- Fulchrum
- Apr 16, 2013
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by R. Guyovich
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Oh wow soooooo tempted to reply with that.
Goddamnit this is why I post in this thread, so I can vent without getting into stupid FB slapfights
That and the joint suffering.
Speaking o'which,
quote:Given all the grisly and disturbing news we’ve been getting about Planned Parenthood—which is the nation’s largest provider of abortion and, presumably, the body parts of unborn babies—would it surprise you at all to know that there’s also a quiet campaign to rehabilitate Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger as a champion of women’s dignity and human rights?
No less a public figure than Hillary Clinton has said, “I admire Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision . . . And when I think about what she did all those years ago in Brooklyn, taking … attitudes and accusations flowing from all directions, I am really in awe of her.”
Sanger wrote about the “deterioration in the human stock” and “the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents, and dependents.” Lest you have any doubt about what this woman of so-called “courage, … tenacity, [and] vision” meant, Sanger was committed to reducing the number of African Americans through contraception.
And here’s another ugly truth behind Planned Parenthood: the disproportionate number of minorities this organization kills and how it sets up shop in poor neighborhoods. According to a report by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, in 2012, far more African American babies were killed by abortion—31,328—than were born—24,758.
quote:Will women have access to the health services they need if the government defunds Planned Parenthood?
That depends on whom you ask.
“Absolutely,” said Jay Hobbs, communications director for Heartbeat International, a pro-life organization that assists with pregnancies.
“If Planned Parenthood were gone tomorrow, the nation’s 2,500 pregnancy help centers, medical clinics, maternity homes and non-profit adoption agencies would continue to offer true choice, true empowerment to every mother who is facing an unexpected pregnancy.”
Kathleen Eaton Bravo, founder of a pro-life network of medical clinics called Obria Foundation, has a different response.
“No,” she said bluntly.
Are we ready in the pro-life community to meet the needs of those women? No. I’m sorry to say, after 40 years, no.
Two decades ago, Bravo quit her job as a successful businesswoman to challenge organizations like Planned Parenthood in California, where in 2011, more than 1 million abortions were performed.
She has since opened five pro-life clinics and one mobile unit, which have helped save “thousands” of babies from being aborted. (Bravo said her organization has a “conversion rate” of about 80 percent, saving more than 6,000 babies.)
But if Congress defunds Planned Parenthood, Bravo believes that the pro-life community isn’t ready to handle the number of women they would need to serve.
“We are reactive in the pro-life movement. We are not proactive,” Bravo said. “The issue is, if we defund Planned Parenthood … we don’t have a competitive medical model under a branded name to compete.”
Out With the Old, In With the New
Planned Parenthood Federation for America President Cecile Richards has said stripping the organization of its federal funding would restrict “millions” of women from access to fundamental health care services.
Besides providing abortions, the organization offers breast and cervical cancer screenings, birth control, STI testing and treatment and well-woman exams.
Planned Parenthood claims that millions of low- and middle-income women across the country rely on these services.
Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, a nonprofit that focuses on health care policy, believes that these services are not exclusive to Planned Parenthood. If the organization were defunded tomorrow, she said, “women would still have access to services.”
The infrastructure already is in place to provide services to women through more than 9,200 community health centers around the country. Planned Parenthood could be defunded right away, and women would still have access to services, and in a way that would allow them to have more continuity of care.
Turner was referring to the thousands of community medical centers that already exist and are eligible for federal funding.
Under the legislation the Senate will vote on Monday night—which came as a result of undercover videos depicting Planned Parenthood harvesting fetal body parts—some or all of the $500 million in federal taxpayer money the organization receives annually would be redirected to these local clinics.
The transferred money could be used for relevant diagnostic laboratory and radiology services, well-child care, prenatal and postpartum care, immunization, family planning services including contraception, sexually transmitted disease testing, cervical and breast cancer screenings and referrals.
These clinics greatly outnumber Planned Parenthood centers (9,059 to 666 Planned Parenthood clinics, according to data from the National Association of Community Health Centers and Planned Parenthood Federation for America).
Daily Signal CHC v PP by state 261x1024Yet the question remains whether these clinics will be equipped to handle an influx of patients should Planned Parenthood go away.
