Included in the speaker’s list for the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte are Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards, NARAL Pro-Choice America’s Nancy Keenan, and Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University Law student who has become the new face of the war on birth control.

Putting reproductive rights luminaries front and center at the convention could be seen by many activists as a signal that this year politicians will be forced to be honest about their true intentions when it comes to a woman’s right to control her reproductive choices.

However, an even more pro-woman, pro-choice stance can perhaps be read in the lack of acquiescence to “Democrats for Life,” which once more tried to soften the party platform to let those who oppose abortion feel more welcome.

~ Robin Marty, RH Reality Check, August 27

[Photo via RH Reality Check]

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.

• Wesley J. Smith notes that the Democratic Party’s abortion platform is extreme, even for the majority of Democrats:
  

  While solid majorities of Democrats back some limitations on abortion — 59 percent would ban partial-birth abortions, for example, and 60 percent endorse a mandatory waiting period — the official position of their party is that even common-sense restrictions are unthinkable….

  If Obamacare remains in effect, eventually Congress will revoke the abortion restrictions currently in the law. Then, we’ll see a “Free Abortion Rule,” patterned after the Free Birth Control Rule.

• Moral Outcry describes how Planned Parenthood reveals its true motive – money – in email fundraising campaigns to support its lobbying and highly-paid employees. Do PP’s supporters know they aren’t actually supporting “women’s health” when they give to the PP Action Fund?

• Secular Pro-Life points to a rogue writer at the Huffington Post who apparently forgot to stick to the “Men are irrelevant after sex” meme:
  

  Most men, however, are not rapists and do not support rape. Most men are sons and brothers and fathers and friends; not only do they love the women in their lives, but they would go to great lengths to protect them. Their daily lives and very existence are deeply and inextricably intertwined with women around them. Including the men whose values don’t align with mine.

  These men deserve a place at the table, if not a veto, then at least a vote [on reproductive policy].

• The Passionate Pro-Lifer notes America’s selective outrage when it comes to child sexual abuse. The Penn State and Catholic Bishops’ cover-ups are looked upon with disdain, while Planned Parenthood is paid “more than $1 million a day… [and] probably covers up more sexual abuse of children than any other institution in the United States. Evidence is overwhelming.”

• ProWomanProLife comments on an eye-opening story in Slate that celebrates lust, selfishness, and abortion – Jewish-style:
  

  It’s a story of selfishness. It’s a story of how oxytocin changes abilities to reason. It’s a story of what we are told we can do. And then some women go out and do it. And some blog about it, and compare their choice to kill their lentil-sized baby with deeply significant religious events like Passover that do not celebrate what she thinks they celebrate. Then trendy magazines like Slate give a forum for such articles and the author feels satisfied that she is a real artist.

• New Feminism writes about “ComKids,” or “commercially created children” and what their rights should be in a society that has turned children into creations to be obtained at any cost.

• John Smeaton stands in defense of Northern Ireland politician Jim Wells (pictured left), who is waging the pro-life battle against the rape, conception, and abortion issues in his own country:
  

  Rape is traumatic, but to argue that aborting a child conceived through rape undoes that trauma ignores that abortion, too, is an act of violence. Of 200,000 babies aborted in Britain annually, less than 1% are conceived through rape…. Today, [I am] proud to work with Jim Wells and other politicians who believe a child’s right to exist does not depend on the circumstances of his, or her, conception.

• Timmerie’s Blog rejoices at the Republican Party’s platform on the sanctity of human life:
  

  Opposition to the non-consensual withholding or withdrawal of care or treatment, including food and water, from people with disabilities, including newborns, as well as the elderly and infirm (YES!)”

• Pro-Life Action League posts about two different grandmothers. One was falsely accused of touching someone during a prayer vigil outside Chicago’s Albany Medical/Surgical Center – on a day she wasn’t even there. The other is the mother of Tonya Reaves, who is suing after her daughter died aborting her second child at a Chicago Planned Parenthood.
• ProLife NZ says New Zealand’s pro-abortion group, ALRANZ, is busy making public statements attempting to “[sell] the general public the myth that NZ desperately needs liberal abortion laws – definitely nothing that actually resembles a coherent logical argument for why aborting an unborn human being should be considered an ethically acceptable thing to endorse or carry out.”

[Photos via agendani.com and The National Archives]

by Hans Johnson

In the wake of Todd Akin’s misstatement, lawyer Gloria Allred and Rebecca Kiessling debated the right to abortion in the case of rape on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight.

Allred became pregnant due to rape and consequently aborted her child. Kiessling, also an attorney, was conceived in rape and placed for adoption.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHPo16vNNfE&feature=g-al[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: Jill]

We believe that in every life there is goodness; for every person, there is hope. Each one of us was made for a reason, bearing the image and likeness of the Lord of Life.

We have responsibilities, one to another – we do not each face the world alone. And the greatest of all responsibilities, is that of the strong to protect the weak. The truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.

Each of these great moral ideas is essential to democratic government – to the rule of law, to life in a humane and decent society.

