by LifeNews Staff Report | LifeNews.com | 2/27/15 4:19 PM

A new Congressional bill with 110 co-sponsors would stop the Obama administration’s HHS mandate, which requires religious businesses, colleges and organizations to pay for abortion-causing drugs in their employee health insurance plans.

Rep. Diane Black along with Congressman Jeff Fortenberry and Congressman John Fleming announced the reintroduction of H.R. 940, the Health Care Conscience Rights Act. The bill would protect Americans’ freedom of conscience and stop the Obama Administration’s attack on religious liberty.

H.R. 940 offers full exemption from Obamacare’s Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate and ensures protections for individuals and healthcare entities that refuse to provide, pay for, or refer patients to abortion providers because of their deeply held beliefs.

The legislation would also specifically address the unlawful violation of religious freedom in California, where the state Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) issued a directive requiring that all insurance plans offered on the state exchange include coverage for abortions, including plans provided by churches, religious entities, and others with conscionable objections to such procedures. The Health Care Conscience Rights Act has the bipartisan support of 110 cosponsors.

“Religious freedom is a bedrock value of our society but, on President Obama’s watch, this time-honored principle is under assault,” said Congressman Diane Black. “From Obamacare’s coercive HHS mandate to the unlawful, pro-abortion directive by the state boards in California, it is clear that Congress must act where the White House will not and reverse this infringement of our First Amendment rights. That is why our bill offers full exemption from the HHS mandate and provides needed legal protections for healthcare entities who refuse to partake in the barbaric practice of abortion. As a nurse for more than 40 years, I am proud to introduce this legislation that will safeguard the conscience rights of every American and ensure that more unborn lives can be saved in the process.”

“The rights of conscience and religious freedom preexist the government. They are rights grounded by the demands of human dignity and are enshrined in our Constitution. It is a true poverty—that in the name of health care—this most cherished American principle is under assault, violating longstanding legislative agreement and precedent. The Health Care Conscience Rights Act restores this principle for all Americans,” said Congressman Jeff Fortenberry.

“The Administration’s actions are a direct assault on Americans’ religious liberties, forcing people of faith to violate their deeply held religious beliefs,” said Congressman John Fleming. “H.R. 940 will get at the heart of the issue: providing protections against coercive government practices; codifying the Weldon amendment to allow physicians and health care entities to provide quality care without being forced to participate in an abortion;  and providing a private right of action so that victims of government discrimination can seek justice.”

The Supreme Court rejected Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate in favor of family businesses in last year’s Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stories, Inc. verdict, however Congressional action is still needed to bring clarity to this debate.

Following the court’s ruling, HHS devised an “accommodation” that still requires closely held, faith-based businesses to contract out with insurance companies that will provide coverage for the morally objectionable drugs and devices. The Obama Administration’s workaround does nothing to allow small business owners the freedom to provide health care plans that match their values, it simply removes the employers’ “fingerprints” from the transaction.

by Steven Ertelt | LifeNews.com | 2/26/15 10:28 AM

Reverend Franklin Graham, son of world-renown Christian evangelist Billy Graham, recently took to Facebook to defend New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s controversial comments concerning his opinion about President Obama.

On Facebook he wrote, “Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has taken a lot of heat from the media for his remark that he’s not sure if President Obama really loves America. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I do know that the president defends Islam and chastises Christians, rebukes our allies and befriends our enemies, and fully supports gay marriage and abortion but denies the religious freedoms of those who don’t agree.”

According to the Christian Post, Graham added that America is “ridiculed abroad and morally crumbling within.” He said, “We are in trouble. We have turned our back on God.”

Unfortunately, Barack Obama has been the most pro-abortion president in U.S. history. From taxpayer funding of abortions in America and around the world, to stacking the Supreme Court and federal courts with abortion extremists, Obama has shown true disregard for human life. In fact, asLifeNews previously reported, during his first week in office, Obama wasted no time in overturning the Mexico City Policy that President Bush put back in place after it was scrapped during the Bush administration.