Community Health Clinics
According to a 2010 report by the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute (which has historic ties to Planned Parenthood), the majority of these local health clinics offer similar services to Planned Parenthood, if not more.
Yet, because Planned Parenthood is such a dominant institution in women’s health care today, some federally funded groups focus their attention on other areas.
“Some of them may say we’d rather put our money into eye exams or dental care because Planned Parenthood is taking care of women’s health,” Turner said.
“But if the federal government were to explicitly make money available to fund women’s health services, they would quickly respond,” she said.
If this were to happen, Turner argues women would actually be better off.
She describes Planned Parenthood as providing “fragmented” health care “where you’re not able to really care for the whole patient.”
In community health centers, which offer their services for free or at an affordable cost, they “keep medical records and have databases,” which provide “continuity” of care.
“It’s much better to have that under the same umbrella,” she said.
What Do Women Want?
If Congress defunds Planned Parenthood and local health clinics equip themselves to handle the millions of women the organization serves, will women feel comfortable going somewhere that’s not female-oriented?
Bravo, the founder of Obria, has her doubts.
“If we defund them, we’re going to continue driving [women] back [to Planned Parenthood],” she said.
In order to really make a difference in women’s lives, Bravo believes that the pro-life movement needs to get out of churches and into smartphones.
“Planned Parenthood meets them where they’re at,” she said of their tech-friendly, mobile-first services. “They meet them in the crisis, they meet them on the smartphone.”
The vast majority of the nation’s 2,500 pro-life pregnancy help centers don’t offer medical treatments, let alone have iPhone apps where women can order a $149 chlamydia and gonorrhea test kit by mail.
Instead, pregnancy help centers like Heartbeat International and Care Net offer women free counseling and adoption agencies, material aid, parenting classes and job skills training.
Bravo believes that women facing an unplanned pregnancy want more than “formula and diapers.” She cites a 2014 market research study from the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute as proof.
The study found that the best pregnancy center would include “free medical exams, medical advice and free diagnostics such as ultrasound,” which Planned Parenthood offers, although not always for free.
With Obria, Bravo is offering these services at no cost.
Her clinics also provide other free services (such as cancer screenings and STI testing and treatments) so that women will come to Obria not just in times of crisis.
Doing this, she believes, gets to the “root cause” of unplanned pregnancies.
What you won’t find at Obria, however, is access to abortion, abortion referrals, Plan B or contraception.
“I would close my doors before I do that,” Bravo said.
By refusing to offer these services, Bravo can’t receive federal or state funding.
Instead, she relies on private funding to support her clinics, which makes her goal of opening 200 clinics nationwide a daunting task.
But to her, providing women a viable alternative to Planned Parenthood—one that is mobile-first and nationally recognized—is worth the effort.
‘Boots on the Ground’
Having had one herself, Bravo isn’t naïve to the reality of abortion.
“We have a law in the U.S. that says abortion is legal and I can’t overturn that,” she said. “What we can do is reach those women. We have to sit on the curb with those girls and say we can walk through this whole process with you.”
When she had an abortion, Bravo went to Planned Parenthood.
At the time, she said there was nowhere else to go, and the same is still true today.
In order to change that—and reach women during times of crisis so they don’t feel Planned Parenthood is their only option—Bravo is calling for “boots on the ground.”
“We need boots on the ground,” she said. “We need to unite and create a nationally branded, mobile-first alternative.”
With a team of ambitious millennials by her side, Bravo is doing just that, offering services like telemedicine, where women don’t even need to go in for an appointment—they can speak to a nurse or doctor online.
“They’re going to take it way beyond what I’m telling you about,” she said of her young staff.
Bravo then recalled a radio interview she did few days earlier. In it, the host analyzed the ways in which the pro-life “pregnancy center” movement was falling behind.
“The pregnancy center movement is still playing an eight-track tape in a Volkswagen van back in the 1970s,” Bravo recalled him saying.
“And they—Planned Parenthood—are driving up the street in a Maserati.”
Kelsey Harkness is a news producer at The Daily Signal.
quote:The federal judge who late Friday granted a temporary restraining order against the release of recordings made at an annual meeting of abortion providers wasn’t just appointed by President Barack Obama, the most extreme proponent of abortion ever to hold the White House. He was also one of President Obama’s top fundraisers, a bundler who raised at least $200,000 for Obama and donated $30,800 to committees supporting him, according to Public Citizen.