~ GOP Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan, speaking at the 2012 Republican National Convention, as quoted by Shallow Nation, August 29

by LauraLoo

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is relentlessly shredded by Anderson Cooper over the group’s false claims about Mitt Romney’s abortion position:
 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k-KuYJraEg[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: Jill]

At first you may now know what you’re looking at. But yes, they’re vaginas. Click to enlarge, if you dare…

Yesterday Code Pink activists were featured at the Planned Parenthood bus stop in Tampa, dressed in full frontal feminist regalia. These vulgar women represent mainstream American women?

Created Equal has more photos on its Facebook page. I’ve got one more on page two, too gross for page one.

If Todd Akin pulls this off, it will be more than he who is vindicated. It was also be the pro-life community.

After supposedly suffering a nine point drop following his infamous rape remark, to fall behind Claire McKaskill 49-44%, could it be Akin has already recovered? Yes, according to a new poll commissioned by Family Research Council.

If Akin regains his foothold, it will put knee-jerk Republicans in a deservedly tough spot. Two days ago RNC Chairman Reince Priebus insanely declared, “He can be tied, we’re not gonna send him a penny.” Priebus, pictured right, has said he believes life begins at conception, although he must also believe babies whose fathers are rapists can nevertheless be murdered.

Seriously, are Republicans so afraid of feminists, and so afraid of defending the pro-life issue, that they’ll throw themselves under the same bus they threw Akin?

Reported Politico, yesterday:

A survey commissioned by the Family Research Council — the prominent social conservative group standing with Akin… found that Akin now pulls 45% support to McCaskill’s 42%.

That’s not to say Akin hasn’t sustained damage: his personal image is weak, with 44% of voters having a favorable impression of him and 50% having an unfavorable impression. But he still leads McCaskill by 10 points among independent voters and in the conservative-leaning state, Akin wins about the same percentage of Republicans (78%) that McCaskill wins among Democrats (82%.)

Pollster Fritz Wenzel underlines the importance of Akin’s support on the right: “McCaskill holds a 58% lead over Akin among very liberal voters, but that pales compared to Akin’s 81% to 5% lead among very conservative voters in Missouri.”

“Despite the firestorm of news in the Senate race over the past few weeks, most voters have already made up their mind in the race, the survey shows,” Wenzel writes. “The fact that 80% said they were firm in their choice certainly indicates that this is a race that will be decided more by ideology and turnout efforts by the campaigns and less by breaking news that flashes across the news pages and cable news channels.”…

The FRC poll was conducted by Wenzel Strategies from Aug. 27 to Aug. 28, testing 829 voters for a margin of error of plus or minus 3.38%. The sample was 32.7% Democrats, 34.1% Republicans and 33.2% independents.

As the Huffington Post points out, the Akin controversy has created new pressure in the “ever-slumbering tensions between the Republican Party’s two core wings: social conservatives and corporate interests.”

While Republican Party elites immediately not only abandoned Akin but attacked him with a vengeance, pro-lifers stood by him. From CNN, August 24:

Huckabee at one point compared the National Republican Senatorial Committee to “union goons” who “kneecap” their enemies.

The former Arkansas governor said party bosses were “opening up rounds and rounds” of ammunition on Akin and “then running over with tanks and trucks and leaving him to be ravaged by the other side.”

“This is unprecedented, to see to this orchestrated attempt to humiliate and devastate a fellow Republican,” Huckabee said of Akin, who has deep ties to the Christian conservative movement….

Huckabee said he spoke directly with NRSC officials this week and was assured that they would begin to dial back their offensive against Akin. He said party officials specifically told him they would stop pressuring Akin’s consultants and campaign vendors to drop the congressman as a client.

Gee, thanks, GOP.

A final salient point in a Hill article today echoes mine from last week: Republicans clearly panicked and committed a knee-jerk reaction that will hopefully become a much-needed learning experience…

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) told The Hill that Akin had made a “very bad” mistake with his comments but that the party acted too quickly in calling for him to drop out.

“Anyone who’s the nominee of the party has the right to get the opportunity to see if he could right the ship,” he said. “I don’t think they gave him time to right the ship. I share their outrage over what he said and how he handled the situation, but he’s the nominee and he deserves the opportunity to see how these things [play out]. You don’t act in politics in the passion of the moment. If you do, you’re going to make a lot of mistakes.”

This would not have happened had Republicans called social conservative leaders instead of freaking out, which was a slight social conservatives should call them out on.

I want to clear the air about something that has been said. People wonder whether guys like me, an evangelical, would only support a fellow evangelical?

Well my friends I want to tell you something, of the four people on the two tickets, the only self-professed evangelical is Barack Obama. And he supports changing the definition of marriage. Believes that human life is disposable and expendable at any time in the womb, even beyond the womb.

And he tells people of faith that they have to bow their knees to the God of government and violate their faith and conscience in order to comply with what he calls, health care. Friends I know we can do better.

~ Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, in his speech at the Republican National Convention, August 29

[Photo via Lionel Hahn/MCT/Newscom]