The Mexico City Policy requires the more than 600 groups that receive State Department taxpayer funding to pledge not to promote or perform abortions with it. Abortion advocates objected to the measure for years during the Bush administration because they want to use the funds to do abortions overseas or lobby pro-life nations to reverse their laws against unlimited abortions. Obama legally had the right to divert the funding, but his administration appears to have also broken the law to promote abortion overseas.

Additionally, earlier this year the Obama administration issued a veto threat indicating that the president would veto a bill to ban late-term abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy; and on the 42nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade Obama reiterated his support of abortion on demand by saying that abortion “gives our daughters rights and freedoms.” Furthermore, President Obama is very close with Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, who has visited him on numerous occasions.

Graham’s post about President Obama has been well received by his followers and shared over 55,000 times, with fans giving the post over 140,000 “likes” on Facebook.

By Steve Weatherbe | Feb 25, 2015 - 4:51 pm EST| The Lifesite News

CONCEPTION, Chile, Feb. 25, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An international team of medical researchers comparing maternal mortality rates and abortion laws in 32 Mexican states claims it has disproven the claim of abortion promoters that easy access to abortion will reduce maternal deaths.

Comparing 14 states with constitutional protection for the unborn with 18 states with varying degrees of permissiveness over 10 years, the Chilean-Mexican-American team found that the less permissive states had a maternal mortality rate 23% lower, and a post-abortive mortality rate “up to” 47% lower.

Team member Dr. John Thorp of the University of North Carolina medical school said in a video released along with the study that it “pretty much refutes the conventional wisdom” that freer access to abortion will reduce maternal fatalities because abortions will be done in safe conditions.

The research director, Dr. Elard Koch, director of the sponsoring MELISA Institute and an associate researcher with the University of Chile’s faculty of medicine, said in the same video that the study does not show “making abortion laws less permissive will automatically decrease maternal deaths.”

But what it does show is that more difficult access to abortion has none of the negative impact on death rates claimed by organizations such as Planned Parenthood and the Guttmacher Institute.

At the same time, the study shows that states with more permissive laws had higher rates of violence against women. Meanwhile, those states with less permissive laws regarding abortion provided better prenatal care, more skilled maternity staff, and better emergency obstetrics.

Out of 10 factors examined, the one bearing the strongest relationship with reduced maternal mortality rate (MMR) was the mother’s literacy and education levels, which bring knowledge about pre-birth health and hygiene and dispel counter-productive folk “wisdom.” Less permissive states had better literacy rates.

Thorp said the results were not a surprise.  A similar study tracking Chilean MMR through several changes back and forth in abortion laws showed the same factors correlating strongly with a reduced MMR, especially female literacy maternal and access to modern medicine. It also showed that legal abortion access had little to no relevance.  Thorp also noted a study comparing abortion laws and the rate of complications arising from abortions in 23 U.S. states also showed that tighter abortion laws went with fewer complications.

Other factors the study found to be related to higher maternal death rates were “Poverty, malnutrition, and exposure to infectious diseases during the fertile age of women increase the risk of maternal death,” according to Sebastián Haddad, MD, a researcher at the Universidad de Anáhuac in Mexico

by Steven Ertelt | LifeNews.com | 2/24/15 6:41 PM

With just two years of the Obama administration remaining, the president appears to be pushing abortion at every new turn possible. A new report today indicates the Obama administration has issued a new mandate requiring that unaccompanied illegal alien children be given access to abortions and abortion-causing drugs.

The new report comes on the heels of a LifeNews article calling attention to a pro-life group’s alarming concern that the Obama administration is attempting to force Christian groups that conduct international relief work to refer women for abortions.

“The Obama administration is getting ready to issue new rules requiring charities to provide abortions to child refugees entering the US without their parents. Faith-based groups say this is a contravention of the rights of parents and a violation of the conscience rights of faith-based groups helping resettle the children,” says Susan Yoshihara of the pro-life group C-FAM.

