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The decision earlier this month by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius not to allow girls under 17 to purchase the Plan B contraceptive without a prescription is still a hot topic in the news media.
Today an article appeared in the Los Angeles Times titled “A Look at the Plan B Pill Controversy,” for which the Pro-Life Action League’s Eric Scheidler was interviewed:
“It’s just a matter of common sense,” says Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League. “The idea that they could go into a pharmacy and buy these very powerful steroids without talking to [a parent] or a doctor is just completely mad.” Scheidler adds that in cases of minor girls having sex with older men, emergency contraceptives helps the abuser, not the girl.
You can read the article here.
Editor’s Note: This article was published as an op ed in USA Today on Friday, December 9
The outrage coming from abortion advocates over Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ decision not to allow girls under 17 to purchase the Plan B contraceptive without a prescription shows just how far out of step they are with most Americans.
But the pro-life movement welcomes Sebelius’ decision, and hopes that HHS will revisit the question of whether Plan B should be available over the counter to anyone.
In rejecting a recommendation from the Food and Drug Administration that younger teens be allowed to buy Plan B over the counter, Sebelius said there are significant cognitive and behavioral differences between older adolescent girls and the youngest girls of reproductive age.
Any parent knows this is true. But this wisdom is lost on the pro-abortion lobby, which is demanding Sebelius reverse her decision, sacrificing girls’ health to their radical ideology. [Continue reading ...]
I was thrilled to hear the report from our colleagues at the Thomas More Society that the Illinois Supreme Court is finally taking up the question of whether the Illinois Parental Notice of Abortion Act of 1995 should finally be enforced. From the TMS blog:
Today, the Illinois Supreme Court agreed to decide a pair of appeals arising out of the ACLU’s latest challenge, based on Illinois’ Constitution of 1970, to the Parental Notice of Abortion Act of 1995—an Act whose enforcement the ACLU has stymied through successive court challenges ever since it became law.
First, the Court ruled it will hear the Attorney General’s petition for review of the Appellate Court’s decision earlier this year, overturning the Cook County Circuit Court’s dismissal of ACLU’s state constitutional challenge to the Act. Second, the Court also granted review of Thomas More Society’s petition, seeking intervention by county prosecutors whom the Act vested with enforcement responsibilities and who contended that the Attorney General was not adequately representing their interests in defense of the Act.
Get the full story at the TMS blog and please say a prayer that this life-saving law would finally get some teeth!
Eric prays a Rosary outside a Germany abortuary in September of this year
I’ve just learned from one of my pro-life contacts in Germany that a court hearing is coming up this Thursday, December 1, on the status of sidewalk counseling in the city of Freiberg. A law enacted earlier this year created a buffer zone around abortion facilities that has effectively outlawed sidewalk counseling. A similar law was put in place in Munich as well.
When I visited Germany this past September, I had the opportunity to pray at the oldest abortuary in Munich, where the sidewalk counseling ban was in force.
It was an eerie experience. My colleague Bryan Kemper and I had to switch off sides of the street to pray a Rosary together, since only one person can stand nearby the clinic entrance at one time. Had we German enough to speak to any of the clients we could have been fined €500 ($670) for doing so.
For an American used to the free speech protections afforded by the First Amendment, the situation for pro-lifers in Freiberg and Munich is hard to imagine.
Please keep Thursday’s court hearing in your prayers. German babies are dying today because courageous German sidewalk counselors have been muzzled by this unjust law.
Pro-lifers protest Governor Quinn and Personal PAC [Photo by Eric Scheidler]
Illinois “Catholic” pro-abortion governor Pat Quinn presented the “Pro-Choice Leadership Award” at Personal PAC’s annual fundraising luncheon, and the Pro-Life Action League was there to protest.
Despite being called out by all six Illinois Catholic bishops, Quinn obstinately disobeyed and presented the award.
Bearing protest signs reading, Shame on Pro-Abort “Catholic” Quinn and Personal PAC = Abortion, League staff and volunteers staked positions outside all the entrances to the Chicago Hilton and Towers where the event was held.
