When even the endlessly pro-abortion New York Times admits that “The first estimate of births since Dobbs found that almost a quarter of women who would have gotten abortions carried their pregnancies to term,” you know the evidence for the pro-life impact of the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade must be solid.

Coming from the other end of the political spectrum Michael New, writing for the pro-life National Review Online, confirms Margot Sanger-Katz’s and Claire Cain Miller’s conclusion:

A new analysis of birth data published by the Institute of Labor Economics in Germany [“The Effects of the Dobbs Decision on Fertility”] provides powerful statistical evidence that post-Dobbs pro-life laws have saved tens of thousands of lives. This study analyzed U.S. birth data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) up to June 2023. It found that state pro-life laws enacted after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June 2022 resulted in 32,000 more children being born.

This analytically rigorous study compared birth trends in the 14 states that were largely protecting all preborn children by the end of 2022 with a group of 24 states and the District of Columbia where abortion was legal. Twelve other states that had either attempted to ban abortion or were enforcing a gestational age limit were not considered in the analysis.

Interestingly, in the 14 states that had enacted strong pro-life laws, the authors found that there were above-average birth-rate increases among both Hispanic women and women between the ages of 20 and 24. Furthermore, the study also found that there were also above-average birth-rate increases in Mississippi, Texas, and other states that were located longer distances from out-of-state abortion facilities.

The Times’s Sanger-Katz and Miller summarized the results of the study (no doubt to their chagrin) this way:

“The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization sparked the most profound transformation of the landscape of abortion access in 50 years,” the researchers wrote. “We provide the first estimates of the effects of this decision on fertility using a preregistered synthetic difference-in-differences design applied to newly released provisional natality data for the first half of 2023.”

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“Our primary analysis indicates that in the first six months of 2023, births rose by an average of 2.3 percent in states enforcing total abortion bans compared to a control group of states where abortion rights remained protected, amounting to approximately 32,000 additional annual births resulting from abortion bans,” the study found. “These effects vary across demographic groups and tend to be larger for younger women and women of color.” …

The new analysis, published Friday as a working paper by the Institute of Labor Economics, found that in the first six months of the year, between one-fifth and one-fourth of women living in states with bans — who may have otherwise sought an abortion — did not get one. …

“The importance of our results is when you take away access, it can affect fertility,” said Daniel Dench, an economist at Georgia Tech and an author of the paper with Mayra Pineda-Torres of Georgia Tech and Caitlin Myers of Middlebury College. “When you make it harder, women can’t always get out of states to obtain abortion.”

“The data on births is preliminary,” the New York Times reporters wrote. “A fuller accounting of the effect of Dobbs on the fertility rate, including county-level data, will not be available for another year. The researchers can’t be certain that the increase in births is attributed to women who wanted abortions but couldn’t get them, but the timing and consistency of the results suggest so.”

Indeed. New concludes

[T]he results of this Institute for Labor Economics study are broadly consistent with my Charlotte Lozier Institute study of November 2022 and with the June 2023 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Both showed an increase in Texas birth rate after the Texas Heartbeat Act took effect.

LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.

The post 25% of Moms Who Would Have Had Abortions Chose Life Thanks to Abortion Bans appeared first on LifeNews.com.

The CEO of Hallow, a leading prayer and meditation app, released a statement addressing the app’s decision to partner with Liam Neeson for its upcoming Advent reflection series.

Early last week, Hallow announced that Neeson, who plays Aslan the Lion in the movie version of Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, would join Jonathan Roumie, the actor who plays Jesus in The Chosen, and Sister Miriam James Heidland SOLT, a popular Catholic speaker, in leading the app’s Pray25 Advent challenge, which focuses on the writings of C.S. Lewis.

Since its release in 2018, Hallow has quickly risen to be one of the most popular prayer and meditation apps. At one point, it was the number 3 app in the App Store, and it  has partnered with a variety of Catholic speakers, bishops, and priests to deliver a wide variety of content centered on Catholic prayer and meditation.

Hallow received backlash shortly after announcing its partnership with Neeson, who has publicly supported abortion in the past.

In an interview with CatholicVote, Hallow co-founder and CFO, Alessandro DiSanto explained Hallow’s decision to partner with Neeson.

““Liam, we think, is a great narrator for Lewis’s works given his portrayal of Aslan,” said DiSanto. “As we do with all our partners, we thought about what he stands for in his own public life, ultimately though we think about what is the probability that this is going to lead people deeper into relationship with Christ versus is this going to lead people away from Christ. The last thing we would ever want to do is to lead people away from Christ because our whole purpose for existing is to help people grow in relationship with Him.”

DiSanto said that for the Advent challenge, Hallow wanted a voice actor that would bring to life the reflections written by Hallow’s professional content team. He emphasized that Neeson merely reads the included excerpts from C.S. Lewis’ books, Roumie and Heidland read the meditations and reflections. None of Neeson’s personal views are expressed in the scripts.

“What we ultimately came to is that Liam’s primary public image is that of an actor; given that context we can separate his different characters and portrayals from his private personal experiences as an individual,” said DiSanto. “We discussed how we might present his participation in a way that would most clearly emphasize that we were not endorsing his private views. The actual content is developed by our team of theologians and is 100% in line with Church teaching.”

Neeson, who has dual citizenship in the United States and Ireland, in 2018 supported the overturning of Ireland’s Eighth Amendment, which affirmed the right to life of an unborn child. He released an op-ed at the time expressing his belief that women should have access to abortions.

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“In Ireland, men have complete control over their bodies. Women do not. Even if a woman has been raped or her health could be damaged by a pregnancy, she has no control over what happens next,” Neeson wrote.

Additionally, Neeson provided the voiceover for a pro-abortion advertisement in 2015, which some dubbed an “anti-Catholic” ad.

In a written response released last week, Hallow CEO Alex Jones said that the app does not endorse or support Neeson’s views, but that they are simply trying to create content to lead listeners deeper into prayer.

“We do not stand behind or claim to endorse any of the personal views, past actions, or political opinions of any of the narrators on the app. We have many actors on the app with differing personal views on many topics, some of whom are practicing Catholics, but several of whom come from different faith backgrounds. Several have done things in the past or may hold personal views that we would disagree with. The one thing we strongly stand behind is every word they read within the app itself,” said Jones.

DiSanto elaborated on this point noting that there are many other pieces of art and media, such as the Chosen tv series, that has helped bring many people closer to God even though some of the actors have have views in opposition with Church teaching.

“I think we as a Church would be in a worse place if we required of every piece of art that everyone who participates with it, in any way, is a saint,” said DiSanto. “We are all sinners on a journey to sainthood together. That does not mean, though, that we can write off any association with anyone, it does require us to use prudence and understanding what and how people are representing in their lives.”

Jones shared that Hallow is deeply pro-life and works to promote the sanctity of life through its app and public advocacy work.

“Hallow stands proudly and unequivocally in support of all Catholic Church teaching, especially the pro-life stance of the Church and the USCCB’s affirmation of the end of abortion as the preeminent priority,” said Jones. “It is a heartbreakingly important issue that we as an organization, and I personally, take very seriously. We would never allow any content on the app that goes against the pro-life teachings of the church.”

DiSanto assured CatholicVote that through its decision to partner with Neeson, Hallow sought to create beautiful and engaging reflections that help all people draw closer to the Lord during the Advent season.

“We want to make sure that the people who want to dive deeper, who are curious enough to climb the tree as Zecchaius did in the Gospel, get to experience the face of Christ visiting their home,” said DiSanto. “That is what we are trying to bring to people this Advent, and do so in a way that maintains its authenticity and doesn’t bring about scandal. We obviously hope that in our prayer, we discerned what God is calling us to do and that we did it well.”

LifeNews Note: Jack Figge writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.

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Last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released updated abortion data for 2021. Unfortunately, the news is not good for pro-lifers. The data indicate that the number of abortions increased by approximately 5 percent between 2020 and 2021. The abortion uptick was fairly widespread, as 34 of the 46 states that reported data both years reported an abortion increase. This marks the third time in four years that the CDC has reported an increase in the incidence of abortion.