“The rules require faith-based providers to make referrals for emergency contraception, partner with groups which provide abortion, or notify the federal government which would make arrangements for the abortion. If groups do not do so, they are not eligible for federal aid,” she said.

CNS News has more on the pro-abortion steps the Obama administration is taking:

Health and Human Service’s Office of Refuge Resettlement (ORR) has confirmed to CNSNews.com that abortion is one of the emergency medical services that must be made available by federally funded caregivers of illegal alien unaccompanied minors (Unaccompanied Children or UC) who have been sexually assaulted and become pregnant.

HHS issued a new regulation on “sexual abuse and sexual harassment” of unaccompanied children on Dec. 24, 2014, and although the regulation does not specially name abortion as one of the required emergency medical services, an official from HHS’ Administration for Children and Families, which operates ORR, told CNSNews.com via email that abortion is one of those services.

“The ‘lawful pregnancy-related medical services’ includes abortion,” the email statement said.

As CNSNews.com reported earlier, the HHS regulation also includes “emergency contraception,” which includes abortion-inducing drugs such as Plan B One Step, which can prevent a fertilized egg from implantation.

 

Providers must comply with the rule by June 24, 2015, according to the Federal Register.

As LifeNews previously reported about Obama’s other abortion push this year, the pro-life group CFAM says Catholic organizations affected by the proposed rules conveyed their objection to the new rules to the Obama administration.She said the groups’ said their comment on the proposed rule is that the requirement to perform, partner or refer for abortion or contraception are a violation of conscience rights.

They are required to comply no later than June 24, 2015.

by Shawn Carney | LifeNews.com | 2/23/15 10:39 AM

Great news to start the week! Through the first weekend of this 40 Days for Life campaign, our local teams have reported 26 babies saved from abortion – that we know of!

Praise God! Every one of these lives represents answered prayers – your prayers!

Norristown, Pennsylvania

Volunteers spoke to a mother leaving the Planned Parenthood facility in Norristown. “She had a pregnancy test,” said Rita, the local coordinator, “and is going to keep her baby!”

It was Day 1 of the campaign – Ash Wednesday – and the counselor who spoke to the woman said she was leaving Planned Parenthood … and heading straight to church.

“The Norristown Planned Parenthood is very, very busy,” Rita said. “It was a dangerously bitter cold day today … God bless the faithful prayer warriors who have such warm and loving hearts.”

Montgomery, Alabama

On Day 1 of the campaign, volunteers watched – and prayed – as 20 women arrived for appointments at the abortion center in Montgomery. They knew it would be challenging. Wednesday is abortion day.

The volunteers did have some joyful news to report. Two mothers changed their minds and chose life for their babies. Michelle, the local leader, said “What an awesome way to begin 40 Days for Life!”

“May God continue to bless our efforts to love the moms and their preborn children,” Michelle said, “and bring hope to the hopeless.”

Houston, Texas

The Houston Coalition for Life operates a mobile pregnancy help center on the street outside the city’s huge Planned Parenthood abortion mega-center. While they are able to connect with many women, the sad truth is that others insist on keeping their appointments for abortions

Volunteers spoke to a woman who came from out of town to have an abortion … so her family wouldn’t know about it. “She was extremely upset, but unwilling to come to the bus and didn’t want to change her mind,” said one of the local leaders. “She will probably be suffering a lot tonight.”

A second young woman saw the ultrasound of her baby, but is still thinking about abortion. She has had more than one previous abortion.

However, a third woman who was considering abortion was willing to listen. She is older, and has a number of children. After seeing her child on the sonogram, she is now planning to have her baby.

Please keep all of these women in your prayers.

by Wesley J. Smith | LifeNews.com | 2/20/15 5:13 PM

My First Things column this week warns against the coming ”medical martyrdom,” by which I mean that the minions of

the culture of death intend to require doctors, nurses, and facilities to either kill (abortion, assisted suicide, etc.) or get out of medicine.

