God Save America

By Michael Hichborn

The ongoing effort to save preborn babies from the culture of death is akin to the epic battle between David and Goliath. While the pro-life movement struggles just to maintain its grassroots support base, the massive and powerful culture of death has access to all of the money, political power and propaganda it could ever want.

At least David had the nerve to show up for the fight. Right now, in Colorado, a 20-year-old law student has taken up David's sling and is prepared to throw the deadly stone while some self-professed pro-life leaders, politicians and clergymen cower because they believe that "now is not the right time."

In November 2007, Kristi Burton, founder of Colorado for Equal Rights, won an important victory in the state supreme court allowing her to move forward with Proposed Initiative 36. The initiative simply states that "the terms 'person' or 'persons' shall include any human being from the moment of fertilization." This initiative is the lynchpin for restoring the right to life for all preborn babies, because in the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, Justice Harry Blackmun wrote, "If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [14^th] Amendment."

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by David Barton

As a Christian should you vote? Does God give us instructions on what kind of people to vote for? I will attempt to answer these questions in the scope of this article. Should a Christian vote?  Some Christian individuals and in fact some entire denominations believe that Christians shouldn't vote or get involved with politics. They'll say "well I'm waiting for Jesus to return and set up his kingdom" or "The bible says to have no part of the world" and it's true, we are to expect Jesus to return at any time as a thief in the night, but he did give us civil duties as well as spiritual ones. We are not supposed to just bide time and wait until the Lord returns, he told us our job was to occupy until he comes (Luke 19:13). Occupy means more than just take up space,we are to preach the gospel in the entire earth, and that should be our focus, however how will we be able to do that if our government continues getting more and more hostile towards Christianity. Already we have several states trying to ban the church from speaking against homosexuality. The government has no business in the church according to the 1st amendment. Jesus told us specifically to "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's. " (Mat 22:21). He expects us to carry out our spiritual duty but also our civil duties. The bible tells us that God appoints all leaders, well in the United States God has set it up so that the government depends on the people's free will to vote. God has people that he desires to be in office , but he won't buck the human spirit. He doesn't buck the human will to save us even though the bible tells us it's His will that all be saved. (2 Peter 3:9). That means that it is up to us to vote in Godly people into office, the kind of people that will stand up for righteousness. They aren't going to make it in if we don't vote because he has given us the power to do so.

Now that we have established the fact that Christians should vote, on what things should we base our votes? Biblicly can we vote for anyone we want? I believe there are 4 major points we should consider when voting, especially for the president. 1. What Kind of Judges will he/she appoint? The bible tells us in Isaiah 1:26 that judges shall restore righteousness to the city of Jerusalem. You may think that doesn't apply to our government today but what we have to realize is that our system of government was set up by the principles laid out in the bible and the position our judges hold now is very much the same as it was then. Think of this it was our judges that deemed abortion was ok and legal, and it was our judges that mis-use the term separation of church and state which is not even in the constitution. If we had been electing righteous judges then we wouldn't have abortions legal in America. As Christians we want judges who will uphold the constitution as it is written and not put their own interpretation onto it. These judges are called strict constructionists.

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When I began writing an ebook on abortion, I found myself "eyeball to eyeball" with the fertile egg. Initially, I considered this "a detour" from where I wanted to go. But, with man's invasion into its domain, and because it is the beginning of the human life line, I soon realized the abortion argument actually does begin with the fertile egg. Even though I've been a pro life advocate for decades, I never really thought much on the fertile egg. I've known what it is from biology, organic chemistry, and genetics classes, but I never really stopped to think about - what it really is. So, what is it?

For starters, the fertile egg is the result of a successful merging of an egg and sperm cell. But, there is something quite astounding about this union. The sperm cell, left to itself, it is incapable of growing into anything else. So also, the egg cell. As solitary cells, they soon expire. But, once merged, they burst into a phenomenally complex life form. And that complex life form is already genetically complete inside that single fertile egg. With nourishment and time, each fertile egg will become a unique adult - 100% of the time. It seems more than the sum of its parts.

Some have called the human fertile egg, "potential human life." Scientifically, this is an untenable statement. It is not "potential human life" - it is human life. It is nothing else and it cannot become anything else. The fertile human egg is simply, and only, the earliest stage of human life.

