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‘America First’ Donald Trump Acts to Save Nonwhite, Foreign Babies

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It might seem counterintuitive: One of President Donald Trump’s first actions in office, on the Monday morning after he was inaugurated, was to act in defense of foreigners — most of them yellow, black, or brown. As LifeSiteNews reports, President Trump

signed an executive order today reinstating the “Mexico City Policy” banning government funding of foreign pro-abortion groups like the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

A cultural political football, the policy was first enacted by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 and was maintained by President George H.W. Bush until it was rescinded first by Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1993. Eight years later, President George W. Bush reinstated Mexico City and it was in effect until Barack Obama reversed it upon entering office in 2009.

The Mexico City Policy bans funding to organizations that perform abortions overseas or lobby for legalizing them in foreign nations.

“But wait,” some liberal might say, as he peels off his vaginal protest hat. “I thought that Trump was for America First. If he thinks that fetuses are human, wouldn’t he first act to protect some American ones?”

The Civil Rights Movement for Unborn Americans

The obvious answer is that Trump doesn’t have the executive power to protect unborn children in the United States. That will take a complex series of courageous political actions, from choosing the right judges to appoint to the U.S. Supreme Court to doing whatever it takes — including trashing the Senate filibuster — to get each of them confirmed. We will need to throw all our political support behind each of those necessary actions.

After that, we will have to battle in each of the 50 states to pass the most protective laws that we can. A federal law protecting unborn children seems unlikely to pass, and would be difficult to enforce in places where the Culture of Death is deeply embedded. (Just check the map of counties that voted for Hillary Clinton.)

As the Civil Rights movement worked incrementally, pro-lifers want to pass the most protective enforceable laws that are politically possible at any given moment, while constantly pushing the envelope to protect even more Americans. The example of Prohibition reminds us of the drawbacks of imposing on a large and diverse country the norms of a narrow majority. It doesn’t last.

First, Kill No Foreigners

But there’s something deeper going on here. Yes, it’s true that this America-First president who has been smeared as a white racialist wants to protect non-white foreign children from U.S.-taxpayer subsidized violence. If that’s really surprising to anyone, it’s because that person has guzzled fake news and hysterical slander for so long that he thinks it’s a pumpkin latte.

A proper nationalism — for which the best word is patriotism — begins by accepting limits.

There are limits to U.S. borders: We don’t want to conquer the world.

There are limits to the vigor of Anglo-American culture: We cannot assimilate limitless numbers of immigrants all at once.

There are limits to our influence: We can’t remake the political cultures and defang the hostile religions of every nation across the earth.

The foreign policy that comes with healthy patriotism is traditionally called “Realism.” It accepts the fact that in a fallen world with tragic limits, we Americans are also fallen and limited. We must tend the flame of Liberty here at home, and cheer on others who wish to light it on their shores. But we won’t descend with fire and sword to set the world ablaze, as a past Republican president once recklessly promised the planet. As surviving Iraqi Christians would tell us, we might well do more harm than good.

Realism starts with the Hippocratic principle: First, do no harm. So it is only right and just that a Trump administration begin by cutting off U.S.-funded aggression against unborn children around the world.

Who Wants to Abort More Africans and Bolivians?

There are a few groups that are deeply unhappy with Trump’s decision:

White racists (like those at Radix magazine) who want to see non-white kids aborted, both here and in America.

Population cranks (like Paul Ehrlich) who want to see as many kids of any color aborted everywhere as soon as possible.

Radical feminists who believe that unborn children are the moral equivalent of fibroid tumors, who want the U.S. government to impose that superstition on foreign countries (from Ireland to the Philippines) where the majority disagrees.

Leftists at the Sierra Club, who are worried about population growth in the U.S. They think it’s immoral to stop foreigners from crossing U.S. borders, but moral to stop them from having children back at home.

Elitists in every country who crave control over the child-rearing choices of the poor, who for decades have threatened the weakest people on earth with cutting off food and medical aid, if they didn’t stop having children. From forced sterilization in India to forced abortion in China, the track record of global “population” activists makes the worst of European colonialism seem positively benevolent.

Dark warnings from elitists at the Rockefeller Foundation and similar groups that population growth (here and abroad) threatened America largely lay behind Roe v. Wade, as Justice Blackmun’s citations in that decision freely admitted. As current abortion enthusiast Justice Ginsburg told the New York Times: “[A]t the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

Are We Images of God or Pets at a Kill Shelter?

And there’s the rub. Supporters of national sovereignty and a market economy see poor people (both here and abroad) as our equals under God, who stand in need of enforceable property rights, economic freedom, and sane political order. Given those crucial but fragile human goods, they can equal us or outpace us, as many recently destitute Asian nations are doing.

Scornful leftists like Hillary Clinton who find millions of Americans “irredeemable” and “deplorable” see poor people differently. The Clintons, Blackmuns, and Ginsburgs of this world look at less fortunate countries like vast shelters full of adorable, starving pets. We’ll adopt as many as we can (via immigration), then neuter or euthanize the rest.

And that’s the bottomless chasm of world view that now divides America. (For more from the author of “‘America First’ Donald Trump Acts to Save Nonwhite, Foreign Babies” please click HERE)

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Majority of Americans Want Some Abortion Restrictions, Object to Taxpayer Funding, Poll Says

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A majority of Americans are in favor of stopping taxpayer funding of abortions and banning most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, according to a new Marist poll commissioned by the Knights of Columbus.