As if to prove my thesis, the ACLU in Washington has sued a health care system for not performing enough abortions. From the Reuters story: The

lawsuit alleges that Skagit Regional Health, which operates a large hospital and several clinics in Skagit County about 100 miles north of Seattle, is not following the state’s

1991 Reproductive Privacy Act. That law requires that any state medical facility that provides maternity care must also provide abortion care, and it prohibits the state from

interfering with or denying a woman’s right to an abortion. “The right of women to choose or to refuse to have an abortion is fundamental and has long been recognized under

Washington law,” Kathleen Taylor, executive director of the ACLU of Washington, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. The ACLU action accuses Skagit Regional Health of providing

a wide array of maternity care services while not offering pharmaceutical abortions and rarely providing surgical abortions. Instead, the lawsuit said Skagit Regional routinely referred women

seeking abortions to off­site facilities, like Planned Parenthood, rather than performing them at its hospitals and clinics. In other words, women are not denied a “right” to an abortion, they just

are referred elsewhere. Moreover, the defendant claims their hospitals DO SO perform all kinds of abortions–apparently just not enough to satisfy the ACLU. In his

great Cooper Union speech, Abraham Lincoln said of slavers: What will convince them [that we mean them no harm]? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right.

And this must be done thoroughly – done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated – we must place ourselves avowedly with them… We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with

greedy pleasure…The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us. Ditto culture of death authoritarians.

It’s the nature of the beast. 

by Cortney O'Brien | LifeNews.com | 2/19/15 1:54 PM

Babies are not trash. Yet, if you took one step into facilities such as the Indianapolis Planned Parenthood, you’d see how thoughtlessly aborted children were treated once the deed was done.

This is a direct quote from Marianne Anderson, a former Planned Parenthood nurse. Her testimony is frightening and – I must warn you – graphic:

“I saw other doctors come into the products of conception room with the dirty instruments in one hand and a jar in the other. In that jar were the pieces of the baby’s body. He would take the contents of that jar, pour it into a big strainer, sift through it to make sure all the parts were there, and then pour it down the drain into the sewer system without treating it in any way.”

Anderson is one of several witnesses who took the stand at a hearing Wednesday in Indiana ahead of a vote on Senate Bill 329, the Fetal Remains Bill. This legislation would help to prevent the type of inhumane disposal the nurse described. After listening to her comments, along with several other abortion clinic workers and post-abortive women, the senators voted in favor of the bill, with a tally of 9-2.

From Indiana Right to Life:

Today a bill regarding the disposal of aborted fetal remains passed the Indiana Senate Health and Provider Services Committee. Senate Bill 329, authored by Sens. Liz Brown (District 15) and Amanda Banks (District 17), requires the Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH) to adopt clear rules for how abortion facilities shall dispose of fetal remains. The bill also provides that a pregnant woman shall determine the final deposition of the fetal remains.

The pro-life organization was following and live tweeting the hearing as it unfolded. It appeared that at one point an abortion worker claimed she saw babies being treated like trash:

Perhaps just as unsettling, were the arguments the other side was trying to make. Here was one shameful suggestion from the Jewish Community Relations Council, which blatantly ignored all science tells us about conception:

One more excerpt from former Planned Parenthood nurse Anderson’s testimony is worth sharing. Again, I apologize for the graphic nature, but it offers a glimpse of just how desensitized abortionists have become to the tiny lives they are ending.

“I often heard one doctor talk to the aborted baby while looking for all the parts. It is a customary procedure to make certain there are no baby body parts left inside the mother. He would say ‘Come on, little arm, I know you’re here! Now you stop hiding from me!’ It just made me sick to my stomach.”

Mine too.

Hopefully this bill helps to restore some humanity to our most helpless.

Senate Bill 334 also passed the Indiana Senate Health and Provider Services Committee. This legislation would prohibit gender and disability abortions, forbidding a mother to abort her child because of its sex or because it was diagnosed with a disability such as Down syndrome.

Both bills need to pass the Senate to advance.