by Alliance Defending Freedom | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 6/13/14 

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing a Connecticut pro-life family filed a motion for preliminary injunction in federal court Thursday seeking to prevent Obamacare abortion surcharges and fines from being enforced against the family. In May, the family filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration because their current health plan will be cancelled in November, forcing them into the state’s health insurance exchange where every plan requires them to directly pay for other people’s abortions. If the Bracys do not comply, they will be subject to crippling fines.

Federal law forbids taxpayer subsidies for elective abortions. However, the Affordable Care Act requires that every plan that includes abortion offered on any Obamacare exchange must collect a separate fee used exclusively to pay for abortions. This abortion surcharge is not listed in the premium but is instead added in to the total premium. The Connecticut state health exchange only offers plans that include abortion coverage, and thus every plan on the exchange requires this abortion surcharge. Consequently, the Bracy family has two options: violate their conscience and faith by personally subsidizing the abortions of others or be penalized with steep fines.

People seeking coverage on the exchanges in Hawaii, Illinois New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wyoming may face the same dilemma.

“With Obamacare, if you like your current plan, you can’t always keep it, and you may be forced to pay for other people’s abortions in your new plan,” said ADF Senior Counsel Casey Mattox. “Neither the Constitution nor federal and state law allow for this type of government coercion. The Obama administration may not value constitutionally protected freedoms, but both federal and state law do. We are asking the court to stop Obamacare from violating this family’s rights.”

“No one should be forced to pay for other people’s abortions,” added ADF Senior Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. “In America, the government is forbidden from strong-arming citizens into participating in acts that violate of our deepest convictions. But coercion is a feature of Obamacare, so it must be stopped.”

Barth and Abbie Bracy had insurance through a private insurer until Obamacare forced the company to cancel the policy. Forced on to the Connecticut Obamacare exchange, the Bracys discovered that every plan offered there included a mandatory surcharge that is used to fund the elective abortions. Ironically, Barth Bracy is executive director of The Rhode Island State Right to Life Committee and has warned people of exactly the problems his family is now facing. The lawsuit also challenges secrecy clauses within Obamacare which forbid Americans from being told prior to enrollment whether the plans they would purchase on an exchange will include abortion coverage and thus require an abortion surcharge.

Michael DePrimo, one of more than 2,400 attorneys allied with Alliance Defending Freedom, is serving as local counsel on behalf of the Bracys.

by Steven Ertelt | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 6/12/14

With some news reports indicating Meriam Inbrahim may be days or weeks away from a brutal pre-execution flogging because of her refusal to backtrack on her Christian faith, pro-life Sen. Ted Cruz and leading pro-life groups staged a rally outside the White House today on her behalf.

Meriam Ibrahim is not sentenced to die for her Christian faith for two years, until such a time as her newborn baby girl Maya is weaned, but she could be flogged within days if her appeal of her death sentence is thrown out. LifeNews recently covered the terrible nature of the flogging she will have to endure and how it will literally take her skin off of her body.

SIGN THE PETITION! Save Meriam Ibrahim, Don’t Hang her to Death for Her Faith

Meriam’s case has drawn international outrage. Meriam was jailed in September despite the fact she was pregnant, because she married a Christian – when authorities claim she is Muslim. Sudanese leaders suggested she may be freed weeks ago as international outrage grew – but there is still no sign of her release. She was forced to give birth to daughter, Maya, in prison, shackled to bed.

Now, human rights advocates have released a video of another woman flogged in public to highlight her case. In the video, dated 2010, the woman begs for mercy as police laugh and joke.

Responding to concerns about a potential flogging and knowing the Obama administration has done very little to support her plight, the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America led a Save Meriam rally today.

“Today we are here to talk about Meriam Ibrahim, who is being imprisoned for her faith, specifically because she is a Christian. And not just her, but also her two children, one of which she gave birth to in chains.  As Christian women, we are talking today about Sudan but also pointing to the plight of women around the world. Women of faith are being persecuted and little girls are forced into marriages at very young ages. Meriam shines a light on this corruption and persecution,”Penny Nance, president of CWFA, said.