The League also brought graphic images of aborted babies to make it absolutely clear what the euphemism of “choice” is covering up. [Continue reading ...]
Even among people who call themselves pro-life, many are reluctant to say they’re opposed to abortion in cases of rape or incest—often out of fear of being labeled a “pro-life extremist”.
Their hesitancy is rooted in a misplaced sense of compassion for victims of these horrific crimes, and in a belief that the law should make exceptions to allow them to have abortions.
Clearly, this question does call for a response from pro-lifers: one that is truly compassionate and that does not compromise the truth.
It’s for this reason that we are releasing our newest brochure, titled, “Abortion for Victims of Rape and Incest?” which debunks the widely held belief that most victims of rape and incest who become pregnant would have abortions: on the contrary, a significant majority of these women freely choose to carry their babies to term.
The brochure also includes numerous excerpts from victims’ testimonies recorded in the invaluable book Victims and Victors: Speaking Out about their Pregnancies, Abortions, and Children Resulting from Sexual Assault, edited by Dr. David Reardon, et al.
We will be distributing copies of this new brochure at at our protest of Personal PAC’s fundraising gala tomorrow, November 17, at 10:30 a.m. at the Chicago Hilton and Towers (Map). [Continue reading ...]
What could cause pro-life Christians to join forces with Planned Parenthood?
Lies. Planned Parenthood’s go-to move, and, I believe, the largest reason why Mississippi’s Initiative 26 ballot measure was defeated at the polls yesterday.
The measure, a proposed “Personhood” law, would have declared “every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof” to be a person deserving of the full protection of the law. Resulting laws the measure would require, would likely ban all forms of abortion.
There were strong indications prior to yesterday’s vote that the measure stood a very good chance of passing and that many, even most, Mississippians supported the idea. So what happened? [Continue reading ...]
Pro-abortion IL Governor Pat Quinn
On Thursday, November 17, pro-abortion Illinois Governor Pat Quinn will present an award at a fundraising lunch for pro-abortion lobbying group Personal PAC and the Pro-Life Action League will be there to protest with graphic images showing the reality of abortion. Get all the details on the protest here.
We protested this very event last year, but the Governor’s actions are making it even more imperative this year. Check out a video of that protest here.
We at the League were outraged, if not surprised, when we heard that Quinn, a cradle Catholic, would be lending his support to Personal PAC, an organization whose stated mission is “electing pro-choice candidates to state and local office in Illinois.” It would, perhaps, be more surprising had Quinn not received nearly $500,000 in support from Personal PAC during his run for Governor last year. [Continue reading ...]
Lately I’ve been getting a lot of overwrought e-mails from the pro-abortion lobby (I’m signed up on all their lists), warning that “anti-choice” legislators are on the verge of taking away women’s access to abortion.
Hyperbole is common enough on both sides of the abortion battle, but the kind of outrageous exaggeration coming from the pro-choice side in recent weeks has side has been off the charts—and in the end it may backfire.
Take this, for example, from the National Organization for Women’s Terry O’Neill: “It’s part of the radical right’s core strategy to chip Roe v. Wade to bits. They won’t outlaw abortion per se, they’ll just make it virtually impossible to access.”
Yesterday, pro-life blogger Jill Stanek posted a cartoon called “Occupy Womb Street” that originally appeared at the leftist website The Daily Kos. The target of cartoonist Jen Sorenson was the pro-life leadership of the House of Representatives, which passed the Protect Life Act last week.
The cartoon is clever, despite its hateful attitude towards both the unborn child and childbirth (which even some feminists cherish as the special province of women). I credit Sorenson for her creative play on the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, as well as her pun on the word “labor” in the cartoon’s last panel.
But what impresses me most about this 4-panel comic is panel 2, in which a fetus holds a picket sign reading “Will work for nutrient rich blood.”
Here Sorenson unwittingly highlights the humanity of the child in the womb, not only by recognizing the child’s utter dependence on its mother at this early stage of life, but drawing what can only be called a cute little fetus. [Continue reading ...]