by Kathy Ostrowski | Topeka, KS | LifeNews.com | 8/4/14 5:17 PM

Reporters are still contacting Kansans for Life to ask what we think is the real reason the Aid for Women clinic closed abruptly last Saturday.

Our executive director, Mary Kay Culp, responded

“It’s hard to know for sure why the clinic closed, but if it’s as we suspect– that women are better informed and more protected from clinic exploitation due to new state laws–clinic owners and operators would be the last to admit it.”

Culp is referencing the state of Kansas-provided “Woman’s Right to Know” information.

Aid for Women so hated having to post the statement

“The abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being”

on their website’s consent form, that they added this ‘commentary’:

This [statement] is untruthful because the fetus is quite dependent upon, not separate from, the maternal placental oxygen and nutrient acquisition and kidney’s waste disposal. The word “whole” implies “complete” but the fetus is not truly completed until birth. Also, cancer is unique, human and living, yet not deserving of life.

In response to such abortion clinic “factoids,” the state of Kansas enacted a law, effective July 2013 (tweaked slightly in May 2014), that requires each Kansas abortion business to post this on its homepage:

“The Kansas Department of Health and Environment maintains a website containing information about the development of the unborn child, as well as video of sonogram images of the unborn child at various stages of development, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment`s website can be reached by clicking here [www.womansrighttoknow.org].”

Isn’t it instructive that not just the abortion clinic but other abortion proponents are reduced to hysterically bad-mouthing scientifically accurate information? When women go to an abortion clinic’s website, they should be able to see the truth about their unborn baby before they commit to further action. It is a fair inference, is it not, that equipped with accurate information, fewer women would chose abortion?

On Monday’s show, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow recycled some of Aid for Women’s criticism. For example, Maddow said

“[T]he state of Kansas newly requires all abortion clinics to post this about the state’s official ‘talk you out of an abortion’ website…. And the clinic has made clear as day in context that they think that is hooey… that you shouldn’t believe, but they made us put it out.”

To emphasize the “burden” on the abortion clinic of having to provide an informational link, Maddow shows how Aid for Women added an ‘introduction’ to the mandated link on their homepage (archived here):

“We’re being forced by Republicans to use our website resources to say untruthful things about the state’s pro-life website in hopes you will visit their website and change your mind away from having an abortion. We must have this signage or go to jail. Republicans also don’t believe that rape causes pregnancy, nor that there can ever be too many children. They are stupid. Let’s vote them out of office. However, here goes.”

Maddow is obviously highly sympathetic to the Aid for Women business, quoting the clinic manager as revealing that they had struggled for eight years to find a replacement for the aging abortionist.

In addition, Maddow voices the clinic manager’s complaint of “ingratitude.” Maddow said,

“He told us, ‘We cannot seem to get some of these Gen Xers to take it seriously and vote. Why am I the only one fighting this?…The generation of patients whom we have helped need to step up and carry the torch instead of assuming clinic workers will always fight their battle.’ ”

So what do we learn from Maddow? That the poor abortion clinics are burdened by providing informational weblinks to pregnant women, when the unborn child is just like cancer, right?

Now that is hooey.

by Carole Novielli | Austin, TX | LifeNews.com | 8/1/14 9:28 AM

Another abortion center in Texas has closed as a result of the new abortion law which took effect last year.

On their blog page, abortion clinic chain Whole Woman’s Health announced the closure of their Austin center.

The announcement reads:

With extremely heavy hearts, we’re announcing today that Whole Woman’s Health of Austin is closing its doors days before our trial against House Bill 2 begins.

Austin was our flagship clinic, serving the community of Central Texas with the best abortion care available to women for over ten years. House Bill 2, which passed last summer, has forced us into yet another closure, this time because we’re unable to meet the standards of an ambulatory surgical center at this location.

In October the Beaumont Whole Woman’s abortion centers was inspected and what authorities found was abysmal.

According to a recent state inspection report, Whole Woman’s failed to have some of the same life-saving tools on site that Convicted abortionist Kermit Gosnell was cited for in Pennsylvania.

In March of 2011, Operation Rescue documented widespread abortion abuses at a dozen Texas abortion clinics. Among the worst offenders was Whole Women’s Health. The McAllen office discoveries were particularly disturbing. Dumped in the trash were the bloody refuse of several abortions along with the names of patients and other private information.