Judge William H. Orrick, III, granted the injunction just hours after the order was requested by the National Abortion Federation.
Orrick’s wife, Caroline “Linie” Farrow Orrick, is a clown and artist with an interest in outdoor athletic endeavors. She partners with her husband in their political decisions and she is his co-bundler according to Public Citizen. She’s also a public supporter of extreme abortion policies.
Her YouTube user page shows that the first video she ever “liked” was from an extreme pro-abortion group called the Center for Reproductive Justice. The slick, celebrity-laden video called for people to sign a “bill of rights” that asserts a right to abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy, a position shared by very few Americans. It further calls for taxpayer funding of contraception, abortifacients and abortion. And, finally, it says that all health care plans should be required under penalty of law to cover abortion, abortifacients, and other anti-reproductive services — even if they have religious objections such as those held by the Little Sisters of the Poor.
quote:As The Daily Signal and 2nd Vote have revealed, corporate America is a major source of revenue for Planned Parenthood. While less than the half-billion in taxpayer dollars Planned Parenthood receives annually, corporate contributions made up a healthy piece of the $127 million in “excess revenue” the ostensible nonprofit received last year alone.
But while corporate America has been comfortable donating funds to Planned Parenthood for years, it has been far less willing to give—or even allow its employees to give—to religious charities.
As their gifts to an organization whose senior officials have been caught on video haggling over money for baby hearts, lungs and livers have come under fire, many of these corporations have begun to back away from their relationship with Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood even had to pre-empt the controversy by hiding the names of its corporate donors. Many of the companies sought to diminish the significance of their gifts to Planned Parenthood, explaining that the contributions were simply matching gifts for employee contributions through the company’s charitable campaign.
But if this kind of employee-directed donations is no big deal, why are religious charities often excluded?
Some of the companies matching employee gifts to Planned Parenthood are much more cautious with their money when it comes to religious nonprofits. Whether through exclusions of religious charities altogether or the application of religion and “sexual orientation” nondiscrimination rules to the employment practices of religious organizations, corporations often exclude the religious charities that are making a difference in our communities and our world.
For example, Pfizer has refused to match employee gifts to some charities because they are “religious.” But it has no problem donating to Planned Parenthood. Ben & Jerry’s gives to Planned Parenthood. And it will provide grants to charities its employees recommend to encourage “social change.” But not if they are “religious activities.”
Bath and Body Works funds Planned Parenthood (and Komen, which also provides grants to Planned Parenthood). But “religious or sectarian organizations” are generally excluded. It also imposes a broad “nondiscrimination” rule covering employment that would also exclude virtually any religious charity. Deutsche Bank will not match any employee gifts to a religious organization or to any organization that “promote[s] … religious causes.” But they will give to Planned Parenthood.
Here and abroad Christian charities are serving the poor, feeding the hungry, providing immediate disaster relief and protecting the persecuted. Christian charities are among the most respected and effective charities in the world. They’re also right there in your community, from the Gospel Rescue Mission to the local pregnancy resource center. (Full disclosure: I serve on the board of directors of Christian Service Charities, a federation of Christian charities in workplace giving campaigns.)
These exclusions of religious charities have been struck down as unconstitutional when they are imposed by government workplace giving campaigns. But private companies are entitled to give to those charities they want to give to and exclude those they do not. They can even choose not to permit their employees to give through their workplace giving campaign to religious charities. But a company that matches its employees’ gifts to Planned Parenthood, but won’t do the same for an employee gift to a pregnancy resource center in their community, should explain why.
It is no answer that some might deem controversial a gift to a volunteer pregnancy center receiving no taxpayer dollars and serving the practical needs of a mother so that she can choose to keep her baby. Even before the last few weeks, there were plenty of reasons for a company to avoid aligning itself with Planned Parenthood. The videos of senior Planned Parenthood officials that are “disturbing” Americans across the political and ideological spectrum should just confirm that businesses should have nothing to do with the abortion giant.
It’s bad enough that these corporations are supporting an organization that holds a 40 percent share of America’s abortion market. It’s abhorrent that they would continue to do so in light of the revelations of Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in the body parts of unborn children.
