Tag Archives: Pro-Choice

New York’s Reproductive Act Heats up Abortion issues in all states

FILE PHOTO -- A woman holds a sign in the rain as abortion rights protestors arrive to prepare for a counter protest against March for Life anti-abortion demonstrators on the 39th anniversary of the Roe vs Wade decision, in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, January 23, 2012. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File PhotoFILE PHOTO -- A woman holds a sign in the rain as abortion rights protestors arrive to prepare for a counter protest against March for Life anti-abortion demonstrators on the 39th anniversary of the Roe vs Wade decision, in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, January 23, 2012. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

By Kami Klein

On the 46th anniversary of Roe V. Wade, the state of New York passed a law called the Reproductive Act that not only removes abortion from the criminal code and allows other medical professionals who are not doctors to perform abortions but is also designed to continue to give access to abortion if the historic case is ever overturned in the Supreme Court.  This new law also allows abortion at 24 weeks if the fetus is not viable or when necessary to protect the life of the mother. For those that are Pro-life, this new law is devastating and once again asks the question of when is a child viable or when can it exist (even with help) outside of the womb.

When does an unborn child have rights?  When is the age of viability? These questions plague the abortion debate.  According to studies between 2003 and 2005, 20 to 35 percent of babies born at 23 weeks of gestation survive, while 50 to 70 percent of babies born at 24 to 25 weeks, and more than 90 percent born at 26 to 27 weeks, survive. As medical treatments have advanced, many doctors have the opinion that those percentages have gone up for those born at 23 weeks.

Abortion existed long before Roe V. Wade.  Before the Supreme Court decision, thirteen states allowed abortion in cases of danger to a woman’s health, rape, incest or the likelihood that the fetus was damaged.  Two states allowed only if the pregnancy was a danger to a woman’s health, In one state abortion was allowed only in the case of rape. Four states gave full access to abortion simply on request. But there were thirty states where it was absolutely illegal to have one.

Because of the Roe v. Wade decision, abortion is now legal in every state and has at least one abortion clinic.  If Roe V. Wade was shot down by the Supreme Court, this would then pass on the responsibility in every state of the union to decide on their own regulations, definitions and laws.   

In a Gallup poll completed in May of 2018, it was found that the country was split 48% to 48% when asked if they were Pro-Choice or Pro-Life.  When asked the question, “Do you believe abortion should be allowed under any circumstances, Legal only under certain circumstances or Illegal in all circumstances”, 50% of those polled said that they believed abortion should only be performed under certain circumstances.  29% said they should be performed in any circumstance and 18% polled said that abortion should not be allowed under any circumstance.

Probably the most surprising poll result was in asking the question, ‘Would you like to see the Supreme Court overturn its 1973 Roe versus Wade decision concerning abortion, or not?’, 64% said they did not want it to be overturned, 28% wanted the decision to be overturned and 9% had no opinion.  

No matter where you stand on these issues, the question of Roe V Wade has spurred many states to make a clear stand on their position.  Eleven states have attempted to pass bills which would prohibit abortion after a heartbeat has been detected during pregnancy.  Most of these have passed through legislation but are now tied up in Federal Courts. Other states such as New York and recently Virginia, have tightened up their support on abortion, designing their laws and bills to continue offering abortion should Roe V. Wade be overturned.  

On January 30th, 2019,  The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) released The State of Abortion in the United States, 2019 report. In addition to summarizing key legislative developments in the states and at the federal level, the sixth annual report also analyzes data on the annual number of abortions in the United States. The report also dissects the 2017-2018 annual report of the nation’s abortion giant, Planned Parenthood.  According to their data collected from abortion clinics and doctors around the country, almost 61 million babies have been aborted since Roe V. Wade.

The key to supporting Mothers as well as supporting the life of the unborn is still under debate but many have suggested that education, financial means to support and untangle the bureaucracy for those willing and wanting to adopt, funding for those who want birth control including tubal ligation and vasectomies as well as counseling for those considering abortion are only a few of the suggestions states are considering.  

Overturning Roe V. Wade would be only the first step to moving beyond the rights of Women, vs Rights of the unborn.  It is when we value ALL lives will this long debated argument be put to rest.