The increase in chemical abortions is playing an important role in this abortion increase. Between 2020 and 2021, the fraction of all abortions that are chemical abortion increased from 53.6 percent to 56.0 percent. As a matter of comparison, less than a third of abortions were chemical abortions as recently as 2016. In 2021, the Biden-administration FDA continued the Covid-era policy of allowing women to obtain chemical-abortion pills without an in-person medical exam. This made abortion policy even more permissive and likely contributed to this abortion increase.

The CDC data also demonstrates that state-level policies continue to affect the incidence of abortion. In September 2021, Texas started to enforce the Heartbeat Act, which protected preborn children after six weeks’ gestation. The number of abortions fell by about 6 percent in the Lone Star State. Also, the last remaining abortion facility in Missouri reportedly quit performing abortions at various points in 2021. Unsurprisingly, the Show Me State had the lowest abortion rate in the country in 2021.

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That said, federal abortion-reporting standards remain weak, and there are serious concerns about the reliability of CDC abortion data. The CDC did not report 2021 abortion data from California, Maryland, New Hampshire, and New Jersey. In fact, the CDC has not reported any data from California since 1997 and has not reported data from Maryland or New Hampshire since 2006.  Furthermore, other states failed to report data about late-term abortions or the demographics of women who obtain abortions. Still others failed to provide specific statistics about chemical abortions or surgical abortions.

Though the short-term increase in the U.S. abortion rate is disappointing, the CDC data do show that pro-lifers have made impressive long-term progress reducing abortion rates. According to the CDC, the number of abortions fell by 18 percent between 2011 and 2021. Previous Guttmacher Institute data show that the U.S. abortion rate has fallen by more than 50 percent since its 1980 peak. The long term, pre-Dobbs decline in the U.S. abortion rate serves as an important reminder to pro-lifers living in blue states. It nicely demonstrates that even when abortion is legal, pro-lifers can still make impressive progress building a culture of life.

LifeNews Note: Michael J. New is a Research Associate at the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America and is an associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute. Follow him on Twitter @Michael_J_New

The post Dangerous Abortion Pills are Killing More Babies Than Ever appeared first on LifeNews.com.

In 2022, the number of people who ended their lives by euthanasia or assisted suicide increased by 31.2% from the previous year, accounting for 4.1% of all deaths in Canada.

According to the latest report on assisted suicide and euthanasia from Health Canada, 13,241 people ended their lives by euthanasia or assisted suicide in 2022. There were 3,149 more deaths than in 2021, which had also seen a more than 30% increase from the year before.

A total of 44,958 people have ended their lives by assisted suicide or euthanasia in Canada since legislation making it legal was passed in 2016.

Non-medical concerns 

As in 2021, a large percentage of people who ended their lives in Canada through euthanasia or assisted suicide did so for non-medical reasons.

According to the report, 86.3% of individuals requesting assisted suicide or euthanasia cited “the loss of ability to engage in meaningful activities” and 81.9% cited the “loss of ability to perform activities of daily living” among their reasons for wanting to die.

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17.1% cited loneliness as their reason for wanting to end their lives, while 35.3% were concerned about being a “burden on family, friends or caregivers”.

Death not ‘reasonably foreseeable’

Compared to the previous year, the number of instances of euthanasia or assisted suicide in which death of the person was not “reasonably foreseeable” more than doubled.

From March 2024, euthanasia will be made legal for “persons suffering solely from a mental illness”.

Right To Life UK spokesperson, Catherine Robinson, said “The state of euthanasia in Canada is truly alarming, not only in terms of the rapid year-on-year increase but also in terms of the reasons people are choosing to end their own lives. The frightening data and horror stories coming out of Canada should serve as a sombre lesson for other jurisdictions that are considering making assisted suicide and/or euthanasia legal”.

LifeNews Note: Republished with permission from Right to Life UK.

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The community of Fort Dodge became the first town in Iowa to receive a Safe Haven Baby Box, according to the executive director of the organization that creates and installs these life-saving units.

“They had had an abandoned infant in their community. As a former firefighter and medic, you don’t want to run on those kinds of calls,” said Monica Kelsey, executive director of Safe Haven Baby Boxes. “Here we are now with our very first box in Fort Dodge, Iowa.”

The town, with a population of about 25,000, is located approximately 100 miles northwest of the Iowa capital of Des Moines. A couple in the community was accused of killing their newborn. The birth mother was arrested and pled guilty, and the baby’s father also pled guilty to what is described as “amended charges.”

A community’s response

After the incident, the community came together in support of having a safe haven box, Kelsey said.

“They got a committee together and started raising the funds and so it was definitely a community-driven event and process,” she said.

The cost to create and install a Safe Haven Baby Box runs about $15,000. Many are installed at fire stations, which is the case for the Fort Dodge box. Hospitals are also locations for the boxes, and sometimes police stations, she said.

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Kelsey said she and her team have seen an increase in the number of requests for the boxes. The organization doesn’t go looking for locations, but instead, people from communities contact them.

“We don’t go looking for locations, locations actually contact us,” Kelsey said.

“There have been abandoned babies for decades in this country, even prior to Roe v. Wade being overturned,” she added. “Abandonments have never decreased. The only time that they’ve really decreased is when we start seeing the success of education and awareness and the last resort option of anonymity.”

Baby boxes allow that anonymity.

“The boxes call 9-11 on their own; the parent doesn’t have to do anything,” Kelsey told Pregnancy Help News in a previous interview. “It usually takes two minutes or less for the baby to be found [by fire station or hospital personnel].”

Safe Haven saves lives

Every state has a safe haven law, in which a birth mother or father can leave their child safely at a fire station, hospital, police or sheriff’s department. However, every state law has parameters, and those vary. Kelsey’s organization, and others like National Safe Haven Alliance, help families and communities understand their respective state’s law.

Safe haven boxes save lives, Kelsey said.

“Last year we had eight. This year we’ve had 15, and we still have two months to go,” she said.

Safe Haven Baby Boxes not only saves the lives of babies, but also helps women who feel they are not equipped to be a parent yet, she added.

“Over 170 women have been impacted in just the last six years [of Safe Haven Baby Boxes],” Kelsey said.

Stories about babies found dead or dying in garbage dumpsters are not uncommon in America. Arrests earlier this year in Oklahoma indicates this horrific practice continues. Safe Haven Baby Boxes reduce those numbers, community by community, state by state, Kelsey said.

“Indiana is a prime example of what baby boxes have done for this country,” she said. “I launched in Indiana … we were having about two to three abandonments every year – babies dead in dumpsters and trash cans – and so we launched in Indiana, where I’m from. We have 109 active baby boxes [there], and we haven’t had a dead infant in our state since we launched baby boxes. We’ve had a record number of surrenders in our boxes in our state, and so we’ve literally turned the tide in just one state alone.”

200 safe haven boxes by year-end

Other states are on Indiana’s heels, she added, including Arkansas and Kentucky, where more boxes are scheduled to be installed. About 200 safe haven boxes will be in communities throughout the country by the end of 2023, Kelsey said.

She hopes to see boxes in more Iowa communities also.

“We want to be where there’s abandoned babies,” Kelsey said. “We do know that more babies have been abandoned in Iowa in the last couple of years, and so if we can help those communities in any way to make sure that they don’t have another abandonment, then do that’s definitely where we want to be.”

She praised the Fort Dodge fire department employees.

“I spent two days in Fort Dodge with these guys because I did the training there and then we did the blessing the following day and I’ll tell you; they are some of the best firefighters you will find across this country,” Kelsey said. “They’re very oiled. They were asking questions. they sincerely wanted to know what they could do to make sure that this didn’t happen again in their community, and so a shout out to the Fort Dodge firefighters because they are some of the best I’ve ever met in this country.”

LifeNews Note: Gayle Irwin writes for PregnancyHelpNews, where this originally appeared.

