Abortion access in the U.S. has been vanishing at the fastest annual pace on record, propelled by Republican state lawmakers’ push to legislate the industry out of existence. Since 2011, at least 162 abortion providers have shut or stopped offering the procedure, while just 21 opened.
At no time since before 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion, has a woman’s ability to terminate a pregnancy been more dependent on her zip code or financial resources to travel. The drop-off in providers—more than one every two weeks—occurred in 35 states, in both small towns and big cities that are home to more than 30 million women of reproductive age.
No region was exempt, though some states lost more than others. Texas, which in 2013 passed sweeping clinic regulations that are under scrutiny by the Supreme Court, saw the most: at least 30. It was followed by Iowa, with 14, and Michigan, with 13. California’s loss of a dozen providers shows how availability declined, even in states led by Democrats, who tend to be friendly to abortion rights . . .
Typically defined by medical researchers as facilities that perform 400 or more abortions per year, the ranks peaked in the late 1980s at 705, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based reproductive-health research organization. By 2011, the most recent year for which Guttmacher has data, that number had fallen to 553. (Read more from “Abortion Clinics Are Closing at a Record Pace” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Save_the_unborn_child_sign_in_New_Zealand.jpg466479kathleenhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngkathleen2016-02-24 20:29:352016-04-11 10:52:17Abortion Clinics Are Closing at a Record Pace
A federal judge refused to grant a preliminary injunction on Feb. 12 against a California law that forces pro-life pregnancy centers to advocate for abortion.
…Judge John A. Houston refused to put the law on hold while the lawsuit proceeds, becoming the third federal judge to do so. He indicated during the hearing that he thought the required information was necessary for women to make “an informed decision.”
California’s “Reproductive Fact Act” took effect Jan. 1. It requires licensed, religious, pregnancy resource centers to inform women, with either posted signage or a handout, that the state offers free abortions for qualifying women. It specifies the inclusion of a phone number for a county social services office that offers free abortions through the state’s Medi-Cal healthcare system. The law mandates the time of distribution and the font size for the signs and handouts. It also requires unlicensed centers to inform visitors that they are not state-approved.
The state currently has 150 local crisis pregnancy centers affected by the law…
“We cannot allow this intrusion into the religious freedom of our pro-life members in California,” said Anne O’Connor, president of legal affairs at [The National Institute of Family and Life Advocates]. “If this act is not successfully challenged, then other states, prompted by Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry, will pass similar legislation forcing pro-life pregnancy centers to become abortion referral agencies.” (Read more from “Federal Judge Forcing Christian Crisis Pregnancy Centers Violate Conscience, Advocate for Abortion” HERE)
The Courts are at it again. And with Republicans planning to confirm another Obama judge as their first vote of the week, it’s time for conservatives to pay attention to the judiciary.
If you thought the last term at the Supreme Court was just an anomaly, think again. The court system is irremediably broken, and that includes the majority of lower courts as well as the majority of judges on the Supreme Court.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been observing a pattern of cases in which the high court refuses to overturn lower court decisions that struck down state laws that were clearly constitutional, all the while refusing to reverse lower court decisions that upheld lawlessness.
For example, while the courts had no problem overturning state marriage laws, they have upheld state gun laws that are clearly unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has refused to take up any of these appeals, even though the lower courts are violating the McDonald decision. The court agreed to take Obama’s appeal to possibly overturn the lower court decision placing an injunction on the DAPA amnesty. At the same time, the court denied the appeal from Sheriff Arpaio to reverse the lower court decision upholding the DACA amnesty. Last week, the court refused to grant cert to those representing power plants languishing from Obama’s carbon rules that clearly violate congressional statutes.
The general theme is that what is in the Constitution is regarded as unconstitutional and what’s not in it is enshrined into the document by judicial action.
Yesterday’s announcements from the court were no different. On the same day the court struck down state sentencing laws regarding juveniles convicted of murder, it refused to hear an appeal from North Dakota after a lower court struck down its abortion law.
First, the sentencing decision. In Montgomery v. Louisiana, the court retroactively applied the Miller v. Alabama decision, which struck down most state laws sentencing juveniles to life in prison without parole. In 2012, Justice Kagan, writing for the majority opinion in Miller, found that the Eighth Amendment precludes states from issuing such sentences to juvenile murderers under most circumstances. Today’s decision in Montgomery, authored by Justice Kennedy, applied this decision retroactively to as many as 2,500 murderers serving life in prison without parole for murders committed as juveniles. Chief Justice Roberts joined with the five liberals, while Scalia, Thomas, and Alito dissented.
