Caption: “Joseph Boyd and his wife Lauren Boyd, who inspired his painting, ‘Bliss'”

Management at the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Memphis, Tennessee, decided they needed to class up their act. Abortion just isn’t chic on its own.

Apparently unaware of the phrases, “putting lipstick on a pig,” which means to “mak[e] superficial or cosmetic changes [in] a futile attempt to disguise the true nature of a product,” and ”whitewashed tombs,” which means to “look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean,” Planned Parenthood commissioned original artwork to beautify the lobby and several rooms in the clinic.

Did Planned Parenthood order artwork for the ceilings of procedure rooms, so aborting mothers might distract themselves from the reality of what they were doing? If so, it went without saying in the newsletter. But this particular Planned Parenthood goes to a lot of trouble to avoid any reference to the A-word. Note the following promo by Planned Parenthood of Greater Memphis makes no mention of the procedure by which it slaughters babies:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/LZL1yPExyMo[/youtube]

Interesting factoid: Planned Parenthood’s art budget was $25,000, the approximate value of 50 murdered children.

Caption: “Artist Kia Lola with her word #4”

Planned Parenthood is conducting art tours, how lovely. Contact info in the newsletter.

Caption: “Artist Jermel ‘Ziggy’ Tucker and his work ‘Viberian Sun'”

Other artists who sold work to Planned Parenthood’s Lipstick on a Pig Project included Nathan Black, Alisa Botto, Jenn Brandt, Traci Brothers-McDaniel, Sean Davis, Maria Ferguson, Ron Fondaw, Matt Ivey, Chip Pankey, April Pierce, Jack Robinson Archive, and Monty Shane. Give them a hand – Planned Parenthood should have several.

Hey, didn’t Hitler collect art? Why yes, he did, what a coincidence.

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

• Culture Campaign reports on a new study from Northwestern University which “compar[ed] the birth rates of abortion advocates to the rest of Americans” and “conclude[d] that the shift in public opinion from pro-choice to pro-life since Roe v. Wade is the result of a demographic shift: Pro-abortion women don’t have as many children, or perhaps none.”

• Big Blue Wave says Canadian pro-life sidewalk counselor Linda Gibbons has again been arrested for standing on the sidewalk in front of an abortion clinic holding her sign and pamphlets. Apparently, this action warranted an over-the-top response from police, who arrived “in four cruisers, as well as three Garda World security cars and [with] two sheriff’s officers, to take the diminutive grandmother into custody at around 11:30 a.m., some two-and-a-half hours after she first appeared at the site, pacing back and forth with pamphlets in hand.”

BBW responds to the arrest:

That so many police officers and security were needed to arrest this little old lady is laughable. What, they expected a riot? Has she ever resisted arrest? Has she ever made a fuss? You’re a joke, Pro-Choice. Your injunction is a joke. Your fear of free speech is a joke. I’m glad Linda Gibbons is making a laughing stock out of you.

• American Life League’s Judie Brown has some strong words for a society that would have the audacity to support a pro-abortion ad featuring a mother and her child:
  

  The young mother and her daughter look lovingly into the camera as the mother explains that she wants her daughter to have the same “choices” she has had in her lifetime. This young mother wants her daughter to be able to decide to choose the abortion of a child in the future because she, the mother, could have aborted her daughter if that had been her decision. The choice is what is important, she is saying, not what the result of the choice could be — life or death of a human being.My question is this: How have we as a society come to a point in our cultural attitudes where aborting a baby is something so commonplace that opposition — even politically motivated, weak opposition — is viewed as radical, extreme, and out of step with mainstream America?…

  If this is what we have become as a society, how can we rail against the atrocities of groups such as ISIL. Are we any better?

• Live Action revisits Planned Parenthood’s “Take Care Down There” website in light of the new information about the organization’s questionable encouragement of risky sexual behavior and BDSM practices among teens.

