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

• ProLifeBlogs links to a CNS News report about pro-abortion Hillary Clinton’s recent speech in which she claimed every life matters. Clinton was, of course, not speaking about the preborn. (After all, she “told the audience at the sixth annual Women in The World Summit last week that ‘religious beliefs’ must be changed for the sake of abortion.”) No, she was speaking about cases in which Black men have been killed by police officers. Clinton is a good example of the compartmentalization of abortion proponents. Perhaps if preborn babies could vote or donate to political campaigns, they could warrant some consideration from her.
• John Smeaton calls on the Vatican to rethink their support of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, because “current drafts reflect[] a strong pro-abortion agenda.”

• Secular Pro-Life tells the story of a couple who refused to abort one of their twin boys who was diagnosed with anencephaly, a serious birth defect which prevents part of the brain and skull from developing. The baby lived a precious 100 minutes:
  

  From the United Kingdom comes the amazing story of a child whose tragically short life is having a tremendous impact: Newborn Teddy Houlston, who died 100 minutes after his birth, became Britain’s youngest ever organ donor after his kidneys and heart valves were used to save a man’s life. The newborn died on April 22, 2014, but news of his miraculous organ donation only came to light this week.

• At Women’s Rights without Frontiers, Reggie Littlejohn posts her address to the Congressional Executive Commission on China in which she points out China’s One-Child Policy and their long record of controlling births. Despite “tweaking” of the policy, we should not be fooled, as they are not abandoning their population control.
• At ProLife365, Kevin Kukla illustrates the ways in which the Culture of Death recreates the Ten Commandments in their own image.
• ProLife NZ is continuing to call for the passage of a parental notification law for girls under 16 to get an abortion. They cite how laws in other countries like the United States have helped in lowering the abortion rate:
  

  According to the Care of Children Act 2004, access to abortion is not restricted on grounds of age. Section 38 of the Act says that a girl of any age can give consent to an abortion and that consent operates as if it were given by her parents. Therefore, her parents need never know that their daughter is having such a procedure.

  Naturally, though, things like field trips and sports participation still require parental permission.

[Houlston family photo via BBC.com]

Click to enlarge…

While arguing in defense of abortion immediatism during his debate against Center for Bio-Ethical Reform’s Gregg Cunningham, Abolish Human Abortion’s T. Russell Hunter used a tree analogy.

Hunter claimed cutting off “branches” of abortion through incremental laws is more than a waste of time, it’s counterproductive, because new branches take their place. The only way to end abortion, said Hunter, is to ignore the branches and focus on chopping down the tree.

Hunter’s tree-cutting analogy is erroneous for several reasons, foremost because removing branches first is exactly how it’s done. I happen to know this because we had to have three big trees cut down in our yard last year (thanks, ash borers), and I happened to take video. Little did I know how handy it would come in…

[youtube]https://youtu.be/L5SFSQQfSyk[/youtube]

At risk of taking Hunter’s tree analogy too far, I daresay all trees in populated areas, such as where abortion exists, are cut down branches first.

In fact, as Cunningham pointed out, “In the entire history of social reform, no activists have ever outlawed a major injustice ‘immediately.'” It has always been branches first.

Well, now that I’ve started down this path, I’ll add it seems indicative to me of Hunter’s antiquated, undeveloped logic that he would use shears and an ax in his illustration to cut off branches and take down a tree. In both cases only a saw will do, unless one wants to take forever, or one is too small to handle a saw, or one hasn’t properly assessed the tree.

Ok, one other point, Hunter is apparently unaware that suckers can grow from trunks (see photo right), so it’s not as if cutting a tree down is necessarily the end of things.

That’s the last of my immediatism tree analogies. On with Hunter’s.

Video of Hunter’s argument is below. In it he makes several gaffes in relation to incrementalism.

One is that he shows a new branch of late-term abortion growing from the cut-off branch of partial-birth abortion.

That’s not accurate. No new branches have grown. There are only so many ways to commit late-term abortions. So the other methods are separate branches we are also working to lop off, such as 12+ week dismemberment abortions, a new target.

About dismemberment bans Hunter misquoted me (at 5:05 in video below) as stating, “Of course, there are other methods that might grow up in its place.” Not true. I wrote:

The fact that abortionists might simply switch procedures disturbs me, of course, although I know the mere title, “Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Act,” is incredibly educational.

But Balch reminded me the induced labor abortion method requires a higher level of expertise, as abortionists testified during the Partial Birth Abortion Ban hearings….

So, yes, a Dismemberment Ban would stop many babies from being aborted.

At any rate, don’t bans against 20-week abortions, or 13-week abortions, or 6-week abortions address Hunter’s concern about banning methods? Those are branches we are certain can never grow back.

It is true the Culture of Death, i.e., Satan, is constantly devising new ways (“branches”) to kill innocent children. It is naive to think otherwise.