Among the discoveries at several WWH clinics, Patient logs and other records were discovered on Whole Women’s Health forms and the bloody remains of abortions came in bags with other documents bearing Whole Women’s Health’s name. Operation Rescue has made examples of this evidence public.

In November, Life Dynamics, a national pro-life group in Denton, Texas sent fliers to every hospital warning them the abortion lobby was going to attempt to get privileges:

According to the Dallas Morning News, the Austin abortion facility is the 17th clinic to close in Texas since November when a new law went into effect requiring doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles of the clinics. The same law will require clinics to meet the same strict structural standards required of ambulatory surgical centers by September of this year. Fourteen of the 20 clinics still operating do not meet those standards.

by Kristan Hawkins | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 7/29/14 12:42 PM

Because Planned Parenthood is always looking for a way to normalize abortion and make it seem mainstream, accepted and no big deal, (see their funding of the “abortion comedy” movie flop Obvious Child), their president Cecile Richards found something equally appalling to compare the ending of a child’s life to: men’s colonoscopies.

Ms. Richards was recently on PBS with Bill Moyers and talked about the recent ruling from the Supreme Court on buffer zones for abortion protestors and sidewalk counselors. Here is what she said:

BILL MOYERS: What do you think will come from the court’s junking of the 35-foot buffer zone?

CECILE RICHARDS: Well, we’re already seeing in Massachusetts that absolutely, immediately after that decision eliminating the buffer zone we had record numbers of protesters outside of the following women all the way up to the door of our health center in Massachusetts. These are not all kindly, elderly ladies simply whispering in the ears.

And even if they were, it is the right of women in this country to be able to access healthcare that they need without harassment and without the advice of dozens of people outside their health center. I mean, can you imagine if, you know, if men in this country, before going into their doctor had to walk through a gauntlet of protesters telling them, you know, whether it’s not to get a colonoscopy or just go down the list? It’s incredible.

Imagine those signs – “Colonoscopies Exploit Men!” or “Abolish Colonoscopies” or “Pro-Men, Anti-Colonoscopy”.

As uncomfortable as a colonoscopy may be, it is a valid medical procedure that saves lives (as opposed to ending them) and is a necessary and actual medical process, something that is considered “healthcare” by the general public and medical field. On the other hand abortion takes life and is not considered healthcare – abortion hasn’t been subsidized by the government since 1976 through the Hyde Amendment until Obamacare came around.

This is a tactic that Planned Parenthood and the abortion lobby need to employ to get the public on their side. But it isn’t working. In fact, the New York Times reports today that abortion advocates are pulling away from the term “pro-choice” because it doesn’t mean anything. Why? Maybe because an actual pro-choice person would want women to see ultrasounds before they decide to have an abortion or to have access to all the information they could on what abortion is, how it affects the women on a physical, mental and spiritual level. Logically, the term pro-choice just doesn’t make sense.

The abortion lobby wants to use terms like “women’s health” instead to promote abortion. But women’s health isn’t about abortion. Please. Any woman is going to see through that façade.

Women’s health isn’t about abortion – it’s about mammograms (which Planned Parenthood doesn’t do), well visits, making sure women are eating healthy and taking care of themselves so they can take care of their families, mental well-being, work-life balance, and other things that yes, deal with reproduction, but also deal with the impressive body and inner workings of being a woman. The “right” to end the life of her child doesn’t encompass “women’s health.”

Planned Parenthood and their allies are losing. They are struggling to figure out how to articulate their position of wanting to perform as many abortions as possible in order to increase their bottom line. They are trying to message around the fact that they exploit women and their preborn babies every day for profit. No wonder they are on the losing end.

by Steven Ertelt | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 7/23/14 10:40 AM

The liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a case yesterday that alleges the Planned Parenthood abortion business defrauded the state of California out of hundreds of millions of dollarsby overcharging customers for birth control and improperly asking the state for taxpayer-funded reimbursements.

Former California Planed Parenthood financial official P. Victor Gonzalez is behind the lawsuit. Gonzalez says his own internal audit estimates that Planned Parenthood overcharged California taxpayers for purchasing birth control by at least $180 million.