As Justice Thomas has said before, “the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause was originally understood as prohibiting torturous methods of punishment—specifically methods akin to those that had been considered cruel and unusual at the time the Bill of Rights.” Yet, once again, the court rules that the Constitution as adopted is unconstitutional. Now the federal courts can engage in retroactive jail break and foray into an area of law over which they clearly have no authority. And again, I will note that this same court stands by idly as states violate the plain meaning of the Second Amendment with prohibitions on concealed and open carry.
As Scalia concluded in his dissent:
[I]n Godfather fashion, the majority makes state legislatures an offer they can’t refuse: Avoid all the utterly impossible nonsense we have prescribed by simply ‘permitting juvenile homicide offenders to be considered for parole.’
Both Thomas and Scalia noted that the court created an entirely new constitutional right to retroactively overturn convictions that were completely constitutional at the time they were passed. Hence, with the ever-evolving standards of the legal profession’s “Constitution,” they can order judicial jailbreak at any time for any reason.
Meanwhile, as the high court overturned the Louisiana State Supreme Court and the state legislature on a retroactive creation of a newly concocted constitutional right, the court refused to hear a petition from North Dakota after a federal district court blocked the state’s six-week ban on abortion. Sadly, this is not surprising because SCOTUS refused to grant cert to Arizona after the Ninth Circuit struck down its 20-week abortion ban in 2014.
Here we are in the year 2016 and the courts have the final say on all important societal questions—from marriage and abortion to immigration and basic criminal justice laws. Many Republicans are excited by the degree of GOP control of state governments, but unless we rein in the courts and strip them of jurisdiction over political questions, they will void out the most basic laws, even those put in place at the founding of our union and the ratification of the 14th Amendment. At the same time, the courts will carelessly uphold blatantly unconstitutional laws passed by blue state governments.
If conservatives are fortunate enough to win back the White House in 2016, the most important looming question is what to do with the courts; for, if the courts are allowed to rewrite our Constitution and impel societal transformation without representation, elections will be rendered moot. (For more from the author of “SCOTUS Upholds Abortion, Strikes Down Juvenile Sentencing” please click HERE)
“If he’ll cheat on her, he’ll cheat on you,” is what Southern mothers tell their daughters, warning them that stealing away a woman’s husband isn’t just gravely immoral. It also means you’re as dumb as a box of rocks. A man who proves that he’s willing to be unfaithful this time is pretty much promising you that he’ll be unfaithful next time, when you’re the victim. The only safe response to a man like this is Carrie Underwood’s: “The next time he cheats/it won’t be on me.”
And that’s what we’d like pro-life Americans to think about as they consider Donald Trump. Not Mr. Trump’s personal life [warning: graphic content] — the fact that he abandoned one aging wife (Ivana) to take up with a younger woman (Marla), then dumped her just shy of the date when their pre-nup would have expired, chivalrously breaking her the news by leaking it to a newspaper, and leaving a copy of the paper on her bed. No, that’s strictly personal stuff, and there’s no way we can learn about a man’s promise-keeping habits from irrelevant data like that. Instead, let’s think about Trump’s stated, public record on life issues, and what it means.
But first please walk on a little imaginative journey with us. Pretend, for just a second, that the pro-life movement acted as an effective pressure group, like the gun lobby. Imagine if in addition to its spiritual uplift mission, the pro-life movement were disciplined, rigorous and political. This would make sense on the face of it, since its stated goal is to change the laws of this country.
Yes, we do hope to change Americans’ hearts, and restore the dignity of sex, and build up a wholesome culture that sees life as meaningful and beautiful. But that is really a job for the churches, one which too many good-hearted people have piled onto the pro-life movement because their churches aren’t bothering with it. That sad fact makes it all too easy to lose our focus on the movement’s stated goal, which is to legally protect a whole class of abandoned Americans from lethal violence. Period. If that has the happy side effects of strengthening marriage, curing the “hook-up” culture, increasing respect for women, and helping souls to accept Jesus as Lord — and we think it will — then all the better.
But first the laws must change. There is no substitute. If we had never outlawed slavery, you can count on it people would own some. If segregation in restaurants had never been outlawed, it would still prevail in many places. The law is a great teacher. It tells citizens what is really, really important — important enough that if you flout the law, there are people in uniform who will come to your door. We wouldn’t settle for a nation that had changed its heart, but not its laws, on slavery or segregation, and we can’t when it comes to abortion.