Such as the emerging worldwide black market for abortion pills. This phenomenon has nothing to do with whether abortion is legal in the U.S. It’s simply another new abortion branch that will need chopping off.

So here’s Hunter’s tree analogy…

[youtube]https://youtu.be/XricAdIkNEE[/youtube]

I know Hunter is a smart guy. I know he knows he grossly misrepresents the pro-life movement, such as at 7:47 in the video:

And you say [to pro-life leaders], “Well, why don’t you say abortion is murder and sin and seek its abolition?” Well, because they can’t. Because it’s legal. And the courts have said. So now instead of that wily snake saying that we gotta keep legal abortion safe, legal, and rare, we’ve got pro-lifers saying, “As long as abortion is legal, it should be safe, early, and painless.”

Hunter knows it is ludicrous to claim pro-lifers keep secret the fact that “abortion is murder and sin” and don’t “seek its abolition.” He knows perfectly well we do both. It is slander of the worst kind for Hunter to claim the end game for pro-lifers is that abortion be “safe, early, and painless.” He knows perfectly well why we pursue incremental efforts.

(All this while Hunter pursues his own self-approved brand of incrementalism – geographical incrementalism.)

So why does Hunter persist? Stay tuned for Part III: “Immediatist underpinnings collapse.”

Also read:
Prologue
Part I: Let babies die today, we can save the rest later.

by Kelli

ProWomanProLife shares a video created by Online For Life, in which children are asked various questions, eventually leading to some simple yet profound reflections on life:

Sometimes the most insightful and remarkable statements come from children. We have all been witness to a child whose keen observation, humility and complete innocence causes them to spout great and eternal truths at the most uncanny and opportune (or inopportune) moments in life. Often these truths, which are so obvious to the child, have been have sullied by adults with our greed, our cynicism and our pride.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/a9–Rf1K9aA[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: Susie Allen]

by Carder

When I was in my 20s, I had a girlfriend who had an abortion, and the decision was entirely out of my hands. Ever since, I have dreamed about a boy at the age he would be now.

Later, I was married for four years to a woman with whom I tried to have children, with help from a fertility specialist. The difficulties we had made me feel, more than ever, that the ability to create life was special. When she left me, as I was running for a seat in the Florida State Senate, my dreams of a family were shattered.

~ Businessman Nick Loeb making the case for why he should be able to use his frozen embryos created with ex-fiancee Sofia Vergara in a New York Times op-ed titled, “Our Embryos Have a Right to Live,” via The Huffington Post, April 30

by Hans Johnson

Stacy Roorda was stunned to get a diagnosis of Stage Four breast cancer – and then in a follow-up test came the news that she was pregnant. With the aggressive cancer feeding on the hormone essential to the baby, she was urged to abort the child so they could start intensive chemotherapy immediately.

A devout Christian, she was sustained by a prayer chain in her church, and boldly told the doctors: “I wouldn’t give up my other two children, I’m not giving up this one. So you need to figure out a plan B.” When the doctors left them alone:

Matt and I just sat there. We were newly pregnant, fighting cancer, and in total shock. Just as I was beginning to wonder if this was the right choice, one of the resident radiologists snuck back in to the room. She quietly said, ‘I’m a Christian too, and I want you to know that it’s a baby, not a fetus, and you’re making the right choice. I’ll be praying for you.’ Both Matt and I burst out sobbing. It was exactly what we needed to hear at that moment.

A milder treatment was used to slow the disease, but then it reached the bone, and Jazmine Stacy had to be delivered (in good health) at 32 weeks. As prayer support spread worldwide, doctors were surprised that the cancer was stopped right in its tracks, and remains there, unchanged, eight years later.

Roorda relates her brave ordeal in a compilation of inspirational stories called  The Missing Piece.

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/82251139[/vimeo]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[Photo via The Blaze]

by Kelli

Brigham sold his interests to his medical director, Vikram Kaji, whose medical license was suspended in New Jersey and Pennsylvania in the mid-1990s for sexually abusing patients and wrongly prescribing controlled substances.

Kaji went to work for Brigham in the mid-1990s while his license was restricted in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Kaji admitted having sex with a patient in his Yardley office, improperly prescribing controlled substances for her, and giving two other patients improper rectal or breast exams.

~ Marie McCullough, The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 28

Related, please read my Prologue, and also Part III: There’s only one way to cut down a tree?

The most disturbing aspect of the “immediatist” anti-abortion movement is that which is hardest to get its followers to acknowledge.

That is, by opposing incremental legislation they are condemning babies to die, some in excruciating ways, who would otherwise be saved.

For instance, Abolish Human Abortion opposes legislation that would save babies slated for abortion who are 20 weeks and older because, AHA says, it excludes younger babies.

Never mind there’s no chance of such an all-encompassing dream law making it past Round 1 in the courts.

