But even as Democrats and abortion rights groups use the controversies to reinforce allegations of a Republican-led “war on women,” don’t expect the anti-abortion movement to back away from calls for all abortions to be illegal – even for women impregnated by rape or incest.

“Philosophically, the consensus is very clearly that life is life and that it should be [sic] not be taken and that abortion is not a compassionate response to something terrible, even like rape,” said Marvin Olasky, the editor in chief of World magazine, an influential evangelical publication.

“It’s adding one terrible thing onto another terrible thing.”…

“The most eloquent defenders of the value of every human life are people like my friends Ryan Bomberger and Rebecca Kiessling [pictured above], both of whom were conceived in rape,” Charmaine Yoest,  president of the anti-abortion group Americans United for Life, wrote in a post for National Review Online this week.

“Today, Ryan and Rebecca are vibrant reminders of the truth that Life has value, no matter its beginnings,” she wrote.

~ Dan Gilgoff, CNN.com Religion Editor, “Anti-abortion movements stands by ‘no exceptions’ orthodoxy amid controversy,” August 22

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.

• Secular Pro-Life dissects arguments of a pro-abortion, former Planned Parenthood employee in a recent article which asks, “Are atheist pro-life groups promoting sound science?” SPL says he “addresses four topics on which he believes that secular right to life groups have been unscientific: abortion and breast cancer; post-abortion psychological problems; ultrasounds before abortion; and fetal pain.”

• Stand True relays information on the real war on women at the hands of the abortion industry. As usual, the mainstream media would rather focus on Republicans’ verbal mishaps than on women injured and killed as a result of abortion:
  

  This is the fourth medical emergency recently documented at [Martin] Haskell abortion clinics. In February, a woman was transported from Haskell’s Kettering clinic to a local hospital. In March, Haskell personally placed a 911 call from his clinic located in the Cincinnati suburb of Sharonville and was heard laughing at the dispatcher who offered emergency information. A fourth woman was once again hospitalized in March, 2009, after abortion injuries received at Haskell’s Kettering clinic, the site of the most recent incident.

  Earlier this year, Operation Rescue filed a formal complaint against Haskell with the Ohio Medical Board, which currently has Haskell under investigation.

  Haskell holds no active hospital privileges as required by law and has been allowed to keep his clinics open on two variances, or legal waivers, issued by the Ohio Department of Health.

  No hospital privileges, multiple injuries to women, and pro-lifers are the ones who don’t care about women?

• Fr. Frank Pavone mourns the death of pro-lifer Joan Appleton (pictured right), a “former abortion facility nurse who went on to found and lead the Society of Centurions of America, a group that provides counseling and financial aid to those who leave work in the abortion industry.” She finished well. May she rest in peace.
• Wesley J. Smith tells readers of another “death by dehydration” case in which a DNR order and removal of nutrients were the chosen methods of “care” given to a 12-year-old gunshot victim just ten days after his injury:
  

  On August 6, a 12-year-old boy was shot in the head. Even though a reliable diagnosis and prognosis for persistent unconsciousness requires at least 3 months, hospital personnel reportedly went in rapid succession from “donate his organs” to “end his life” mode.

• ProLife NZ notes the downturn in our culture, beginning with the sexual revolution of the 60’s and continuing along the path toward justifying infanticide à la Peter Singer:
  

  Philosophy and culture are inextricably connected, but it is usually only when a man like Peter Singer writes his ideas out loud in a daily newspaper [in an article entitled, “Just being human doesn’t give you a right to live”] that the general public starts to become aware of the origins of our current cultural sickness. But these new ideas have slowly grown their poisoned tendrils into every corner of human endeavor and strangled the basic notions upon which our civilization was built.

