Last week I noted the youthful pro-life glow so evident at the Supreme Court  when we were celebrating the Hobby Lobby decision that a photo of one of the our groups ended up in Cosmopolitan.

Pro-life movement doesn’t kill its young

Dave Weigel at Slate also noted the phenomenon - with a twinge of jealousy perhaps? “The abortion rights protesters ran the square, with their most camera-friendly interns and staffers lofting signs….”

So here’s another – of many – exuberant victory shots, this one via Reuters. (click all photos to enlarge)…

Police protect abortion

On the flip side, Reuters posted another photo steeped in irony – police protecting Planned Parenthood, the United States’ largest abortion provider, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s buffer zone decision. This ruling freed pro-life advocates to once again approach mothers planning to kill their babies with a message of hope and help.

I expect this photo will end up in the Abortion Holocaust Museum some day…

On the implied topic of violence, here’s a must read post, “Beyond buffer zones: the risky business of pro-life activism.”

What a week, eh? Don’t forget when you worship today to thank God for His mercy in protecting the religious freedom of American business owners through the Supreme Court’s June 30 Hobby Lobby/Conestoga Wood decision, which also affirmed Life.

Here were my top five seven favorite political cartoons on that topic. Be sure to vote for your fav in the poll at the bottom of this post!

by Rick McKee at Cagle.com…
 by Stilton Jarlsberg at HopeNChangeCartoons.com…

 by Chip Bok at Townhall.com…

 by Glenn McCoy at Townhall.com…

 by Walt Handelsman at GoComics.com…

by Gary Varvel at  Townhall.com…

 by Joe Liccar at EditorialCartoonists.com…

As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do.

~ I Peter 1:14-15, New International Version

Monday’s Hobby Lobby decision is part of a deeper trend: even as Obamacare worked to expand access to contraceptives, decisions by both the courts and state governments have left American women with less access to reproductive health care than they did four years ago.

Since 2010, states have moved aggressively to restrict access to abortion and taken new steps to defund family planning programs. Advocates on both sides of the issue describe the wave of changes as unprecedented.

~ Sarah Kliff, “It’s not just Hobby Lobby: the pro-life movement is winning,” Vox.com, July 2

[Photo via Vox]

[UPDATE 7/6 7:45p: Interesting… just found another article on this same vein at The Daily Beast, “Ten Reasons Women Are Losing While Gays Keep Winning,” July 6]

AllahPundit at HotAir.com poses this as a political question: Should the GOP support over-the-counter sales of birth control pills?

I’d like to ask the same of pro-lifers. Be sure to take the poll at the bottom of this post.

To boil AllahPundit’s thoughts down, now that the Supreme Court has ruled closely held for-profit corporations do not have to pay for abortion-causing contraceptives, the Obama administration could force insurance companies to provide them “free” (spread the cost among all insurance payees) or force taxpayers to foot the bill (actually, more of the bill we already foot through so-called “family planning” funding).

So why not just make contraceptive pills available over-the-counter, i.e., without a prescription? If the much higher dosed morning-after pills are now available OTC, why not “morning-before” pills? This would simply alleviate the HHS Mandate mess.

Policy reasons to support OTC contraceptives

Ben Domenech at The Federalist thinks such a move would be good policy:

There are a number of objections to this, but I find them to largely amount to unconvincing paternalism. The chief argument advanced is that standard oral contraceptives mess with hormones and have all sorts of side effects. This is, of course, true! But: dangerous side effects are rampant within all sorts of other over the counter drugs. Women can think for themselves and make decisions with their doctor and pharmacist about what drugs they want to take….

It’s obvious why libertarians like the idea of OTC birth control. Conservatives should like it because it removes the responsibility for redistributive payment from themselves while demonstrating that yes, they really aren’t about banning things or preventing access to birth control. And liberals should like it because it will lower the drop-out rate, which is currently largely driven by the requirement to re-up the prescription as much as every few months. The American College of OB-GYNs supports it….

Political reasons to support OTC contraceptives

Philip Klein at the Washington Examiner thinks the move would be politically savvy on the part of Republicans:

It would make it a lot more difficult for Democrats to portray the GOP as being only interested in obstructing Democrats rather than supporting their own ideas, and harder to accuse Republicans of being broadly against access to birth control…

If Democrats oppose the move, they’ll have to explain why they want to force women to go through their doctors to obtain birth control and make it harder for uninsured women to gain access.

Moral reasons to oppose OTC contraceptives

The major con against approving of OTC hormonal contraception from a pro-life perspective is it might be to tacitly endorse wider distribution of abortion drugs.

A con from a pro-woman perspective would be that making birth control pills available without seeing a doctor decreases the likelihood girls and women will get proper screening before taking hormonal contraceptives, which are contraindicated for a variety of reasons. Such a move would also decrease the likelihood of proper preventative care, such as PAP smears and breast exams.

Cons from a pro-family perspective would be that wider availability of contraceptives might increase sexual promiscuity as well as aid and abet sexual perpetrators.

The Planned Parenthood factor

It will be interesting to see how Planned Parenthood comes down on this idea.

