If abortion proponents condemned 2011 as “the year of abortion restrictions… mark[ing] a sea change for abortion rights,” and 2012 as “an unmitigated disaster for abortion rights,” I can’t imagine what they will say about 2013.

In 2011 there were a record 92 pro-life laws enacted in the states, followed by the second highest number, 43, in in 2012. This year has already seen at least 14 pro-life bills become law, according to Mailee Smith, Staff Counsel for Americans United for Life, so we are on track for another banner year.

But in 2013 we are not only seeing a high volume of typical pro-life legislative fare, we are seeing passage of pro-life legislation on steroids, the likes of which has never been observed in 40 years of legalized abortions throughout the U.S.

Yesterday, North Dakota adopted the “heartbeat” ban, which outlaws abortion once a baby’s heart tones can be detected, as early as six weeks. At the same time ND Governor Jack Dalrymple signed the first ever ban against eugenic abortions for fetal abnormalities or gender.

Bumped from the top spot, held only three weeks, was Arkansas, which on March 6 passed what was then an unprecedented ban on abortions after 12 weeks.

Just a week prior, Arkansas became the 10th* state to pass a ban on abortions after 20 weeks.

Then there’s the Personhood Amendment. On March 22 North Dakota became the first state to legislatively authorize a ballot initiative that would establish the right to life from the moment of conception.

The other side is attempting to exude coolness by mocking and dismissing, but you know they must be overwhelmed, not just because the attacks against abortion are coming from all sides, but also because of pro-life chutzpah and legislative cohesiveness never before seen.

Mother Jones has created three rounds of “Anti-Choice March Madness” charts, because:

Despite being Women’s History Month, March has seen relentless attacks on ladies’ rights. As soon as one state passes some outrageous woman-restricting bill, another is right behind with something even, well, outrageous-er. The “state-by-state race to the bottom on women’s health,” as the president of Planned Parenthood put it, inspired us to set up our own March Madness bracket to determine the national champion in the War on Women.

Read through the match-ups to get a thrill up your leg. The winner is, no surprise, North Dakota! Click to enlarge…

More on the pro-life tsunami from Politico, March 26:

For years, decades even, abortion fights targeted procedures used in later stages of pregnancy, such as the ban on certain late-term abortions. Or they focused on making abortion harder to access because of rules like waiting periods, parental notification or regulations that make it harder for clinics to stay in business. Several states have also begun to put restrictions on drugs used to terminate a pregnancy in its early weeks, like… RU-486.

Then the battleground began to shift. A few years ago, states began passing “fetal pain” laws, restricting abortions at around 20 weeks post-fertilization….

This year, states have begun hurtling toward very early bans, in the first trimester of pregnancy.

“It’s an astonishing display, really. I think in the last month, we’ve seen legislatures basically in a race to the bottom, each one trying to outdo each other in being more anti-choice than the other,” said Donna Crane, policy director for NARAL….

“These are obviously, these are without question, unconstitutional,” Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said. “There’s no chance that these could stand up in court. They are an absolute affront to the current standards.”…

Jennifer Dalven, director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said… “These are certainly the most extreme restrictions that we have seen in quite some time. But I don’t think we should miss the point that the goal of all the restrictions is to make it very difficult, if not impossible, for a woman to get an abortion if she needs one”…

Note that both Richards of PP and Donna Crane of NARAL used the “race to the bottom” catch phrase. They must share PR firms.

From a PP email alert yesterday (click to enlarge)…

Well, duh.

*According to AUL, 10 states maintain prohibitions of abortion at 20 weeks: AL, AR, DE, IN, KS, LA, NE, NC, OH, and OK. Three state laws are in litigation: AZ, GA, ID.

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by LauraLoo

A pair of teenagers was arrested Friday for the fatal shooting death of 13-month-old Antonio Santiago, and for the wounding of his mother, during their morning stroll in Brunswick, Georgia.

From the Associated Press:

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by Susie Allen, host of the blog, Pro-Life in TN, and Kelli

We welcome your suggestions for additions to our Top Blogs (see tab on right side of home page)! Email Susie@jillstanek.com.