That they would do so while simultaneously treating religious nonprofits aiding those in need as too controversial or unworthy of their support is conclusive proof they don’t deserve our support.
Casey Mattox is senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom and its Center for Life.
quote:In his over 40-year fight to abolish the slave trade, William Wilberforce became known for his personality, patience, and political gravitas. In 1787, Thomas Clarkson met with Wilberforce for the first time and gave Wilberforce his essay on the slave trade. Together, the two men formed a partnership that lasted for 50 years, and which ultimately resulted in abolishing slavery in the British empire.
Gathering and then spreading as much knowledge—including as many horrifying details about the slave trade as he could, especially to his political rivals and allies—became Wilberforce’s mission. As Wilberforce said in an 1789 speech to the House of Commons: “How then, can the House refuse its belief to the multiplied testimonies…of the savage treatment of the Negroes in the middle passage. There indeed, what need is there for any evidence? The number of deaths speaks for itself and makes all such inquiry superfluous.”
The Planned Parenthood videos released so far have been disturbing, but the most recent is particularly atrocious. Although one of their many purposes is undoubtedly to show that Planned Parenthood has been intentionally procuring and profiting from aborted body parts, one of the subsidiary “benefits” is that it sheds a different kind of spotlight on the reality that abortion is the murder of tiny human beings. You can’t change a cultural norm (which is most certainly what abortion has become) if no one knows what it looks like, if no one understands the realities of what occurs. As Wilberforce said, “You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.”
As my colleague D.C. McAllister points out, “Slavery was institutionalized racism. Abortion today is institutionalized murder. I find it ironic that we continue to hear about the guilt of America being its racist past, yet there is little said about the guilt of America for its murderous present. The supremacy of death and the dehumanization of our children are inherent in these laws. Similar to the supremacy of whites and the dehumanization of blacks in slavery.”
Nicole Russell is a senior contributor to The Federalist. She lives in northern Virginia with her husband and four kids.
quote:In a repulsive demonstration of hostility towards Christians, the City of Houston wants to bulldoze one church and condemn the property of another so they can build affordable housing and a public library.
Attorneys representing the Christian Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church and the Latter Day Deliverance Revival Center were in court Tuesday asking a judge to issue a temporary restraining order preventing the city from taking their property.
“The government cannot take a church’s property and give it to some other business in violation of the law,” said Hiram Sasser, the deputy chief counsel for Liberty Institute. “These churches, their congregations, and this neighborhood are not for sale.”
Both congregations are located in Houston’s Fifth Ward – which has a notorious history of violence and crime.
Liberty Institute said the ministries of both churches have been credited with turning the neighborhood around – reducing crime and drug use.
quote:The pro-life advocates behind the four shocking videos exposing Planned Parenthood selling the body parts of aborted babies for research have released a 5th video today that catches a Planned Parenthood official discussing how the abortion business sells “fully intact” aborted babies.
The video, which follows Senate Democrats defeating a bill to de-fund Planned Parenthood, makes it appear the Planned Parenthood abortion business may be selling the “fully intact” bodies of unborn babies purposefully born alive and left to die.
Planned Parenthood could be breaking the federal law known as the Born Alive Infants Protection Act that requires abortion clinics, hospitals and other places that do abortions to provide appropriate medical care for a baby born alive after a failed abortion or purposefully birthed to “let die.” That would be one of the potential ways Planned Parenthood could produce a “fully intact” baby to sell to StemExpress for research. Most “crunchy” abortion methods would do damage to the baby’s body.
The fifth undercover video in the controversy over Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted baby parts shows the Director of Research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, Melissa Farrell, advertising the Texas Planned Parenthood branch’s track record of fetal tissue sales, including its ability to deliver fully intact aborted babies.
quote:On Monday, federal district court Judge William Orrick ordered the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) not to publish undercover video taken at the National Abortion Federation’s (NAF) annual meetings in 2014 and 2015.
CMP has released five undercover videos exposing Planned Parenthood’s program of selling aborted babies’ body parts—and they promise that more videos are on the way. But it may require lawmakers to get involved to allow the public to see the videos, based on the unfolding court battle.