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A pregnancy center in Decatur, Texas, is the grateful recipient of devotion, care, and fundraising from the White family.

Berry White and his wife Lee first became involved with Wise Choices Pregnancy Center after learning about their good work from church friends.

“We just loved what they were doing, right from the start,” Berry said.

The pregnancy help medical facility is about 50 miles northwest of Dallas and offers everything from pregnancy tests and ultrasounds to parenting classes and post abortion healing programs. The center sees around 200 clients a month, including approximately 30 for ultrasounds.

Berry, a lawyer, has been on the Wise Choices Board of Directors for several years, and Lee, a pediatric nurse, volunteers at the center.

At home, their five-year-old daughter was hearing about Wise Choices and the women and babies in need. She saw her parents’ dedication and came up with an idea all on her own to fundraise for the center.

“Well, Ainsley came to us and said she wanted to have a lemonade stand,” Berry said. “It was her idea; she came up with it all on her own, and of course we wanted to support her.”

It was just a few weeks before the local annual Fourth of July festival. The event always draws a crowd between a golf tournament, parade, and fireworks show. The White family decided that would be a great place to hold a lemonade stand.

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Connie Coleman was CEO of Wise Choices that first year of the lemonade stand and recalls Ainsley and her dad coming in to talk about their idea.

“They had marketing flyers, a budget for expenses, the details and hours of the lemonade stand, and brought it all to the center to present to me,” she said. “Ainsley was very excited.”

“Yes, at age five, almost six, she created it,” said Connie. “We shook on the deal. And that sweet child worked her little tail off all day long at the Fourth of July celebration in her town. She missed participating in the parade, thejumhouses, all the excitement to stay and work her stand.”

Ainsley, along with her mom and dad, went door to door with copies of the sign announcing the lemonade fundraiser to local shops, asking if they would hang the sign in their window.

The big day arrived, and Ainsley was all set up with pitchers, plastic cups, ice, and homemade fresh lemonade. In 100-degree heat, Ainsley, along with her mom, poured lemonade from morning to 11 p.m.

By the end of the evening, a lot of people had learned about the great work of Wise Choices, and Ainsley’s idea had raised $1310 for the center.

Afterward, Ainsley went to Wise Choices with the proceeds.

“When she brought in her earnings, it was so precious,” Connie said. “She revealed that she had made $1,300+ dollars!”

“I knew we wanted to do something special with that money,” she said. “We were currently remodeling the baby boutique, so we added a “lemon” theme, purchased what was needed to serve the mommas and babies, and began to call our baby boutique Ainsley’s Place. It is still called that today and has served many babies since then.”

Ainsley has continued to sell lemonade to benefit the center.

Berry, said, “From the very first year, Ainsley has said, ‘I really want to help the moms and the babies.’ We give her the choice now, the past couple of years; does she want to continue the lemonade stand or stop. And she says she wants to continue. This year it reached 118 degrees, and she just stayed there at that stand the entire day.”

The price of a cup of lemonade is whatever people choose to give, and many people give far more than a dollar. Some have given $20, some $50, and others even $100, $200, or $300. For those who would like to pay by credit card, there’s now a QR code posted at the lemonade stand that brings customers to Wise Choices website and the ability to donate to Ainsley’s lemonade stand.

The current CEO of Wise Choices, Brandie Hayden says Ainsley’s enthusiasm brings tears to her eyes.

“I’m so glad she’s being recognized,” Brandie said.

“She gives so selflessly and mans that lemonade stand while all her friends are off having fun at the Fourth of July event,” said Brandie. “The amount of money she’s brought in is quite amazing…over $14,000 now…but it’s also free advertising for us. There are people who live in our community who didn’t know anything about us.”

This past July, a local newspaper came out to the lemonade stand to interview Ainsley and take pictures of her fundraising event.

When asked if she would share her lemonade recipe, she told the reporter, “I am sorry sir, but that is confidential.”

“A day or two after the event, Ainsley came in with her family, and she had this little bank bag to present to us, with all the cash and a few checks in it,” Brandie said. “She said she wanted to give it to us before she went away to summer camp. We had a little celebration for her, we had cupcakes and presented her with a framed copy of the newspaper article.”

Every summer since then, Ainsley’s lemonade stand for Wise Choices has been a regular stop for cold drinks. Sometimes she even has a line of people waiting.

Now the entire White family is involved. Ainsley has her two younger sisters, Lola, 8, and Vera, 6, also help out.

Each year, her sales have grown:

2019 – $1310.00

2020 – $1798.35

2021 – $3111.75

2022 – $3653.00

2023 – $4304.14

Total to date – $14,177.24!

LifeNews Note: Patty Knap is a certified pregnancy counselor, faith formation teacher, ABA therapist for autism, and freelance writer from Long Island. This originally appeared at Pregnancy Help News.

The post Texas Girl Raises $14,000 for Pro-Life Pregnancy Center by Selling Lemonade appeared first on LifeNews.com.

The Planned Parenthood abortion business is no stranger to twisting the truth to push its abortion agenda.

Amazingly, the nation’s biggest abortion company just admitted that unborn babies have beating hearts.

But, first, some background.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which is supposed to be a neutral association of medical experts, is rabidly pro-abortion. ACOG is so extreme on abortion that, earlier this year, it admitted it now supports abortions up to birth – saying abortions “must be available without restrictions, without limitations and without barriers.”

The positions has cost it members like Ingrid Skop, M.D., F.A.C.O.G., a board-certified OB-GYN who has practiced in Texas for nearly 30 years and serves as vice president and director of medical affairs at Charlotte Lozier Institute.

“As an obstetrician for the last 30 years, I have advocated and cared for both of my patients—mothers and their unborn children. This brazen proclamation from ACOG, while sad to see, is reflective of a discouraging new reality: In ACOG’s leadership and the broader medical community, there’s no place for dissent on the issue of unlimited abortion for any reason, at any time in pregnancy,” Dr. Skop says.

She added: “We are witnessing, in real time, a vocal, political takeover of a scientific community that represents the most honorable and beautiful profession, responsible for safely bringing new life into the world. I wish ACOG would realize that their promotion of elective abortion without limits isn’t reflective of the views of their own members, considering about 90% of practicing obstetricians will not perform an elective abortion.”

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Why does ACOG matter? Because Planned Parenthood relies on it almost exclusively as “experts” for anything it does.

But ACOG’s false claims that unborn babies don’t really have beating hearts was apparently too much for even Planned Parenthood to go along with in legal papers filed in court.

As National Review reports:

One of Planned Parenthood’s favored legal arguments against the heartbeat laws passed in many states is that fetal heartbeats aren’t “real.” Planned Parenthood has relied on the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), whose “Guide to Language and Abortion” and many amicus briefs said that “a fetal heartbeat exists only after the chambers of the heart have developed and can be detected via ultrasound, which typically occurs around 17 to 20 weeks’ gestation.” Thus, said ACOG, “there is no recognizable ‘heartbeat’ from a clinical perspective,” and “[w]hat pregnant [women] may hear is the ultrasound machine translating electronic impulses that signify fetal cardiac activity.” ACOG said this to courts over and over and over and over and over and over. In a noteworthy reversal, Planned Parenthood just admitted that ACOG was wrong.

Planned Parenthood’s argument was always dubious on the merits. Put aside that the distinction between “cardiac activity”/“electrical impulses” and “fetal heartbeats” is legally irrelevant because these laws generally define fetal heartbeats as early cardiac activity. What’s more damning is that — until this fact became inconvenient — Planned Parenthood’s own website said that at 5-6 weeks, “[a] very basic beating heart and circulatory system begins to develop.” Johns Hopkins Medicine says the same: “[t]he heart is beating.”

One would reasonably expect ACOG, an organization that heralds itself as a “premier professional membership organization” and a “leading provider of authoritative scientific data,” to know all this. Instead, ACOG claimed that no heartbeat exists until 17-20 weeks because the heart’s chambers are not formed until that point. That’s false.