“There is a consensus in America in favor of significant abortion restrictions, and this common ground exists across party lines, and even among significant numbers of those who are pro-choice,” Carl A. Anderson, CEO of the Catholic organization Knights of Columbus, said in a statement.

“This poll shows that large percentages of Americans, on both sides of the aisle, are united in their opposition to the status quo as it relates to abortion on demand. This is heartening and can help start a new national conversation on abortion.”

When polled, 61 percent of Americans opposed using tax dollars to fund abortions within the United States, while 83 percent of respondents opposed subsidizing abortions outside of the United States.

When it came to the partisan breakdown of individuals polled, 41 percent of Democrats and 87 percent of Republicans opposed using taxpayers’ money to fund abortions.

Large majorities of the Marist poll’s respondents supported significant restrictions on abortion, including banning the practice after 20 weeks, unless the mother’s life is in danger.

The poll found that 85 percent of Americans supported some restrictions on abortion.

“It’s also worth pointing out, we have 74 percent of all Americans who support these [significant] restrictions and 77 percent of women who would support these restrictions,” Andrew Walther, the vice president of communications and strategic planning for Knights of Columbus, said in a conference call to reporters.

Walther added:

We’ve been doing this now going back to 2008, asking Americans what kind of restrictions they would support on abortion, and what we found here, as in previous years, was an overwhelming support for limiting abortion to at most the first three months of pregnancy, with substantial support for limiting it to cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother.

The Marist poll’s numbers, showing the majority of Americans support some sort of restriction on abortion, were released during the same week as the annual March for Life event, an annual pro-life event that meets in the District of Columbia.

Additionally, on Monday, Donald Trump reinstated a policy that specifies that federal funds designated for family planning can only be used to support foreign nongovernmental organizations that will not promote or perform abortions in foreign countries.

The Marist poll sponsored by the Knights of Columbus was conducted between Dec. 12 and Dec. 19, 2016. The survey included responses from 2,729 adults living within the continental United States and has a margin of error of ±1.9 percentage points. (For more from the author of “Majority of Americans Want Some Abortion Restrictions, Object to Taxpayer Funding, Poll Says” please click HERE)

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Women’s March on Washington Is Really a March against Women, Science, and Life Itself

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The Women’s March on Washington has taken sides. There will be no partnership between their efforts and pro-life organizations. And the argument between life and death for the unborn just crystallized.

Outraged by the inauguration of President-elect Trump, the organizers of what is estimated to be 200,000 “women’s rights are human rights” marchers, have made it clear they stand for the cavalier liquidation of life springing from the wombs of women across the nation.

Masked by the false narrative that women ought to be able to do what they wish with their own bodies, the pro-aborts are blind to the fact that the body growing within a woman’s womb is a completely different body, given life from God above at the moment of conception. The child has a different circulatory system, different blood, and different DNA, making arguments in favor of “women’s reproductive rights” anti-science, not to mention profoundly brutal.

Saline abortions — in which the child can be viewed on an ultrasound thrashing in immense pain as her skin burns — causes no sympathy from the pro-aborts. Nor do suction aspiration abortions induce a heartfelt tear, where the baby can be viewed (again, via ultrasound) trying to move away from the powerful vacuum that rips off her legs and arms before her body and head is crushed.

A D&E abortion is one in which the doctor uses instruments to break bones and tear off the arms and legs of a baby who no doubt is screaming at the obvious pain that would induce at 20 to 32 weeks of age.

No problem, say the pro-aborts, there is an uptick in post-conception pill use, which supposedly kills the child at a much more acceptable phase of life, between five and nine weeks. Only, the pill starves the child to death over a long period of time.

The whitewash of the mass genocide and torture of the unborn in America by pro-abort groups is a stain on this great nation equal to the acceptance and proliferation of slavery. Yet some women continue to refuse to look at what they claim is their right for what it actually means.

Women are not stupid, but the abortion industry in America has made many of them believe these horrific acts are somehow part of their handbook on how to be a woman.

So the women will march on Saturday, Jan 21, funded by Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the nation. There will be foolish women wearing outfits made to look like their own genitals, and, if the past is any indicator, being generally distasteful, gross, and foul-mouthed. They are getting more and more desperate to “get their message across” because their heyday is waning.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, the number of abortions in America has dropped below one million for the first time since 1975 to 958,700 in 2013 and 926,200 in 2014. Pro-aborts had this happen on their watch, with the most pro-abortion president this nation has ever seen.

They claim the numbers of abortions have dwindled because Republican state legislatures are making access to abortion facilities more difficult. But despite the Institute’s pro-abortion narrative, they did admit there was not a “clear and consistent relationship between state restrictions and changes in state abortion rates,” nor was there a “clear correlation between the number of clinics and abortion rates.”

Which means the pro-life movement is changing hearts and minds, and state legislatures are working to meet the demand of their constituencies who are overwhelmingly pro-life.

There is no doubt the media will cover the “women’s march for death” with the excitement and hype of the Oscars. However, each year the March for Life gets a blip, if anything, on the media’s radar, even though the annual march gathers between 200,000 and 500,000 people.

Saturday’s estimated 200,000 women may seem to be an overwhelming amount of people who agree with pro-aborts, but six days later, the 44th Annual March for Life will bring hundreds of thousands of activists to the Capitol who fight for the right to life for the most defenseless among us, and who have resolved to bring an end to the senseless killing of innocent people.

