The angel added, “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.” The angel of the LORD also said to her: “You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.”

~ Angel of the Lord speaking to Hagar, Egyptian maidservant to Sarai, who had been impregnated by Sarai’s husband Abram. And so was birthed the Arab nations. Genesis 16:10-12, New International Version

[Graphics, via Rorate Caeli, are of “Nun (?), the 14th letter of the Arabic alphabet (the equivalent of letter N in our Roman alphabet)… the first letter of the word Nasara (????? : Nazarenes), the way Muslims have called Christians since the beginning of their invasion of the Christian world in the 7th century. Christians under Muslim rule never called themselves thus, since the intent of Muslims was to portray Christians as a contemptible and disobedient sect. In their genocidal physical elimination of Christians from the Mesopotamian city of Mosul, Muslim terrorists [ISIS] marked each Christian-owned institution and building with this letter, for the extermination of holdouts and expropriation of their belongings.”]

Click to enlarge…

This photo comes by an interesting route. Pro-choice author Robin Marty was in Chicago yesterday doing research for a story, and part of that process involved interviewing pro-life hero Joe Scheidler.

Robin brought photographer Wendi Kent to take professional pictures to go with the story, and I was happy to see they posted one on Twitter, above.

As an aside, I’ve become acquainted with Robin over the course of time, and I love Ann and Joe (and, in fact, we are now sort of related, since my daughter and son-in-law just named their newest addition Scheidler Richard Peter Moore, after Joe).

So I took a day trip yesterday from the southwest side to the north side to say hi to everybody, which was enjoyable.

Joe is a pro-life icon. If I could emulate anyone’s temperament, it would be his - polite to all, kind, funny, deeply committed Christian and family man, and an unswervingly strong and persuasive pro-life apologist. This was a great photo that I think captured all that.

https://twitter.com/JessicaValenti/status/497790148663582720

~ Pro-abortion writer Jessica Valenti on Twitter

On August 2 pro-life abolitionist Caleb Head, a member of Abolish Human Abortion, observed a Chick-fil-A catering truck making a delivery to Houston Women’s Clinic. According to Head, this abortion mill is the busiest in Houston and 4th busiest in the country….

AHA initiated phone calls and online activism to admonish this Chick-fil-A, located at 3101 West Holcombe Avenue, to repent and never do this again.

Head’s father, Pastor Scott Head, wrote a letter to CFA Holcombe’s owner, Juli Salvagio, who responded:

Our restaurant was simply fulfilling a catering request. Our goal is to serve great food with genuine hospitality to all guests. We have no political or social agenda.

We strive to serve everyone with honor, dignity and respect.

Pastor Head, in turn, responded:

[T]he ruthless killing of babies by abortion is not a political or social matter, it is a barbaric practice that all decent people ought to be concerned about.

You represent a company that has a particular learning and reputation toward Christian ethics, whether you are a Christian or not. Your company, though you are an independent owner, still represents the founder’s ethic. Knowing other independent franchise owners personally, I know they are free to do as they wish, but wise owners also support the general business and brand perception. Chick-fil-A will surely suffer, and your business in particular, if you stand by and give Nazi-esque answers when confronted about supporting abortionists like Rosenfeld’s HWC.If you remember, the Nazis who serviced the holocaust perpetrators also said “we are simply fulfilling a business order.” Yet these same businesses (like BASF, who supplied Zyklon B to gas Jews, for example) were held responsible by courts for war crimes.

Here’s AHA’s pictorial position:

In this video Caleb shows a clip of the original confrontation with the Chick-fil-A delivery person, who it turns out was manager Robert L.

In the video Caleb refutes complaints he has received from Christians, such as that we are instructed in Proverbs 25:21 to give our enemies food and water if they are hungry and thirsty, pointing out abortionist Bernard Rosenfeld and his staff are by no means starving or dying of thirst.

What do you think Chick-fil-A should have done when getting the catering call from an abortion clinic? How far should Christian and/or pro-life-owned companies go to avoid complicity with abortion?

For that matter, how far should we as individual pro-lifers go to avoid aiding and abetting abortion?