• Pro-Life Action League found out about a planned stop of the “Women are Watching” Planned Parenthood “pepto bus,” and with only a few days notice and the help of social media, they mobilized the grassroots to come to the event, outnumbering abortion supporters 2 to 1.
• Stand for Life features a clip from Scott Klusendorf discussing the best and worst scriptures to use in defending life. Some surprising no-no’s: Psalm 139, Jeremiah 1:5, and Job 3:3. Instead, Klusendorf says Genesis 1, James 3, Exodus 23:9, and Proverbs 6:16-19 are the ones to use:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K2LSEnbvQg[/youtube]

[Appleton photo via prolifeinfo.ie]

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• CNN has posted the Republican party’s plank on the sanctity and dignity of human life.
• The Obama campaign really has no shame. They’re attacking Mitt Romney for not wanting to waste his time talking about Representative Akin’s comments and fulfilling the media’s and the Democratic party’s dream of it lasting another week in the news. This attack from a campaign which doesn’t allow reporters to interview campaign surrogates unless they give them veto power over their quotes.

• At The Atlantic, Rebecca Rosen badly garbles abortions in America pre-Roe. This paragraph is embarrassing. Where are the editors?
  

  Of course no official statistics were kept, but Reagan cites some late-19th-century doctors as estimating a rate of about two million abortions per year. Studies confirmed their prevalence: One, of some 10,000 working-class women who visited birth-control clinics in the late 1920s, found that 10 to 23 percent had had abortions. A smaller study at a clinic in the Bronx in the early 1930s found that 35 percent of women – Catholics, Protestants, and Jews alike – had had at least one abortion. And of course, because abortion occurred mostly on the black market, they were very dangerous: One estimate placed the annual death toll at 5,000 women.

  2 million abortions a year in the late 19th century? That abortion rate would be astronomical. The census bureau estimates there were only around 76 million people in the U.S. in 1900. So approximately 1/4 as many people were having nearly twice as many abortion as today? Back when abortions were illegal? If Leslie Reagan thinks 2 million annual abortion is a good estimate of late-19th-century United States, then maybe you shouldn’t believe a word she says because she’s clearly not competent.

  Rosen then provides some other numbers for women who said they had abortions but does nothing to show how those unnamed studies would prove anywhere near 2 million annual abortions especially since the percent of women who supposedly admitted to having had abortions in one of the studies is lower than the number (1/3) touted by abortion advocates today.

  Lastly, she doesn’t mention that the annual death estimate of 5,000 has been debunked for decades.

  How do these people find writing jobs?

[Graphic via jezebel.com]

by LauraLoo

Michael Voris of Church Militant.TV discusses the eye-opening financial repercussions of contraception on our Social Security deductions.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKKe6tHbxmE&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: carder]

Each month, a woman releases an egg (“ovum,” in science speak), which travels down one of two fallopian tubes and hangs out in the uterus for some days awaiting a sperm. If a sperm and egg meet, usually through intercourse, and connect, in a process called fertilization, a pregnancy can occur. The egg, which is a cell and thus cannot be said to have anything like feelings, does not distinguish between the sperm of a rapist and the sperm of Prince Charming.

I learned this information in the seventh grade, thanks largely to a yellow paperback given to each member of our class by our biology teacher. The book was filled with edifying drawings and explicit information. And though it was titillating – when you’re 13, all information of this sort is titillating – it also instilled in me a profound fear of getting pregnant as an adolescent as well as the clearest possible sense of how that might occur.

Today, thanks to a successful campaign largely by members of the conservative Christian community to remove frank talk about sex from schools and teach abstinence instead, kids don’t learn that kind of information….

Instead of learning about how sex works, kids are getting the message that the mechanics don’t matter because, in any case, it’s yucky girl stuff… which is exactly the kind of thinking that might lead a person to grow up and, at the mature age of 65, to go on TV and talk about how rape, if it’s really rape, doesn’t get you pregnant. The concern here is not just that Akin is a numbskull. It’s that Akin’s disinterest in the facts is reflective of a broader contemporary disinterest in facts – and in science. Religious faith is crucially important to so many lives, but it should not be a hall pass that allows you to sit out the class on how babies are made.