Someday in this nation, a vast majority of the female population will frown upon abortion, just as the nation turned away from slavery, and do everything they can to educate their daughters that life is precious and that they play the most important role of anyone. They must emphasize that the role of responsibility — motherhood — involves genuine love and care. This is the only way that the sick, twisted, deceitful, and scarring mantras of the pro-aborts can someday become obsolete. (For more from the author of “Women’s March on Washington Is Really a March against Women, Science, and Life Itself” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

When Feminism Was Pro-Life

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Serrin Foster has been talking about Susan B. Anthony probably for as long as she can remember. She’s president of Feminists for Life, and a Saturday Night Live skit recently gave her even more opportunities.

A skit on that comedy show ended with Anthony telling a group of modern women that “abortion is murder,” providing an unlikely gift to Foster’s group, which aims to educate women about nonviolent alternatives to abortion.

As it happens, Foster was already fielding press calls because of a billboard that Feminists for Life put up in Rochester, New York, where Anthony lived and spent her activist years. “Peace Begins in the Womb,” it says, which was essentially the message that Mother Teresa told Bill and Hillary Clinton and the rest of us when she spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in 1994.

The billboard didn’t invoke Anthony, but it provoked a debate about her record on abortion. Foster makes the points that Anthony and other “feminist foremothers … without known exception, spoke out against abortion during the first wave.” The suffragettes were unmistakably pro-life, as Foster explains, using words and phrases like “crime against humanity,” “feticide” and “child murder.” “They used infanticide and abortion interchangeably,” Foster says.

What an opportunity for reflection — about the history that Foster and Carol Crossed, the president of the Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum, have dedicated years to exploring and communicating and about what we have been doing to ourselves — to human lives, to our culture and law.

“Sometimes SNL gets it right,” Grazie Christie, a doctor in Miami and senior fellow with the Catholic Association, tells me. She saw in the sketch the “superficial banality of modern feminism is in full display.” About Anthony she said: “The suffragist struggled to change a society where women could not divorce a drunk and abusive husband, vote, speak in public, own separate property when married or be joint guardians of their children. The millennials, affluent and liberated heirs to the fruits of her labor, argue about taxi fare and whether to eat on the train or grab takeout.”

Foster sees it as “an opportunity to instruct both sides about our rich, pro-life feminist history. It begins with the women who fought for the rights of slaves to be free and for women to vote, and who also argued to protect women and children from abortion. Women deserve better than abortion — and so do all children. We seek to fulfill the unrealized vision of the first wave feminists. May peace begin in the womb.”

Anthony, who did not have children of her own, was once complimented on what a good mother she would have been. Foster points to her response: “Sweeter even than to have had the joy of caring for children of my own has it been for me to help bring about a better state of things for mothers generally, so that their unborn little ones could not be willed away from them.”

Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life Foundation, which every January sponsors a large annual gathering celebrating life and protesting the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, says, “Given the many conflicting messages these days about what it means to be a woman, to be a feminist, I appreciated the skit and its humorous poke at a sound-bite culture that is lacking a deeper understanding of the inherent dignity and vocation of woman. I appreciated that the skit depicted Susan B. Anthony’s stance on respecting and protecting life from conception.”

I take some solace in the fact that the first major female presidential candidate, who was an extremist on abortion, wasn’t elected. Unlikely as it may be, an SNL skit could be a gateway to liberation from our cultural assumption that women’s politics and health are wedded to legal abortion. It’s not so. It hasn’t been so. It doesn’t need to be so. We can’t live like this forever. And we don’t have to. See the opening now — it’s even showing up on SNL. (For more from the author of “When Feminism Was Pro-Life” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Pro-Lifers Should Start to Imagine What a Post-Roe World Would Look Like

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Dare we think that in the not too distant future, Roe v. Wade will be corrected?

Let us assume that whoever almost-President Donald Trump appoints to the Supreme Court believes that unborn children have value under the law and merit the right to life. Or, at least, that Roe was decided wrongly.

A case then comes before the Court challenging the validity of Roe which has resulted in the deaths of nearly 60 million children within the wombs of their mothers.

First, some background regarding our anti-natal culture. As my former Family Research Council colleague Cathy Ruse and I wrote a few years ago, Roe “did not create a limited right to abortion but a virtually unlimited right to abortion throughout pregnancy.” Indeed, the Supreme Court

ruled that abortion must be permitted for any reason a woman chooses until the child becomes viable; after viability, an abortion must still be permitted if an abortion doctor deems the abortion necessary to protect a woman’s ‘health,’ defined by the Court in another ruling issued the same day as ‘all factors — physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age — relevant to the well-being of the patient’. In this way the Court created a right to abort a child at any time, even past the point of viability, for ‘emotional’ reasons.

Unrestricted access to abortion on demand became the national norm that grim day in January 1973. Under President Obama, that access became even easier: As noted by the director of FRC’s Center for Human Dignity, Arina Grossu, the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) subsidizes abortion through a number of funding streams.

In 1973, the Supreme Court said the foundation of Roe is that abortion is an element of the “right to privacy.” The Court admitted that such a right was not explicit in the Constitution but only resident in a conceptual haze of implicational rights. Using that criterion, this “zone of privacy” should include my right to receive free Internet services, psychiatric treatment, multivitamins or anything else I can convince at least one federal judge is necessary for my well-being.

Justice Blackmun also noted that another reason for jettisoning all state laws against abortion “is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it.”

Interesting criterion. How about the distress to the child herself, dismembered without anesthetic in her mother’s womb? How about the distress of the couple who desperately want a child and are denied her because so few babies are available for domestic adoption? And how about the untold numbers of families which, thinking they are “unable” to rear a child, have been enriched and filled with love because the “unwanted” baby has become the apple of its eye?