But there is something even more basic about a fertile egg. It is living matter. This may sound like a stupid observation, but it is actually quite significant. Many things are not alive. Most of the matter on our planet is not alive. Indeed, the rest of the universe may have no living matter. If all living matter was weighed against the nonliving matter, it would not amount to a speck of dust on the cosmic weighing scale. A fertile egg is an exceedingly rare piece of living matter in a universe dominated by inorganic matter.

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Ruling Loses Support When People Learn the Details   

Washington, D.C. — 35 years ago, on January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court handed down one of the most controversial rulings in history, Roe v. Wade. For the most part, support for the decision is surrounded by a lack of knowledge. Much of the public is unaware of the details of Roe.

Concerned Women for America (CWA) along with Focus on the Family, The Alliance Defense Fund and the Family Research Council, created the Roe IQ Test to see how familiar the average American is with the details of this controversial ruling.

The outcome: America flunked. With the average score resulting in 7 out of 12 correct answers, America scored a failing grade of 59%. When individuals learn of the specifics of Roe, the support to overturn the ruling increases.

CWA speakers are available to discuss the Roe IQ Test, as well as the March for Life and current lobbying efforts by CWA for federal legislation.

Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America said “The assumption that most people support Roe is not only flawed but flat out wrong. When people learn the details of Roe, their support declines.” Wendy has been a pro-life activist for over 15 years and involved in many U.S. Supreme Court cases involving abortion and free speech. She is a recognized leader in the pro-life movement.

Dr. Janice Crouse, Director and Senior Fellow of Concerned Women for America’s Beverly LaHaye Institute, can discuss research and data analysis on current abortion trends.

Matt Barber, Policy Director for Cultural Issues, provides a personal account of how abortion affects men. “Abortion doesn’t only hurt women and kill children; it can also deeply wound the men it touches. I’m sad to say that I know this from personal experience. Along with the realization that a woman has chosen to end the life you helped to create, comes a profound sense of loss and guilt. I can’t know for sure, but I sometimes imagine my first child was a girl. Today she would have been about 22 years-old, finishing college, I suspect, ready to take on the world. Perhaps I’d be walking her down the aisle soon. I can’t know. I’ll never know. Only God knows. My child was torn from this world before anyone could know.”

For Information Contact:
Natalie Bell
(202) 488-7000
media.cwfa.org

National Right to Life Cites Pro-Life Education, Legislation as Key

Today, National Right to Life cited an increase in pro-life educational outreach and legislative initiatives as central to a new report issued by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the special research arm of Planned Parenthood, showing the annual number of abortions reaching their lowest level in nearly 30 years.

"Today's numbers confirm what we have known for years – if women seeking abortion are fully informed about the risks surrounding abortion, the development of their unborn child, and public and private assistance available in their area, they are more likely to reject the idea of abortion," said Randall K. O'Bannon, Ph.D., NRLC director of education and research.  "Women's Right to Know laws, parental involvement laws, bans on partial-birth abortion – all of which continue to be enacted by the states – not only help women facing crisis pregnancies, they also raise the public's awareness about abortion and the humanity of the unborn child."

The Guttmacher Institute report finds just over 1.2 million abortions in the United States in 2005, down nearly 25% from their high of 1.6 million in 1990, and the lowest reported total since 1.179 million in 1976.  Additionally, the report shows the abortion rate (the number of abortions per every thousand women age 15-44) down to 19.4 per thousand – the lowest since 1974.  The Guttmacher report speculates that the lower abortion rates may be due to "more women carrying unintended pregnancies to term," implicitly acknowledging that attitudes toward abortion and pregnancy may have substantially changed.

Much of that attitudinal shift can be attributed to the efforts of National Right to Life and its state affiliates in passing legislation at the federal and state levels to protect unborn children and equip their mothers with information.

Twenty-three states have women's right to know laws that provide women seeking abortion with information about abortion and its risks, biological information about the development of their unborn child and available alternatives to abortion, including, significantly, the types of both governmental and private assistance available if they choose to bear their child.  Eleven states also make provisions for women to view ultrasound footage of their unborn child.

Twenty-eight states have laws providing for parental involvement in a minor daughter's abortion decision.  Other data show that teen abortion rates have fallen further and faster than abortion rates as a whole. 

Also significant has been the enactment of partial-birth abortion bans at the federal and state level.  Public debate surrounding these laws has further increased the public's awareness about abortion and the development of unborn children in utero.

Educational outreach has also played a significant role in changing the public's attitude about abortion.  Every year, thousands of pieces of literature are distributed at fair booths and events nationwide.  Furthermore, polling trends continue to show that the majority of Americans oppose the vast majority of abortions.