• At Priests for Life, Janet Morana discusses the case of Ariel Knights, who sought (and thought she had) an abortion after she was told her pregnancy was a risk to her life due to uterus didelphys, and her baby survived. Most revealing is that this article on the case minces no words regarding the substandard conditions of the abortion facility and stark facts of the procedure:
  

  When her name was called that March morning a year ago, she walked into a cramped room and climbed onto a table, positioning her lower body above a trash bag. When the doctor finished, Knights, still woozy from being sedated, was handed her things and shown the door.

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by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• A record number of people wrote in to oppose the HHS Mandate regulations:
  

  Three years after Congress approved President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), contraceptive care remains its most controversial provision, drawing not only more comments than any other regulatory proposal on any subject government-wide, according to an analysis of federal regulations on Sunlight’s Docket Wrench.

  More than 147,000 people and organizations have made their voices heard over the debate, most of them opposing the provision that requires that federal agencies have interpreted to mean that women have access to preventive services–including contraception – at no cost.

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As many abortionists are found to be over the course of time, abortionist Reginald Sharpe is a menace to society.

The rap sheet against Sharpe is long.

Sharpe’s medical license was placed on probation in 1998 for illegally administrating drugs and was suspended in 2005 after he botched an illegal 27-week abortion. Sharpe was busted in 2008 for illegally dumping patient records, aborted babies, medical waste, and syringes. In 2010 Medicaid revoked Sharpe’s certification for unspecified “fraud and abuse, false billing, or kickbacks.”

In addition, Sharpe has been sued at least five times:

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by Hans Johnson

In this season of Resurrection, consider the story of Kayli Whistler, diagnosed with Trisomy 18, who was pronounced dead during a heart operation. After 32 minutes she revived and is now almost four years old. View her Facebook page here.

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: GodTube]

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Having ended its first week, earlier chapters of the [abortionist Kermit Gosnell] trial were much more charged. Those included gruesome and revolting descriptions of dead babies – oh, excuse me, I mean fetuses, not babies, not even the one that was seven months along [gestational age depicted in image, right] who could have walked Gosnell to the bus, he reportedly joked.

It’s nice to have fun on the job.

Jurors nearly sobbed when they learned that Gosnell reportedly cut the spinal cords of dozens of fetuses and babies, which means the state believes at least some survived birth, allowing Gosnell to be charged with murder.

It’s amazing that what separates human from nonhuman, baby from fetus, is the thickness of the wall of the mother’s belly.

Uh-oh. This is heading where maybe it shouldn’t.

~ Stu Bykofsky, Philadelphia Inquirer, March 22

[Image via ehd.org]

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Former Planned Parenthood manager Abby Johnson’s amazing conversion story is well-known in the pro-life world: After visualizing an abortion on ultrasound, Abby walked out of her Bryan, Texas, PP clinic in October 2009 and walked into the Coalition for Life office headed by Shawn Carney, who now coleads the 40 Days for Life ministry.

Since then Abby has never looked back, releasing the best-selling exposé, UnPLANNED, in 2011 and launching the And Then There Were None ministry last year.

ATTWN reaches out to abortion workers to encourage them to leave the trade.

To date ATTWN has helped 47 souls escape that bloody industry. ATTWN helps former clinic workers in four important ways, providing:

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by LauraLoo

As reported by Newsbusters:

On her MSNBC show this morning, MH-P repeatedly revealed how little respect she has for life in its early forms.

At one point, [Melissa] Harris-Perry callously spoke of how much it costs “to have this thing turn into a human.”

Watch as MH-P makes light as she accidentally breaks a model of a fertilized egg, claims there is no science supporting the notion that life in its early forms could be considered a person, and dismissively refers to that early life as “this” and “this thing.” You really have to watch and listen to hear the dismissivness, the virtual contempt, with which MH-P speaks of “this thing.”…

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  [Apparently], it is much more important for the school to have Planned Parenthood at Benson than it is to have a teacher teach computer science and math.

~ High school teacher Bill Diss (pictured), who was escorted by police out of his classroom at Benson High School in Portland, Oregon, last week because of his opposition to Planned Parenthood’s presence on campus, as reported by Christian News Network, March 22

[HT: Barb and Brian; photo via Catholic Sentinel]

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