Embarrassingly, even Planned Parenthood has now distanced itself from ACOG, albeit hiding its retreat in a recent footnote in a South Carolina filing: “[a]fter consulting with experts,” it “understand[s] that a heart forms earlier than that.” So much for ACOG being the “experts.” Planned Parenthood also concedes that all four chambers can be viewed well before 17 weeks.

Within the past two months, ACOG quietly deleted its grossly inaccurate claim from its ideological “Guide to Language and Abortion.” Yet, ACOG has apparently never publicly retracted this statement or provided an explanation for how it got basic scientific facts so wrong — and misled courts in the process.

So what’s the truth?

An unborn baby must develop a heart that beats by about 22 days of pregnancy in order to survive and grow, said Dr. Peter Ward, a respected embryology professor and researcher, in a recent lecture to medical students.

The lecture refutes recent propaganda from abortion activists claiming that an unborn baby does not have a heartbeat by six weeks of pregnancy.

Ward’s talk had nothing to do with politics or the abortion issue. A professor at the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine, he described the development of the human heart in a 2018 YouTube series through Lecturio Medical, which helps medical students prepare for the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE).

In the nine-minute video, Ward explained that the heart begins as a “single tube” in the human embryo very early after the unique, human life begins, and quickly develops into a functioning, beating organ.

The myocardium, or muscle of the heart, “starts beating about 22 days into development,” he said.

“This is important because at this point the embryo can’t get much larger without a heart,” Ward continued. “Simple diffusion of gasses and nutrients from cells is no longer sufficient to handle the size of the embryo. We can’t just create cavity after cavity for these things to diffuse. We need to have a circulatory system, and the heart starts pumping at 22 days because we absolutely have to have it to get any larger.”

Ward has been teaching embryology, anatomy, histology and neuroscience since 2005, according to Lecturio. His degrees are from Carnegie Mellon University and Purdue University.

The post Planned Parenthood Admits Unborn Babies Have Beating Hearts appeared first on LifeNews.com.

In a decision handed down November 21, Judge James T. Russell concluded that a proposed ballot initiative that would have embedded abortion in the Nevada constitution is too broad, contains a “misleading description of effect” and has an unfunded mandate.

“This is probably the clearest case I have seen that I think there is a violation of the single-subject rule,” Russell said, according to KOLO-TV Reno. “I’ve seen a lot of them over the years and in respect to this particular matter, there are too many subjects. Not all of which are functionally related to each other.”

Writing for the Associated Press Gabe Stern explained the background to Judge Russell’s decision:

The political action committee Nevadans for Reproductive Rights filed the petition to enshrine reproduction rights in the constitution with the Nevada Secretary of State’s office on Sept. 14.

On Oct. 5, the Coalition for Parents and Children PAC filed a complaint with the court challenging the petition’s legality. If allowed to proceed, Nevadans for Reproductive Rights would need just over 100,000 signatures to get the issue on the ballot.

Asked about a possible appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court, Nevadans for Reproductive Rights attorney Bradley Schrager said the group is “considering its options.”

Lindsay Harmon, president of Nevadans for Reproductive Rights, said the group “will not let one judge’s misguided ruling deter us from giving Nevadans the opportunity to vote to permanently protect their reproductive rights in the Nevada Constitution,” according to Stern.

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“Jason Guinasso, an attorney for the Coalition for Parents and Children PAC, said he was happy with the ruling but expected the other side to appeal.”

To amend the constitution, it “requires either approval from two legislative sessions and an election, or two consecutive elections with a simple majority of votes,” Terri Russell reported for KOLO-TV Reno.

The two sides sparred at a November 11 hearing. Guinasso told Judge Russell that the petition “doesn’t just mention reproductive rights, but abortion, birth control, prenatal care, and post-partum care. Not only that, Guinasso said the petition as written protects those who provide that care as well as those who facilitate that care,” according to KOLO-TV.

Guinasso called it “log rolling” where the petition may address a topic the voter is interested in, then adds other subjects the voter may not know about. He also said the petition, if it ultimately became part of the constitution, would be an unfunded mandate, costing taxpayers here in Nevada.

If the pro-abortion group wins its appeal to the state Supreme Court, and if the initiative petition gains enough signatures—over 100,000 by June—it will appear as a question on the statewide Nevada ballot in November of 2024.

LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. He frequently writes Today’s News and Views — an online opinion column on pro-life issues.

The post Judge Stops Amendment Claiming There’s a Right to Kill Babies in Abortions appeared first on LifeNews.com.

On Monday the group Arkansans for Limited Government announced it is working to place an abortion amendment on the ballot in Arkansas in 2024.

The proposed amendment’s wording is available here.

This amendment puts the lives of women and unborn children in jeopardy.

If approved, this amendment would permanently enshrine abortion in the Arkansas Constitution.

The amendment’s language would prevent Arkansas law from requiring abortionists to have parental consent before performing an abortion on an underage girl. Parental consent laws for abortion help protect children from trafficking and exploitation. Repealing those laws puts underage girls at risk.

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The amendment’s wording also could permit abortion in Arkansas through all nine months of pregnancy — including late term abortion and partial-birth abortion. Most Americans oppose these abortion procedures, but this amendment could give them constitutional protection in Arkansas.

Family Council has worked for nearly 35 years to promote and protect the sanctity and dignity of innocent human life in Arkansas. If passed, this amendment would erase nearly four decades of good laws that protect women and unborn children from abortion. We are firmly committed to stopping abortion in our state.

LifeNews Note: Jerry Cox is the president of the Arkansas Family Council.

The post Arkansas Amendment Would Make Killing Babies in Abortions a Constitutional Right appeared first on LifeNews.com.

November is National Adoption Month, and there are millions of families all over the world that can testify to the amazing blessings that adoption brings. While my family’s story is very personal, I am hoping that by telling it, I can encourage other couples who are thinking about adoption.

My husband and I were married for two years when God blessed us with our firstborn daughter in 2004. Two years later, he provided us with another gift, our second daughter! Soon after this, the world experienced the global financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, so we decided to wait to have more children.

Then, a few years later when we decided we would like to have another baby, we couldn’t because I had severe endometriosis. So in May 2012, we were at the hospital preparing for my surgery to remove endometriosis, when the nurse told us I couldn’t have the surgery because my pregnancy test came back positive! We were both shocked and excited. However, when I had an ultrasound a few days later, the technician was unable to find the baby. A few days after that, I experienced sharp pain, and my doctor told us to go straight to the hospital. Eventually the doctors figured out that I had an ectopic pregnancy, and I needed emergency surgery because my life was in danger.

When I woke up from surgery, doctors confirmed that there had been a baby in my fallopian tube which ruptured, and therefore, I had had a miscarriage. (Babies in ectopic pregnancies cannot survive.) I was also told that, unfortunately, there had been other damage caused by the rupture, and, as a result, we would not be able to have any more biological children. While this news was very difficult, we ultimately were at peace knowing that it is likely that we will meet our son or daughter in heaven someday, when we will all be home with our Heavenly Father.

My husband and I had often talked about the possibility of fostering or adopting children, so both of us believed that God was confirming this plan for our family. In the following months, we began the process of becoming licensed for foster care, including taking classes from a local foster care provider. Eventually, we became licensed to foster a boy or girl between the ages of newborn and five.

Finally, after much anticipation by our family, including our daughters who were now eight and six years old, we received a phone call from the foster care agency in July 2013, letting us know that there was an eight-month-old baby girl who needed a home! They asked if we would be interested in fostering her. Without hesitation, we said, “Yes!” My husband and I drove to the agency where we saw Nazarene sleeping peacefully in a crib. I could not help but pick her up and hold her, knowing that she had had an extremely difficult, stressful night.

