It's Much Worse Than You First Think

Abortion As A ‘Horror Show’

The Washington Post Just Proved Abby Johnson’s Point 


Madeline Osburn
The Federalist

After former Planned Parenthood employee Abby Johnson spoke the truth about the abortion industry at the Republican National Convention Tuesday night, corporate media immediately went into attack mode, setting out to poke holes in her speech, all while affirming the message Johnson intended to send: The only way to defend abortion is to deny it.

The story Johnson shared on the RNC stage was one of denial, and how she ignored the reality of abortion until she witnessed it for herself. Only after seeing what violence in the womb really looks like, even smells like, Johnson said, did she realize what she had been a part of.

“For most people who consider themselves pro-life, abortion is abstract. They can’t conceive of the barbarity,” Johnson said. “For me, abortion is real. I know what it sounds like, what it smells like. I’ve been the perpetrator … to these babies … to these women.”

The next day, Washington Post Style Columnist Monica Hesse set out to disprove Johnson’s claims, only to illustrate them perfectly. “As a reporter covering women’s health care, I’ve witnessed at least 20. My friends have had them,” Hesse writes, laying out her abortion bona fides. She says Johnson had to use “dramatic terms” to tell her story, and could only “describe abortion as a horror show because the alternative would have been too banal to achieve the effect she desired.”

If Johnson’s description of an abortion procedure seemed “dramatic” or akin to a “horror show,” that’s because that’s what an abortion is. The reality is, abortion is a violent act. It ends in the loss of life. To describe it as “banal,” as Hesse does, is more of an exaggeration or a misrepresentation than any of the rhetoric Johnson used.

Hesse continues:

As for one of her other seemingly horrifying claims, that doctors piece together fetal remains to make sure the abortion is complete — that’s true. But it’s not some ghoulish jigsaw puzzle done on a lark. It’s because an incomplete abortion could be dangerous to a patient’s health, and abortion doctors care about women’s lives.

Johnson didn’t have to describe a routine part of the abortion procedure as a “ghoulish jigsaw puzzle,” to conjure up that image in mind of her audience. Hesse came up with that image herself after hearing Johnson laying out the facts. Johnson was simply describing what Planned Parenthood locations call “Products of Conception” rooms, “where infant corpses are pieced back together to ensure no extra body parts remain in the mothers.” That may be a horrifying statement to many, but it’s not a dramatization of what happens during an abortion. It’s reality, as Hesse even admits herself.

US Democrats Wedded to Abortion

Three Reasons the Democratic Convention Downplayed Abortion

. . . And Covered It Up

JOHN McCormack
National Review Online


Transport yourself back in time to May 2019 and imagine you had been told that the 2020 Democratic National Convention would take a muted approach to the issue of abortion. This prediction would have been shocking.

The 2012 Democratic convention, amid the “war on women” and the travails of Sandra Fluke, was a rip-roaring abortion jamboree.

The 2016 Democratic convention somehow managed to be an even more pro-abortion extravaganza: The party platform called explicitly, for the first time, to provide unlimited taxpayer-funding of abortion for Medicaid recipients, a plank one Democratic senator called “crazy.” The president of Planned Parenthood was given an 8:00 p.m. speaking slot. The leader of NARAL spoke onstage about the time she aborted her first child, not because of any medical issue but because it was an inconvenient time to have a child, and the crowd cheered.

In May 2019, several states across the South had just passed laws that would ban abortion when a baby’s heartbeat is detectable early in pregnancy (if the federal courts allowed states to govern themselves on this issue). Democratic activists were panicked and outraged. One would have reasonably thought the 2020 Democratic convention would have put the “war on women” front and center.

But that didn’t happen. There were some brief mentions of “codifying Roe v. Wade” and “reproductive justice” scattered throughout the four nights of speeches — but nothing rhetorically close to the 2012 or 2016 DNC in terms of its emphasis on abortion.

There are at least three reasons for that.

Kamala Harris, The Persecutor

Planned Parenthood Whistleblower Still Trapped In Kamala Harris’s Persecution


Madeline Osburn
The Federalist

Sen. Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic nomination for vice president Wednesday night, exactly three weeks after journalist and pro-life activist David Daleiden appeared in a San Francisco Superior Court, once again fighting the criminal charges Harris brought against him at the behest of her political donors four years prior. As Harris joins a campaign fighting for the “soul of our nation,” Daleiden continues a years-long battle for countless unborn souls and the First Amendment, both of which Harris has a record of fighting against.