The Margaret Sanger Argument Against Abortion
If you were pro-life in the same way that the head of the NRA is pro-gun rights, would you settle for a candidate who had spent most of his life as a radical anti-gun advocate, supporting the seizure of all private weapons? Well, Donald Trump favored abortion on demand until … some point after he decided to run for president. In 1999, he expressed support even for partial birth abortion, the destruction of near-newborns who could survive outside the womb. By 2011, Trump claimed to be pro-life, recalling that he knew “a friend had a child who they were going to abort, and now they have it, and the child is incredible.” In a GOP debate, Trump upped the ante, calling that lucky child a “superstar.” Jamie Weinstein of The Daily Caller, as a good journalist, asked Trump the obvious question:
Would Trump have changed his view on abortion if the child had become a total loser?
“I’ve never thought of it,” Trump said in our interview. “That’s an interesting question. I’ve never thought of it. Probably not, but I’ve never thought of it.”
Margaret Sanger couldn’t have said it any better. In fact, Trump’s view echoes her slogan: “More children from the fit, fewer from the unfit.” He would realize that if he ever took the time to think about it, which he admits he has not. That’s how important the deaths of a million American pre-born children each year are to Donald Trump: unworthy of two consecutive, logical thoughts, bridged by an inference. Would the NRA settle for this kind of callous “conversion” from a lifelong gun-grabber? Why should pro-lifers?
Perhaps it’s not surprising that when every pro-lifer in America was reeling from the gruesome footage obtained by journalistic hero David Daleiden, which proved that Planned Parenthood doesn’t just kill unborn babies, but cuts them up for parts, Donald Trump was one of the few Republicans to openly say that the government should go on funding that ghoulish group. He argued that the taxpayer should pay for all the non-abortion stuff (like imaginary mammograms) that Planned Parenthood is supposed to do — a distinction which he understands is meaningless. If your son is a heroin addict, you can’t make a deal with him that you will pay all his other bills, but will not pay for his drugs. Of course, you’re just freeing up his other money for … buying drugs! A man who has navigated four bankruptcies unscathed, while his investors lost tens of millions, surely understands basic accounting better than that.
We all know the way that abortion was legalized for all nine months, for any reason, in 50 states, against the wishes of voters — by unelected judges. In the same way, same-sex marriage and countless other evils have been foisted on us, and carved in stone out of voters’ reach. Trump knows this too. He knows that vast power has been seized from the citizens of this country by a cabal of judges, the presidents who appoint them, and the senators who confirm them.
This travesty of democracy which perverts and degrades our Constitution is one of the main complaints of the entire conservative movement — including immigration restrictionists, who note that “birthright citizenship” was only applied to illegal immigrants by virtue of a crackpot Supreme Court decision made in 1898. The greatest disappointment to social conservatives of three Republican presidents has been their mixed record of choosing Supreme Court appointees. Notice that Democratic presidents never, never disappoint the abortion lobby. Why do you think that is? Because they wouldn’t get away with it. Republican candidates know that they can, so they do. Since up to four Supreme Court seats might become vacant in the next presidential term, this issue matters more than ever, and more than most. The next four (or eight) years of presidential Court appointments could change America radically, revoking gun rights and gutting the First Amendment’s free exercise of religion.
So you’d think that the fervent pro-life convert Donald Trump would be keenly attuned to the need for appointing solid Constitutionalists to federal courts, especially the Supreme Court. But you would be wrong. When asked about this issue, Trump didn’t offer some mealy-mouthed speech about avoiding “litmus tests,” as too many weak pro-life politicians do. No, he didn’t hint with a wink that he might betray us. He outright promised to. Trump cited as the kind of judge he’d appoint to the Court his left-wing, judicial activist sister, who in the Trump tradition supports partial birth abortion. Some were tempted to write this statement off, even excuse it, as a mere example of charming, roguish nepotism. Really? Would Wayne LaPierre of the NRA settle for such an excuse? So why should we?
Lately, it seems that someone who knows the pro-life movement has gotten to Mr. Trump, and helped him to hire a ghostwriter. We’re glad that writer found work, but it’s hard to take seriously an op-ed like Trump’s recent piece in the Washington Examiner, which flies in the face not only of what he was saying in recent years, but in recent months. Given what he has said over many years, and in unguarded moments when there was no ghostwriter at hand, we must take Trump’s pro-life promises no more seriously than he took his business debts, or “till death do us part.”
