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News and commentary from the Pro-Life Action League
News and commentary from the Pro-Life Action League
Last week, the Guttmacher Institute announced the publication of an analysis of the rate of unintended pregnancy in the United States from 2001 to 2006. The report unwittingly makes the case for defunding Planned Parenthood.
Guttmacher reports that overall “the unintended pregnancy rate has remained essentially flat” during that period but that it “has increased dramatically among poor women.” Their conclusion [PDF]: “The United States did not make progress toward its goal of reducing unintended pregnancy between 2001 and 2006.”
The Institute was founded as a division of Planned Parenthood in 1968, and later named in honor of former Planned Parenthood director Alan Guttmacher when it became independent in 1977. However—as the two groups’ response to the new report shows—Guttmacher and Planned Parenthood continue to work hand-in-glove.
“The Guttmacher Institute’s new analysis of unintended pregnancy should serve as a national wake-up call,” declared Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards—and for once I agree with her. But we’re completely at odds as to what the wake-up call is trying to tell us. [Continue reading ...]
Joe Scheidler speaks at pro-life candlelight vigil in Auburn Hills, Michigan, Aug 27 [Photo by Rebecca Kiessling]
More than 400 pro-life activists gathered Saturday in front of the shell of a massive building that has been purchased by Planned Parenthood to be used as another mega-abortion facility in Auburn Hills, Michigan.
I was among those invited to address the prayer warriors during the three-hour prayer vigil. Other speakers included attorney Rebecca Kiessling, who spoke about how she was conceived in rape, and how her life was spared only because the law would not allow her mother to have an abortion in 1969. As such, Kiessling said she had a very personal reason for preventing this Planned Parenthood abortion facility from opening.
The prayer vigil was planned and conducted by nationally known pro-life leader Dr. Monica Miller and her organization, Citizens for a Pro-Life Society.
The prayer vigil consisted of readings by local pastors, many religious hymns, a time for private and small group prayer and a blessing at the conclusion. As the vigil continued into darkness, candles were distributed to the assembly, and a chorus of young students sang in harmony, adding to its solemnity.
The main purpose of the vigil was to seek Divine help in keeping Planned Parenthood from completing the building and turning it into an abortion center. [Continue reading ...]
It’s been over a week now since Ruth Padawer’s article on so-called “selective reduction” was posted on the New York Times website, and since then it’s elicited a lot of reactions online.
It’s surely one of the most discussed abortion-related stories to have appeared this summer, if not all of 2011.
And yet it’s notable that there is one organization that has yet to say one word — positive, negative, or otherwise — regarding the article:
Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood (which, let us remind ourselves, was responsible for 332,278 abortions in 2009 — more than a quarter of abortions nationwide); calls itself “America’s most trusted provider of reproductive health care.”
You would think that as such, Planned Parenthood would have an unspoken obligation to say something in response to such a high-profile 5,000 word article that appeared in, of all places, the New York Times.
And yet “America’s most trusted provider of reproductive health care” has exactly nothing to say in response to the article on either their Facebook or Twitter pages. [Continue reading ...]
Slate writer William Saletan is committedly “pro-choice”, but because he has often publicly questioned the tenets that his movement holds to be sacrosanct, not everyone on his side of the abortion debate is a fan of his.
In his latest column, posted today, he tackles “The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy” article in the recent New York Times Magazine (which I wrote about here), asking straightforwardly in the subtitle: “Why do ‘reductions’ of twin pregnancies trouble pro-choicers?”
Saletan writes:
Look up any abortion-related item in [the pro-choice site] Jezebel, and you’ll see the developing human referred to as a fetus or pregnancy. But when the same entity appears in a non-abortion item, it gets an upgrade. A blood test could help “women who are concerned that they may be carrying a child with Down’s Syndrome.” A TV character wonders whether she’s “capable of carrying a child to term.” Nuclear radiation in Japan “may put unborn children at risk.”
An entry was posted recently on the blog Abortion Witness that you may find a bit eye-opening for its unusually honest language about abortion and what it does to fetuses babies.