In March 2016, as the California attorney general, Harris met with six Planned Parenthood officials in her Los Angeles office. Email records between Harris’s office and Planned Parenthood officials show the two were corresponding on orchestrating public responses, filing police reports, and even drafting legislation targeting Daleiden for his undercover videos exposing the abortion giant’s illegal practices.

Two of the six executives in that meeting went on to be used as witnesses in Harris’s criminal investigation. Harris has been a staunch abortion advocate and received tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions from Planned Parenthood-affiliated entities over the course of her political career.

Pro-Abort Iniquity

Biden-Harris Pro-Abortion Ticket ‘Great Concern to All Christians’

Analysis by Rev Franklin Graham

Dr. Susan Berry
Breitbart News

Rev. Franklin Graham tweeted Wednesday it “should be a great concern to all Christians” that pro-life leaders are labeling Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris as “the most pro-abortion … in the history of our nation.”

Graham tweeted a Breitbart News article containing the statements of many national pro-life leaders expressing that concern.  “As a follower of Jesus Christ, I am pro-life and believe every life is precious to God,” he said. 

Within the last day, more pro-life leaders have added their concerns about the Biden-Harris pro-abortion rights ticket.  “I didn’t think Joe Biden could move much further Left on abortion — but he did just that in picking Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate,” expressed Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council Action.

He continued: 

Vice President Biden has already endorsed taxpayer funded abortions and embraced late term abortions. And now he has chosen a vice presidential candidate who voted to leave perfectly healthy newborns on hospital tables to die and as the attorney general of California went after pro-life activists for exposing Planned Parenthood for illegally selling aborted baby body parts. During the presidential primary, Senator Harris complained that she didn’t have enough time in the debates to show off her abortion radicalism. As if this were not enough, Harris co-sponsored the religious liberty-violating and pro-abortion ‘Equality Act’ in the U.S. Senate. Joe Biden has now clearly shown himself for what he is: a puppet on the strings of radical abortion.

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, recalled that, while a presidential primary candidate, Harris pledged that, if elected, “no abortion law or practice will take effect until the Department of Justice certifies it comports with Roe v. Wade.” 

In May 2019, Harris’s presidential campaign pledged not only to restrict states’ rights to pass and enact their own laws, but also to block a pro-life president’s power and that of the administration.  “Guardrails will ensure DOJ enforces the law even under an administration that’s hostile to women’s rights — and patients and providers will have standing to sue if they don’t,” Harris’s plan stated.

Harris’s presidential campaign website now immediately takes visitors to joebiden.com.

Hawkins continued that Harris has not only “promised to ‘protect Planned Parenthood from Republican attempts to defund’” it, but also hopes to “force all private insurances and employers to cover abortion and contraception, even over people’s moral objections, such as the nuns in the Little Sisters of the Poor who twice had to fight for their conscience rights before the Supreme Court.”

“Sen. Kamala Harris has already proved that she will use any legal authority available to her to target pro-life Americans,” Hawkins said. “Abortion was always going to be an issue in this election, but the stakes just got higher. The choice for anyone who rejects abortion at any point in pregnancy and with taxpayer funds is crystal clear.”

Kamala Harris Appears Deeply Prejudiced Against Christians

Catholic League Highlights Kamala Harris’s ‘Catholic Problem’

Thomas D. Williams
Breitbart News

Catholic League President Bill Donohue warned of Sen. Kamala Harris’s (D-CA) ‘Catholic problem’ in an essay this week, insisting that Biden’s running mate will have a hard time winning over Catholic voters due to her “positions on an array of moral issues.”

As a radical supporter of abortion rights, Harris has alienated pro-life voters, but she has gone further still, tainting herself “with the brush of anti-Catholicism,” Dr. Donohue states.  [And anti-Christianism in general. Ed.]

“In 2018, she sought to stop a Trump nominee for a seat on the federal bench simply because he was Catholic,” Donohue notes. “In doing so, she invoked a religious test for the bench, a patently unconstitutional act.”

As Michael Gerson echoes in an op-ed Friday in the Washington Post, Harris posed a series of “inappropriate questions” to federal district court nominee Brian Buescher, suggesting that “being a member of the Knights of Columbus — a nearly 2 million-member Catholic social and charitable organization — was disqualifying for the federal bench.”