Gonzalez says the abortion business fired him because he raised concerns about illegal practices of overcharging the state hundreds of millions of dollars on birth control. The former Planned Parenthood official filed a lawsuit in March 2008 but, in January 2009, a federal district court judge dismissed the case and Gonzalez filed an appeal. Represented by the American Center for Law and Justice, Gonzalez is now considered a federal whistleblower and

Gonzalez says his own internal audit estimates that Planned Parenthood overcharged California taxpayers for purchasing birth control by at least $180 million. He was the vice president of finance and administration for Planned Parenthood of Los Angles and, according to a Los Angeles Times report, the overbilling began in the late 1990s.

Now, the liberal federal appeals court has dismissed the suit:

The three-judge appeals panel found that a series of letters between Planned Parenthood and state officials attached to plaintiff P. Victor Gonzalez’s complaint “fatally undercut” his allegations.

“Stated simply, even if bills sent by Planned Parenthood were false in portraying its costs, one cannot plausibly conclude that there was knowing falsity on the part of Planned Parenthood given the explicit statements addressing this subject made by the State of California through CDHS and the state’s silence after being told what procedures Planned Parenthood was following,” the appeals court ruled.

During oral arguments in the appeal last month, Gonzalez’s attorney Walter Weber of the American Center for Law and Justice argued that because Planned Parenthood was required by law to bill the government only its acquisition cost for the birth control, but actually asked for marked up prices, its overcharging was inherently a false claim.

“If charging the government more than 10 times the amount that is allowed by law is not a false claim, then it is hard to imagine what is a false claim,” he said.

While other public health facilities and private facilities charged the state between $8 and $9 for a cycle of birth control pills, Planned Parenthood charged almost $12. The Planned Parenthood charge to the California government was several times more than it paid for the drugs originally.

Gonzalez alleges that other California-based Planned Parenthood affiliates and Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California knowingly engaged in a scheme to defraud state and federal taxpayers by deliberately over-billing the Medi-Cal program.

Judge A. Howard Matz dismissed Gonzalez’s suit in October 2008 and he ruled that Gonzalez did not qualify as a whistleblower under federal law because he was not the “original source” of the data exposing the fraud. As a result, he said his court lacked jurisdiction in the suit.

The federal False Claims Act (FCA) forbids government contractors from submitting “false or fraudulent” claims for payment. The FCA also authorizes private individuals to bring suit against the offenders to recover the fraudulently obtained funds.

The allegation in this case is that PP affiliates in California illegally marked up the supposed cost of various birth control drugs when seeking government reimbursement, resulting in tens of millions of dollars of overbilling – at taxpayer expense. State audits in both California and Washington State have found PP affiliates guilty of overbilling.

When Gonzalez sued Planned Parenthood, a prominent law firm began representing the abortion business at no cost to the defendants and asked the federal district court to dismiss the case on technical jurisdictional grounds.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Planned Parenthood overbilling occurred until state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara sponsored legislation allowing Planned Parenthood to charge more based on concerns the abortion business presented her that it would suffer financial problems without it.

However, altering the statute didn’t address the billing practices prior to it and a 2003 state audit found at least $5.2 million in overbilling in 2003 alone from just one of the nine California Planned Parenthood affiliates.

Medi-Cal officials first noticed the problems in 1997 and Planned Parenthood received two separate letters at that time pointing out the problems.

State officials now say Planned Parenthood was given conflicting information on billing practices. They say Planned Parenthood does not need to repay the millions it overcharged state taxpayers.

Still, Gonzalez wants the abortion business to be held accountable for firing him abruptly on March 9, 2004 for doing his job and pointing out that it was breaking the law.

by Steven Ertelt | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 7/22/14 

In a new expose’ video released today, a former Planned Parenthood abortion clinic director says Planned Parenthood put a price on the value of a human life: $313.29.

That’s the amount of money Abby Johnson says the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic she ran in south Texas would make every time it would kill a baby in an abortion. Johnson, who is now pro-life, released a video this morning exposing the abortion quotas that take place at Planned Parenthood.

In the video, Johnson says her supervisor informed her that her clinic needed to double the number of abortions it was doing and that it should be killing 1,135 babies per year to make the financial goals set up for her clinic by Planned Parenthood’s head honchos.

“This was bothersome to me as I truly believed that our goal was to reduce the number of abortions…after all, that’s what we always said to the media,” Johnson said. “When I voiced my concerns to my supervisor, she laughed and said, ‘But Abby, abortion is how we make our money.’”