It is my hope that these arguments will become, if not mute, at least dormant in light of a Supreme Court decision to bring legal sanity back to the jurisprudence of abortion.

After Roe?

So: Imagine it’s the first day of a post-Roe America. What then?

According the respected legal scholar Paul Linton, “the immediate impact of such a decision (overruling Roe) would be far more modest than most commentators — on both sides of the issue — believe.” According to Linton, “More than two-thirds of the States have repealed their pre-Roe laws or have amended those laws to conform to Roe v. Wade, which allows abortion for any reason before viability and for virtually any reason after viability.

Pre-Roe laws that have been expressly repealed would not be revived by the overruling of Roe. Only three States that repealed their pre-Roe laws (or amended them to conform to Roe) have enacted post-Roe laws attempting to prohibit some or most abortions throughout pregnancy. Those laws have been declared unconstitutional by the federal courts and are not now enforceable. Of the less than one-third of the States that have retained their pre-Roe laws, most would be ineffective in prohibiting abortions.”

Linton concludes that only seven states (Arizona, Arkansas, Michigan, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin) “would be able to enforce their pre-Roe statutes prohibiting most abortions should Roe be overturned.”

At the same time, Tim Bradley of the Charlotte Lozier Institute notes that just four states have “enacted ‘trigger’ statutes that would prohibit abortion in the event that Roe is overruled: Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota and South Dakota. In Mississippi, however, the state Supreme Court recognized a constitutional right to abortion in the state constitution in 1998, meaning that its trigger statute will not be allowed to go into effect.”

Could Congress Prohibit Abortion?

Could Congress pass a law prohibiting abortion except in rare cases? Yes. But as Bradley observes, there is no guarantee that the Supreme Court would find such a law constitutional. If the Constitution is silent on abortion, its silence extends not only to acceptance of the procedure but also to rejection of it. In other words, it becomes a state issue.

It is also unlikely that there would be any quick enactment of a constitutional amendment to prevent abortion-on-demand. Amending the Constitution is a laborious process and given the passions aroused by the abortion debate, inclusion of a pro-life amendment in the Constitution is far from a certainty.

The Guttmacher Institute, once an adjunct of the nation’s leading abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, noted last year that “states enacted 334 abortion restrictions between 2011 and early July 2016. According to the analysis, the new laws account for 30 percent of all abortion restrictions since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in 1973.”

These state provisions include such things as banning dismemberment abortions (performed on fully-formed unborn babies), health regulations for abortion centers, and mandatory viewing of ultrasound photographs of their unborn children by women considering abortion.

These common-sense and compassionate provisions are partial steps toward a culture of life. But now is the time when pro-life leaders in all 50 states need to be planning how to safeguard unborn children and their mothers from a predatory abortion industry in a post-Roe America.

This should include a careful review of all existing state laws concerning abortion and what specifically needs to happen to build a wall of legal protection around women and their unborn little ones. This should take place even in states like California, Washington and New York, where the sanctity of unborn life is barely discussed in their statehouses.

Public Persuasion

Additionally, public persuasion is essential. Part of this is exposing the predatory nature of the abortion industry, as has been demonstrated by the gruesome Planned Parenthood videos regarding the sale of the body parts of aborted babies. The pro-life movement also needs to make strong public arguments about the injustice of encouraging women in crisis to abort their unborn children, as if the lives within them were similar to infected appendices or swollen tonsils. As has been said, women deserve — always deserve — better than abortion.

The late Dr. Mildred Jefferson, the first African-American woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School and a courageous champion of the unborn, said, “The fight for the right to life is not the cause of a special few, but the cause of every man, woman and child who cares not only about his or her own family, but the whole family of man.”

Now is the time for the right-to-life movement to think about our post-Roe strategy. The fight for the unborn and the women carrying them is one we must win. (For more from the author of “Pro-Lifers Should Start to Imagine What a Post-Roe World Would Look Like” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

The Left’s “Abortion-Armageddon” Hysteria Now in Full Force with Trump

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Remember when conservatives thought President Obama was so pro-choice he would practically require women to have abortions to both show how thankful they were that they even had such a right and to demonstrate the importance of it? No? Me neither. That’s because President Obama never said such a thing — nor did any media, right of center, speculate he might believe that. To do so would have been false, dangerously reckless, and just plain absurd.

Yet, ever since President Trump won the election, the media has been anxiously predicting the era of a woman’s “right to choose” will soon be over, as all Republicans are apparently working to curtail access to the wonder of abortion. (Strangely, nothing is said of the lives of actual babies at stake.)

In this, the Left not only acts unfairly, but misses the point altogether of where much of the conservative movement stands on abortion. Hint: It’s not in the middle of a back alley, beckoning women to get abortions via coat hangers, risking life and limb.

What Trump will do

In this New York magazine cover story, “Warning: Abortion’s Deadly DIY Past Could Soon Become Its Future,” the writer all but predicts Trump will single-handedly overturn Roe v. Wade, forcing women to have abortions illegally in secret.

Upon his November election win, Americans Googled “abortion” so much it looked like the “manifestation of collective anxiety about what would become an early flash point in the Trump administration—and a first test of whether much of the social progress of the past 40 years can be undone over the next four.”

The piece describes how our great grandmothers had to seek abortions secretly and dangerously: “This isn’t ancient history; this was the lived reality of many of our mothers and certainly of our grandmothers. And it is entirely possible that it could become our future as well.”