In other words, even though we can’t save all babies NOW, we will oppose a law that could save 20-week-old babies NOW, because the latter would be morally wrong?

This is just one example of their upside down and deadly thinking.

So, as the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform’s Gregg Cunningham pointed out in the “Immediatist vs. Incrementalism” debate against AHA’s T. Russell Hunter on April 25 (1:08:03 on the time stamp, also in video clip below):

The inescapable conclusion of T. Russell Hunter’s argument is that until we can save that baby [pointing to a 6-day-old embryo, see screen shot above right] – until we can outlaw the abortion of that baby – we should be utterly indifferent to the slaughter of that baby, and that baby  [pointing to an 8-wk-old aborted baby, then a 10-wk-old aborted baby], and older babies….

“Utterly indifferent” is exactly right. We witnessed this indifference during the debate, wherein Hunter acknowledged incremental legislation “might be able to help somebody” and “may save some babies,” BUT is nevertheless wrong, he claimed, because “you leave this wicked tree (of abortion) growing.”

So saving some babies is wrong because the wrong we saved them from still exists?

Hunter further contradicted his position by first acknowledging, “Every child who is aborted? Image bearer, neighbor.” EVERY CHILD. Every child aborted is Hunter’s neighbor, but not really….

[youtube]https://youtu.be/Z-DUjsZxoBQ[/youtube]

There is absolutely no historical foundation for Hunter’s absolutist philosophy. As Cunningham stated in so many words during the debate and followed up in an email:

In the entire history of social reform, no activists have ever outlawed a major injustice “immediately.” Reform has only ever been achieved step-by-step.  AHA activists are willing to allow savable babies to perish in reliance on an absurd strategy that amounts to saving no babies until we have the votes to outlaw birth control pills….

Getting immediatists to focus on the very babies they are condemning to death by their all-or-nothing strategy is understandably difficult. They’d prefer these babies remain in the abstract, inexplicably dismissing them while simultaneously claiming moral superiority on the abortion issue.

Cunningham tried three times during the debate to get Hunter to focus on the babies he is casting aside on his quest. The most telling exchange can be seen below (beginning at 1:33:30 on the full debate video), where Hunter repeatedly dodged the question but ultimately referred to legislation that saves babies as “empty, illusory victories,” i.e., babies saved by incremental legislation are “empty, illusory victories,” then went completely into left field by likening such laws to killing abortionists, and finally mocked incrementalists who celebrate saved lives.

In my opinion, these were the most condemning moments in the debate…

[youtube]https://youtu.be/OXVl0QLKluo[/youtube]

Here is a transcript of that exchange:

GC: I’d like to return to the question with which I began, which Russ hasn’t answered. Should we allow these babies to die rather than enact incremental legislation?

TR: No.

GC: I’m sorry?

TR: Like, should we allow - should we allow babies to die?

GC: Should we allow these - because…

TR: The charade is – the charade is not even what we’re talking about – the incrementalism/immediatism debate. Focusing the ax at the tree, getting all the people who follow incrementalism to become immediatists and help put that ax to the branch – to the root…

GC: Would you answer this question?

TG: [unintelligible]

Moderator: That was the last question. Russ, go ahead and answer that, and then we’re gonna end this.

GC: Just for the record, Russ didn’t answer the question: Should we have allowed these babies to die, which this university professor says would have died had that legislation not been enacted. Should we have allowed them to die rather than enact the incremental legislation?

Moderator: Ok, Russ, answer that question, then we’ll change.

TR: Um, well, I firmly believe that abortion is evil, and it is one of these things that the powers and principalities of darkness and high places are very in to. It’s the crown jewel of darkness, and I actually believe that if they can keep abortion going by deceiving people into becoming gradualists, they will do it. And if to deceive them they have to give them empty, illusory victories, and law professors may claim that babies were saved, they’ll do it. But I – if someone goes to an abortion mill and shoots a doctor, a baby might be saved that day, but that’s not going towards abolishing abortion. It’s not establishing justice that day [unintelligible] a baby that day.

GC: May I ask for clarification for your answer? You’re saying this guy’s making this up?

TR: Uh, no, I have to read it. But I’m just saying that convincing people to be gradualists by saying, “Hey look, we saved some,” while they’re still being – I’m pretty sure that you can convince people to be gradualists for the next 40 years…

GC: Hey Russell, let’s do both. Let’s do both. Let’s do both.

Stay tuned for Part II: “There’s only one way to cut down a tree?”

Also read Jonathon Van Maren’s, “Four observations from the Cunningham vs. Hunter debate.”

by Hans Johnson

When newlywed Matthew Davis crashed his motorcycle into a parked car, he sustained multiple injuries, the worst of which was brain damage. His wife Danielle was advised  there was a 90% chance he would remain in a vegetative state, and a week later one doctor said if it were him, he would want to have life support removed.