"What the pro-life movement has done, and continues to do, has saved hundreds of thousands of lives," Dr. O'Bannon added.  "Falling abortion rates are a sure sign that, given truthful information about abortion, about its impact on their lives, about the child growing inside them, and given even the slightest help and encouragement, many women will choose life."  

The National Right to Life Committee is the nation's largest pro-life group with affiliates in all 50 states and over 3,000 local chapters nationwide.  National Right to Life works through legislation and education to protect those threatened by abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and assisted suicide.

By Christopher Adamo

This week marks thirty five years since the Supreme Court’s monstrous "Roe v. Wade" decision gave a blanket legalization to abortion, and by which the feminists claim that women have been greatly elevated in society. At this milestone, it is worthwhile to ponder the horrendous consequences they have paid.

The network news headlines on any average day reveal the grim facts. Women can comfortably degrade themselves in public, burdened with far less vocal judgment than they endured in the past. Perhaps, according to the twisted thinking of some, this constitutes an improvement. Yet on too many other fronts, their status in society has been significantly lowered. And abortion has been a major contributing factor.

Women are attacked abused and demeaned by brutish men, just as they always have been. Clearly, Roe did not fix that. Furthermore, the moment the PC police are not around, male discussions of women rapidly degenerate to the same crass themes that have always characterized such talk.

Despite the proliferation of rules and regulations ostensibly prohibiting this manner of treatment in the workplace and elsewhere, the pattern continues unabated. Far too many men still regard women as targets to be preyed upon.

The number of young girls who suddenly disappear, only to be recovered some time later as "remains," has reached a horrific level. Could it be that, despite all of the "I am woman hear me roar" rhetoric that deluged America since the 1970s, an underlying mindset of complete scorn for them, disregarding their worth as anything other than sexual "playtoys," increasingly pervades the culture?

Any intellectually honest assessment of the situation (and admittedly, both intellect and honesty are in very short supply these days, especially among the so-called "politically correct") would have to conclude that no single activity has contributed more than abortion to the demeaning of women in modern culture.

It has always been among the oddest of ironies that, in post-modern America, pro-abortion men are lauded by the liberal establishment as being "pro-woman." The evidence proves quite the contrary.

Consider, as the most striking example, Bill Clinton who was undoubtedly the most ardent pro-abortion individual ever to serve as president of the United States. Within the angry circles of embittered feminism, he is universally held in the highest esteem, having ensured by both his policy decisions and his Federal and Supreme Court appointments that no limitations on abortion would ever be implemented on his watch. A woman’s best friend, was he not?

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“In examining the operations of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, it is clearer than ever that it is in business to kill children for a profit,” said Jim Sedlak, vice president of American Life League. “In our latest survey of Planned Parenthood’s affiliates and their services, we have uncovered the fact that the organization has greatly increased the number of facilities that commit abortion.”

“The numbers speak for themselves,” said Marie Hahnenberg, researcher and director of ALL’s Map Room project. “Planned Parenthood has a total of 855 clinics across the country. We now know that 287-a greater number than ever before-are surgical and medical abortion centers. That marks an increase of 55 abortion locations over the previous year.”

It is most noteworthy that Planned Parenthood has nearly doubled the number of medical abortion only facilities that distribute the abortion drugs Mifepristone (RU-486) and Methotrexate, both of which result in killing of the preborn baby. The new survey shows 108 locations that offer medical abortions, an increase of 48 over the previous survey.

“Since the Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton cases decriminalized abortion in 1973, there have been an estimated four million babies killed at Planned Parenthood facilities alone, and the number continues to rise,” Sedlak said. “Let us remember all of the deaths and hurt mothers across the country, as we pray and continue to fight for this hidden holocaust to end.”

Sedlak encourages pro-lifers to get involved in the effort to stop Planned Parenthood by visiting www.all.org/stopp/maps and either joining or starting a peaceful protest outside a Planned Parenthood facility in their communities.

Source: American Life League

 Wichita, Kansas – Operation Rescue has conducted a covert investigation into late-term abortions at Women’s Health Care Services and plans to release compelling evidence that the most extreme late-term abortions are continuing there despite pending criminal charges and an ongoing grand jury investigation against owner George R. Tiller.

“There is no way to look at this evidence and not question the legality of Tiller’s abortion business,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “This is evidence that cannot be ignored.”