“Harris was effectively treating membership in a distinctly Catholic organization as if it were allegiance to a hate group,” Gerson writes.

Keeping Up The Pressure

Defunding UN Bodies Over Abortion

U.S. Lawmakers Renew Interest 

Rebecca Oas, Ph.D. | July 30, 2020
C-Fam

NEW YORK, July 31 (C-Fam)

Funding for foreign aid cannot be used to lobby for or against abortion, according to U.S. law.  There is growing interest among U.S. lawmakers in enforcing that standard against the UN and its various agencies.

Last year, the U.S. Department of State cited the Siljander Amendment when it cut funding to two organs of the Organization of American States (OAS) due to their pressuring Latin American countries to liberalize their abortion laws.  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the cuts in March 2019, saying, “our reduction equals the estimated U.S. share of possible OAS expenditures on these abortion-related activities.”

This came about through a 2018 letter from a group of U.S. Senators led by James Lankford to Secretary Pompeo outlining OAS abortion lobbying and asking him to enforce the Siljander Amendment.

However, the OAS and its human rights bodies are not alone in lobbying for abortion at the international level and that receive U.S. funding.  Multiple UN agencies that receive U.S. funding are engaged in similar activities, and the actions taken by the State Department toward the OAS provide a blueprint for how similar steps could be taken to reprimand pro-abortion overreach at the UN.

There is no internationally agreed human right to abortion, nor a right to abortion in international humanitarian law, and the consensus among UN member countries is that abortion laws are a national matter.  Nevertheless, the UN Secretariat, the Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the World Health Organization (WHO), UN Women, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and other agencies operating under the UN umbrella routinely pressure countries to decriminalize abortion or legalize it under more circumstances.

The most aggressive pressure comes from the Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which includes the independent expert bodies that monitor compliance with the nine core multilateral human rights treaties.  All but one of these treaty bodies have directly pressured countries to change their abortion laws, two of which did so for the first time in 2019, despite none of the related treaties mentioning abortion at all.  The treaty body monitoring compliance with the treaty on women’s rights (CEDAW) pressured nations in 88 percent of the country reviews it conducted in 2018.

The treaty bodies accounted for 14 percent of OHCHR’s budget in 2017, and the U.S. is among the leading contributors to its operations, giving over $18 million in 2018.

The Secretariat of the UN, led by the Secretary-General, has issued multiple reports characterizing abortion as a right in humanitarian settings, particularly in cases of conflict-related sexual violence.  Similarly, other UN agencies including UN Women, UNFPA, and the WHO, have issued manuals promoting abortion.

While the WHO and UNFPA have been defunded by President Trump as an executive action, a future Democratic administration could reverse those cuts.  Nevertheless, as Secretary Pompeo pointed out, ensuring that U.S. contributions are not going to support abortion lobbying is a matter of federal law.  Applying that standard to the UN, just as it was applied to the OAS, would be the next logical step.

The Fundamentals Must be Already Fixed and In Place

No More Betrayals

Sen. Josh Hawley Sets The Standard For Conservative Supreme Court Justices

'If there is no indication in their record that at any time they have acknowledged that Roe was wrong at the time it was decided, then I’m not going to vote for them.'

Christopher Bedford
The Federalist

Social conservatives are done being taken for granted by the GOP: That’s the message Sen. Josh Hawley shot across the party and administration’s bow Sunday, setting a brave and admirable standard for Christian legislators that is sure to pit him against powerful Washington Republicans and Democrats.

“I will vote only for those Supreme Court nominees who have explicitly acknowledged that Roe v. Wade is wrongly decided.” Hawley told The Washington Post. “By explicitly acknowledged, I mean on the record and before they were nominated.”

“I don’t want private assurances from candidates. I don’t want to hear about their personal views, one way or another. I’m not looking for forecasts about how they may vote in the future or predictions. I don’t want any of that. I want to see on the record, as part of their record, that they have acknowledged in some forum that Roe v. Wade, as a legal matter, is wrongly decided.”

The junior senator from Missouri is a member of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, through which any of President Donald Trump’s potential future nominees to the Supreme Court must pass before being brought to the floor for a vote. Conservative judges have been a major point for this administration, beginning during the campaign when, working closely with The Federalist Society and The Heritage Foundation, Trump released a list of who he would nominate, exciting then-skeptical conservatives.

