This afternoon a jury found former Democrat U.S. senator and presidential candidate John Edwards not guilty on one count of campaign finance fraud and deadlocked on five other counts, forcing the judge to declare a mistrial.

Edwards was accused of illegally using campaign donations to cover up an affair and illegitimate baby.

What gave the case against Edwards legs was that baby, Quinn.

Had Quinn been aborted, as Edwards’ former aide Andrew Young claims Edwards wanted, there likely would have been no case. Abortion covers up a lot of sins.

But thank God Quinn’s mother loved and protected her preborn daughter, and Quinn is here.

Some people don’t think about Quinn as a person, and that she is going to grow up. Although the circumstances of her birth are not her fault, she will someday learn the sordid details and have to work through several serious issues.

That’s why I was so happy Edwards had the foresight to mention Quinn today, with obvious affection, in his statement following the verdict.

While taking responsibility for his moral failures, Edwards recognized it was one of those very moral failures that resulted in Quinn, and he astutely took the opportunity to affirm her. I give him a lot of credit for that.

Edwards’ entire speech is worth watching, but he begins to talk about Quinn at 3:52.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nL0pWnGZwGo&feature=youtube_gdata_player[/youtube]

[Photo via the Associated Press]

UPDATE 7:25p: A breakdown of the votes:

• Voting yes: 226 Republicans and 20 Democrats (Altmire, Barrow, Boren, Cooper, Costello, Critz, Cuellar, Donnelly, Garamendi, Holden, Kissell, Lipinksi, Lynch, Matheson, McIntyre, Peterson, Rahall, Reyes, Ross of AR, and Shuler)
• Voting no: 161 Democrats and 7 Republicans (Amash, Bass of NH, Bono Mack, Dold, Hanna, Hayworth, and Paul)
• Absent: 8 Republicans (Burton, Fortenberry, Guinta, Lewis of CA, Mack, McCarthy of CA, Roby, and Young of FL) and 9 Democrats (Chandler, Doyle, Ellison, Heinrich, Napolitano, Pascrell, Rangel, Slaughter and Velazquez

2:37p: The heartbreaking, infuriating bottom line: The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act has failed. Vote tally:

TOTAL:
246 Yes
168 No

(2/3 majority was required for passage.)

GOP:
226 Yes
7 No

DEMOCRAT:
20 Yes
161 No

Read more at LifeNews.com.

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• At the Huffington Post, Cassie Farrell responds to a piece by Canadian abortion proponent Joyce Arthur:
  

  What Choice Joyce and her cronies need to understand is that their lies simply aren’t cutting it in Canada anymore. Instead of formulating a sound argument, they attack the legitimacy of the debate. However, the debate is on, and isn’t going away until the right to life for all Canadians is acknowledged and ensured.

• National Right to Life News points out the need for RH Reality Check’s Robin Marty to open mouth, insert foot. It’s amazing how the regular bloggers there like Marty and Jodi Jacobson have an incorrect understanding of what Roe v. Wade did. They assume it actually protects children/confers rights after viability as opposed to allowing states to pass laws. If the state doesn’t have a law on the books, there’s no protection:
  

  Marty writes, “In D.C., an abortion post-viability is allowable for the exact same reasons it is allowed under the established criteria in Roe v. Wade: life or health of the mother.” Let’s stop right there. Marty has just made what used to be known as a “schoolboy error.” (Are we still allowed to say that?) She apparently slipped into thinking that Roe v. Wade itself imposed some affirmative limitations on abortion — by which I mean, some limits that are constitutionally required and that therefore, somehow, are in force everywhere.

  But that premise is entirely erroneous. I am not aware of any attorney, on any side of the abortion issue, who has ever defended such an assertion.

  As far as I know (and I’ve done some reading on this subject), the U.S. Supreme Court has never held, in Roe v. Wade or any other ruling, that any legislative body is required to adopt a limitation on abortion, at any stage in pregnancy, with respect to any jurisdiction. Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, all other abortion-related Supreme Court decisions deal entirely with what limitations on abortion the Supreme Court will permit state, local governments, or Congress to apply to abortion.