She added: “CWA members are here today wearing chains to remind us of the torture that she is being put through. So today I’m here to tell the President to stop going around the world apologizing for us. We are an exceptional nation, we love our country, we believe in our values, especially religious freedom and we want everyone to share in that God given right, not from the White House, but from our Creator. We are standing here today to speak for someone who is our sister in Christ who cannot speak for herself. We also pray for the Nigerian girls. Hashtag diplomacy is not enough. We want to see results.”

Nance concluded: “I am mortified by what is happening to this woman and I am calling today on our President and our State Department to rescue Meriam Ibrahim. She deserves our support. Why are we allowing her to be tortured?”

Below are some of the pictures from the rally, including a photo of Senator Cruz and one of Congressman Trent Franks of Arizona. All pictures come to LifeNews from CWA and FRC.

by Steven Ertelt | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 6/10/14 5:43 PM

Caitlin and Emily Copeland were born as conjoined twins, but because they were fused at the chest, liver and bile ducts – and not the heart — doctors were able to successfully perform a separation surgery. Once they were separated at 10 months of age, the twins then began to prosper.

Now, they have graduated at the top of their class and are headed to college.

Here is more from a local news report on their incredible story:

For a set of Texas twins, being joined at the hip is not just a cliche — that was basically the first 10 months of their life.

On Tuesday, Emily and Caitlin Copeland, who were born conjoined at the liver, are celebrating their 18th birthday by enjoying the success of a separation surgery that has allowed them to lead normal lives and graduate as co-valedictorians from Lutheran High North in Houston.

“I think for anyone it’s exciting to get to 18, but in particular for us I think it’s just a really big blessing that we got to 18, considering what could have happened,” Caitlin said.

Crystal Copeland, the twins’ mother, nods. She will never forget the day she learned she was pregnant with conjoined twins, a phenomenon that occurs once in every 200,000 live births. Between 40 percent and 60 percent are stillborn, and some 35 percent survive one day.

And in late 1996, surgery and imaging were not as advanced.

“At the time, if you Googled conjoined twins all you got was circus acts and babies that died,” Copeland said.

It was a Friday when Copeland first spoke to Dr. Kevin Lally, surgeon in chief at Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston. He promised to provide an honest assessment of the chances for survival.

The babies were kicking. Copeland had seen them in an ultrasound. To her, they were alive and well. That weekend, she said, was the hardest in her life.

On Monday, the Copelands got the best news they could have hoped for.

“They were joined at the liver, not at the heart, which would have been, you know, fatal,” Copeland said. “He thought there were good opportunities for separation where they would both be able to live basically normal lives,” she added.

The complications after the twins were born were worrisome. One was born with a blocked intestine, and surgery had to be conducted when they were just 2 days old. Lally wanted to separate them at that point, but when the surgery began doctors discovered they were not only conjoined at the liver but the organs were discharging through only one twin. So doctors decided to wait for them to get bigger for the separation surgery.

by Dave Andrusko | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 6/9/14 12:36 PM

We’ve collectively been so inundated with the “fact” that abortion is a “woman’s decision” that it’s difficult to remember that this is absurd on a gazillion different levels.

No one is evading the truth that carrying a baby to term is not easy under the best of circumstances, or that care of that child most often falls disproportionately on the mother. But it doesn’t follow that the father ought not to have a voice in the fate of a child that is his as well as hers.

Next week NRL News Today will re-post a story we first ran in 2008—“Second Reclaiming Fatherhood Conference Draws Much Media Attention.” Here are a few thoughts in anticipation.

Vicki Thorn reminds us that the simple-minded, one-dimensional stereotype of the boyfriend/husband who can’t wait to abort an unplanned pregnancy, while obviously true in some instances, doesn’t account for many men, let alone all the other possibilities. (Note to pro-abortionist feminists, life is rarely simple.)

Thorn does not photoshop out the villains, for example, the men who coerced the women in their lives—including their daughters—into having abortions. Her point, my point, however, is that this does not exhaust the range of possible behaviors, nor does the failure of some to act as they should exclude all men from any voice in any and all abortions.

Consider…

There are men who oppose the abortion from the beginning but have no ability to save their child. Read their stories of powerlessness and you will have a tough time sleeping.