Since then, conservatives have been routinely disappointed by Republican-nominated justices, quietly complaining about the GOP and the powerful, conservative Federalist Society’s tendency to focus on justices who have established records of conservative and libertarian business and government rulings, but no firmly established record of rulings that protect either marriage or the lives of the unborn.

The WHO Abortion Agenda

Another Reason to Defund It

By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.
C-Fam

WASHINGTON, D.C. April 24 (C-Fam) President Donald Trump announced last week that he was holding $400-$500 million in funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, including WHO’s parroting misleading talking points from the Chinese government.

Yet prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, the WHO was already highly politicized and engaged in controversial activities.  A closer examination of the WHO’s promotion of abortion, which current U.S. foreign policy opposes, might lend support to the U.S. government choosing instead to bilaterally fund the eradication of disease and preventable deaths in the future.

A recent WHO guideline on essential services during the pandemic called for provision of “safe abortion to the full extent of the law.”  Abortion activists continue to call for a stronger statement, framing it as a public health rather than legal issue.

Longstanding consensus by UN member nations holds that the legal status of abortion is for individual countries to determine, and not an international human right.  Nevertheless, the WHO has taken the position that, with regard to those rights agreed by international consensus, “[a]ccess to legal and safe abortion is essential for the realization of these rights.”

"Joining Forces" Disclose Their Horrible Cant

Institutionalised Evil

Children’s Charities Urge EU to include Sexual and Reproductive Health in COVID-19 Response

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.
C-Fam

WASHINGTON, April 10 (C-Fam) As European development ministers met this week to hammer out a $17 billion COVID-19 aid package, primarily for Africa, six of the world’s top children’s charities sent a letter urging that sexual and reproductive health and rights for children be “prioritized” as “life-saving.”

A draft letter obtained by the Friday Fax, including detailed recommendations from the organizations, said, “Girls’ and women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights must continue to be prioritized, funded and recognized as life-saving, along with essential health services for young children’s survival and healthy growth.”

The letter, confirmed to be an authentic draft from a coalition called Joining Forces, said, “It is critical that health workers are properly trained and able to provide non-discriminatory health services (including sexual and reproductive health) to adolescents and young people.”

During the Ebola crisis, the letter claims, “limited access to sexual and reproductive health information and services (including contraception and safe abortion) all contributed to the rise in teenage pregnancy rates and the number of maternal and child deaths.” It claimed that these conditions would be repeated in the COVID-19 crisis.

Joining Forces includes ChildFund Alliance, Plan International, Save the Children International, SOS Children’s Villages International, Terre des Hommes International Federation, and World Vision International.

The group’s six CEOs met with members of the European Commission and the European Parliament in February to “make sure the EU walks the talk on both the [UN Sustainable Development Goals] and the UN [Convention on the Rights of the Child].”

The children’s rights treaty does not mention sexual and reproductive health and rights or abortion, but UN staff include abortion in sexual and reproductive health programming.

A Lawless Voice

Black Pastors Group Calls for Censure of Chuck Schumer

Dr Susan Berry
Breitbart News

The president and founder of the Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP) has launched a petition calling on the Senate to censure Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for his threatening remarks against two Supreme Court justices.

Rev. William Owens said in a statement that Schumer’s remarks against Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh promote “violence and hate”:

This is the kind of language that promotes violence and hate. We’ve had enough of politicians who bemoan partisanship on the campaign trail while still catering to the most extremist elements of the hard Left. To make an open threat against two sitting judges – in an attempt to influence a case currently before the Court – goes far beyond acceptable behavior for a U.S. Senator.

Last week, during a rally near the Supreme Court where oral arguments were heard regarding a Louisiana abortion safety law, Schumer stated that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh will “pay the price” if they vote against pro-choice advocates in the case.

Schumer said:

Over the last three years, women’s reproductive rights have come under attack in a way we haven’t seen in modern history. From Louisiana, to Missouri, to Texas, Republican legislatures are waging a war on women, all women, and they’re taking away fundamental rights.

I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you, if you go forward with these awful decisions.

Schumer’s comments drew a rare rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and, on Thursday, a Senate floor speech by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), in which he referred to Schumer’s remarks as “unhinged” and “shameful.”