~ Lisa Miller, attempting to tie Rep. Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” remarks to abstinence education, The Washington Post, August 23

[Image via pointofview.net]

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• Abortion is a reason for gender gap between Republican and Democratic voters? Not so much.
• The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a temporary injunction which temporarily prevented Texas from eliminating Planned Parenthood from the Texas Women’s Health Program. From this AP article, the average reader would leave with the impression that PP isn’t America’s leading abortion provider but merely “linked,” “tied” to, and “affiliated” with some other unnamed abortion provider.

Video has surfaced of Barack Obama at a 2003 press conference, expressing his support for abortion through all nine months of pregnancy:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YEvBTwDqBY[/youtube]

From The Weekly Standard:

OBAMA: “I am pro-choice.”

REPORTER: “In all situations including the late term thing?”

OBAMA: “I am pro-choice. I believe that women make responsible choices and they know better than anybody the tragedy of a difficult pregnancy and I don’t think that it’s the government’s role to meddle in that choice.”

In another interview, Obama said: “I voted no on the late-term abortion ban, not because I don’t recognize that these are painful issues but because I trust women to make these decisions.”

Interestingly, Obama’s position shifted slightly to the right during his presidential run, claiming as long as there were “strict” mental and physical health exceptions for the mother, he would support a state’s ban on late-term abortion.

And yet, it seems the official position, now that he’s in the White House, is “well known”:

When the House of Representatives voted on a late-term abortion ban for the nation’s capital this summer, White House press secretary Jay Carney dodged the issue. “Well, I haven’t spoken to the president about this particular piece of legislation,” Carney said at a White House press briefing on July 31, “but the president’s position on a woman’s reproductive freedom is well known.” Almost one-month later, the White House has not indicated whether Obama supports or opposes banning abortion when an unborn child can feel pain.

According to Dr. Martin Haskell, the man who invented the partial-birth abortion procedure, most abortions after 5 months of pregnancy are “purely elective.”

“I’ll be quite frank: most of my abortions are elective in that 20-24 week range,” he said in a 1993 interview with American Medical News. “In my particular case, probably 20% are for genetic reasons. And the other 80% are purely elective.”

It is worth noting that Obama’s support for such late-term, third trimester abortions is at odds with nearly 90% of the U.S. population. Truly an extreme view.

Which is worse, slavery or rape?

Answer: Neither. They’re equally despicable atrocities committed by humans against fellow humans.

Last week Joe Biden violated a sacred pain of black Americans by recklessly comparing Republican control of the presidency to a return to slavery. Worse, he attempted black dialect, y’all, to do so.

Biden took some heat for his insensitive remark, but President Obama and Democrats stood by him.

Four days ago Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin made a problematic remark about rape victims, and Republicans promptly threw him under the bus.

Republicans are famous for doing this, but one difference in this case was the offended constituency. Democrats were not afraid blacks would deluge the media with righteous howls of protest. But Republicans, even conservative Republicans, are deathly afraid of pro-abortion feminists. As the Bible says, “It is better to sit on the corner of the roof than to dwell with a contentious woman” (Proverbs 21:9), and liberal women excel at being all that.

After he misspoke, Biden ran home to hide. Akin manned up and apologized:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R57E3S8RO7A[/youtube]

It was a good apology for the inexplicable mistake of straying from pro-life talking points on the rape/incest exception. That topic shouldn’t really take any of us off-guard, but particularly a U.S. senate candidate. As Dana Loesch tweeted, “I’m used to Republicans screwing us over [but] you don’t go into a national senate race unprepared. Period.”

In other words, “legitimate” is not part of our lexicon. Nor is wandering into the weeds about women’s bodies rejecting pregnancy by rape, whether or not it is true.

Our talking points are simple. We affirm: 1)  the unspeakable trauma of being raped, but 2) nevertheless, abortion hurts women, and 3)  the innocent baby is not responsible for his/her father’s crime – all as concisely put by the American Life League (HT: Matt Abbott):

The trauma of sexual assault is very real, and there is no intention here to downplay that. Abortion carries its own variety of trauma, however; women – even those who were victims of sexual assault – have reported years of physical, emotional and psychological difficulty following their abortions. Abortion did not solve their problem; it merely created additional ones.