“Just a few weeks later, I witnessed the ultrasound guided abortion procedure that caused me to flee from Planned Parenthood,” she said. “About a year ago, I was sorting through some old files and came across that same budget from 2010. Since then, I have been waiting for the perfect time to release this project.”

“Ever since I left Planned Parenthood, I have been talking about the abortion quotas that are established inside abortion facilities,” Johnson said.

“Since releasing the photo a couple weeks ago, we have heard from many abortion supporters who have expressed their disgust of Planned Parenthood and their unsavory practices,” Johnson said. “Women and their children are worth far more than $313.29. Their lives are priceless.”

The new videos comes on the heels of a document obtained from Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, which gave its abortion clinic in Aurora, Colorado an award for doing more abortions in the past fiscal year than the one prior.

by Micaiah Bilger | Harrisburg, PA | LifeNews.com | 7/21/14 

We have a young heroine for life in our state.

Her name is Chloe Kondrich, and she has Down syndrome. The 11-year-old and her family have made it their mission to educate people about the precious value of individuals with Down syndrome. The family received our Pennsylvania Pro-Life Leadership Award in 2011.

On Friday, July 18, Chloe stood with Gov. Tom Corbett as he signed “Chloe’s Law,” a measure that ensures Pennsylvania moms have access to accurate information and support when their preborn baby is diagnosed with Down syndrome.

Sadly, preborn babies who are diagnosed with Down syndrome often become victims of abortion. One study suggests that 90 percent are aborted.

According to an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

“Kishore Vellody, medical director of the Down Syndrome Center at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC … [said] he sees the necessity of the new law, which will outline physicians’ responsibilities in delivering the news of a Down syndrome prenatal diagnosis.

“‘Published data shows that less than half of people felt like their training was accurate in communicating prenatal diagnosis,’ he said. ‘Even in my med school textbooks, a lot of things we learned about Down syndrome was inaccurate because it takes so long to have them updated.’

“Within the past 30 years, the increase in information and standard medical care has been dramatic and is mirrored by the increase in life expectancy for people with Down syndrome, from 25 in the 1980s to 60 and beyond now.

“‘Our goal in medicine is to make sure people receive balanced and accurate information when they make decisions about health care,’ Dr. Vellody said. ‘That’s why we support endeavors to help expectant parents.’”

Chloe’s parents, Kurt and Margie Kondrich, understand the emotions that families feel when they discover their child has Down syndrome. They believe the new law will help alleviate fears and give hope to the families.

Chloe and her family truly are Pennsylvania heroes, spreading the message to families that there’s always a reason to choose life!

by Steven Ertelt | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 7/18/14 

The pro-life movement is sometimes scoffed at by abortion activists when it points out that abortion is mostly used for birth control reasons. Here’s a report that provides more confirmation that that’s the case.

A British schoolgirl had her fourth abortion in 2012, figures today revealed. She is one of 200 teenage girls who have had repeat abortions before the age of 16.

The figures show five girls had three abortions by the time of their sweet 16 birthday, which is the legal age of consent in England. That means abortion practitioners are doing abortions on girls who are victims of statutory rape and, as is the case in the United States, they may not be reporting those rapes to authorities.

Here’s more on these tragic repeat abortions:

In 2011, a total of 84 under-16s had abortions for a second time or more, according to the Department of Health figures obtained by The Sun.

Last night, Norman Wells, of the Family Education Trust, said too many teenagers were having sex without thinking about the consequences.

Too many are being taught that they have a right to sex without consequences and are free to dispose of any unborn child that threatens their lifestyle,’ he said.

Last year, 185,331 British women of all age groups had terminations. Of these, 50 were treated for a staggering nine abortions of more.

FIGURES: ABORTIONS IN THE UK

• 2,538 under-16s had an abortion in 2013
• This is compared to 2,925 girls in 2012
• 68 had already undergone a termination
• Five of these were on their third abortion
• 185,331 women of all age groups had abortions in the UK last year
• Of these, 50 were treated for nine abortions or more

Earlier this year, a 13-year-old schoolgirl was given the right to choose whether to have an abortion by a High Court judge.

Mr Justice Mostyn ruled that the youngster was capable of making up her own mind as to whether or not to keep the child.

The teenager, who lives with her parents, only realised she was pregnant when her grandmother spotted her growing bump and took her for medical tests.