A Culture of Death Flowing Through Our Veins

Life Comes From God Alone

Humans Owe It Reverence

The problem is not abortion. Abortion is the symptom of the problem you and I have. We have lost God as maker.

Christopher Esget
The Federalist

[The following is a sermon given before Divine Service — the service of the Word and Sacrament — before the listeners participated in today’s March for Life in Washington, DC.]

“This man dealt treacherously with our people, and oppressed our forefathers, making them expose their babies, so that they might not live” (Acts 7:19). “So that they might not live.” That’s the first martyr, Stephen. Recounting the slaughter of Hebrew babies, Stephen uses an interesting expression. “So that they might not live.”

It’s the same expression used in today’s epistle: “I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things.” “Who gives life.” It’s all built on the word Zoē—like the girl’s name Zoe, or zoology. You go to a zoo to see living things.

When that word is used about humans, it means a decision about leaving someone alive. Pharaoh exposed the Hebrew babies, “So that they might not live.” He didn’t leave them alive.

But whenever it means to give life, God is the subject, the doer. “I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life.” Man cannot give life, we can only let live—or not let live, a.k.a. murder. Only God can give life. Only God has the power of life in himself.

St. Irenaeus said, “God makes, man is made.” Deus facit, homo fit.

That’s the problem: that we have forgotten we are made. Made by God. Yes, yes, you believe in creation. But don’t run so quickly past it. Psalm 100 hints at the implications: “Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves.”

The godless philosophy of our age has cast aside God for the myth of mutation. And make no mistake, that’s not science, that’s philosophy masquerading as science. “It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves”—but we ourselves cast aside God with every act of covetousness. We rebel against our Father when we calculate how much money a child will cost, as though He who gives life will not give us our daily bread. We rebel against our Father when we look at evil images, as though a human body is an object to be used and discarded. We rebel against our Father when we worry about tomorrow, as though He does not order our days.

No "Human Right" To Abortion

Trump Builds International Anti-Abortion Coalition

Stefano Gennarini, J.D. 


WASHINGTON D.C., January 24 (C-Fam) Last week, the Trump administration hosted an international strategy meeting for ambassadors, ministers, and other government officials to discuss a way forward for the pro-life cause internationally.

“I stated this fact at the United Nations this past September, and I’ll repeat it here: there is no international human right to abortion. On the other hand, there is an international human right to life,” U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said in remarks during a gathering at Blair House. The meeting was attended by representatives of 34 countries representing 1.7 billion people.

“President Trump has been clear, at the U.N. and on the world stage: Health care exists to improve health and preserve human life,” Azar emphasized.  He thanked the countries for their help in promoting a positive vision for women’s health, protecting the lives of the most vulnerable, defending the important role of the family, and parents in particular, in the health and well-being of their children, and promoting respect national sovereignty.

Azar described the group of countries at the gathering as a “pro-life, pro-family, pro-sovereignty coalition that is a force to be reckoned with” and invited countries to help grow the coalition.  “We cannot stand still, because we have much work to do in 2020 and beyond,” Azar said.

Kenya Far More Advanced and Sophisticated Than Western Nations

Kenyans Strongly Rebuke UN Agency

"Do Not Use Africa as a Backdrop to Promote Abortion"

By Lisa Correnti
NAIROBI, November 15 (C-Fam)

The UN population agency’s plans to host a government conference on “sexual and reproductive health” in Kenya backfired this week, as Kenyans fought back attempts to export Western sexual norms in Africa.

The UN Population Fund’s Nairobi Summit was greeted by pro-life street protests and accusations of neocolonialism. The Kenyan legislature forbade UNFPA access to the chamber of Parliament and Members pledged to amend a foreign NGO law to restrict the promotion of anti-family and anti-life programs.

Far from providing the optic that Africans embrace abortion, LGBT rights, and comprehensive sexuality education, the Nairobi Summit galvanized resistance to UN sexual norms. Kenyan government officials, faith leaders, and pro-family organizations emerged as a formidable opponent to the powerful and well-funded UN agency.

More Good News From the US

Mitch McConnell Pulls Funding Bill Containing Shaheen Pro-Abortion Amendment


Dr  Susan Berry
Breitbart News

Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) withdrew an overseas spending bill last week that would have provided $665 million for “family planning and reproductive health care” overseas and funds for the pro-abortion U.N. Population Fund.