There is also the very important fact that abortion takes the life of a living human being. The circumstances of conception may have been criminal, but the life of the newly-created human being is just as valuable as any other person’s. We do not put criminals’ innocent children to death in our culture; it simply isn’t done. It should not be done in this situa0tion, either.

Now, despite great pressure, Akin has decided to stay in the race. A few thoughts.

Foremost, as Erick Erickson wrote at RedState.com two days ago (before concluding Akin should drop), Akin is a hero:

The hyperbole from the left over Todd Akin has been disgusting. The man truly believes that children who are conceived out of rape should not be killed. The Bible teaches us that God raised us up from the dust of the earth and stitched us together in our mothers’ wombs.

When you believe that, as Congressman Akin does, then it is asking much to tear apart what God has stitched together.

Congressman Akin said something dumb and inarticulate. But God bless him for trying to explain why so many Christians do not believe in an exception for rape and believe that to have one could see an increase in the number of claims of rape that are not actual rapes (“legitimate” rapes in his words), but are claims of rape used to justify an abortion when abortion is otherwise prohibited.

It is truly unfortunate that Akin showed such political naiveté, but who among us hasn’t had a macaca moment? It’s ridiculously over-reactive to tell Akin to give up his hard-earned senate endeavor for this unfortunate comment, particularly since pro-life Americans own the majority. It’s as if no one knows it.

Furthermore, pro-life issues of the day – fetal pain and sex selection abortions – enjoy 70-80% support!

I internally scream at the unfairness of Akin’s situation. Democrats don’t abandon gaffers; Republicans do. Democrats unite on the abortion issue; Republicans don’t.  MSM ignores Democrat mistakes but magnifies those made by Republicans.  MSM ignores Democrat extremist  views while calling Republican mainstream views extremist. Liberal feminist crazy talk is considered the voice of reason and vice versa.

This debacle is just another reminder that pro-lifers fight a unique, two-front war. Rather than circle the wagons and stand united when controversy arises around the abortion issue, Republican elites run from it rather than do what Democrats do – only yell louder.

Republican elites don’t want to deal with abortion, while their counterparts relish such conversations. It doesn’t  matter how many times we tell Republicans life is a winning issue, they are uncomfortable with it, if not themselves pro-abortion. They cannot conquer a fear exacerbated by the liberal media that women will somehow be offended by pro-life talk.

Rather than blink and run, Republican elites should be turning the question around, as Rush said yesterday on his show, asking reporters whether they know Obama supports infanticide. National Right to Life has a good media advisory in this area, “Mainstream news media again subjects Republican pro-life positions to hyper-scrutiny and extrapolation, while ignoring President Obama’s positions on current legislation on late abortions and abortion for sex selection.”

There are any number of questions Republicans could raise to turn the tables. Do reporters know Planned Parenthood has been prosecuted in several states for failing to report child rape? Do they know PP has also been caught in a multi-state sting offering to help a pimp get underage abortions?

The proper response to this PR crisis would have been for Republican leaders to quickly organize a call with pro-life leaders to plan a united front and gather talking points. You know that is what Democrats would have done.

Rather, by abandoning Akin Republicans have invited scrutiny of themselves – their votes, their platform. (Jim Bopp, seriously?) In the end, it is the Republican establishment that is to blame for fanning the flames and for turning on pro-lifers – once again, as usual.

Pro-lifers must demand Republican leadership stand by us in times like this, just as their counterparts would.

Pro-lifers must now also give to Akin’s campaign, since the establishment has abandoned him. I like reading articles about our continued loyalty to him, like this and this. He’s asking for $3 apiece. Give more if you can.

Throughout history there have been lots of heroes. But only one of them was perfect.

[Photo of Akin via the Washington Post]