If pro-lifers accept at face value Donald Trump’s half-hearted, fingers-crossed, nod-and-a-wink conversion, then they really are as clueless as Donald Trump thinks all Republican voters are. He boasted just this weekend that he “could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” If voters choose such a man as the legal champion of innocent unborn life, then they deserve to be betrayed. But those unborn babies don’t.
Or maybe some “pro-lifers” just don’t care. They are so concerned with winning, with sidling up to the big dog, with walling off the border or stopping goods from China, that a fig leaf’s enough for them. Ann Coulter, with her famous good taste, responded to Trump’s vague immigration plan by Tweeting:
Pro-lifers who share her priorities will nod at Trump’s empty promises, and pretend that they believe them. Then they’ll bat their eyes, sign the prenup, and give The Donald what he wants.’ (For more from the author of “Will Pro-Lifers for Trump Get Dumped — Like Ivana and Marla?” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-01-26 23:47:332016-04-11 10:53:24Will Pro-Lifers for Trump Get Dumped — Like Ivana and Marla?
The Supreme Court will not hear an appeal that would reinstate an Arkansas law prohibiting abortion if an unborn child has a heartbeat.
The Human Heartbeat Protection Act barred abortionists from aborting a baby after 12 weeks if “the fetus that a pregnant woman is carrying possesses a detectible heartbeat.”
U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright, who presided over Paula Jones’ sexual harassment lawsuit against Bill Clinton, struck down the Arkansas Human Heartbeat Protection Act in March 2014, ruling that it “impermissibly infringes a woman’s Fourteenth Amendment right to elect to terminate a pregnancy.” Her ruling was upheld by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in St. Louis, last May . . .
The ACLU and the Center for Reproductive Rights, which brought the lawsuit, was overjoyed that the lower court rulings will stand.
“Arkansas politicians cannot pick and choose which parts of the Constitution they want to uphold,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “The Supreme Court has never wavered in affirming that every woman has a right to safely and legally end a pregnancy in the U.S — and this extreme abortion ban was a direct affront to that right.” (Read more from “Supreme Court Rejects Heartbeat Bill Appeal” HERE)
In a shocking turn of events transgender men (always genetically, and sometime anatomically, women), along with other similar LGBTQ-type groups, have filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court requesting the current Texas abortion restrictions to be removed. They feel it is important that transgender men have access to unrestricted abortion.
At the very least, arguing on behalf of transgender men to have abortions seems specious because if they were truly men they obviously could not get pregnant. However, there are a number of cases where transgender men have by choice, and by accident become pregnant.
Transgender men were born women but generally believe they should have been endowed with male genitalia. Up until very recently, it was nearly universally recognized that such a condition was a treatable mental disorder. Now, many transgender men go through multiple operations in barbaric surgical attempts to become more like men. At the end of such an ordeal, they would physiologically be unable to become pregnant. However, many transgender men choose not to go through the entire process either due to the substantial costs, medical complications, or numerous personal reasons.
Even so, if transgender men truly self-perceive as male, how is it possible that they need abortions? Shouldn’t they also be attracted to women as most men are? If that was the case then, a transgender man having sex with a woman could not get pregnant. But, in reality, many transgender men engage in bi-sexual and high-risk activities, creating risks of unintended pregnancies if they have not fully completed transitioning. So then, is it right for them to demand that the Texas abortion laws be changed for them?
Frankly, it’s likely the Texas abortion law doesn’t even apply to them (the statute refers to “the woman”). Since the law seems to only apply to women, and many of them have legally changed their status to men while still retaining the ability to become pregnant, they are likely not affected by the statute in question.
So what are these activist transgender men and the broader LGBTQ community doing in this case? It seems they want to expose themselves to the public and force a degree of public acceptance. See it enough and you won’t be shocked any more; the obscene becomes normal with enough exposure. In short, they want the public to accept them as men who can still get pregnant and have periods.
As a woman, these efforts are offensive to me. For centuries men have had numerous advantages over women. Even today, transgender men admit that they do see privileges in their everyday life that they did not get as women.
Why then are they also demanding to retain special “rights” from the gender they were assigned by the Creator at birth? If they want to live as a transgender man they must be willing to give up those rights. Or, they need to admit that they are women (due to their ability to still get pregnant) that simply want to live and look like men.
For a sane person, none of this really makes sense except to understand this is all just another effort to rebel against the created order and further deconstruct the Judeo-Christian foundations of western civilization.