NAF is a professional association of abortion providers who are dedicated to making “reproductive choice a reality” according to its website. A quick Google search reveals all types of information already available about its annual meetings and the presentations made there. For example, an organization called Gynuity Health Projects describes the panels on which its staff participated at the 2015 NAF annual meeting in Baltimore, with subjects ranging from “Medical abortion service provision: How low can we go?” to “Can we omit the screening ultrasound before medical abortion?”
This makes it a bit far-fetched for NAF to claim that its privacy has been invaded by a video about what happened at these meetings.
Obama Bundler’s Spouse Temporarily Blocks Video Release
Late Monday, Judge Orrick—who along with his wife was a major campaign finance bundler for and contributor to Obama, raising at least $200,000 for Obama’s campaign and contributing over $30,000 to committees supporting Obama—granted a temporary restraining order on the grounds that CMP breached confidentiality agreements with NAF by setting up a fake company and attending NAF’s annual meetings in a bid to uncover potentially illegal activities.
Orrick claims that the videos released so far have subjected the individuals and companies involved to harassment and death threats, and this was “sufficient to show irreparable injury” to NAF if a temporary restraining order had not been issued. The judge set a hearing on the merits for August 27.
This comes on the heels of a California state judge ordering CMP not to release video of a meeting with employees from StemExpress—a company that buys “human tissue, blood and other specimens” from Planned Parenthood.
Restraining Orders Raise Free Speech Concerns
As we wrote last week, StemExpress’s desire to avoid further ridicule, criticism or scandal for its nefarious involvement in the gruesome harvesting and sale of aborted babies’ body parts does not outweigh the public’s interest in seeing these videos any more than it would if this were a CBS “60 Minutes” undercover sting.
The same can be said of NAF, particularly given the information already available about its annual meetings. And these restraining orders may violate the stern prohibition against prior restraint of free speech outlined by U.S. Supreme Court precedent.
These groups are clearly concerned about what other horrendous details may come out in the yet to be released videos, and dragging CMP into court for breach of contract or invasion of privacy is a stalling tactic.
Politicians Investigate Planned Parenthood
In light of statements made by Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services, about the collection and pricing of “intact” body parts from aborted babies in one of CMP’s videos, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce opened an investigation of Planned Parenthood.
In a letter to Planned Parenthood’s president, Cecile Richards, Chairman Fred Upton and Tim Murphy, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, requested information from Planned Parenthood on its consent procedures, tissue collection practices and other related issues, as well as the opportunity to have a staff briefing with Nucatola.
Planned Parenthood has refused to make Nucatola available to committee staff, citing the need to review this request with lawyers. The committee has threatened to subpoena Nucatola if Planned Parenthood will not make her available.
Likewise, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte, along with Trent Franks, the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, has asked Attorney General Loretta Lynch to open an investigation into whether Planned Parenthood has violated the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. They cite statements in the undercover videos by Nucatola “that raise serious questions about whether abortionists and particularly abortionists in the Planned Parenthood organization are complying” with the law.
On Friday, Charles Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, sent a letter to CMP’s lawyer requesting “[a]ll video footage in CMP’s possession relating to the provision, acquisition, preparation, transportation and sale of fetal tissue…by PPFA, Planned Parenthood affiliates and associated clinics, intermediary businesses, end-users, as well as any other individuals, entities, and organizations involved in these processes.”
What Lawmakers Can Do
The other action that one or both of these congressional committees should consider taking is immediately to request or subpoena all of the remaining videos from CMP that have not yet been released.
The actions of StemExpress and NAF, who are allies of Planned Parenthood, reveal the tactics that these abortion providers and organ buyers intend to use to prevent or delay the release of these videos: seeking out sympathetic judges who will prevent the further release of videos that severely damage the image of the abortion industry and reveal in gory detail their inner workings.
No federal or state judge has the authority to prevent a congressional committee from holding a hearing at which witnesses—like representatives of CMP—testify about their experiences or where the committee presents evidence it has obtained such as the undercover videos, which could also be posted on the committee’s website.
Such action by Congress may be the only way to ensure that litigation tactics do not prevent the public from seeing the rest of the evidence of Planned Parenthood’s possible violations of federal law, and its hideous practices and procedures.
Hans von Spakovsky is an authority on a wide range of issues—including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration, the rule of law and government reform—as a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and manager of the think tank’s Election Law Reform Initiative.