One of the things they worry Trump will do is what Paul Ryan, R-Wisc. (F, 52%) has often said Congress will (and attempted to do last year) — defund Planned Parenthood. The New York cover story suggests that if this were to occur:

60 percent of Planned Parenthood patients — who rely on those programs for Pap smears, breast exams, STD testing, and, of course, contraception would no longer be able to get that care from Planned Parenthood. For many, that would mean not being able to get treatment at all.

This could not be more false. Defunding Planned Parenthood simply means they won’t receive taxpayer dollars. In fact, last year the House Oversight Committee found Planned Parenthood was able to function without taxpayer subsidies. If the absence of taxpayer dollars forces the group to shut down, perhaps they never should have been in operation in the first place.

So is this an attempt by Republicans to handle taxpayer dollars wisely that doubles as an attempt to save the lives of unborn babies? Absolutely. Bloomberg did report last February abortion clinics were closing at a “record pace.” Since 2011, 162 clinics closed, not all operated by Planned Parenthood.

And while most of those closings were due to legislation, some closed because they were not fit to practice medicine — a fact that doesn’t seem to bother the Left. By contrast, the number of crisis pregnancy centers, which typically steer patients away from abortion, are growing at an alarming pace.

Babies have rights, too

New York mag explains, “The truth is, conservative activists and legislators have been chipping away at American women’s access to reproductive health care for years, with more and greater restrictions in more and more states.”

While the above might appear to the Left as a strategic maneuver to strip women of the supposed right to choose, the statistics — abortion clinics defunded or closing and crisis pregnancy centers rising — more accurately show a two-pronged effort to stop murdering babies in utero.

The piece continues:

That the right wing’s focus is not simply opposition to abortion but also reducing women’s access to contraception gives away the game: Theirs is an effort to keep women from making decisions about when, if, and under what circumstances to have children, and thereby to keep them from exerting agency over their families, their work, their partnerships, their sex lives, and their bodies.

Sigh.

Speaker Paul Ryan, when asked if birth control would still be free when Republicans repeal Obamacare, called it a “nitty-gritty detail,” and was lambasted for his callousness toward what is apparently a central issue in U.S. health care. The issue is neither central nor an “effort to keep women from making decisions about when, if, and under what circumstances to have children.”

Remind me again why and with what logic should the government provide health care, birth control et al., for free? That’s the central issue. When my husband and I were newly married and just beginning to talk through if or when we might like children, it never occurred to me the government should pay for my birth control, just like the government does not pay for my dentistry.

While they’re not always successful at implementing this, the party of limited government and fiscal responsibility sometimes tries to enforce these ideas.

Ignorance is bliss

Despite the fact that Roe v. Wade was decided decades ago, the Left still feigns outrage when conservatives try to curtail abortions by any means, legislatively or otherwise. Articles like and the New York mag story show how they even pretend to not understand why.

Over the years, conservatives have embraced science from Princeton that shows when life begins, studies from Oxford that describe how babies feel pain in the womb, and how ultrasounds change women’s minds about their babies. The Right has encouraged marches, picketing, legislation, safe clinics, care for moms and babies postpartum, and adoption. In fact, conservatives are doing this so successfully it’s spawned abortion-armageddon hysteria.

It’s baffling as to how the Left continues to insist, after four decades, that Republicans — who have repeatedly fought for women’s rights over the last century — actually care more about limiting women’s freedoms than saving lives.

It’s such an obvious truth it’s hard to know if this ignorance is feigned or real. Only one of these efforts between the two political parties is beneficial for mom, baby, dad, and society. The other is harmful, if ever progressive and “liberating.”

Conservatives can and do care about women’s rights and babies’ rights — the two aren’t mutually exclusive. And doing both doesn’t mean women are going to be forced to have abortions in back alleys; it means women might actually think twice about aborting their babies, thus sparing emotional trauma, life, and making a difference in society’s cultural makeup. That’s what conservatives are trying to do. (For more from the author of “The Left’s “Abortion-Armageddon” Hysteria Now in Full Force with Trump” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Babies Left to Die: UNM Abortion Doctors Not Trained to Deal With Babies Born Alive

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“Imagine an infant in an abortion clinic without food, without care, defenseless, confused, crying and grasping for life — being left alone to die on its own.”

That was the response of New Mexico Alliance for Life Executive Director Elisa Martinez, after she read the final report of the Select Panel on Infant Lives. Martinez continued, “It’s almost too difficult to imagine, but this is the reality taking place at UNM Hospital and Southwestern Women’s Options, confirmed by testimony from the abortionists themselves.”

Released Friday, Dec. 30, 2016, the report covers more than a year of investigative effort by the panel, which was established on Oct. 7, 2015, in light of the Center for Medical Progress videos.

One particularly disheartening account is that of abortion doctors at the University of New Mexico (UNM), where a faculty member, whose name is redacted from the report, admitted that doctors at the university were not trained on how to handle children who were born alive during an induced abortion.

This flies in the face of the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act — which requires that children born alive in the case of an abortion or attempted abortion receive “immediate admission to a hospital,” “diligence to preserve the life” and the mandatory reporting of any failure to comply with the law.

When pressed for more information, such as if the doctors took resuscitation training, the faculty member, who is also a doctor, simply replied, “OB/GYN doctors do not resuscitate neonates.”