• Clinic Quotes shares remarks from abortionist and OB/GYN, Marciana Wilkerson (who apparently retired well; pictured right with husband Dwight Ford). Wilkerson reveals how she deliberately hid her abortion practice from people:
  

  What we did to protect me in private practice was, if someone called and asked for an abortion on the phone and she wasn’t one of our patients, the staff politely told her that I didn’t perform that service…. But if they knew who she was, they bring her in and I’d speak to her face-to-face. There was a big need for it; women would usually come and say “can you refer me to someone?” And they were thrilled when they found out I could offer the service and not send them out.

• Euthanasia Prevention Coalition posts a timely anti-euthanasia commentary by Wesley J. Smith. To literally die of thirst – as in the case of the Yazidi in Iraq at the hands of ISIS, or in the case of Terri Schindler Schiavo – is, says Smith, “an awful, horrific death.” He quotes Washington Post health writer Larry Bernstein:
  

  The body is about 60 percent water, and… if it’s not replaced over time and dehydration becomes severe, cells throughout the body will begin to shrink as water moves out of them and into the blood stream, part of the body’s efforts to keep the organs in fluid….Changes in mental status will follow, including confusion and ultimately coma…. As the brain becomes smaller, it takes up less room in the skull and blood vessels connecting it to the inside of the cranium can pull away and rupture. Without water… [k]idney failure will soon lead to disastrous consequences and ultimately death as blood volume continues to fall and waste products that should be eliminated from the body remain.

  Smith remarks that in light of this information, we should think of those like Terri Schiavo:

  Oh, and notice what [Dr. Jeffrey] Berns said about the size of the brain after dehydration: Terri’s shrunken brain was touted as proof she could feel nothing. Remember?

  People in cognitively disabled conditions may not be able to cry out and beg for food–although I know of at least one case where that happened – because they don’t have the ability. But that doesn’t mean on the inside, unless given powerful drugs – Terri Schiavo wasn’t given that courtesy – they aren’t feeling the same pain as those poor people on the Iraq mountain.

[Gibbons photo via LifeSiteNews; Wilkerson/Ford photo via Facebook]

by Hans Johnson

President Barack Obama notoriously entered the political stage with his fervent opposition to the Born Alive Infants Protection Act as an Illinois state senator. A few years later as President, he did little to change the perception of his immaturity when he made a clumsy attempt at self-deprecating humor on national television.

Our own Jill Stanek was met with Obama’s cold-hearted indifference when she presented testimony before him about how she refused to allow an aborted alive, dying baby boy with Down syndrome to die alone in Christ Hospital, where she worked as a labor and delivery nurse.

At a White House tribute to the very Special Olympics he used as a joke, one guest was Tim Harris. The 28-year-old man with Down Syndrome has been notable for opening Tim’s Place in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The popular restaurateur is known for greeting his patrons not with just a smile, but a hug. When the President asked him for one of his famous hugs, most saw it as heartwarming. But others in the know could find it only cringe-worthy….

[youtube]http://youtu.be/NOI3Ia8W6uU[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: Susie Allen]

by Kelli

Still, judges’ willingness to step outside the abortion frame and to weigh, from that broad perspective, whether the abortion right has become unduly burdened is something new and potentially of great value in the struggle to preserve women’s reproductive freedom.

Even in the face of cynical and unrelenting political attack, the right to abortion can become stronger the more tightly it is stitched into the constitutional fabric, the more that smart and gutsy judges are willing to treat it as what it is, a right like any other.

~ Linda Greenhouse, discussing the recent decision by a judge to nullify Alabama’s Women’s Health and Safety Act, “which required doctors who performed abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital,” New York Times opinion page, August 6

[Photo via debate.org]

It’s too early to tell whether pro-abortion world is imploding, but there sure have been plenty of fireworks lately.

I’ve written two posts in recent days on a new phenomenon – abortion groups publicly challenging the big kahuna, Planned Parenthood, something heretofore unheard of.

In that case the charge was racism. Since then it appears the floodgate has opened. Now add a complaint by pro-abortion Exhale’s Aspen Baker, who singled out Planned Parenthood for its “narrow view” ignoring abortion regret, and a complaint by California NOW for Planned Parenthood getting sidetracked on voter ID laws.

I’ve simply never seen anything like this. Abortion groups are usually very good about keeping their fights internal.