C-Fam and the Eagle Forum reported McConnell withdrew the State and Foreign Operations (SFOPs) bill after New Hampshire Democrat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen inserted an amendment into the bill to provide support to groups that promote abortions overseas – a move that would have clearly undermined the Trump administration’s pro-life policies.

A coalition of 44 national pro-life leaders sent a letter in October to McConnell and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) voicing their vehement opposition to the Shaheen amendment.  Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), chairman of the Senate pro-life caucus, joined with these leaders in asking McConnell to amend the bill before it advanced.  “It’s our duty to protect the most vulnerable in our society,” Daines said, according to C-Fam. “I am deeply concerned about how this amendment undermines pro-life policies abroad and I will continue to work to defeat it.”

SFOPs was part of the Bipartisan Budget Agreement reached by Congress and the White House in July. The agreement clearly stipulated, “[T]here will be no poison pills, additional new riders…unless agreed to on a bipartisan basis by the four leaders with the approval of the President.”

C-Fam reported Shaheen’s longstanding attempts to force American taxpayers to fund promoting abortion overseas:

Sodom and Gomorrah Take Shape Once Again

Opinion: The Democratic Party’s abortion fanaticism is demonic

by Peter HeckNovember 5, 2019, 6:35 pm

When Democrat presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard publicly announced her compromising stance on abortion-on-demand, specifically saying that she favored an approach that kept abortion legal, but also worked to make it rare and “unnecessary,” she was pilloried amongst what has become mainstream liberalism.

Combine that reality with a spate of recent jaw-dropping events, and an extremely unnerving conclusion emerges: the driving ideology behind the Democratic Party in America has evolved from a tacit approval and defense of legalized child killing to a macabre celebration of the ritual.

Start with notorious late-term abortionist Leroy Carhart, a folk hero to pro-abortion activists and a champion to Planned Parenthood apologists. Carhart, who has repulsively compared full-term babies in the womb to “meat in a crockpot,” was photographed celebrating his birthday with a desk placard that read, “Even on my worst days, I’m killing it.”

Pro-Abortion Thuggery

Abortion Legislation Bill Takes on Democracy--and "Wins"


Gavan O'Farrell
Averagethief


I was one of the thousands of people who made a submission relating to the Abortion Legislation Bill.  Like many people, I oppose abortion on demand, and my submission gave reasons.

Sometime later, the Parliamentary Select Committee considering this bill emailed submitters.  The email included:

The committee has agreed to hear from as many submitters as possible, focusing on submissions that will most help it consider what, if any, changes should be recommended to the bill.

Select Committees consider –

1.  whether to recommend that a bill should proceed; and
2.  if they recommend that it should proceed, what (if any) amendments to recommend.

This committee seems to have skipped step #1.  And public hearings are yet to occur.  I emailed the committee secretariat describing the usual practice and asking, “How on earth has the committee decided in advance that the Bill will proceed?”

The response:

Once More Into the Breach, My Friends

Trump Keeps Abortion Out at UN Security Council

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.
C-Fam




NEW YORK, November 1 (C-Fam) For the second year in a row, the U.S. kept abortion-related language out of a UN Security Council resolution on women in crisis and conflict. It is a victory for the Trump administration, which has been pushing to eliminate the phrase “sexual and reproductive health” from UN documents. It is a blow to Europeans who insist that abortion be funded as humanitarian aid.

The U.S. had wanted to go further and eliminate from the resolution any reference to other documents that mention the term. U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN Kelly Craft said after the unanimous vote to adopt the resolution, “We cannot accept references to ‘sexual and reproductive health,’ nor any references to ‘safe termination of pregnancy’ or language that would promote abortion or suggest a right to abortion.”

Under the Obama administration, references to “sexual and reproductive health” appeared in two versions of the recurring resolution on Women Peace and Security, promoted by France and other European nations and supported by UN Women and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. This week, the Trump administration was willing to break with the typical practice of reaffirming all previous iterations of the resolution in order to avoid reference to them.

Murderous Intent Towards Down Syndrome Children

Mothers Reveal Huge Pressure 

"Abort Babies With Down's Syndrome!"

The Christian Institute
England & Wales

Mothers who refuse to abort their children with Down’s syndrome are pressured by medics to change their decision, a report has revealed.