There are men—a LOT of men—who’ve been told that they should not engage their hearts or their minds. Their “job” is exclusively to support the woman’s decision to abort. To do otherwise, it’s implied when not stated flatly, is to try to impose your will. If in his heart a man knows that he has a responsibility to the child AND the mother, he is, at best conflicted, at worst an emotional basket case. (This overlaps with what Thorn is describing when she talks about the men who “seem” not to care.)

Thorn talks about the men who really didn’t care, or who were happy to see this “inconvenience” swept away. “But years later, when they are ready to be fathers, the reality of what happened hits them hard,” Thorn writes. I’ve personally known more than a few men who’ve looked back at their younger selves with great bitterness.

What almost never gets talked about is how a sister’s abortion affects a brother. We tend to overlook how deep the bonds can be between siblings and how much one sibling can hurt when another is terribly distraught.

Likewise, as Thorn reminds us, “There are men whose wives had abortions before they met, who get caught up in the vortex of her pain.” Talk to any counselor, as I have, and you hear how this unresolved pain and grief about an abortion she likely has not told her husband about, is almost too much to bear. And if they are unable to have children, the impact is multiplied.

There are lots of arguments one can make that easily dismantle (or at least show the inconsistencies of) the argument that men are, at best, irrelevant to the abortion issue, at worst power-hungry intruders.

But my desire here is simply to show that abortion does not forever change the destinies of women and unborn children alone, but husbands, boyfriends, brothers, grandfathers, even uncles and cousins. If you think the latter is a stretch, I can tell you from personal experience what a difference my father’s care and compassion for my unwed, pregnant cousin made in her decision to carry her baby to term and to find a loving home for that child—and how it shaped my attitude forever more.

Women and men are in this together, never more so than in the case of an unplanned or crisis pregnancy.

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 at National Right to Life News Today.

by Joe Ortwerth | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com 

The Miss USA pageant will be held in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on June 8th, and one of the contestants will be a woman who was conceived as a result of forcible rape.

Valerie Gatto was crowned Miss Pennsylvania 2014 in December of last year.  She has made a central platform in her competition the need to provide greater support for victims of sexual assault.

Gatto has revealed that her mother was raped at knife-point when she was 19 years old.  Valerie says that the perpetrator planned to murder her mother after the sexual assault, but that she was able to escape when he became distracted.

While her mother originally intended to give Valerie up for adoption, she then decided to set aside her plans for law school and raise her daughter.

“I knew God put me here for a purpose, and He’s the reason my mother and I were saved,” Gatto says.  “I want to do Him proud and my family proud.”

“I could just sit here and say, ‘Why did this happen,’ and ‘Does my father know I exist,’” Valerie continued.  “But God put me here to do great things, and I’m not going to let things from the past stop me.”

Gatto graduated from the University of Pittsburgh magna cum laude with a degree in Business Administration.  She hopes to someday lead a philanthropic organization that will serve underprivileged children in the United States.

“There’s not that many role models for young women out there today that are positive and uplifting,” Valerie observes.  “That’s why I got into pageantry.”

Gatto says she will be forever inspired by how her mother overcome the horror and indignity of being violated in such a violent way.

“It gives me a deep desire to shed light on the trauma of sexual assault and rape for young women,” Gatto explains.  “I am very passionate about educating women on how to protect themselves and prevent these types of crime.”

“My mom always told me I was her light.  The way I look at it, from that moment of conception, I was the light associated with the darkness.  That’s what I hope to do as Miss Pennsylvania 2014.”

by Rebecca Downs | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 6/6/14 9:15 AM

A recent Gallup poll takes a range of issues in which respondents are asked if it is morally acceptable or not. The 19 issues are regarded as “Highly acceptable, “Largely acceptable,” “Contentious,” “Largely unacceptable,” and “Highly unacceptable.” Abortion, along with doctor-assisted suicide, is regarded as contentious, and, according to Gallup, the “moral acceptability [is] at or near record high.” Still, these issues only enjoy 42 percent and 52 percent of moral acceptability, respectively. Further down in the analysis of the poll, these numbers are broken down by political party.

