by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• The California Nurses Association is opposing legislation to make it legal in CA for nurse practitioners, nurse midwives and physicians assistants to perform abortions. There is currently a study at UC San Francisco Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health where 41 non-doctors are being trained to perform aspiration abortions.
• At the Charleston City Paper, Jack Hunter doesn’t get pro-choice vegans:
  

  What is it that is so precious about milk that it should be respected, but a fetus is something we can dispose of? What is it that is so sacred about cheese, but is nonexistent when it comes to the value of a human life? I simply do not get it. When the primary guiding philosophy behind your diet is a respect for life, it seems perverse to put human beings at the bottom of the food chain.

• Jane at the Abortion Monologues provides a great example of how some pro-choicers in Canada are almost completely unable to debate abortion. When a call for a government committee to study when human life begins leads to such a mindless, angry, unpersuasive and unreasonable monologue, it makes you wonder if someone like Jane really knows that the unborn are human beings but cares too much about abortion to let that inconvenient fact get in the way.

• One of Steven Brigham’s (pictured left) closed abortion clinics in Pennsylvania is hoping to re-open but the state doesn’t appear to be backing down:
  

  “Rose Health Services’ failure to have a physician on-site to perform abortion services and notify the department accordingly in a timely fashion is a violation of the law,” said Christine Cronkright, Health Department director of communications. “The Pennsylvania Department of Health stands by its actions in the April 17 letter and order revoking the registration.”

• At the Philadelphia Daily News Christine Flowers writes about the false idea that having an abortion is courageous or selfless:
  

  We can disagree about the law.

  We can disagree about the science.

  We can even disagree about the politics of reproductive autonomy.

  What we can’t do, though, is delude ourselves into believing that it takes more courage to destroy a growing fetus than it does to allow that child to be born. We can’t pretend that it is more selfless to use abortion as birth control than it is to give birth and then gift that child to loving, adoptive parents.

[Brigham photo via NRTL News]

by LauraLoo

Chuck Woolery, game show host and now political activist, visited Don and Roma of WLS 890AM Chicago.

I’ve always loved Chuck Woolery and, after hearing his political viewpoint, I now have another reason to love him.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV-RqPtT2PU[/youtube]

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

More from Chuck Woolery next month.

Email LauraLoo with your Lunch Break suggestions.

But in Girls, the abortion talk is the comic relief.

The show’s second episode, “Vagina Panic,” is partially set in a Manhattan health clinic. Shoshanna, Marnie, and Hannah have shown up to support their fourth friend, flighty, pregnant Jessa (she’s the Samantha of the group). But Jessa’s too flaky — and too frightened — to go to the clinic herself. She spends the afternoon drinking White Russians and hooking up with a stranger as her friends leave her increasingly angry messages like this: “Uh, hey. You’re pregnant when you don’t want to be. So you might want to come have your abortion now. Thanks.”

Instead of segregating humor from the episode’s central issue, Girls finds humor in that issue itself.

~ Hillary Busis comparing how HBO’s Girls and Sex In the City handled the abortion issue, Entertainment Weekly, April 23

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.

• Fletcher Armstrong responds to a recent article by Erin McCann opposing a Genocide Awareness Project display:
  

  Ms. McCann’s piece actually illustrates some of the very points we make with our GAP display….

  She notes that, “Isn’t it interesting how the male can do whatever he pleases, but the female must live with the consequence? Only the female is left with the decision between ‘right and wrong.’” Sadly true. Reminds me of something Mark Crutcher often says, “Abortion is something done by men, to women, for the benefit of men.” So many males — I cannot use the term “men” to describe such people — want sex without responsibility….

  But when cancer-causing birth-control hormones are passed out, who gets to ingest those? When the worst symptoms of STDs show up, who bears that burden? When somebody gets pregnant, which one is it? It’s always the woman.

  His response is often to threaten abandonment. It can be an overt threat or a thinly veiled one, such as, “It’s not my decision, it’s yours … Whatever you want to do.” In other words, “The decision… and especially the guilt that goes with it… are yours alone; I’m going to go hide somewhere until you get it taken care of.

• Abortion in Washington highlights a LifeSiteNews article on a Seattle fertility clinic that advertises sex-selective services in conjunction with IVF. Their ad (pictured left) seems to target a certain population, featuring photos of children dressed in ethnic garb.
• Down on the Pharm exposes President Obama’s “slush fund” in Medicare Advantage. $8B will be used to assure the program continues… until just after the November election:
  

  The current regime understands that if seniors lose this particular Medicare plan, and get funneled back into the standard plan, they’ll get upset and vote Obama out.

• Abstinence Clearinghouse says Tennessee legislators recently approved a bill that will require abstinence education to be taught in public schools:
  

  The bill was introduced to address Tennessee’s high teen pregnancy rate.

  Abstinence education has continued to gain momentum in the past decade. With new strains of STDs and unplanned pregnancies becoming more and more common among teens, many law makers see the need to teach adolescents abstinence. “Safe sex” isn’t safe. Abstinence from sexual activity is the only 100% way not to get pregnant or contract an STD.