• Michael Hiltzik hits back at the response from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine’s president and chairman to his original column lambasting their misleading ad campaigns. Hiltzik claims his characterization is fair and points to CIRM’s own ads to prove it:
  

  So let’s look at the record. It may be true that no ads for Proposition 71 used the term “miraculous cures,” but then neither did I. What did the ads promise, however? Several of them have been archived by UCLA, and here’s what we find.

  [The late actor Christopher] Reeve [pictured above with wife, Dana] taped an ad shortly before he died, in which he observed, “Stem cells have already cured paralysis in animals. Stem cells are the future of medicine.”

  Michael J. Fox taped an ad in which he urged, “Vote yes on 71, and save the life of someone you love.”

  Joan Samuelson, a leading Parkinson’s patient advocate, is shown in another ad asserting, “There are more Americans than I think we can count who are sick now, or are going to be sick in the future, whose lives will be saved by Prop. 71.” Shortly after the measure passed, Samuelson was appointed to the stem cell program’s board.

  Do these ads amount to promising “miracles”? Given that the essence of scientific research is that no one can predict the outcome, to assert as fact that “lives will be saved by Prop. 71” is plainly to promise something downright extraordinary, if not outright miraculous.

[Photo via LA Times]

by LauraLoo

Over-the-moon mommy Jessica Simpson proudly poses with daughter Maxwell in an exclusive People photo shoot.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0wfiH5Y8cM[/youtube]

Jessica was reportedly paid $800,000 for the exclusive photos, plus she stands to make almost $3,000,000 as she sheds her baby weight with the help of Weight Watchers.

Email LauraLoo with your Lunch Break suggestions.

This afternoon the House will vote on the Prenatal Discrimination Act, a federal ban against sex-selection abortion. A two-thirds majority vote is needed.

Following are Democrat congresspersons to focus on. If you live in their district, your call is urgently needed to request support for PRENDA:

Baca (CA-43) 202-225-6161
Barrow (GA-12) 202-225-3377
Bishop, S. (GA-02) 202-225-3631
Cardoza (CA-18) 202-225-6131
Chandler (KY-06) 202-225-4706
Cooper (TN-05) 202-225-4311
Costa (CA-20) 202-225-3341
Cuellar (TX-28) 202-225-1640
Doyle (PA-14) 202-225-2135
Langevin (RI-02) 202-225-2735
Lynch (MA-09) 202-225-8273
Matheson (UT-02) 202-225-3011
Michaud (ME-02) 202-225-6306
Neal, R. (MA-02) 202-225-6306
Reyes (TX-16) 202-225-4831
Ryan, T. (OH-17) 202-225-5261

Late Tuesday pro-abortion groups, including Planned Parenthood, of course, came out strongly against PRENDA. They’re trying to give pro-abortion congresspersons cover.

Yesterday during House floor debate, the following pro-life stalwarts spoke in favor of PRENDA. Click on the links to see their speeches):

·         Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) Opening & Closing

·         Rep. Sandy Adams (R-FL)

·         Rep. Steve King (R-IA)

·         Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY)

·         Rep. John Fleming (R-LA)

·         Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL)

·         Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)

·         Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ)

·         Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA)

Today pro-life group Live Action released a new undercover video showing Planned Parenthood’s flagship Margaret Sanger Center late-term abortion clinic on Manhattan Island in New York City help a pregnant mother determine if her baby was female so she could have a sex-selection abortion.

The video is second in a new series titled “Gendercide: Sex-Selection in America,” exposing the practice of sex-selective abortion in the United States and how Planned Parenthood and the rest of the abortion industry facilitate the selective elimination of preborn baby girls.

Since Live Action released its first video on Tuesday, Planned Parenthood has maintained to the press, “Gender bias is contrary to everything our organization works for daily in communities across the country.”

Planned Parenthood has a funny way of doing that. In the new video, Planned Parenthood social worker Randi Coun advises an LA actor posing as a pregnant mother of various tests to determine the gender of her baby in the late first or early second trimester.