 

Federal judge blocks Down syndrome abortion ban in Ohio

Supporters of Planned Parenthood (L) rally next to anti-abortion activists outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Detroit, Michigan, U.S. February 11, 2017. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook

By Kim Palmer

CLEVELAND (Reuters) – A federal judge on Wednesday blocked an Ohio law due to take effect later this month that would criminalize abortions based on a Down syndrome diagnosis, ruling that it violates a woman’s right to choose.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Black’s decision came after the Ohio state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in federal court in Cincinnati, arguing the legislation violated the liberty and privacy clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“Because H.B. 214 prevents women from making the choice to terminate their pregnancy prior to viability, it is unconstitutional on its face,” Black wrote in his 22-page ruling.

Down syndrome is a genetic disorder caused when abnormal cell division results in an extra full or partial copy of chromosome 21.

Under the legislation, signed into law by Republican Governor John Kasich last December, doctors would lose their medical licenses in the state and face a fourth-degree felony charge if they were to perform an abortion with that knowledge.

Mothers would not face criminal charges.

“The Down syndrome abortion ban violates four and a half decades of legal precedent that says a woman has the unfettered right to choose whether to end a pregnancy before the point of viability,” Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio said in a statement.

A spokesman for Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said Wednesday that his office was planning to defend the law passed by the state’s majority of Republican lawmakers.

“While we are reviewing this ruling to determine further action, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office will continue to vigorously defend Ohio law,” spokesman Dan Tierney said.

The Ohio law marks the 20th restriction on abortion and reproductive rights signed by Kasich since 2011, according to NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio.

Similar laws have been passed in Indiana and North Dakota. An Indiana District Court issued a permanent injunction on a similar Down syndrome abortion ban on Sept. 22, 2017.

(Reporting by Kim Palmer in Cleveland; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Lisa Shumaker)

U.S. abortion support groups put on more public face

A protester (L) and an escort who ensures women can reach the clinic stand outside the EMW WomenÕs Surgical Center in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. January 27, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Kenning

By Chris Kenning

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (Reuters) – Patricia Canon drives poor rural Kentucky women to distant abortion clinics each week, part of a national army of volunteers who are growing bolder even as abortion foes ratchet up opposition to the activists they have branded as “accomplices to murder.”

The Kentucky Health Justice Network, where she volunteers, is one of dozens of non-profit U.S. abortion funds providing money for procedures or covering travel costs to help women obtain abortions, particularly in states where Republican-backed laws have narrowed options.

For years, such organizations kept a low profile to avoid being targeted by abortion opponents. But now, as abortion foes have succeeded in shrinking access, advocates are working harder to grow grassroots support and taking a more public stance.

The anti-abortion movement won a victory with the election of President Donald Trump, who has promised to appoint U.S. Supreme Court justices who would overturn the Roe v. Wade decision protecting a woman’s right to abortion. Critics of the decision say states should decide.

That worries pro-choice advocates, including support groups in states where Republicans control legislatures.

“There is a volume and aggressiveness of anti-choice legislation and legislators who feel empowered by the administration,” said Yamani Hernandez, executive director of the National Network of Abortion Funds, which represents 70 funds in 38 states.

Kentucky is a flashpoint in the national debate. The state had 17 abortion providers in 1978 but one today. It could become the first U.S. state without any clinics this fall, when a court will determine whether its anti-abortion Republican governor wins a licensing fight.

Anti-abortion protesters will converge on Louisville starting Saturday ahead of a week of demonstrations. Some have vowed to broadcast footage of abortions on an 8-by-16-foot “Pro-Life JumboTron” screen.

In response, a judge has ordered a temporary buffer zone around the state’s only abortion clinic.

NEW RESTRICTIONS

Kentucky is not alone in making access to abortion tougher. There are six other U.S. states with only one clinic each.

The Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health think tank that supports abortion rights, said U.S. state legislatures enacted 41 new abortion restrictions in the first half of 2017, even after a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down restrictive abortion laws in Texas.

Many more restrictions were proposed, ranging from waiting periods to 20-week abortion bans. The number of U.S. abortion providers dropped from 2,434 in 1991 to 1,671 in 2014, according to Guttmacher data. This year, Iowa blocked abortion providers from receiving public money for family planning services.

Medicaid restrictions and a decline in the number of hospitals providing services have also curtailed access, the National Abortion Federation said.