• Big Blue Wave believes there is a right way and a wrong way to debate abortion online:
  

  When you debate abortion online, your purpose is not to convince the person you`re talking to. So DON’T EXPECT ANY MOVEMENT ON THEIR PART and that will lessen your frustration. Abortion supporters will cling to their opinion even in the face of facts and logic because they have a strong emotional reason for doing so. It’s not your job to be their personal psychologist. Don’t play arm chair psychologist and try to get them to spill the beans about their reasons. That doesn’t convince anyone.

  Your purpose is to persuade anyone who might be reading. Because online debates often have silent readers, either at the time of posting or later on when people find your discussion through search engines.

[Image via lifesitenews.com]

by LauraLoo

One nine-year-old boy loved arcade games so much he made his own from cardboard in his dad’s shop - and it now looks like his project could be enough to not only keep him amused for hours, but also pay for his university education.

Caine Monroy started with a single arcade-style game in the front of his father’s car part shop in Los Angeles.  Now the summer project has become a serious business and raised more than $62,000 towards future university fees.  A website has also been created to celebrate Caine’s unique arcade.

“Caine does not stop by an arcade without going in,” his father George said. “He loves tickets, playing games and prizes so it was only natural for him to build his own arcade.  He loves to see how things are built.  He takes all of his toys apart to see how they work. He can’t put them together again but he takes them apart.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQQQ7h2pRtI[/youtube]

Email LauraLoo with your Lunch Break suggestions.

[HT: Kelsey H.]

This was our last stop. This was it. We had those two embryos that we had banked prior to learning about the breast cancer, and with the medicine she was on (which meant Giuliana will have to wait years before trying to personally get pregnant), this was our last effort.

The prayers were answered.

~ Bill Rancic of reality shows Giuliana and Bill and The Apprentice, shares news of he and wife Giuliana’s pregnancy via the use of a surrogate, as quoted on Today, April 23

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• The Santa Fe New Mexican has a long article on retired abortionist Lucia Cies.
• The Washington Examiner reports that the vast majority of abortion clinics in Virginia will comply with the state’s recent law abortion clinic regulation law:
  

  Twenty of the 23 facilities affected by the new rules have already informed the state that they meet those new standards or would make the necessary changes to comply, according to license applications The Washington Examiner obtained through an open-records request.

  Of the other three that didn’t apply for a license, one already stopped providing abortions and two others didn’t have to meet the new standards because they plan to perform fewer than five first-trimester abortions a month.

  When the regulations were being considered, abortion advocates continually claimed the regulations would force numerous clinics to close.

  Abortion advocates are now claiming it will cost between $150,000 to $3 million to meet the regulations.

• Planned Parenthood has stopped distributing RU-486 abortion pills in Wisconsin because of a new law:
  

  It mandates that women having nonsurgical abortions visit the same doctor three times and that doctors ensure the woman is having the procedure voluntarily and without coercion. Failure to follow those requirements could result in felony charges against the doctor….

  Planned Parenthood president and chief executive officer Teri Huyck said because of confusion over the new law, nonsurgical abortions are being suspended. Planned Parenthood will continue to provide surgical abortions at its clinics in Madison, Milwaukee and the Appleton area, its leaders said.

  “The added risks of felony penalties for physicians who provide medication abortion are unnecessary and intended to threaten a physician’s ability to provide women with medication abortion,” Huyck said.

  Or maybe it’s just not cost-effective for the abortionist to see a woman three times.

• An Indian woman who was forced into 6 sex-selection abortions is exposing abortion and sonography clinics:
  

  [Amisha] Bhatt had already filed a police case against her husband and in-laws for harassment. But in order to expose this practice Bhatt filed RTI applications with the health officers of two districts seeking details about her abortion case and other such cases. The explosive information exposed a nefarious nexus between gynecologists and sonography clinics involved in illegal abortion and sex determination tests. Bhatt found that her name did not figure in the elaborate list of patients who had undergone sonography tests.

  “This meant that the government had no information on the tests conducted on me, as mandated under the PCPNDT Act. There may have been many such women like me. The doctors were maintaining a secret list of patients on which sex determination tests were being conducted,” says Bhatt.

  Due to Bhatt’s expose, licenses of two doctors’ were cancelled for malpractice and the state government reviewed the requirements for doctors to submit their monthly reports.

[Image via abortionpills.co.cc]

by LauraLoo

The First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the government from infringing upon the freedom of speech, the freedom of association and the freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Speech is language and other forms of expression; and association and petition connote physical presence in reasonable proximity to those of like mind and to government officials, so as to make your opinions known to them.

The Declaration of Independence recognizes all three freedoms as stemming from our humanity. So, what happens if you can speak freely, but the government officials at whom your speech is aimed refuse to hear you? And what happens if your right to associate and to petition the government is confined to areas where those of like mind and the government are not present? This is coming to a street corner near you.

Last month President Obama signed into law HR347  (and its companion Senate bill S1794), a.k.a. the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011.  This law permits Secret Service agents to designate any place they wish as a place where free speech, association and petition of the government are prohibited. And it permits the Secret Service to make these determinations based on the content of speech.

Political speech is in the highest category of protected speech. This is not about drowning out the President in the Oval Office. This is about letting him know what we think of his work when he leaves the White House. This is speech intended to influence the political process.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqYUdZfE5Ww[/youtube]

Email LauraLoo with your Lunch Break suggestions.

[HT: Ken the Birther]