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Over the coming months, our family bonded with Nazarene, and she became a part of our family. We also knew that the goal of foster care is to return children to their biological parents. Keeping that in mind, there were many emotions for everyone — not knowing how long she would stay with us. My husband and I attended every court hearing, and over time, it became clear to the judge that Nazarene would need to be placed into an adoptive home. While we were excited about the possibility of finally adopting her, it is hard to describe the heartbreak we felt for her birth mom. She loved Nazarene with all of her heart but was unable to raise her. Knowing this, we immediately informed her that we wanted to maintain a relationship with her.

Finally, in January 2016, when Nazarene Faith was three years old, the adoption was complete, and our family became a family of five! Nazarene is now 11 years old, and we continue to see her birth mom two to three times a year, doing fun things like going to zoos, museums, and ballgames. We all look forward to these get-togethers and are all blessed by them.

While this is our immediate family’s experience with adoption, several families in our extended family have also experienced the joys of adoption! Each of these families have amazing stories that reveal how God worked miracles, leading these children to become part of their families. We truly cannot imagine our extended family without them.

This week, as we spend time together over our Thanksgiving meal, we will thank God first of all for adopting us into His family, and secondly, we will thank him for giving us the opportunity to adopt each of these precious children into our extended family.

May God bless your family.

LifeNews Note: Kathy Athearn writes for the Washington Stand, where this column originally appeared.

The post God Brings Light out of Darkness: Our Family’s Adoption Story appeared first on LifeNews.com.

One out of every three women who has an abortion develops full-blown depression because of her choice, according to a scholarly review of data tracking post-abortive women around the world.

“[T]he occurrence of post-abortion depression was found to be highly prevalent,” concluded a meta-analysis published in BMC Psychiatry in October, in which researchers reviewed 15 studies involving 18,207 post-abortive women globally. “Individuals who have undergone an abortion should receive additional care and psychological support from healthcare providers, as well as their spouse, family, and community.”

“The findings revealed that the worldwide prevalence of post-abortion depression was estimated to be 34.5%,” the meta-analysis revealed. Planned Parenthood has often normalized abortion by claiming, “One in four American women will have an abortion by age 45.” Experts found that one in three of those women will develop depression as a result of their abortion.

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“No uterus, no opinion.” This sentiment is common in conversations concerning abortion — the idea that men should sit down and shut up. Although it’s crude and presents a fundamental misunderstanding of the pro-life issue, the demeaning argument has been effective in pushing some men to the sidelines. They don’t want to appear controlling and do not see how abortion affects them, so they remain silent or even advocate for “choice.” But it’s all based on lies. Men should rise as leaders to protect life because of their responsibility as fathers and their God-given duty to fight evil.

Reestablishing the value of fatherhood is crucial to ending abortion. Exit polling from Ohio’s Issue 1 showed the majority of married men (52%) voted against the law allowing abortion up until birth, while the majority of unmarried men (64%) voted for it. This contrast displays a problematic truth: unmarried men tend to support abortion because it gives them an emergency escape from fatherhood.

Since the covenant of marriage builds a foundation of stability and commitment, men becoming fathers within this relationship more readily embrace the role of protector and provider. Families started out of wedlock, however, do not enjoy these safeguards. Men pursuing casual sex and independence will cower at the thought of parenthood. Even if abortion seems morally questionable to these men, killing their own child seems like a better alternative than giving up their passive, gratifying lifestyle. Abortion advocates often speak of the “sexual liberation” their industry gives to women, yet they rarely talk about the liberation from responsibility it gives to men.

All the same, women desire support in this issue. A recent video on a college campus showed a pro-abortion proponent proclaiming that men should not tell a woman what to do with her body, but also that both the man and the woman are responsible for a pregnancy. She wanted men to be held accountable for their actions, but she was blind to the fact that abortion was the very thing preventing accountability.

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The truth is, men should be held accountable. We should exhort men to embrace the responsibilities of fatherhood and encourage them to raise families within the sacred bounds of marriage. Yes, it will come with many challenges and requires courage, but the blessings outweigh the costs. Young men desire greater purpose and meaning in life — something that fatherhood offers — and we Christians can always point to the grace and perfect example our Father provides: “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him” (Psalm 103:13 ESV).

Men also have a stake in the life issue, because we all have a duty to fight evil regardless of sex. Ultimately, the pro-life position is simple: it’s a scientific fact that human life begins at conception, and every innocent human life made in God’s image deserves dignity and the full protection of the law. Once euphemisms and arbitrary standards for unborn life are discarded, everyone can hold the pro-life position with moral clarity. It is abhorrent to kill a child in the womb, and the legalization of such a crime in many states is a great stain on our nation today.

The battle for unborn life in America is only beginning. Women can and should be at the front of our pro-life efforts, but we must not welcome the lie that this is a single sex issue. It is a gospel issue with implications for all mankind. Women and men should “hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate” (Amos 5:15a ESV). Men should rise up as strong fathers and leaders till all proclaim with the psalmist: “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward” (Psalm 127:3 ESV).

For more pro-life resources for men, check out this booklet from FRC’s Center for Human Dignity.

LifeNews Note: Isaac Pilon serves as an intern at Family Research Council. This column originally appeared at Washington Stand.

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Though it might seem somewhat anticlimactic after some other national groups have released data on the number of abortions since Dobbs, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has kept to its own organizational schedule and issued its report on abortions that took place in America in 2021 the day after Thanksgiving.

In short, they say that the numbers of abortions and their frequency in the population have increased in the last five years CDC studied.  While we know that big changes occurred in 2022 with the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe, the CDC report gives us a good idea of where the industry was headed and how it was preparing for the road ahead.

Unlike Guttmacher and the Society for Family Planning, who rely directly on abortion “providers” for their numbers, the CDC develops its reports from the voluntary submissions of state health departments.  Not every state reports the same data, and some states do not report at all, but CDC abortion surveillance reports have the advantage of using a standard format and reporting every year, making trends apparent and helping make year-to-year comparisons possible.

In its 2021 “Abortion Surveillance,” the CDC found the number of abortions rising by more than 5,000 from the previous year and saw abortion rates and ratios return to levels not seen in five years or more.

Basic Benchmarks

The CDC reported 625,978 for 2021, after reporting 620,327 the year before. The latest figure does not include any abortions from New Jersey, which reported nearly 23,000 abortions in the previous report. But as we have reported about with previous CDC studies, though good for comparisons, this still does not reflect the full national total, thought to be somewhere between 900,000 and a million, since the CDC has not had any data from California, Maryland, or New Hampshire in any of its report since 1998.

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Even with these higher numbers, we are clearly better off than we were in the 1980s and 1990s, when abortions hovered between 1.5 and 1.6 million a year before finally beginning a long drop off that now seems to have continued through 2017.

But recently, with these latest figures, abortions appear to have been on the increase.

The abortion rate, which for the CDC measures the frequency of abortion, hit 11.6 per thousand women of reproductive age (15-44). That is higher than it has been any year since 2015, when it hit 11.8.

The abortion ratio, by which the CDC contrasts the number of abortions for every thousand live births, hit 204 in 2021.  It had not been above 200 since 2012 when it was 207.

Increases were seen pretty much across the board, with higher numbers of abortions being reported in 33 reporting areas (32 states and New York City) and decreases (some very small) found in just 15 reporting areas (14 states and Washington, DC).

Though the trend is broadly up, each state has its own story. For example, high percentages of those obtaining abortions in Washington, DC (70.8%), Kansas (49.9%), New Mexico (40.3) and Oklahoma (39.6%) came from another state. In the case of New Mexico and Oklahoma, it is clear that a large number came from Texas, which had just put some excellent protective legislation in place. An abortion clinic just across the border in Kansas picked up a lot of traffic from Missouri, which had just seen its last abortion clinic close in a legal dispute over licensing.

Age and Race

Over the past ten years, the CDC actually shows abortion numbers, rates, and ratios dropping for most age groups, 15-19, 20-24, 25-29, and 40 and up. For some reason, however, abortion numbers and rates increased for women 30-34.

Abortion ratios also fell for that group, though, and rates and ratios also fell for women ages 35-39, even though the raw number of abortions increased.