Coincidentally, here’s video via Life Dynamics of a different caterer who turned around and left when he realized he was delivering to the Houston Planned Parenthood.

Be sure to take the poll as well as lend your thoughts…

[HT: Andy Moore, lesforlife.blogspot.com, and saynsumthn.wordpress.com]

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

• Wesley J. Smith says the bioethics community is finally beginning to criticize artificial reproduction techniques like IVF – but not for the reasons you might think:
  

  But now, in the ever more radical Journal of Medical Ethics, Cristina Richie, of Boston College’s Department of Theology, argues that these technologies should be regulated to limit the number of children – called “carbon legacies,” as a means of fighting climate change.

  Smith opines:
  

  I don’t know if Richie coined the term, but it is ridiculous. Children are children, not bundles of carbon producers…. No, grim is the exploitation of surrogates in biological colonialism and the eugenic impetus that has sunk its fangs deep into the heart of the industry. In the face of such human objectification, sorry, I can’t get upset about global warming.

• Reflections of a Paralytic highlights a growing craze from GoFundMe – funding IVF treatments with prizes attached for each level. The New York Post noted two of the campaigns, with one (prizes pictured left) standing out as a perfect example of exploiting children even before they are conceived.
• ProWomanProLife quotes research linking certain types of birth control pills to an increased risk of breast cancer. What pesky timing, when the abortion industry is pivoting from abortion talk to contraception talk:
  

  Women taking newer formulations of birth control pills could face a 50 percent or higher increased risk of breast cancer than those not using oral contraceptives, according to a study by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center scientists.

• Pro-Life Wisconsin is happy to announce the rescinding of a free speech restriction in the capital city:
  

  Citing a lawsuit by Madison pro-life advocates, and reacting to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in McCullen v. Coakley striking down a Massachusetts law requiring pro-life witnesses and sidewalk counselors in the public way to remain 35 feet from the entrance to an abortion clinic, the Madison Common Council last night unanimously repealed their own anti-speech zones created by an ordinance passed in March.

• At National Review, Michael J. New discusses the pro-choice movement’s effort to rebrand themselves as something other than “pro-choice.” New believes the reason for this is that they are “struggling to find messaging that will engage young voters, while pro-lifers continue to make quiet inroads among young adults.”

• Saynsumthn’s Blog comments on the announced winners of the Excellence in Media “Maggie Award” from Planned Parenthood, named after their eugenicist founder, Margaret Sanger. One winner, pro-choice feminist writer and NARAL board member Jessica Valenti, called for a “safe sex f***-in” inside Hobby Lobby’s “glitter aisle[s]” (photo and tweet pictured right) following the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the company’s right to refuse providing abortifacient drugs in employee insurance packages.

  Another winner? Cosmopolitan, that paragon of feminist empowerment, with their plethora of articles on how to sexually please men. (Standards for the award must be pretty low.)

• At our newest blogroll addition, the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, Jonathon Van Maren debunks an article written by the aforementioned “safe sex Hobby Lobby f***-in” supporter Jessica Valenti (who has time to tweet but apparently no time for research), in which she claims the pro-life movement is dying:
  

  Basically, Valenti claims every pro-life tactic—from sidewalk counselling (which features evil bullies that, if you listen to her, closely resemble Disney villains), to Crisis Pregnancy Centres (where quack science such as embryology is used), to legislation restricting abortion clinics (because we don’t care for butcher shops like Gosnell’s House of Horrors, or any other dead-baby-producing establishment) — is a sign of demented desperation.

  Actually, based on our track record thus far, it is simply a sign of smart strategy combined with a helpful thing called “the truth,” which in regards to abortion, can be found in any embryology textbook which Valenti has not read. If she wants to write about the pro-life movement, she might want to actually take a closer look at our movement so she knows what’s going on. She’d still be outraged, sure. But she’d be less bewildered.

  One final point: The only way the anti-abortion movement will “end” is if abortion “ends” and our culture stops glorifying as a right this barbaric version of in-utero infanticide. Which isn’t all bad for Ms. Valenti, I suppose. She will have occasion to write many more such columns.