In addition, abortion groups are now publicly uniting against one of their own, Stop Patriarchy. The group is being blackballed for a number of fascinating reasons, foremost that Stop Patriarchy opposes porn and prostitution as degrading to women (because everyone knows they’re not), and uses slavery language (saying “forced pregnancy is female enslavement” and hosting a “Freedom Ride” in Texas).

Led by Texans for Reproductive Justice, abortion proponents further complain that Stop Patriarchy is terrorizing them, boo-hoo, “us[ing] intimidation and disruption to upset and silence those who disagree with them,” and that Stop Patriarchy [warning: link vulgar] “hijack[ed] the Texas filibuster anniversary party” to siphon donations away from other groups.

Horrors, Stop Patriarchy is also Islamophobic (because being forced to don burqas - and having one’s nose cut off if giving any lip about it – is so worthy of feminist defense), homophobic and transphobic (for not making an exception in its opposition to porn for queer or alternative porn), and is affiliated with Communists (as if liberals don’t share the same beliefs, hello, Occupy Wall Street, although it is interesting that terrorist Bill Ayers signed Stop Patriarchy’s ”Stop Forced Motherhood” petition).

Whatever, I say have at it. The more infighting the better, obviously.

I will say as an objective observer that Stop Patriarchy rallies are a bit embarrassing. The group has an apparent penchant for the never-ending echo-chant…

[youtube]http://youtu.be/N-fnbZ_E5F8[/youtube]

That video was shot at an August 7 Stop Patriarchy rally in Austin, Texas, with an epic counter-protest by Love of Truth Ministries and Created Equal.

All of these episodes point to another problem within the abortion movement, that of being forced by political correctness to take up an array of causes aside from abortion – LGBQT (note the other side no longer uses the term “pregnant woman,” which offends transgender folk, but instead says “pregnant person”), pro-defense of any religion not Christian, prostitution, porn, global warming, environmentalism, voter ID, fair wages, and tampon justice, to name just some.

Meanwhile, the pro-life movement remains focused like a laser beam on blocking the culture of death, the leading culprit of which is abortion.

Abortion advocates try their best to divert our attention away from abortion and life issues. Sure, most of us are personally involved in related issues, but as a movement we are not distracted.

Again, have at it, pro-aborts. Dissension and dilution are good.

[HT for petition: Saynsumthn’s Blog; top photo via Houston Press; second photo, of “Broadband Guerrilla Girls” performing at a Stop Patriarchy rally, via ggbb.org; bottom photo via revcom.us]

by Kelli

At Today’s Parent, mom of two Tara McCallan describes becoming a mom to her baby girl, Reid Layne McCallan, nicknamed “Pip” (short for Pipsqueak), and finding out three days later that her daughter had Down syndrome. But her devastation gave way to joy and gratitude for the beauty that she sees in Pip.

Tara’s blog, Happy Soul Project, won an Indie88 radio billboard contest, with Pip’s picture larger than life, displayed at Bay & Bloor in downtown Toronto, Canada:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/PQA27trhfYA[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: Susie Allen]

by Carder

The main starting point for writing this book - using abortion as the medical subject that I was looking at - was that as a novelist, I was very interested in interrogating what it is that all of us feel we can’t say to people. And the idea that I came up with was that a young woman of reproductive age who was performing abortions for a living instead of having babies would be the most stigmatized and difficult story to tell that a woman could possibly tell.

So, I actually came to the subject matter of abortion more from that point of view than because I had any particular ax to grind about abortion politically.

~ Novelist Gabriel Weston explaining the starting point for her new book about the life of a fictitious abortionist, Dirty Work, NPR, August 9

Good morning, and happy 14th birthday to our oldest grandson Gabriel! Sad that on this day I have to spotlight how fast the world is spinning out of control. Here were my top five six favorite political cartoons this week. Be sure to vote for your fav in the poll at the bottom of the post!

by Michael Ramirez at Townhall.com, Iraq…

 by Nick Anderson at GoComics.com, Afghanistan…

 by Glenn Foden at Townhall.com, Gaza…

 a twofer by Lisa Benson at Townhall.com, more Gaza, and “As the World Burns”…

 by Gary Varvel at Townhall.com, Russia…