Upon being read the language of the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, the faculty member claimed she had not discussed the law with her council, nor did she “understand the relevance” of the law to her practice — despite admitting that she was aware of instances “where a planned abortion … [was] born alive,”

“Coming from the official who is arguably most responsible for making UNM an abortion provider,” the report declares, ” this testimony is a startling reflection of the absence of attention given to any standard of care for infants that survive the abortion procedure.” (For more from the author of “Babies Left to Die: UNM Abortion Doctors Not Trained to Deal With Babies Born Alive” please click HERE)

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Scientists Keep Trying to Deny the Heartache of Abortion — With Poor Science

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Our culture is in a worrisome state when major medical journals ignore the foundation and methods of science in service to a political end. Equipped for decades with billions in grant revenue, ideological control of the academy, and agenda-driven professional organizations, scores of scientists have suspended personal and professional ethics to safeguard women’s right to end the lives of their children and suffer the concomitant effects. Dr Antonia Biggs and colleagues are just the latest to march down this path with their JAMA Psychiatry article titled “Women’s Mental Health and Well-Being 5 Years after Being Denied an Abortion: A Prospective, Longitudinal Cohort Study.”

What once appeared to be a subtle mainstream journal bias in favor of publishing results, suggesting abortion poses no threat to women’s psyches, has morphed into a peer-review process, blind to scientific deficiencies as long as the results further leftist abortion rights initiatives. These are desperate times for the pro-choice community, as they seek to block women-centered abortion laws rooted in strong empirical evidence and the voices of brave women standing up to share their post-abortion struggles.

What better way than to grab bullet points from a JAMA article and flood the popular media with them? Women deserve better and here is why the latest study results have absolutely no merit and will not hold up in any court.

Study results and their obvious bias

The authors compared women who received abortions just under legal gestational limits with women who wanted an abortion but were denied, because they were just over the facility gestational limit (Turnaway Group) relative to psychological outcomes. The Turnaway Group was subdivided into those who gave birth and those who obtained an abortion subsequently or miscarried. The authors summarized the results by stating “Women who were denied an abortion, in particular those who later miscarried or had an abortion elsewhere (Turnaway no-birth group), had the most elevated levels of anxiety and lowest self-esteem and life satisfaction 1 week after being denied an abortion, which quickly improved and approached levels similar to those in the other groups by 6 to 12 months.”

The authors’ objective for publishing the study is introduced in the opening line: “The idea that abortion leads to adverse psychological outcomes has been the basis for legislation mandating counseling before obtaining an abortion and other policies restricting abortion” and it is nailed down at the end of the article when they state “…there is no evidence to justify laws that require women seeking abortion to be forewarned about negative psychological responses.” As scientists we never make such sweeping conclusions based on a single study, particularly when there is an abundant literature comprised of sophisticated studies with discrepant conclusions.

Courts throughout the US have concluded that women should be appraised of the risks before consenting to abortion; it is absurd that these researchers have attempted to shift the tide based on this one study. Funding was predictably secured from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation among other sources with a political agenda. As described on their website, “Our work in the United States seeks to advance reproductive health and rights for women and young people by improving access to quality comprehensive sexuality education, family planning and safe abortion care.”

Results are inconsistent with the current state of knowledge

The results of hundreds of studies published worldwide over the past three decades indicate that abortion is a substantial contributing factor to women’s mental health problems. I published a meta-analysis on the association between abortion and mental health in the British Journal of Psychiatry (BJP) in 2011. In a meta-analysis, the contribution of any particular study to the final result is based on objective scientific criteria (sample size and strength of effect). The BJP sample consisted of 22 studies and 877,297 participants.

Results revealed that women who aborted experienced an 81% increased risk for mental health problems. When compared exclusively to unintended pregnancy delivered, women were found to have a 55% increased risk of experiencing mental health problems. This review offers the largest quantitative estimate of mental health risks associated with abortion currently available. Evidence of this nature has influenced informed consent legislation in many states. For example, upholding the South Dakota law in 2012, the US Court of Appeals relied upon the emerging body of data.

Methodological shortcomings

• Only 37.5% of women invited to take part in the study actually participated, and across the study period 42% of these dropped out, rendering the final sample comprised of under 22% of those eligible for inclusion! The 78% of women whose voices are not included were likely those who had the most serious post-abortion psychological complications. With sensitive topic research, securing a high initial consent rate and avoiding sample loss are vitally linked to the validity of the conclusions. The authors acknowledge this fact as they state “we cannot rule out the possibility that women with adverse mental health outcomes may have been less likely to participate and/or been retained.” We really can just stop here, because this is a fatal flaw.

• In a previous article with the same data published last year in PLoS ONE, the authors noted that the sample had a high concentration of women from low socioeconomic backgrounds, obviously not representative of US women undergoing abortion today. Now we hear from the research group that “given the large number and range of recruitment facilities representing geographically diverse regions in the US (30 clinics from 21 states), and that our sample demographics are consistent with those of nationally representative samples of women seeking abortion, we believe these results are generalizable.” A sample is either representative or it is not.

• The authors failed to reveal the specific consent to participate rates for each group. Second trimester abortions have been established as potentially more traumatizing than first trimester procedures; therefore it is likely that a significantly higher percentage of women in the first-trimester group compared to those in the second trimester group consented to participate. If the rates were comparable, why not report this? Failure to report critical information increases suspicion that this “near limit’ group is in no way representative.