Operation Rescue plans to publicly release the evidence after it has been submitted to the grand jury that is currently investigating Tiller and the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts. The public release will coincide with the 35th memorial of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that decriminalized abortion in America at a time and place to be announced soon.

Kansas law (K.S.A. 65-6703) bans abortions after 22 weeks when the baby is viable except when the woman’s life is in danger or when continuation of the pregnancy would result in “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.” The law requires a second physician to concur in writing that the abortion meets one of these two exceptions, but the second physician must not be legally and financially affiliated with the abortionist.

Tiller faces trial on March 10 on 19 counts of committing illegal abortions without the signature of an unaffiliated physician. Instead, he used abortionist Ann Kristin Neuhaus, with whom he had an illegal financial arrangement, according to the criminal complaint.

Tiller is also the subject of a grand jury investigation that began on January 8. Citizens convened the grand jury to ask for an investigation into alleged illegal late-term abortions committed between 2003 and 2007, years District Attorney Nola Foulston and disgraced Attorney General Paul Morrison have refused to investigate.

Morrison has since resigned from office after admitting to conducting an illicit sexual affair with a subordinate during business hours. He has been accused of attempting to use that relationship to illegally influence criminal cases against Tiller and Planned Parenthood.

“Tiller and his employees continue to arrogantly thumb their noses at the laws of Kansas. Now, the public deserves to see for themselves what is really going on at that abortion mill,” said Newman.

Source: Operation Rescue

WASHINGTON, D.C.— American Life League slammed the latest ad campaign of Planned Parenthood Golden Gate, describing their new “safe sex” ad as a promotion tool for new abortions, and took strong exception to the fact that the campaign was paid for with taxpayer dollars.

“Planned Parenthood says it promotes sexual health, but in reality, it’s just promoting recreational sex,” said American Life League vice president Jim Sedlak. Planned Parenthood Golden Gate recently released an ad campaign to be aired on MTV, VH-1, and Comedy Central that associates Planned Parenthood with the so-called Mile High Club.

Sedlak explained, “Planned Parenthood makes one third of its income by providing contraceptives and abortions.  It promotes recreational sex to keep demand for their business high.”

The Mile High Club is a slang term used to describe people who have engaged in sexual activity aboard an airplane at least one mile above the earth’s surface.

“By linking itself to the Mile High Club, Planned Parenthood’s message is loud and clear,” said Sedlak. “It is telling kids in the 18-24 age bracket to ‘Have sex!  It’s fun.’ In reality, Planned Parenthood is just farming for more business.”

“What most people probably do not know is that ads such as these are paid for with taxpayer money,” said Sedlak. “The Federal Government gives at least $305 million annually to Planned Parenthood.  This must end!  American Life League is continuing its call to American taxpayers to sign the online petition at www.StopPlannedParenthoodTaxFunding.com and contact state and federal elected officials to cut Planned Parenthood off from our wallets!”

For more information on how to stop Planned Parenthood, go to www.all.org/stopp/planopen.htm

by Carey Roberts

Why are men reflexively treated as the fall-guy in the abortion debate?

Recently National Review Online convened a group to opine what would happen in a post-Roe v. Wade world to women who might obtain an illegal abortion. The panelists reveal that before 1973, women who sought an abortion were not subject to criminal prosecution. So overturning Roe v. Wade would not fill our jails with post-abortive women. [http://article.nationalreview.com/?=ZjkwNWQ4ZDQ2NTljNDg4MjUyYWIxZWQ0NDVjMTkxYjg=]

One theme surfaces repeatedly in the commentaries: feckless boyfriends who abandon their partners in their hour of greatest need.

Hadley Arkes of Amherst College describes women having an abortion as routinely "Abandoned by the man." And Dorinda Bordlee from the Bioethics Defense Fund obliquely refers to fathers as "those who should be caring for [the mothers] and their unborn children."

So does research back up these broad pronouncements of male abandonment?

In their book Men and Abortion: Lessons, Losses, and Love, Shostak and McLouth report that 44% of single men offered to marry the woman, 18% of the couples had discussed adoption, and half the men accompanied the woman to the abortion clinic >– hardly the image of wholesale male abandonment.

When these men show up at the clinic, they are met with a chilly reception. Two-thirds of the fathers want to accompany their partner throughout the experience, and nine out of 10 hope to hold the hand of their partner in the recovery room. But in most cases abortion clinics prohibit men from such expressions of support.

But the NRO panel reserves it harshest criticism for men who force their girlfriends to abort.

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