And Gallup makes this worthwhile point about the abortion issue in that it “receives neither majority support nor majority disapproval, making it the most contentious issue of the 19 tested.”

When the abortion issue is broken down by acceptability for political party, only Democrats show a majority support, at 59 percent, which even then, is not such a high majority. It also certainly is not high enough to reflect the extreme position of the current Democratic national platform, and its party leaders who have such a preoccupation with supporting abortion, including President Barack Obama and DNC chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Independents, who are usually split in the middle between the two parties, as noted by Gallup and clear in the poll, regard abortion as morally acceptable at only 41 percent. This is the issue in which there is the biggest gap between Independents and Democrats. Only 28 percent of Republicans regard abortion as morally acceptable.

While both parties should take note on how these percentages reflect voter values, it is especially important that the GOP does so. When only just over a quarter of a party’s voters find such an issue to be morally acceptable, a political party certainly does not need to consider supporting it more. And, perhaps this is one such issue where the GOP can even win over Independents.

Further analysis by Gallup mentions that views of Republican respondents have shown regard of issues being more morally acceptable since 2001, when these questions were first asked. These include same-sex relations, pre-marital sex and divorce. Abortion is not listed as one of these issues. And, in response to those members of the GOP establishment who may claim that abortion is not an important topic or one the party needs to compromise are, in order to attract voters, Gallup mentions that “…Republicans’ views have changed little.”

Another Gallup poll, which was released days prior to the above mentioned one, also reflects this. This poll shows that 47 percent of Americans consider themselves pro-life, compared to 46 percent who consider themselves pro-choice. While the split is narrow enough for Gallup to accurately claim that “U.S. Still Split on Abortion[,]” when the breakdown is examined further, this time by importance of issue for voters, the gap is certainly more noteworthy.

The numbers are slightly different from those who regard abortion as morally acceptable or unacceptable versus those who consider themselves pro-life or pro-choice, but the idea is the same in that abortion should not be ignored completely as an issue for voters, particularly for the Republican party.

Again, Gallup counteracts those in the GOP who wish to ignore the abortion issue or say it is not important, when analysis of the poll says “[i]t is thus remarkable that the percentage of voters saying a candidate’s position on abortion is paramount to their voter has not only remained constant, but has also increased slightly.” Let that be a lesson to the GOP for 2014 mid-term elections and beyond, especially with what else the Gallup poll shows when it is broken down further.

Almost one-quarter, at 24 percent, of pro-life voters will only vote for a candidate who shares their view on abortion. And exactly half consider it to be “one of many important factors.” For those who “[d]on’t see abortion as a major issue,” there is a gap of double digits between pro-life and pro-choice voters. Only 21 percent of pro-life voters have this view, as opposed to 32 percent of pro-choice voters.

Abortion may be regarded as a “contentious” issue, according to Gallup, and it is rightly so considering how much it divides Americans who are passionate on this divisive issue. But, just because it is contentious does not mean that political parties need to stay away from addressing it, or addressing both sides of the issue, as the Democratic party truly ought to do. Regardless, it is time for both political parties to stand up and recognize the importance of the life issue, or at least those within their party who do. The polls certainly reflect it.

by Steven Ertelt | Lansing, MI | LifeNews.com | 6/4/14 4:32 PM

A pro-life group in Lansing, Michigan says fetal models have helped save a baby from a late-term abortion. Officials with 40 Days for Life in Lansing posted a picture of a set of fetal models that it says helped changed a woman’s mind about having an abortion.

“I showed the 30-week model to a late-term mom who left the clinic and DID NOT have an abortion. Praise God!” the group wrote.

As LifeNews writer Andrew Bair has written before, abortion activists really dislike fetal models.

Abortion advocates fight tooth and nail to hide the humanity of the child in the womb. Nothing is more detrimental to their cause than the public realizing the truth about what abortion does to a human being.

That is why they so vehemently oppose measures to ensure mothers get the chance to see the sonogram image of their unborn child. They threw a fit when Facebook created the option for users to make pages for their unborn babies.

The latest source of their outrage: fetal models.