Though reasons are unclear and the changes are generally small, this means that these recent increases are concentrated in that middle range of women in their 30s.

Abortions and racial minorities

The CDC found that abortion rates for black women (28.6) were more than four times that of white women (6.4). The black abortion ratio was also higher by the same fourfold factor (498 to 116).

Hispanic abortion rates were also higher, though not as extreme. Abortion rates for Hispanics (12.3) were nearly twice that of white women, and the Hispanic abortion ratio was just over one and a half times higher (186).

Racial and ethnic figures should be taken with a grain of salt, however. Many states known to have higher minority populations (New York state, Illinois, Louisiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc.) do not report this data to the CDC or did not report any data to the CDC at all (California, Maryland, New Jersey).

Marital Status and Previous Pregnancies

As it has been the case most of recent history, the vast majority of abortion (87.3%) are to unmarried women.

Statistics also continue to show that most women (60.7%) having abortions have already given birth to at least one child.  Many women (43.7%) report having had at least one previous abortion, while 7.7% reported having had three or more past abortions.

Gestational Age and Abortion Method

More than nine out of every ten abortions are performed in the first trimester. Just 6.6% of abortions are performed at 14 weeks or more and less than one in a hundred (0.9%) occurred at 21 weeks gestation or more.

An increasing number of abortions are happening very early in pregnancy.  The CDC says that 44.8% of abortions occurred at six weeks or less.

A large part of this surge in early abortions comes from two sources. The first is the development of the early surgical technique called MVA or manual vacuum aspiration. That accounted for nearly three out of every ten abortions that occurred at six weeks or less.

Chemical or “medication” abortions account for the other 70.6%. Largely thanks to chemical abortions, more than half (54%) of the abortions the CDC tracked for gestational age happened at nine weeks or less.

The CDC records that 56% of all abortions are now chemical abortions.

Maternal Deaths

Various studies have shown that government agencies miss a lot of abortion related complications and maternal deaths, but it is remarkable nonetheless that the CDC continues to find and report instances of women dying from abortion.

Figures are always a year behind, but the CDC reports that six women died from legal abortions in 2020.  This is important to keep in mind amidst constant assertions of chemical and surgical abortion safety.

Value of 2021 data today?

It is legitimate to ask what value 2021 data has in this new post-Dobbs environment. One thing this data helps the concerned pro-lifer see is how the abortion industry has long been preparing for Roe’s demise.

Early chemical abortions ascendant

The shift to chemical abortions was more than just the introduction of a new product. It was part of a strategic effort to make the provision of abortion less dependent on brick and mortar abortion clinics and abortionists with surgical training.

While, at least in theory, one needed a trained surgeon, full operating equipment, trained assistants, waiting and recovery rooms to offer even standard suction aspiration abortions, anyone, it was argued, could dispense pills.

Chemical abortions also enabled the move towards earlier, supposedly less controversial abortions. Most of these are chemical. As seen above, more and more abortions are performed at nine, or even six weeks or less.

Though the humanity of these children is scientifically beyond question, their size and development make these an easier sell to the public and to women distressed by the discovery of their pregnancy.

Sponsored abortion tourism

Look into the details of this report and previous ones and one can see that many abortion patients have “migrated” from one state to another.

Missouri’s abortions dropped to less than a hundred while Kansas saw nearly half of its abortion patients coming from other states.  New Mexico and Oklahoma abortion clinics saw lots of out of state traffic when protections for unborn children went into effect in Texas.

This is not random consumer traffic. Clinic employees in Texas specifically helped arrange for and in many cases funded the travel of abortion patients to clinics in other states.

Abortion friendly states have advertised for abortion tourism.

Abortion giants like Planned Parenthood have set up mobile clinics and built giant mega-clinics just across state lines to pick up customers from nearby states which have protections in place for unborn children and their mothers.

Chemical abortions by mail, recently authorized by the Biden administration, also enable unscrupulous abortion pill promoters to ship their deadly pills into states where they might not be legal.  There is some concern that these will be difficult to count and monitor.

Strands of all these elements can be found in the CDC’s 2021 Abortion Surveillance.

Improved, but not done

We’ve clearly made a lot of progress since the 1990s when abortion peaked at 1.6 million a year and we’re obviously a lot better off with Roe now on the ash heap of history.  But numbers like this show us that the abortion industry has been preparing for this day and has been hunkering down for the long term.

We’re certainly in a better situation today than we were in 2021, but we still have a long way to go.

LifeNews.com Note: Randall O’Bannon, Ph.D., is the director of education and research for theNational Right to Life Committee.

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When doctors give expectant parents terrible news, it takes great courage not to give in to counsel to abort. Such news—that “one of her babies had a rare brain condition and an abnormality with her esophagus”– was given to Marie Stockdale who was carrying twin girls.

“After receiving the news of one of the twins’ condition, they [Marie and her partner Paul Kipling] chose to turn down the abortion and, when the twins were born in 2022, Ava underwent emergency surgery to correct her esophagus” reported Rikki Loftus and Naomi Corrigan.

“Ava and sister Mila are now eight-and-a-half months old. Despite a tumultuous first few weeks, feeding through a tube and continued hospital treatment every two months, Ava has come on leaps and bounds.

“Her mum who also has two children from a previous relationship, Ashton, 10, and Camden, six, said: ‘Doctors are monitoring her brain condition but so far, it seems to be mild. Ava went through a lot in the first few weeks of her life so to see her now, getting stronger each day, is wonderful.”

But that doesn’t begin to explain all that the family went through. When she had her 20-week scan doctors found that Ava had a lot more amniotic fluid surrounding her body than did her sister Mila.

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As Loftus and Corrigan explain

They drained some of the fluid while the girls were still in the womb, but it continued to build back up. This confirmed their diagnosis that Ava had esophageal atresia and tracheo-esophageal fistula as she was not swallowing the fluid.

These conditions cause an abnormality where the esophagus, the tube that connects the mouth to the stomach, is not attached correctly, ending in a pouch further up her body. Ava was also diagnosed with a brain condition called rhombencephalosynapsis, which is a rare abnormality of the cerebellum, has varying degrees of severity and can cause other disorders such as cerebral palsy.

“Because the condition is so rare, doctors had no idea how severely it would affect her, and I was offered a termination,” Marie said. “It was never an option though, I had to give her a chance to fight.”

Marie underwent an emergency caesarean. Doctors then determined that waiting was no option: it was best for Ava to have surgery that same day. “Surgeons closed the gap between Ava’s esophagus and windpipe before sewing together the upper and lower parts of the esophagus.”

When Ava was five weeks old, she underwent her second major surgery, to lift her aorta and fix it to the sternum so she could breathe correctly. “Mila and I had been discharged but thanks to the support of The Sick Children’s Trust, we were able to stay with Paul at Crawford House, just next door to where Ava was,” said Marie.

Finally, after 8 weeks, Ava was strong enough to go home.

Loftus and Corrigan conclude their story on an optimistic note

Ava is currently being tube fed as she has no sucking reflex and has regular physiotherapy to help her with head control and general movement, but her surgeons are pleased with her progress. “They’re both little characters, Mila is very chilled out and patient and Ava is really happy and smiley,” said her mum.

LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.

The post Doctors Told Mom to Abort a Disabled Twin, She Refused and Both Babies are Doing Great appeared first on LifeNews.com.

The narrative is summed up in the headline of a recent Politico article: “Abortion rights are winning in red states.”

I say, “Not so fast.”

The abortion lobby has always been eager to spin the narrative that the public agrees with their position. But their position is unlimited abortion.

Neither Planned Parenthood nor any of the other abortion advocacy groups, nor the Democratic Party — for whom abortion has become both a dogma and a sacrament — will admit of any limits they are willing to place on abortion.

That is not a position that the American people have ever embraced. No polling has ever indicated that a majority of Americans want abortion to be legally available for a healthy mother carrying a healthy baby in the final months of pregnancy.