Elizabeth Slattery writes about the rule of law, the proper role of the courts, civil rights and equal protection, and the scope of constitutional provisions such as the Commerce Clause and the Recess Appointments Clause as a legal fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
quote:The FBI has begun investigating the security of Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server, an attorney for the Democratic presidential front-runner confirmed to Fox News late Tuesday.
The probe, which was first reported by The Washington Post, comes days after watchdogs from the State Department and the intelligence community asked the Justice Department to explore whether classified material was improperly shared or stored on the former secretary of state’s private e-mail account.
The Post first reported the FBI contacted Clinton attorney David Kendall about the security of a thumb drive he possesses that contain copies of work emails sent by Clinton during her time as America’s top diplomat. The paper also reported that the FBI had contacted a Denver-based technology firm that helped manage the server.
“Quite predictably, after the [intelligence community’s inspector general] made a referral to ensure that materials remain properly stored, the government is seeking assurance about the storage of those materials,” Kendall told Fox News. “We are actively cooperating.”
Brilliant day one strategy by Rand - make Americans immortal. Gee, wonder why no-one else ever thought of doing that?
quote:A Republican senator is rolling out a new bill that would protect religious organizations and other groups from having to provide health insurance coverage to employees that poses religious or moral objections, The Daily Signal has learned.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., introduced the Health Care Conscience Rights Act today. The legislation protects religious organizations, private businesses, higher education institutions, health care providers and insurance companies from having to provide or pay for health insurance coverage that violates their moral or religious beliefs.
“It is possible for people with opposing views to live together in peace, but we all must respect opposing views,” Lankford said in a statement to The Daily Signal. “The federal government should honor freedom and conscience rights for everyone. This bill would assure that happens.”
Co-sponsors include Republican Sens. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, John McCain of Arizona, Rob Portman of Ohio, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Ted Cruz of Texas, John Boozman of Arkansas, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Dan Coats of Indiana and Steve Daines of Montana.
Republican Reps. Diane Black of Tennessee, Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska and John Fleming of Louisiana introduced the same legislation in the House of Representatives earlier this year. Their bill has 152 cosponsors, including two Democrats.
Lankford’s legislation comes less than a month after a federal court ruled that Little Sisters of the Poor, a nonprofit religious group serving the elderly, and four Oklahoma Christian universities must abide by Obamacare’s contraception mandate.
The contraception mandate requires employers to provide employees with health insurance plans that cover contraception and abortion-inducing drugs. Organizations that choose not to comply are required to pay a fine to the Internal Revenue Service.
In the case of Little Sisters of the Poor, refusing to adhere to the contraception mandate would cost the group, which serves 13,000 elderly people in 31 countries, $2.5 million in penalties annually, it estimated.
In its ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit pointed to an “accommodation scheme” created by the Obama administration as protection for religious groups like Little Sisters of the Poor. The plan, the court said, allowed employees to receive contraception while still keeping organizations and institutions from violating their religious beliefs.
Under the accommodation scheme, groups that object to the contraception mandate on the basis of their religious and moral beliefs must notify the Department of Health and Human Services of their opposition. The government will then work with the insurance company or a third-party administrator, which would provide coverage directly to workers.
Little Sisters of the Poor, though, argued that adhering to the accommodation scheme made them complicit in providing contraception and abortion-inducing drugs to employees and thus violated their religious beliefs.
In addition to making sure groups do not have to violate their consciences, Lankford’s bill also addresses the issue of having to pay a fine for choosing not to comply with the contraception mandate.
The Health Care Conscience Rights Act would instead prohibit the government from imposing a penalty on organizations opposing the contraception mandate because of religious or moral objections.
“Our nation is divided on various issues, but the fabric of America is built on the First Amendment rights of free speech, the free exercise of religion and freedom of conscience,” Lankford said. “This should be something we all agree on.”
[Full Disclosure: The Liberal Logic 101 site admin attended seminary with James Lankford.]
Melissa Quinn is a news reporter for The Daily Signal.
quote:Just because Republicans don’t want to fund Planned Parenthood’s practices of chopping up babies and selling them doesn’t mean they don’t care about women. They do, and women can be better served in the many health centers across the nation that need the money being wasted on Planned Parenthood.