• In the Turnaway Study, women who secured abortions near the gestational limits included women for whom the legal cut off ranged from 10 to 27 weeks. There is a wealth of data indicating that women’s reasons for choosing abortion and their emotional responses to the procedure differ greatly at varying points of pregnancy. Women aborting at such widely disparate gestational ages should therefore not be lumped together, particularly when such information is available in the data.

• The authors do not explain how the sites were actually chosen. What type of sampling plan was employed? Why were only those identified with the National Abortion Federation used? What cities were included? Which areas of the country were sampled?

• All 4 outcome measures are shockingly simplistic with 2 variables containing only 6 items and 2 variables measured with single items. This is inexcusable given the many psychometrically sound multiple item surveys available in the literature. Further, no theoretical basis is given for the cut-score employed to determine clinically relevant cases of depression or anxiety. Well-trained behavioral science researchers should not measure complex human emotions in such a superficial manner; and ethically responsible scientists would not extrapolate from minimalistic assessments to women’s emotional reactions to one of life’s more challenging decisions.

The authors suggest that later abortions are healthier for women than childbirth when women seek abortions, obscuring the well-documented risks of late abortions to women’s physical well-being in addition to the elevated psychological risks. For example, using national data, Bartlett and colleagues reported in 2004 that the relative risk of abortion-related mortality was 14.7 at 13–15 weeks of gestation, 29.5 at 16-20 weeks, and 76.6 at or after 21 weeks. This compares to a 12.1 rate for childbirth. Bartlett reported that the causes of death during the second trimester included hemorrhage, infection, embolism, anesthesia complications, and cardiac and cerebrovascular events.

Many women who make the decision to abort do so without a thorough understanding of the procedure. A number of studies have revealed that feeling misinformed or being denied relevant information often precipitates post-abortion difficulties. There is also considerable evidence that a high percentage of women walking into abortion clinics are conflicted about the choice.

In a 2006 study I published with colleagues in the Journal of Medical Ethics, we found that 95% of a socio-demographically diverse group of women wished to be informed of all possible complications associated with drugs, surgery, and/or other forms of elective treatments, including abortion. Fortunately state-level legislation has responded to the needs of women, respecting the gravity of an abortion decision by mandating dissemination of accurate information on the procedure and risks involved, time to reflect on the decision, and sensitive pre-abortion counseling.

This latest study in JAMA will be aptly tossed on the dusty stack with other similarly compromised studies that have yielded results palatable to a culture fighting to normalize a procedure that will never feel natural or right to countless women. The studies will be unattended to by the average person, clinicians, and the science-savvy alike, because the results simply do not align with the lived experiences of women. (For more from the author of “Scientists Keep Trying to Deny the Heartache of Abortion — With Poor Science” please click HERE)

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Texas Looks to Bury Aborted Babies Despite Legal Objections from Abortion Groups

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A new set of rules in Texas requiring aborted babies to be cremated or buried has prompted a legal battle in the Lone Star State. Pro-abortion groups are attempting to halt the law with a lawsuit, and its implementation has now been delayed by a court order.

The abortion burial measure, which would also apply to miscarriages that happen at hospitals, abortion centers, and other health clinics, was set to go into effect Dec. 19.

The state department of health approved the measure, but it has been delayed until Jan. 6 by a court order.

Advocates for the new law say it is necessary to protect the dignity of life and also public health.

“All human beings deserve to be treated with respect after death,” Marc Rylander, a spokesperson for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, said in a statement before the court hearing delaying the measure on baby tissue remains. “To that end, Texas will continue to defend the safety and dignity of the unborn up to and as far as Supreme Court precedent will allow.”

Rylander added:

These new rules simply provide for the humane disposal of fetal tissue instead of sending it to landfills like unwanted trash, as is the abortion industry’s current practice. They do not, in any way, interfere with a woman’s access to abortion. Our office looks forward to proudly defending these commonsense rules in court.

The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit last week, challenging the required burial for aborted babies.

“The politically-motivated rules are designed to restrict a woman’s right to access safe and legal abortion by increasing both the cost of reproductive health care services and the shame and stigma surrounding abortion and pregnancy loss,” the organization said in a press release.

After the Center for Reproductive Rights sued John Hellerstedt, in his official capacity as commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks temporarily delayed the implementation of the new rule, ABC News reported. Sparks is expected to decide, after a preliminary hearing on Jan. 3, if the burial rules will go into effect.

“Texas has chosen to dignify the life of the unborn by requiring the humane disposition of fetal tissue,” Paxton, a Republican, said in a statement following the hearing last week. “I am confident in the constitutionality of these rules and look forward to the court upholding their validity by Jan. 6.”

“Medical facilities will be required to either cremate or bury the unborn babies they kill, not contingent on the period of gestation—as opposed to sending the baby’s remains to be incinerated or dumped into a landfill, as most facilities currently do,” The Daily Wire reported on Nov. 29.

The Texas Health and Human Services Commission proposed the law in July. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, supported the rule change.

“I believe it is imperative to establish higher standards that reflect our respect for the sanctity of life,” Abbott said in a fundraising email in July, reported The Texas Tribune.

“Gov. Abbott believes human and fetal remains should not be treated like medical waste, and the proposed rule changes affirms the value and dignity of all life,” Ciara Matthews, Abbott’s deputy communications director, said in an emailed statement to The Daily Signal. “For the unborn, the mothers, and the hospital and clinic staff, the governor believes it is imperative to establish higher standards that reflect our respect for the sanctity of life.”

“Further, it is Gov. Abbott’s hope that the Legislature will consider legislation next session to enshrine the new rules into state law,” Matthews added.