“So if you were to have what’s called a CVS test, which is, do you know what that is?” Coun asks, referring to the genetic Chorionic Villus Sampling test. “It’s done between 11 and 13 weeks, so it is a test that you could do now.”

CVS tests have a risk of miscarriage of about 1 in 100, which Coun did not mention, and are typically done to test for genetic disorders.

Incredibly, Coun also reassures the woman late-term abortions are as safe as early, which is contrary to known facts about late-term abortions as well as Planned Parenthood’s own acknowledgement that “[t]he risks increase the longer you are pregnant,” certainly at 6 months.

But “an abortion at any stage up to 24 weeks is considered a safe procedure,” Coun claims. “It’s not that it’s unsafe, or that there’s a lot more risk involved, it’s just there’s more steps involved and it’s just a little more complicated.”

Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Center commits abortions up to 24 weeks of pregnancy and is the organization’s national headquarters. Photo, left, is of a preemie born at 24 weeks.

“I can tell you that here at Planned Parenthood we believe that it’s not up to us to decide what is a good or a bad reason for somebody to decide to terminate a pregnancy,” Coun adds concerning the woman’s request for a sex-selective abortion. Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards yesterday opposed a ban on sex-selective abortions on the grounds that it would “limit [a woman’s] choices as she makes personal medical decisions,” which sure sounds to me like endorsement of sex-selective abortions.

Here’s the video…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Fz2KLSxDzc&feature=youtube_gdata_player[/youtube]

Michigan Rep. John Conyers [pictured], the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said the bill “tramples (on) the rights of women under the guise of nondiscrimination, while doing absolutely nothing to provide women with needed resources for their babies, female and male.”

Citing opposition to the bill from groups such as the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Conyers said, “If this measure is passed into law, we will then require that medical and mental health professionals violate … doctor-patient confidentiality” and report suspected violations to law enforcement authorities.

~ Alan Silverleib, reporting on the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act to ban sex-selection abortions, CNN, May 30

[Photo via citizens4freedom.com]

Until now pro-abortion groups have opposed state and federal bans against sex selective abortions by simply denying they exist, for instance Jezebel only six days ago:

[I]n the U.S., there’s no evidence or noteworthy numbers to indicate that women are having abortions based on the sex of the infant….

Apparently, abortion industry leaders have decided they can no longer carry on the ruse. Public opinion is so persuaded against sex-selective abortion, the other side must have decided they have to enter the conversation in order to remain players and try to influence the outcome.

The first to fall was Guttmacher Institute in its Spring 2012 Policy Review, published sometime after May 1:

There is some evidence – although limited and inconclusive – to suggest that the practice may also occur among Asian communities in the United States….

[T]wo studies using 2000 U.S. census data to examine sex ratios among Chinese-, Indian- and Korean-American families found that although the ratio for first-born children in such families was normal, there was evidence of son preference in second- and third-order births, if the older children were daughters.

Then yesterday fell RH Reality Check:

Son preference, missing girls, sex selection: We may seek to label these Chinese or Indian issues, but they exist here in America. And with anti-choice crusaders desperate to destroy Planned Parenthood Federation of America, America’s leading provider of affordable reproductive health care for women, the purportedly spreading practice of sex-selective abortion is back in the news….

However, as birth order rises, apparently so does selection – at least, in certain ethnic groups. With U.S. 2000 Census data, researchers investigating Korean, Chinese, and Indian communities found that, after one girl, parents have as many as 1.17 boys per girl the second time. With two girls at home, this goes up to 1.51 boys per girl for the third child. These skewed ratios aren’t present among other ethnic groups in America.

Finally, NARAL in an email alert and petition drive launched today conceded:

Sex-Selection abortion is a real problem – and it needs to be addressed.

Of course, none of these groups think sex-selective abortions should be banned. But what is it they say, acknowledging a problem is the first step toward solving it?

[Graphic via RH Reality Check]