To begin with, community health centers outnumber Planned Parenthood clinics ten to one. These are local organizations designed to meet local needs—birth control, cancer screenings, treatments for sexually transmitted diseases, etc. This is true for urban and rural communities. Community health centers operate in more than 8,000 locations and serve 23 million patients, “making up a substantial share of the nation’s primary care infrastructure. They provide one-quarter of all primary care visits for the nation’s low-income population and generate $24 billion in annual savings.”
If you are shocked by the recent videos, by the declaration of “It’s a baby!” or “We have another boy!” as technicians separate hearts, kidneys, spines, and lungs, and you don’t consider the fact that the causal agent here is legal abortion, then you’re missing the point entirely. While it is offensive and illegal that Planned Parenthood might be making money off the sale of baby parts, this is nothing compared to the alarming fact that they’re killing babies in the first place. If all we do is defund Planned Parenthood, babies will still be butchered, and their legs, arms, brains, and livers will still be sold.
Legalized abortion denies the humanity of our children when they are most vulnerable. Most pro-abortionists consider the embryo in the womb to be something “other” than human life, yet they cannot tell us what it is. To all of you who champion abortion at any stage, what is it you’re ending in the act of abortion? Tell us. All you can say is “not human,” “not life,” “not a baby.” Or you rename it into something that has no real meaning: fetus, mass, blob, products of conception. These are just dehumanizing terms that still do not tell us what it is.
quote:In an attempt to spin their organ harvesting business into a humanitarian effort, Planned Parenthood argues that “lifesaving” discoveries are made through conducting research on babies killed in abortions.
However, the problem with Planned Parenthood’s claim is that scientists indicate that fetal “tissue” research has been disappointing. For example, Harvard researcher, Ole Isacson, MD, said they have been fairly unsuccessful in using it to finding a cure for Parkinson’s. He said, “It is very difficult to obtain dopamine nerve cells from fetal tissue. It would be far easier to grow the cells in a laboratory from stem cells. There have been no stem cell transplants as of yet for Parkinson’s patients.”
The Federalist reports that even though fetal tissue research receives $76 million in taxpayer funding, scientists are moving on to other methods because they believe it will produce better results. The associate professor of bioethics at Case Western Reserve University, Insoo Hyun, explained, “Despite the long history of using fetal tissue in medicine and research, the practice could be on the way out. Even though it has led to important medical advances in the last several decades, ‘in the future, the need for fetal tissue will go down because of advances in stem cell [technology] that will take over.”
Ultimately, regardless of whether fetal tissue research is beneficial, the end doesn’t justify the means, and it is quite unbelievable that Planned Parenthood thinks Americans will disregard the plethora of problems with their sketchy practices
quote:Who are these Trump supporters? Which Republican voters have so quickly coalesced around his candidacy? Have his controversial comments suggesting most unauthorized immigrants from Mexico are criminals, drug dealers, and rapists alienated Hispanic voters? Has his aggressive rhetorical style appealed more to men or women?
Multiple polls show Trump does better among men than women. For instance, a Fox News poll finds that among likely Republican primary voters, 23 percent of men want Trump as the GOP nominee compared to 13 percent of women. CNN/ORC finds nearly identical numbers.
CNN, Fox, and ABC/WashPo polls reveal that Americans with more education are less likely to support Trump’s presidential candidacy. Most strikingly, the ABC/WashPo poll finds only 8 percent of college-degree-holding Republican voters plan to vote for Trump, compared to 32 percent of Republican voters without college degrees. Moreover, those with college degrees (56 percent) are about 6 points more likely to believe that Trump is wrong about immigration compared to those without college degrees (50 percent), the Fox poll finds.
The Washington Post’s Peyton Craighill and Scott Clement point out that, while Trump’s favorability ratings among Hispanics are negative 68 points, Jeb Bush’s favorability ratings are positive by 15 points. This suggests that partisanship alone cannot explain Latinos’ antagonism towards Trump. Instead, the developer’s controversial comments on immigration are more likely behind the surge in Hispanics’ negative opinions of Trump.
Tea Party voters prefer Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (24 percent) to Trump (14 percent). In contrast, Republicans overall favor Trump first (19 percent) followed by Walker (17 percent), according to a PPP poll. Furthermore, Trump does about as well among moderate Republicans as he does among very conservative Republicans (see ABC/WashPo and PPP polls.) If the right wing were bolstering Trump’s candidacy, then we’d expect him to garner greater support among the “very conservative” ranks.