At the North Dakota State Fair, Minot County Right to Life had an education booth where they displayed scientifically-accurate, plastic models of unborn babies at various stages of development. They group also handed out models of unborn babies at 12 weeks.

“It was [given] out to show a visual that at 12 weeks, the baby is a baby. No abortion talk had to come of it with any children that picked one up. Young children just saw them as babies and that was it,” North Dakota Right to Life posted on Facebook.

What is odd is that pro-lifers have been showing fetal models at county and state fairs for decades. But to take the next step—to distribute them—has pro-abortionists incensed.

Any seasoned right-to-life activist who has volunteered at a county or state fair booth knows that the overwhelming majority of the public are receptive to their outreach. Many attendees are fascinated by the basic biological facts of unborn development, which too often are hidden by advocates of abortion and their allies in the media.

From my own experience manning pro-life fair booths, I can attest to their effectiveness. Probably the most touching experience is to witness a pregnant mother come up to the table and find the model which is closest to the stage of development of her unborn baby. Children especially love the models. For them, a representation of a baby is not a political affront, it is just a baby.

The facts about human development may be inconvenient for the pro-abortion cause but they remain. By 12 weeks, babies the size of the models have beating hearts and detectable brain waves. They can kick, swim and even suck their little thumbs. Their nervous systems are developed. 

by Steven Ertelt | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 6/3/14 10:42 AM

A shocking report from the new conservative news web site The Daily Signal is making the waves around the Internet today.

When it comes to premature babies, parents already face tremendous pressure to have abortions. And when the government comes in and tells parents of premature babies there is a new government study they can be involved with that will benefit babies born well before their normal delivery date, there is a certain level of trust one ought to be able to expect.

But, as the report states, that trust was grossly violated in what is nothing less than nonconsensual government experimentation on hundreds of premature babies.

Below is an excerpt from the report and LifeNews encourages you to read the entire news article:

Just 24 weeks into her pregnancy, Sharrissa Cook gave birth to a critically ill baby boy. Dreshan weighed in at a fragile 1 pound, 11 ounces. He lay motionless in the incubator, connected to tubes and monitors in the neonatal intensive care unit at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital.

“He was so tiny,” Cook recalls. “I was a first-time mom. I didn’t have a clue. I didn’t know what to expect.”

It was Oct. 11, 2006. Medical personnel asked Cook, then a 26-year-old single mother, to enroll little Dreshan in a study. She says they described it as a program offering assistance and encouragement to preemies—premature babies—and their families. She readily signed the consent form.

“I remember them telling me they were a support group who would pretty much hold my hand through the developmental process,” Cook says.

But in reality, the study was much more than that. It was a national, government-funded experiment on 1,316 extremely premature infants in which their fate may as well have rested with the flip of a coin.

Other single moms were among those persuaded to sign up their critically ill babies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital describe similar misunderstandings of the study’s purpose.

Bernita Lewis, then a 22-year-old student, says she enrolled her premature newborn, Christian, after medical personnel told her it simply was to gather data such as weight and height.

And Survonda Banks, then 21, unemployed and on public assistance, says someone handed her the consent form on her way in for an emergency C-section at 28 weeks of pregnancy. Banks remembers being told only that it was a way to help her baby, Destiny.

‘Parents Were Misled’

The government-backed study is called SUPPORT, which stands for “Surfactant, Positive Airway Pressure, and Pulse Oximetry Randomized Trial.” The experiment was conducted at 23 academic institutions from 2005 through 2009 under the National Institutes of Health, part of the Department of Health and Human Services.

All three women now say they never would have agreed to take part if they had known the NIH-funded study’s true nature—to randomly manipulate preemie oxygen levels. They discovered that just last year.

Dreshan and Christian are now 7 years old and both struggle with myriad health problems. Destiny died within three weeks. The mothers wonder: Did the experiment contribute to any of the medical problems of their children?

“[Dreshan] was already at a slim chance of surviving; why would I make his chances of surviving more slim?” Cook asks.

Today, nine months after the federal government convened a public meeting to examine the subject, NIH and HHS officials have yet to propose a remedy to avoid a repeat of the controversy that erupted from the multiyear study.