[Valenti photo via times.co.uk, Tweet via ]

by Kelli

The TODAY Show recently aired a piece discussing milestones in fetal development, with Columbia University psychiatrist and fetal expert Dr. Bill Fifer even stating, “Everything that a newborn does, a fetus has pretty much done already.”

[youtube]http://youtu.be/Nv-5_5p9MH4[/youtube]

In a similar vein, another recent study revealed that newborns may recognize nursery rhymes that they heard while still in the womb.

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: Brad F.]

by Carder

It’s getting great reviews because it’s a serious issue, but you make it lighthearted, you make it funny….

Good for you.

~ Late-night comedian Jimmy Fallon complimenting actress Jenny Slate on her performance in the abortion comedy Obvious Child (which was actually a box-office bomb), via Newsbusters, August 4

To no one’s surprise, U.S. District Court Judge Myron Thompson, pictured right, ruled on August 4 that Alabama’s law forcing abortionists to have admitting privileges at local hospitals was unconstitutional.

This is the same judge, after all, who forced the removal of the Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama capitol building. He’s a devout liberal, handpicked by the abortion industry to rule on this case. Noted Dr. Michael New at First Things:

However, this development is not unexpected. Planned Parenthood Southeast shopped for a sympathetic judge and found one in Thompson - an appointee of Jimmy Carter who frequently rules against pro-life legislation.

The abortion industry claims such a law would force three of the state’s five remaining abortion clinics to close.

Ironically, two of them are presently closed anyway, by no one’s doing but their own.

Planned Parenthood Birmingham’s clinic shut down in December 2013 after one of its nurses was caught selling RU-486 in the parking lot and the entire staff was fired. (Read more juicy details on this in Thompson’s decision, beginning at page 152.)

Alabama Women’s Center in Huntsville closed in June because it couldn’t meet new regulations requiring the state’s abortion clinics to follow the same building requirements as ambulatory surgical centers. The clinic is trying to move to a new location.

Yet, even abortion proponents are not jumping for joy by this favorable decision. Noted Think Progress:

It is an open question, however, whether Thompson’s decision will survive further review. Thompson’s opinion will appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, a court which includes some very conservative judges. Moreover, even if it upholds Thompson’s decision, the conservative Fifth Circuit recently upheld a similar Texas law. When federal appeals courts divide in similar cases, the Supreme Court often steps in to resolve the dispute.

If the justices do step in, that is probably bad news for Team Choice. Justice Anthony Kennedy, the ostensible swing vote in abortion cases, has not cast a pro-choice vote in the last 22 years.

It does appear likely that the ultimate decision about laws requiring abortionists to have hospital privileges will be made by the Supreme Court, since lower courts have split on allowing them to go forward. The Guardian explains:

Similar laws have been blocked by federal courts in Kansas and Wisconsin [and Mississippi], while they have taken effect in Missouri, North Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.

There’s more to know about  Supreme Court swing voter Anthony Kennedy, pictured right. Thompson ruled that a law forcing abortionists to play by the same rules as legitimate doctors would create an “undue burden” to abortion access:

Indeed, the court is convinced that, if this requirement would not, in the face of all the evidence in the record, constitute an impermissible undue burden, then almost no regulation, short of those imposing an outright prohibition on abortion, would.

The “undue burden” threshold has been used to both uphold and strike down admitting privilege laws.

From where did the concept of an “undue burden” t0 abortion arise? It came from the Supreme Court’s 1992 Planned Parenthood v Casey decision. Who wrote that decision? Anthony Kennedy. An August 6 memo from the Southeast Law Institute, which I recommend reading, notes:

Depending on what the Eleventh Circuit does, these cases will provide an excellent opportunity for the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit the abortion issue, which it has not done in a long time. With the present makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court, whatever opinion will be written will be a five-four decision, with Justice Kennedy being the swing vote. Kennedy wrote the Casey decision and we would be hopeful he would take offense at using his “undue burden” reasoning to diminish women’s healthcare.

[HT for Southeast Law Institute memo: Fr. Terry Gensemer of CEC for Life]