Advocates say poor and rural women are hurt most by such laws. The biggest impact is in the South and Midwest, where the number of abortion providers has dwindled. Nearly half of the 40 clinics in Texas closed after laws enacted in 2013. Only a few have reopened since last year’s court ruling.

The National Network of Abortion Funds met last month in Arizona to map a strategy that in part aims to open 10 new support fund programs across the country, expand its network of more than 2,000 volunteers and leverage rising donations to fill more than 100,000 annual requests for financial or travel aid, Hernandez said.

The groups spent roughly $3.5 million to aid abortion access in 2015, she said, the latest year for which data was available.

Kentucky Health Justice leaders hope to double volunteers and funding. Fund Texas Choice, an abortion travel aid group formed in 2014, and Arkansas Abortion Support Network, opened a year ago, are also among those working to expand.

The abortion support groups face fierce opposition, especially from religious groups. Joseph Spurgeon, an Indiana pastor and activist with the fundamentalist Christian group Operation Save America, called abortion access volunteers “accomplices to murder.”

Such rhetoric has not stopped some support groups from taking a more public stance resisting pressures to curtail abortion access.

“When we started two years ago, a lawyer told us to make sure your mission is kind of vague, don’t use the A-word,” said Maia Elkana, who started Missouri’s Gateway Women’s Access Fund several years ago. “We’re a lot more out there now.”

(Reporting by Chris Kenning, Editing by Ben Klayman and David Gregorio)

Norma McCorvey, from Roe to Pro Life, a journey of restoration

Norma McCorvey, the anonymous plaintiff known as Jane Roe in the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling legalizing abortion in the United States, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee along with Sandra Cano of Atlanta, Georgia, the "Doe" in the Doe v. Bolton Supreme Court case, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, U.S. on June 23, 2005.

By Kami Klein

Norma McCorvey has been known over the past 4 decades as the anonymous plaintiff  Roe, in the deeply controversial Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade.  The year was 1973 when the highest Court held that a woman’s right to an abortion fell within the right to privacy protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision gave a woman a right to abortion during the entirety of the pregnancy and defined different levels of state interest for regulating abortion in the second and third trimesters. From that moment to now, over 59,115,995 children have been aborted in the United States.

The journey of Norma McCorvey ended with her death on February 18th, 2017 but the divide between Pro-Choice and Pro-Life has moved no closer to resolution.  The rights of the unborn were not even a part of the lawsuit when the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and the pro-life movement has been attempting to have those voices heard ever since.

Norma, interestingly enough, never had an abortion.  She never attended a single trial nor did she give a deposition.  She signed documents only once after failing to get an illegal abortion in which she actually went to term with the child later giving the baby up for adoption. In later years, she described herself as a “pawn” in the fight to legalize abortion.

McCorvey came forth about her part in Roe v. Wade when court documents were released, and she became the poster child of the pro-choice movement, working for abortion clinics and protesting against the pro-life message.  Her life had been battered from the beginning, but it was only when she became a Christian that she understood the full and tragic impact of Roe v. Wade.

In her book, Won By Love, she wrote:

“I was sitting in O.R.’s offices when I noticed a fetal development poster. The progression was so obvious, the eyes were so sweet. It hurt my heart, just looking at them. I ran outside and finally, it dawned on me. ‘Norma’, I said to myself, ‘They’re right’. I had worked with pregnant women for years. I had been through three pregnancies and deliveries myself. I should have known. Yet something in that poster made me lose my breath. I kept seeing the picture of that tiny, 10-week-old embryo , and I said to myself, that’s a baby! It’s as if blinders just fell off my eyes and I suddenly understood the truth—that’s a baby!

I felt crushed under the truth of this realization. I had to face up to the awful reality. Abortion wasn’t about ‘products of conception’. It wasn’t about ‘missed periods’. It was about children being killed in their mother’s wombs. All those years I was wrong. Signing that affidavit, I was wrong. Working in an abortion clinic, I was wrong. No more of this first trimester, second trimester, third trimester stuff. Abortion—at any point—was wrong. It was so clear. Painfully clear.”

Charisma magazine has written a powerful testimony of Norma’s path to God in the article, Norma McCorvey’s First Church Experience as a Believer where not only did Norma experience the love and forgiveness of Jesus, she also experienced the love and forgiveness of the body of Christ—the church.