The Texas department of health said that the measure could also be effective in stopping the spread of disease.

“While the methods described in the new rules may have a cost, that cost is expected to be offset by costs currently being spent by facilities on disposition for transportation, storage, incineration, steam disinfection, and/or landfill disposal,” Carrie Williams, Texas health department spokesperson, told LifeNews.

Pro-abortion activists are unhappy that the rules could “create more obstacles for people obtaining abortions,” The Dallas Morning News reported.

Critics of the law say burial and cremation costs could get in the way of access to abortion.

Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement that the law is an “insult to Texas women” and a “new low.”

“This restriction, just like the many before it, all across our nation, does not create any health benefit for women and is strictly designed to limit access to safe, quality abortion care,” Amy Hagstrom Miller, CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, said in a statement.

Whole Woman’s Health is part of the lawsuit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of multiple health clinics.

The Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops, in a press release last week, said the Catholic Church would pay for the burial costs at Catholic cemeteries.

“Catholic cemeteries estimate that their costs will range from $1,500 to $13,000 annually to inter children who die from abortions,” the press release said. “There are more than 50 Catholic cemeteries in the state; the [Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops] also hopes to collaborate with other cemeteries, funeral homes, and mortuaries.”

Abortions and miscarriages that take place at home are exempt from the rules.

Pro-life advocates point out the “humanity” that comes with burying a dead baby.

“It’s no surprise the abortion industry is adamantly opposed to this law. They would rather sell those body parts for money or find some other nonhumanitarian way to dispose of the remains,” Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, told LifeSiteNews.

“We hope that this law helps our nation to see the humanity of the child in the womb and also helps women who are contemplating abortion to understand more fully the unique gift of a child.”

“What we’re saying is, it needs to be humane, and the mother needs to be given the opportunity to have a say and be informed with what’s happening,” Kristi Hamrick of Americans United for Life says, according to NPR. (For more from the author of “Texas Looks to Bury Aborted Babies Despite Legal Objections from Abortion Groups” please click HERE)

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Will Texas Grant the Unborn Decent Burial?

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Today, a Texas regulation was supposed to be implemented to preserve the dignity of unborn children’s lives by requiring that they be buried or cremated after an abortion or miscarriage.

Proposed by the state’s Health and Human Services Commission, the new regulation was simply an amendment to the existing code. The health services provisions previously allowed for aborted or miscarried fetuses to be ground up and discharged into sewer systems as alternatives to cremation or burial. The proposed law now requires internment via one of the latter two options, which are customarily applied to the deceased.

However, that regulation was blocked by a temporary injunction last Thursday by a U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks in Austin, Texas. He expects to make a final ruling regarding the regulation on January 6, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

Pro-choice groups joined with the Center for Reproductive Rights to challenge the regulation in a lawsuit in July. According to the AP, the Center for Reproductive Rights called the regulation “unwise, unjustified and unconstitutional.”

Mainstream Culture Living in Denial

Their outrage comes as no surprise. Required burial or cremation assumes that the deceased being is human, and such assumptions are inconvenient for pro-choice activists and abortionists. After all, it’s easier to justify the killing of millions of fetuses every year if you deny their humanity.

According to Amy Hagstrom-Miller, president and CEO of the case’s lead plaintiff Whole Women’s Health, it’s not the dignity of the unborn, but the dignity of women at stake.

“We will not stand for Texas putting more undue burdens on women and families who deserve the safe and compassionate abortion care that we provide at Whole Woman’s Health,” she said in a press release from the Center for Reproductive Rights

While the burial of the deceased is often acknowledged as a burden to the family they leave behind, no one argues that it’s “undue.” Unless, of course, the deceased isn’t recognized as a human being.

The lawsuit claims that “Women and their families hold a diversity of views on whether and when an embryo or fetus attains the status of a human being.” (Emphasis added.)

Whether and when. Not only is the lawsuit highlighting the hotly contested issue of when an unborn baby becomes alive — it is alleging that an unborn baby may not even be human at all!

The lawsuit claims that these diverse opinions about a baby’s humanity are “informed by science, culture, spirituality and religion.”

By suggesting that a fetus may not actually be human (and therefore completely eligible for killing, with no moral qualms), pro-choice culture is attempting to assuage the conscience of a society that aborts millions of unborn human children each year.

Mainstream Media Devalues Life in the Womb

The euphemistic bias has, unsurprisingly, seeped into the mainstream media.

The AP’s report on the judge’s block of the Texas regulations last Thursday is a perfect example. Consider this paragraph from AP reporter Will Weissert:

The Center for Reproductive Rights and other national advocacy groups sued to prevent Texas from requiring hospitals and clinics to bury or cremate fetal remains from abortions or miscarriages rather than disposing of them in a sanitary landfill, as they often currently do with such remains and other biological medical waste. (Emphasis added.)

Weissert is equating the bodies of unborn human beings with “biological medical waste,” as if an aborted child were the same as a discarded tumor.

The Truth Regarding Life

It doesn’t take a degree in science to recognize three simple truths that appear in grade school biology textbooks:

1. The being that grows inside a womb is human. Conceived of two humans, it can’t be anything else.

2. Since that being is constantly growing from the moment it enters the womb, we know it is alive.

3. Abortion ends that life.

Pro-choice activists and the media which follow their lead aren’t just rejecting religion and ethics; they are sunk in denial of basic medical facts. (For more from the author of “Will Texas Grant the Unborn Decent Burial?” please click HERE)

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