Trump is a polarizing candidate with some of the highest unfavorability ratings among the many Republican hopefuls. Polls consistently find about 4 in 10 Republicans are unfavorable toward him, about two to three times higher than most other Republican candidates (see Monmouth, YouGov, CNN/ORC, and PPP polls). Similarly, a Monmouth poll reports that 39 percent of Republican voters think publicity is Trump’s true motive in the race.
quote:The FBI investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s unsecured e-mail account is not just a fact-finding venture — it’s a criminal probe, sources told The Post on Wednesday.
The feds are investigating to what extent Clinton relied on her home server and other private devices to send and store classified documents, according to a federal source with knowledge of the inquiry.
“It’s definitely a criminal probe,” said the source. “I’m not sure why they’re not calling it a criminal probe.
“The DOJ [Department of Justice] and FBI can conduct civil investigations in very limited circumstances,” but that’s not what this is, the source stressed. “In this case, a security violation would lead to criminal charges. Maybe DOJ is trying to protect her campaign.”
Clinton’s camp has downplayed the inquiry as civil and fact-finding in nature. Clinton herself has said she is “confident” that she never knowingly sent or received anything that was classified.
quote:At least 3,500 Americans have been detained inside a Chicago police warehouse described by some of its arrestees as a secretive interrogation facility, newly uncovered records reveal.
Of the thousands held in the facility known as Homan Square over a decade, 82% were black. Only three received documented visits from an attorney, according to a cache of documents obtained when the Guardian sued the police.
Despite repeated denials from the Chicago police department that the warehouse is a secretive, off-the-books anomaly, the Homan Square files begin to show how the city’s most vulnerable people get lost in its criminal justice system.
People held at Homan Square have been subsequently charged with everything from “drinking alcohol on the public way” to murder. But the scale of the detentions – and the racial disparity therein – raises the prospect of major civil-rights violations.
Documents indicate the detainees are a group of disproportionately minority citizens, many accused of low-level drug crimes, faced with incriminating themselves before their arrests appeared in a booking system by which their families and attorneys might find them.
quote:New Hampshire has become the second state to cancel state taxpayer funding for the Planned Parenthood abortion business after multiple expose’ videos have caught the abortion business selling the body parts of aborted babies. The Granite State follows Louisiana, where pro-life Governor Bobby Jindal made the decision to cancel Medicaid funding to the abortion company.
In New Hampshire, the Republican-led Executive Council has rejected roughly $650,000 in state taxpayer funding for the abortion company. The move follows Senate Democrats defeating a bill to de-fund Planned Parenthood.
A local news report indicated, “GOP councilor Chris Sununu, who has supported Planned Parenthood in the past, voted against the contract, saying the state should be investigating the practices of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England.”
“This vote eliminates about a third of Planned Parenthood’s funding, as it also receives money through federal contract,” the report continued.
A total of 12 states have already launched an investigation including South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Kansas, Missouri, Arizona, Indiana, Ohio, Georgia, Texas and Louisiana and members of Congress have launched an investigation as well.
quote:Ten tea party groups are still awaiting approval by the IRS years after they applied for tax-exempt status, Senate investigators revealed Wednesday in a report that recommends the tax agency issue a ban preventing employees who work on nonprofit applications from engaging in political activity.
Investigators said the IRS’s top brass showed bad management in letting the division that handles nonprofit applications run amok, but the report cleared those top officials of more serious charges of trying to punish groups politically opposed to President Obama.
Indeed, after two years of investigation the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee couldn’t even agree on whether there was politically motivated targeting in picking which applications to delay or to give extra scrutiny — the central allegation in the 2013 inspector general’s audit.
“The committee found evidence that the administration’s political agenda guided the IRS’s actions with respect to their treatment of conservative groups,” said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, committee chairman.
But Sen. Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat, said just the opposite: “The results of this in-depth, bipartisan investigation showcase pure bureaucratic mismanagement without any evidence of political interference.”
What the two senators could agree on was that the IRS needs stricter controls on employees, including a time limit that would force the agency to decide on applications within 270 days. Some tea party groups’ applications have languished for five years awaiting a decision on nonprofit status.
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Aug 9, 2015 09:15
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