The author of the blog, “Jeannie,” worked previously for 12 years in an abortion clinic, and is still hard-core pro-choice. In this long post, titled “Talking about the Babies: Saying ‘Things We Cannot Say’”, she writes this:
We all know that an unborn child dies in each abortion. And the majority of abortion care workers accept responsibility for our roles in these deaths. We have, for various reasons, determined for ourselves that having a part in these deaths is an important—and ethical—thing for us to do. At the same time, we realize that while our work brings us in direct contact with death on a regular basis, the majority of people (even those who identify as “pro-choice”) are uncomfortable talking about death. Add to this the way abortion-rights opponents have long invoked death to condemn abortion, and you have a perfect recipe for silencing people. [emphasis added]
Jeannie then goes on to say: [Continue reading ...]
A woman is carried into an ambulance behind a sheet at Planned Parenthood in Aurora, Illinois [Photo by Eric Scheidler, 4/1/11]
Reading yesterday’s Chicago Tribune article about the lack of oversight of abortion clinics in Illinois, a couple things in particular stuck out in my mind:
Also unknown to officials are the types of abortion-related problems experienced by women. Nearly 4,000 reports of abortion complications involving Illinois residents in 2009 were missing the required description.
That’s nearly 4,000 complications in one state, in one year.
Even worse, the article highlighted the deaths of six (6) women, and in at least four of these cases, the abortion facilities “could not confirm” whether they had reported these deaths to the state, as required by law.
Unbelievably — or not, I suppose — Planned Parenthood “said it had no reason to believe the 2002 death [of Maurice Stevenson's wife] was not reported but that the records were in storage” [emphasis added].
The records were in storage? Seriously? [Continue reading ...]
A woman is carried into an ambulance behind a sheet at Planned Parenthood in Aurora, Illinois [Photo by Eric Scheidler, 4/1/11]
The Chicago Tribune ran a front page story today reporting that many Illinois abortion facilities are not reporting how many abortions they perform or the number and nature of the complications that arise from the abortions.
Megan Twohey, author of the Tribune article, called the Pro-Life Action League back in March, in the wake of the news about the filthy conditions in Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s “House of Horrors” abortion facility in Philadelphia. Twohey was looking into inspections and reporting in Illinois.
We sent her the summaries of the malpractice lawsuits against Chicago area abortion clinics on file in the Circuit Court of Cook County. We routinely check the court files and have uncovered dozens of Complaints against Family Planning Associates, Planned Parenthood, and American Women’s Medical Center. Complaints range from deaths due to complications during or following an abortion, to hemorrhaging, perforated uterus, excessive bleeding and damage necessitating a complete hysterectomy on a 14-year-old girl. [Continue reading ...]
Yesterday the parody news website The Onion posted an article titled, “Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex.”
In the satirical piece, the “Abortionplex” is said to allow Planned Parenthood to “terminate unborn lives with an efficiency never before thought possible”:
During a press conference, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards told reporters that the new state-of-the-art fetus-killing facility located in the nation’s heartland offers quick, easy, in-and-out abortions to all women, and represents a bold reinvention of the group’s long-standing mission and values.
“Although we’ve traditionally dedicated 97 percent of our resources to other important services such as contraception distribution, cancer screening, and STD testing, this new complex allows us to devote our full attention to what has always been our true passion: abortion,” said Richards, standing under a banner emblazoned with Planned Parenthood’s new slogan, “No Life Is Sacred.” “And since Congress voted to retain our federal funding, it’s going to be that much easier for us to maximize the number of tiny, beating hearts we stop every day.”
On March 30, an investigation by Live Action revealed that contrary to claims made by Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards, the nation’s largest abortion chain does not, in fact, perform mammograms.
And yet, several weeks later, Susan G. Komen for the Cure — the King Kong of breast cancer awareness organizations — is still referring mammogram-seeking women to PP.
After Live Action’s investigation was released, pro-lifers began contacting Komen to ask them why they’re continuing to give money to the nation’s largest abortion chain. In response, Komen issued this statement [PDF] on its website, which begins thusly: [Continue reading ...]
Supporters of Planned Parenthood are quick to point out that abortions aren’t all that PP does.
And although abortions do make up 98% of the “services” PP offers to pregnant women, it is true that they’re not the only thing they do.
Among other things, they also link approvingly from their Facebook page to essays in newspapers like the New York Times that recommend that guys get over their natural inhibitions about having premarital sex by thinking about women not as people, but as animals.
No. Really.
Last week in the NYT, college student Andrew Limbong wrote about how he wanted to have sex with his girlfriend, but the influence of his mother and his Christian upbringing was holding him back. Rather than listen to his conscience, he sought the advice of a friend: [Continue reading ...]