________________________________
Walt Heyer is one voice of reason who intimately understands transgender issues. For another perspective, please see his article comprehensively discussing the problems with a transgender lifestyle and other associated psychological problems.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-01-15 22:29:252016-04-11 10:53:47Transgender “Men” Ask Supreme Court to Overturn Texas’ Prolife Law Because They Want the Right to Kill Babies, Too
It has been 43 years. 43 years of children being literally crushed and torn limb from limb for the sake of convenience. Sacrificed at the alter of self-interest, these were individual human beings who deserved to live their God-given lives.
Join us as we memorialize their short lives on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the day in 1973 that their deaths were sanctioned by 9 unelected Supreme Court Justices. We will be gathering at the Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery (corner of 9th and Cordova) on Saturday, January 23rd at 2pm for a short prayer service, calling on God for mercy and interceding for the lives of the little ones who are yet to come. Please make it a priority to come and take part in this memorial service and be re-inspired to be a voice for the voiceless.
We will also be having an organizational meeting for 40 Days for Life at our office on January 23rd at 6pm. If you have been part of 40 Days for Life in the past or would like to be involved now, please come and take part in this meeting. We will be providing dinner. Our office is located at 1220 E Street and we are upstairs in Suite 207.
Even though godless elected officials have waged a war on America’s most vulnerable for 43 years, we believe in the power of an Almighty God who already has won the victory. He is still on the throne and He will be the One with the last Word. His heart is broken for all the lives lost to the tragedy of abortion, just as ours should be. (For more from the author of “Anchorage Memorial: Remembering the Millions Lost Through 43 Dark Years of Abortion” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-01-14 00:18:162016-04-11 10:53:53Anchorage Memorial: Remembering the Millions Lost Through 43 Dark Years of Abortion
Dear President Obama, my prayers are with you as I write this letter today, anticipating your State of the Union address.
Sir, you recently tweeted: “If there’s even one thing we can do, if there’s just one life we can save—we’ve got an obligation to try.” Your appeal seemed to be directed at gun control. Yet, the one life chord is vibrating on a frequency that embraces not just victims of gun violence, but even reaching the innocent lives in the womb . . .
As you may know, I am a pro-life activist. I am concerned about all human lives. I write to you today because, like you and so many other Americans, I am concerned about the growing violence in America. But I am also concerned over the millions of lives lost to the violence of abortion.
Mother Teresa once said, “I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself.”
I’m writing today to appeal to your compassion for those lost to violent acts, and I ask you to consider that what our world needs is not just gun control but violence control. We need to turn to LOVE for the answer. (Read more from “Alveda King’s Open Letter to Obama: ‘Are the Babies in the Empty Chair?'” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-01-13 00:16:542016-04-11 10:53:55Alveda King’s Open Letter to Obama: ‘Are the Babies in the Empty Chair?’
Churches must not be afraid to speak out against abortion in the 2016 election, according to one prominent pro-life group.
On Wednesday, Priests for Life hosted a press conference on abortion in light of the upcoming 2016 elections at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The event centered on the question “How political can the Catholic Church be?” under its tax-exempt status and highlighted that “restrictions on political activity by churches are misunderstood” — even by the media.
Priests for Life National Director Fr. Frank Pavone opened the press conference by stressing Church obligation during the election season.
“This is not about the Church becoming a political machine,” he said. “This is about the Church becoming more the Church.”
But instead, many churches have been undergoing a “massive self-censorship” to avoid losing their tax exemptions. (Read more from “The Church Can’t Be Afraid to Denounce a Political Party That Supports Killing Unborn Babies” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-01-11 00:15:322016-04-11 10:54:02The Church Can’t Be Afraid to Denounce a Political Party That Supports Killing Unborn Babies [+video]
Patti Stanger, better known as the Millionaire Matchmaker and the star of the reality show that has her company pairing up well-to-do single men and women potential matches, is, ironically, single herself. In a new interview, she revealed her biggest regret: having an abortion and not having children.
Stanger revealed the shocking abortion secret during an interview with OK! Magazine, saying she had an abortion in her late 20s and now regrets the decision, saying she wish she’d had children.
“My biggest regret is I didn’t have children,” the 52-year-old replied. “I had an abortion in my 20s. I was pregnant, and I didn’t have enough money and I didn’t think it was okay to have a child and be a single parent. And now look, everybody’s doing that! I didn’t find the right guy at the right time to have one with, I guess.” (Read more from “Reality TV Star Admits Something Huge About Her Abortion – This Is Heartbreaking” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00kathleenhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngkathleen2016-01-07 00:02:012016-04-11 10:54:09Reality TV Star Admits Something Huge About Her Abortion – This Is Heartbreaking