Join Jim and Lori Bakker on The Jim Bakker Show beginning March 3rd as the Bakkers welcome Rabbi Jonathan Cahn and Mikel French to the show where they will be discussing the inauguration, the future of Roe v. Wade and the inspirational story of Lori Bakker’s God-destined meeting with Norma and the time they spent together.  

Norma’s life has been told from every angle.  She had been called names from all sides and struggled daily to discover for herself who she was. It was through Christ that she finally discovered the truth.

Norma McCorvey was and IS, simply and wonderfully, a child of God.

 

additional sources: Roe vs Wade fast facts, Norma McCorvey, ‘Roe’ in Roe v Wade, is Dead at 69, Norma McCorvey ‘Roe’ in Roe v Wade case legalizing abortion dies aged 69, U.S. abortion statistics by Year (1973-Current), Wikipedia – Norma McCorvey

 

 

Vandals Deface Pro-Life Display At Clarion University

Vandals defaced and destroyed crosses that were part of a pro-life display at a Pennsylvania university.

Students for Life at Clarion University played the crosses.  The 350 crosses were part of a display called “Cemetery of the Innocents” and each represented 10 aborted children that day.

Overnight, a number of the crosses were pulled out of the ground and thrown in trashcans.  Others were defaced with messages indicating their connection to activists against a recent Indiana religious freedom law.

The crosses were also placed in a manner that is a traditional anti-Christian placement.

“[All] 350 crosses were pulled up and re-inserted in inverted fashion, a well-known anti-Christian symbol,” the group Students for Life reported. “Additionally, red paint was splattered on crosses and signs. Even eerier was the mock bloody footprints of an infant painted in front of the display.”

“Pro-Choice” was written on the sidewalk near the mock footprints of an infant.

University police claim they are investigating the act.

“I ask that as a community of educators and students, we come together and reflect upon our commitment to our rights and responsibilities of expression,” university President Karen Whitney said in a statement. “I ask that we use dialogue and discussion to engage very differing viewpoints in ways that leave all of us better for the experience.”

The display has since been restored.

Concrete Company Agrees To Help Louisiana Abortionist

A controversial new abortion center planned by Planned Parenthood has found a company that is happy to pour concrete for the mega-facility.

The 8,000 square foot center to abort babies has been delayed partly because local contractors did not want to work with the organization to create the building. The group wants to create the facility in New Orleans which now has only one location for women to abort their babies.

“The Department simply stated that they didn’t meet the need requirement,” Bill Shanks, pastor of New Covenant Fellowship in Kenner, told Christian News Network. “[Planned Parenthood’s] statement was that New Orleans was 2,844 abortions less than the national average, therefore we need their facility to bring it up—to kill 2,844 babies so we could be with the national average. And the Department of Health and Hospitals rejected that.”

Absolute Concrete Solutions accepted the order. When members of King Jesus Ministries approached the owners to reconsider, they were told that if they gave the company $20,000 the order would be cancelled.  Then Linda Backes, one of the owners, said ‘I’m for Planned Parenthood and I’m for abortion,’ and she said, ‘If we let all these little kids live, they’ll just grow up and kill us” according to the Christian group.

Anti-Life Groups Launch Campaign To Promote Abortion

Anti-life groups are organizing a campaign with the goal of trying to end “the stigma” of abortion.

The groups have even taken a slogan used during the Clinton administration of “safe, legal and rare” and dropped the word “rare” to add “affordable.”

The group is calling the event “1 in 3 Week of Action” claiming that one in every three women will have an abortion during their life. The group will be handing out books from women who are celebrating ending their baby’s lives via abortion.

The group also hired Katie Stack, a young women from the MTV show 16 and Pregnant, to come out and speak to the group about her decision to end her baby’s life via abortion. She will speak at an event being held at the University of Michigan.

“The fact of the matter is, no matter what anyone wants to debate about abortion and its morality, I feel that I made the right decision. And that’s threatening to people, the fact that I will say that,” Stack told an anti-life blog site.

Anti-Life Activists Create Game Challenging Women To Get An Abortion

Anti-life activists are creating a video game where the goal is for a woman to kill her baby via abortion through the crowd-funding site “Indiegogo”.

The game is titled “Choice: Texas, A Very Serious Game” and is in the developmental stages by a professor at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and an activist poet living in Austin, Texas. Continue reading →