One mum whose child is now five-years-old told how even at 38 weeks pregnant she was being offered an abortion.  Another mother said medical professionals told her they could leave her baby to die if it was struggling after birth.

The report, from Positive About Down Syndrome (PADS), revealed that 69 per cent of women were offered an abortion after they were told their baby had Down’s syndrome.  There is very limited support and an overriding assumption to terminate.   Even after informing medical professionals that they wished to keep their child, 46 per cent of mothers were asked if they wanted to change their decision.

Nicola Enoch, founder of PADS, said: “Women are making life or death decisions influenced by outdated and prejudicial views by many medical professionals.

Another Win For Righteousness

Judge Overturns Obama Rule 

OUT: Forcing Doctors to Perform Abortions, Gender Transition Procedures


Daniel Payne
DISRN

A federal judge on Tuesday vacated a mandate imposed by the Obama administration forcing doctors to perform abortions and gender transition procedures.



Judge Reed O’Connor held that the rule, which had expanded anti-discrimination law to include both “gender identity” and “termination of pregnancy,” violated the Administrative Procedures Act as well as the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

O’Connor remanded the policy for further review, noting that the Trump administration has proposed an alternative rule that would lessen the burden on physicians’ religious freedom.

One of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the case called O’Connor’s ruling “a major victory for compassion, conscience, and sound medical judgment.”

US Government Holds The Line Against Global Abortion

U.S. Coalition Tells UN: “There is no International Right to Abortion”

By Stefano Gennarini, J.D. | September 26, 2019

NEW YORK, September 27 (C-Fam) The United States led a coalition of twenty-one countries to promote pro-life and pro-family international policies and oppose abortion at the United Nations on Monday.

The countries criticized the use of “ambiguous terms, such as sexual and reproductive health and rights, in U.N. documents, because they can undermine the critical role of the family and promote practices, like abortion, in circumstances that do not enjoy international consensus and which can be misinterpreted by U.N. agencies.”

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex M. Azar III, delivered the statement of the coalition during a specially held press conference ahead of a high-level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on universal health coverage.

Their statement emphasized, “There is no international right to an abortion and these terms should not be used to promote pro-abortion policies and measures.”

The countries who joined the U.S. also criticized ongoing international efforts to promote explicit and inappropriate sex education materials, such as the World Health Organization’s guidelines for Europe, which promote telling children under the age of four about “early childhood masturbation.”

“We only support sex education that appreciates the protective role of the family in this education and does not condone harmful sexual risks for young people,” the countries underlined.

They concluded asking the international community to concentrate “on topics that unite rather than divide on the critical issues surrounding access to health care.”

Areas of consensus that were highlighted in the statement included “equal access to health care, which includes, but is not limited to reproductive concerns, maternal health, voluntary and informed family planning, HIV, elimination of violence against women and girls, and empowerment to reach the highest standard of health.”

The Trump administration went on offense to promote the pro-life cause this summer, asking countries to join U.S. pro-life efforts at the UN ahead of the meeting, as the Friday Fax reported.

The Trump administration was unable to remove references to ambiguous terms from the final declaration on universal health coverage adopted on Monday. The statement of the 19 countries insisted that the declaration must be read in light of past UN agreements that exclude an international right to abortion.

During the official adoption of the agreement on universal health-care, later in the day, Azar lamented how some delegations were unwilling to more explicitly reaffirm those past UN agreements in the declaration. The Friday Fax reported that it was the European Union who blocked those references in August.

Surprisingly, both Poland and Hungary, who are members of the European Union, joined the U.S. press statement. It remains to be seen if in coming months they will prevent the European Union from blocking U.S. pro-life efforts in UN negotiations.

In addition to the U.S., Hungary and Poland, Bahrain, Belarus, Brazil, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Guatemala, Haiti, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, also joined the statement.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin leading the Holy See delegation at the universal health coverage summit underscored similar pro-life concerns with the wording of the declaration in his official statement. He said the right to health belonged to “all persons during all stages of development of their life, from conception until natural death.”

In contrast, 54 countries, mostly from Europe and Latin America delivered a joint statement which said investing in “sexual and reproductive health and rights” is integral to universal health coverage and a “cost-effective and cost-saving” measure to “decrease the burden on health systems.”