But good luck trying to get a Democrat candidate to set a limit — any limit — on the “right to choose” abortion.

So how, exactly, does the Left spin the narrative that the American people are embracing abortion rights? This is crucial to understand, because the battle is in the mind of the enemy. The enemy always wants his opponent to think he is losing.

Since the Supreme Court obliterated Roe vs. Wade last year, the abortion lobby has passed four abortion-rights ballot initiatives and stopped pro-life initiatives in three other states.

Why is this a far cry from America embracing abortion rights, or in other words, abortion being a losing issue politically?

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First, we need to ask what the people actually voted on, and second, we need to look not just at these ballot initiatives, but at the legislative and judicial victories across the nation.

As to what people voted on, it’s instructive that the abortion lobby is incapable of honestly advancing their own agenda. They have to present their initiatives as protecting the right to life-saving emergency medical treatment.

And that’s what they did as tens of millions of dollars were pumped into these states for deceptive ad campaigns.

In other words, they had to make their message “pro-life.” It’s reminiscent of the way the abortion groups marketed their big 2004 march: not a “March for Abortion” but a “March for Women’s Lives.”

Violent death just doesn’t market well. That’s why, unlike what most people want to do when trying to sell a product, abortion advocates strenuously try to hide and disguise what they promote.

They never describe what they defend.

I challenge them to try a single ballot initiative, in whatever state they choose, in which they honestly advertise what an abortion is, and whether it should be allowed without restriction.

They would never win. Not once.

And secondly, take the broad perspective.

The will of the American people — even if issues are presented honestly — is not expressed simply or even most effectively in ballot measures.

It’s expressed through legislation.

The legislative process examines and debates issues more carefully than ballot initiatives, and uses the tools of hearings, witnesses, questions and counter-questions, documents, amendments, lobbying, and a more flexible and generous timeline.

So how is pro-life doing with legislation?

Some 14 states — Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia now protect unborn children throughout pregnancy.

This was unheard of throughout the 50 years of Roe and Casey — but even then, that was so not because of the will of the people but because of the Courts blocking the will of the people.

In Ohio, where the fake “Issue 1” just passed, the will of the people had already been expressed in the passage of Heartbeat legislation.

And in Montana, one of the states where a ballot initiative failed that would have protected babies born alive after abortion, no less than 10 legislative measures restricting abortion passed after that.

And numerous other states have advanced pro-life laws — like in Florida, where a 15-week protection for the unborn passed last year and a six-week protection passed this year.

So where is the will of the people? Why should a ballot initiative in Montana say less to us about the will of the people than ten pro-life bills passed afterwards in the same state?

Why should pro-life losses in seven states say more than total pro-life wins in twice as many states?

Legislation, as well as all the polls, tell us the American people want less abortion, not more.

Elections show it too, contrary to popular narrative. Lawmakers and governors who actually passed measures that advanced the protection of the unborn were re-elected by large margins.

And finally, the anti-abortion movement has seen victory after victory in the Courts. Now that Dobbs is precedent, Courts have to get out of that knee-jerk reaction they’ve had for five decades by which they strike down laws that protect babies in the womb.

Witness Indiana’s recent Supreme Court ruling, upholding it’s law protecting babies throughout pregnancy, and the even more recent rulings in Georgia and South Carolina, upholding their laws protecting babies from early in pregnancy.

So who is really winning? I’d say the evidence is pretty strong in our favor.

LifeNews.com Note:  Frank Pavone is the national director for Priests for Life.

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Leading American pro-life advocate Lila Rose slammed abortion at the United Nations, saying that abortion is a violation of human rights because it undermines the human rights of people before birth.

Rose made a pro-life presentation before the United Nations Transatlantic Summit to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

“When the member states of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the world was reeling,” said Rose.  “We were three years removed from the liberation of the Nazi death camps in 1945, where the horrors of the evils committed against the Jewish people and political dissidents emerged, and the world would never be the same. Their human rights were violated. They were enslaved, their bodies used for labor or human experimentation at the whim of their captors. They were cruelly tortured and degraded as if they were less than animals. They were murdered.”

Rose called the horror of the Holocaust “killing on an industrial scale.”

Rose explained how abortion is also a violation of human rights.

“Many powerful people today argue that a human in the womb is not a human, not a life, not worthy of the basic human rights enumerated in the Declaration,” said Rose. “Instead, they argue that one must pass through the magical birth canal in order to receive one’s humanity. How ludicrous.”

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Lila Rose drops the truth at the United Nations

“Healthcare does not include the right to harm a child

Women’s rights do not include the right to kill a little girl in the womb

The “Right to Choose” does not include the right to “choose” to murder a child”@LilaGraceRose pic.twitter.com/69X7QO5gwC

— Live Action (@LiveAction) November 18, 2023

According to Rose, international documents confirm that the right to fie is a basic human right and should be applied to unborn children.

Rose explained, “From Article 3 of the Declaration, ‘Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person’. From Article 6, ‘Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law’. From Article 7, ‘All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.’”

She continued, “The Declaration’s preamble states that the rights enumerated are for ‘all members of the human family.’ It states: recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

So if there are indeed human rights for all, including the right to life, why are tens of millions of human children being killed each year simply because of their location — in their mother’s womb?

“Here’s the hard truth: every year, globally, seventy million children are slaughtered by abortion. Abortion is, by far, the worst human rights crisis of the last half century, one that is ongoing, and one that few today even acknowledge,” said Rose. “In fact, most of the members of this great institution that is the United Nations outright support and justify this human rights abuse.”

“Abortion not only violates the unborn child’s right to life,” said Rose. “Abortion also violates the child’s right to be free from slavery and their right to be free from torture.”

Rose concluded: “Abortion, at its core, is a contradiction of every human right.”

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For many years I have prayed outside abortion clinics, trying to be a presence of love, faith and support to the women and men who find themselves in a desperate situation of crisis pregnancy and think abortion is the only way out. In all kinds of weather, in every season and every hour, witnesses to the sacred gift of life stand as sentinels of the Dawn on High at these clinical places of death. I was drawn to the pro-life movement as a young priest as a result of counseling so many people whose lives had been severely wounded by abortion. Some pro-lifers may be too strident or single-issue oriented. Some may be judgmental or condemnatory. The vast majority, however, are good folks who simply want to help stop the killing of innocent life in the womb.

Through more than four decades of legal abortion in the United States, how many millions of human lives have been silently erased, how many mothers and fathers bear the wounds of a hasty decision to end the life they had co-created, how many impassioned words have been written and spoken to articulate the fundamental moral darkness of destroying fragile, beautiful human beings at the very dawn of their mysterious and wonderful existence, fresh with all the potential of who they have been called to be? And yet the killing goes on.

Critics of the Church’s stance on abortion will often say that we care more about life in the womb than those already born, that we passionately want to save a child from abortion yet turn our backs on the mother who ends up choosing life. Yet the Catholic Church offers more compassionate services through health care, education and needed assistance to the poor, the homeless, the imprisoned, the elderly, the immigrant and the unwed mother than any other institution I know. Care and love for the human person must embrace all facets of our social fabric and include everyone in order to be authentic, but it must begin, as indeed the miraculous wonder of each one of us began, with welcome and respect for life in its most fragile and initial stage. If it does not, then the rest of our struggle to build a world of justice, peace and mercy for all will forever be radically deficient.

Several years ago, I prayed outside an abortion clinic in Milwaukee on a gray, melancholy morning, filled with icy wind and a threat of snow. One by one, young women emerged from the building, looking dazed and shocked, each carrying a brown paper bag with medication. Like wounded survivors returning from the front of an invisible and terrible war, they stepped into waiting cars of boyfriends, roommates or parents, whisked away from the place where their child’s life had just ended and their own psychological and emotional torment had just begun. I felt a profound sorrow in that moment that I had never experienced before, grieving for the victims of a needless and preventable tragedy.

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Then suddenly the owner of the abortion clinic emerged, hurrying through the cold and past us to reach the security of her Volvo. As she went by, I heard myself quietly saying, more to me than her, “Stop killing people here.” Turning on me with all the rage of her pro-choice righteousness, she hurled obscenities and insults but never denied that she was indeed complicit in the taking of human life. If someone had accused me of ending the life of another person, I would indignantly deny, explain, obfuscate or defend myself against such a charge, but such was not the case with this woman. She screamed and swore, but never answered the fundamental charge that she was an active accomplice in the taking of innocent human life. This startling realization taught me an important truth about the whole abortion struggle.

For years we have thought, that with the help of science, everyone could be convinced that a human fetus, even in the earliest stages of development, rapidly exhibits all of the characteristics, components and complexity of a developing human being, that the whole “it’s just a blob of tissue” canard was false. We hoped that if we could just show the beauty, form and wonder of unborn life, everyone would naturally see that this amazing being is human and abortion would cease. But, of course, this has not happened.

What I came to realize on that cold and sad February morning was that the real challenge is not convincing the abortionists that life in the womb is human — they know that — but rather helping them to see that every life has an inherent dignity which calls for respect, welcome, tenderness and love. The Church’s fundamental stance on so many moral issues flows from the glorious truth that every person is created in the image and likeness of God, but even an atheist can acknowledge the moral absolute “Thou shall not kill,” because such respect for the life of the other is inscribed in our heart and conscience. How will we ever see the homeless, the immigrant, the elderly, those with disabilities, the poor as blessings and not burdens if we cannot welcome precious, innocent life in the fragility of the womb?

Perhaps the greatest challenge is to help folks like the abortion-clinic owner, the frightened pregnant teenager, the Planned Parenthood worker, the pro-choice congressman and ourselves to recognize the gift and beauty of our own humanity. The culture of death seeks to diminish, dehumanize and destroy us. Jesus Christ has come to save, love and forgive us. When we let in that redeeming light of the Lord, the shadows of death vanish and our hearts long for a love that only the Lord can give. Building a civilization of life and love is the fundamental task of the Christian disciple; we can only embrace such a daunting and luminous enterprise if we know our own worth, dignity and beauty in the eyes of the One who kisses us from the cross and laid down His life so that we could be His forever.

LifeNews Note: Bishop Donald J. Hying is the Bishop of Madison, Wisconsin.

The post Catholic Bishop Blasts Abortion: “Millions of Human Lives Have Been Silently Erased” appeared first on LifeNews.com.

A new national analysis finds abortion bans have saved the lives of over 32,000 babies from abortions so far, and the figure is likely higher. Births have increased in every state with an abortion ban as the lives of children are valued more now than before.

According to to an analysis published Friday by the Institute of Labor Economics, abortion bans have saved tens of thousands of babies in the first six months of 2023 alone.

“Our primary analysis indicates that in the first six months of 2023, births rose by an average of 2.3 percent in states enforcing total abortion bans compared to a control group
of states where abortion rights remained protected, amounting to approximately 32,000 additional annual births resulting from abortion bans,” the Institute reported.

With the Supreme Court overturning Roe in June 2022, the number of babies saved from abortions thanks to pro-life state laws is clearly higher given that abortion has been illegal in at least some states for 18 months.

Although some says abortion bans are not truly protecting babies because women can travel t other states from abortions, the analysis found that 20-25% of women end up choosing life for their baby instead of having an abortion thanks to the bans. As a result, 2.3% more babies were born in states with abortion bans compared to states without bans, the analysis shows.

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Texas saw a 5.1% spike in the number of babies born, which is not surprising given that it found a way to protect babies from abortions before Roe was overturned.

In fact, Texas’ 2022 abortion report was released by Texas Health and Human Services in September 2023, showing a significant drop in abortions from 2021. The data shows that abortions fell to near zero in the state after the abortion ban went into effect in late 2022.

One leading pro-life advocate celebrated the news.

“The insinuation of a lot of coverage of such data points is that it’s a bad thing for there to be more children welcomed in states with better laws than in states that fast-track abortion,” Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America, told The New York Times.

“It’s a triumph that pro-life policies result in lives saved,” she said.

The post Abortion Bans Have Saved at Least 32,000 Babies From Abortions appeared first on LifeNews.com.

Since you, me, toddlers, teenagers, etc., have basic rights, and since there is no morally relevant difference (that is, relevant to whether one has basic rights) between us and human beings at earlier, prenatal developmental stages, it follows that unborn humans also have basic rights. This precludes killing them for the reasons that people have elective abortions (“unwantedness,” convenience, economics, disability, etc.), just as our rights-bearing status precludes killing us for those same reasons.

The disputed premise is that there is no morally significant difference between unborn and already-born human beings. But consider the differences. Size doesn’t matter, since big people are not more valuable than small people. Development doesn’t matter, since a five-year-old girl is not less deserving of moral respect than her more-developed older brother. Location (in the womb or out) doesn’t matter, since one doesn’t become something or someone different by driving from Minneapolis to St. Paul. Dependency doesn’t matter, since we may not kill breast-feeding newborns, parasitic uncles or people reliant on kidney machines or pacemakers. Intelligence doesn’t matter, since smart people don’t have more rights than dumb people. Appearance doesn’t matter, since the “elephant man” was still, after all, a man. The sentiment of others doesn’t matter, since a shunned and reclusive leper ought to be treated with dignity.

Philosophers who defend abortion offer more sophisticated criteria for excluding unborn human beings from the community of rights-bearing persons. But these differences don’t matter morally either.

The capacity to suffer doesn’t matter, since people with congenital insensitivity to pain are still people.

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The possession of desires doesn’t matter, since a Buddhist who succeeds in eliminating every desire retains his right to life.

The capacity for self-awareness doesn’t matter, since infants and temporarily comatose people should be respected and protected, not killed when we think it is in our best interest.

The strenuous intellectual efforts in recent decades to find some plausible exclusionary criterion have simply failed, as the recent work of philosophers like Francis Beckwith, Patrick Lee, Christopher Kaczor, Christopher Tollefsen and Robert George makes clear. Unless someone can find reason to think there is some actually relevant difference between unborn human beings and older, unquestionably-rights-bearing human beings, this “argument from no relevant difference” holds, and elective abortion is wrong.

LifeNews.com Note: Paul Stark is a member of the staff of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, a statewide pro-life group.

The post Babies are Human Beings With a Right to Life, Before and After Birth appeared first on LifeNews.com.

On Tuesday, voters in Utah’s Second Congressional District went to the polls to vote in a special election to fill the vacancy left by the resignation of pro-life Rep. Chris Stewart (R). The Associated Press called the election for Republican Celeste Maloy, a former aide to Rep. Stewart, over pro-abortion State Senator Kathleen Riebe (D).

Congresswoman-elect Maloy was endorsed by National Right to Life in race. Following the endorsement, Maloy posted on X (the social media platform previously known as Twitter), “I’m pleased to receive the endorsement of NRLC. I will always fight to protect the lives of the unborn!”

The issue of abortion came to the forefront in the race. Riebe ran misleading attack ads hitting Maloy on abortion, falsely claiming that Maloy supports legislation that would put women who have abortions in jail.

In 2022, National Right to Life published an open letter signed by over 75 national and state pro-life organizations reaffirming the pro-life movement’s opposition to legislation or policies that would punish or prosecute women who have abortions. Read here.

In a piece entitled, “Abortion rights won big this November. Will they impact Utah’s special congressional election?”, The Salt Lake Tribune opined that, “Riebe could have a better shot than Democrats who have vied for the seat in years past.”

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Full results continue to trickle in, but with 70% of the vote counted, Maloy was winning by about 24 points over Riebe, according to the Associated Press. Those numbers mirror the margin of victory by which Stewart won the seat in November 2022.

With Maloy’s victory, the U.S. House will be comprised of 222 Republicans and 213 Democrats.

The post Celeste Maloy Defeats Abortion Advocate to Win Special Congressional Election in Utah appeared first on LifeNews.com.