Seems to me making hormonal contraceptives available OTC would severely cut into its profit margin. Women would no longer need appointments to get contraceptive pills, nor would they need the Planned Parenthood middleman to purchase them. Wonder if this is one reason Planned Parenthood has begun pushing IUDs. [UPDATE 7/6 5:30p: Looks like ‘m on to something. Robin Marty, Truth-Out.org, July 5: “Of course, conservatives really want OTC contraceptives not because they think people should have the ability to prevent pregnancy, but because they hope that would put Planned Parenthood out of business. Once again, that is always the end goal.]

Your thoughts?

[Bottom photo via Planned Parenthood]

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

• Right to Life of Michigan reminds Hillary Clinton – as she rambles incoherently about the Hobby Lobby decision that she opposes – that her own version of a 1994 healthcare bill included conscience protections:
  The 1994 legislation gave “any employer” an exemption from purchasing health care that covered “abortion or other services” if “the employer objects to such services on the basis of a religious belief or moral conviction.”

• At Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, Reggie Littlejohn tells how a WRWF undercover field worker learned of the potential coercive abortion of a full-term baby girl. They were able to tell the mother of their “Save a Girl” program:
  Our fieldworker reassured her that we are helping other families keep their girls too because we believe that girls matter just as much as boys. We offered to give the family a monthly stipend for a year, to help them support their new daughter. With our help, Bao Yu’s mother was able to stand against the cultural tide of son-preference and give birth to precious baby Bao Yu [pictured left].
• Real Choice recalls her history with journalist Diane Sawyer, who once labeled a bombshell of a story about an abortionist as a “non-story”:
  After the allegations of patient A.A. became public, a warrant was issued for [Dr. Lawson] Akpulonu’s arrest on charges of rape. He fled. His whereabouts are still unknown. He and his facility remain “a non-story,” very much like the way the “house of horrors” Kermit Gosnell was running in Pennsylvania was dismissed by Sawyer-caliber journalists as just “a local story” and not worth a second glance on their part.Diane Sawyer, if she’d had a shred of journalistic integrity, would have skulked off in vile disgrace after the Akpulonu story broke no thanks to her. Instead, she continued to pick and choose what the public should know about for decades. Her departure from the newsroom is a long overdue good riddance to bad rubbish.

• Secular Pro-Life points out that the real war on women is happening with the help of Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, which are supporting two Wisconsin abortionists who can’t manage to obtain admitting privileges. Abortionists Dennis Christensen and Bernard Smith (both pictured) deserve to be poster-children for the necessity of abortion facility inspections:
  Christensen’s Rockford, Illinois… was inspected on September 15, 2011, when inspectors found that all three of the abortion rooms “failed to ensure a sanitary environment.” Surgical instruments were not sanitized, and “brown substances” were found on surgical equipment and gloves. Inspectors also discovered that Christensen had no hospital privileges and failed to have a registered nurse present during invasive procedures as required in that state. The Illinois Department of Public Health issued a closure order five days later….

[Smith] was involved in two medical emergencies on the same day in April, 2011. A previous complaint lodged in 2007 concerning other medical emergencies at AMS involving Smith went unheeded.

• Students for Life comments on the shameless award Planned Parenthood gave their facility in Aurora, Colorado, for exceeding their abortion quota.
• John Smeaton advertises three paid internships in London this summer, which will “provide[] an excellent induction for those seeking to ‘learn the ropes’ of a leading pro-life organisation. Many interns have gone on to work in the pro-life or political sphere.”

• A Voice for Hope posts a sobering picture (left)with a thought provoking question: Are you like him?
• Wesley J. Smith says a “new study reports that women who use donated eggs in IVF have a greater likelihood of dying”. It can also be dangerous for the donors themselves:
  Women who have IVF babies using donor eggs could be much more at risk for a common but potentially dangerous complication of pregnancy, warn researchers. A new study shows a threefold higher risk of hypertension – high blood pressure – and an even higher risk of pre-eclampsia.

Pre-eclampsia is a severe disorder of high blood pressure in pregnancy that is potentially fatal for the mother and baby and the only cure is to deliver the baby surgically. The use of donor eggs in IVF (in vitro fertilisation) is increasingly common among older women trying for a baby who have no eggs of their own.

But French researchers say the pregnancies of egg donation patients are at a higher risk of disorders caused by high blood pressure, than the pregnancies of IVF patients using their own eggs. They found almost one in five pregnant women using a donated egg developed hypertension, compared with one in 20 women using their own eggs during IVF.

Altogether 11 per cent of women using donor eggs suffered pre-eclampsia, compared with less than three per cent of women using their own eggs.

[Abortionist photos via Illinois Review]

The 4th of July is starting out with a real bang!

Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky announced July 2 it is closing three Indiana clinics this summer, in Bedford, Madison, and Warsaw.

None of the three are abortion clinics; they are all feeders.

On its website the Planned Parenthood affiliate indicates the Bedford and Warsaw clinics will shutter on July 25. No date is listed for Madison’s closure.

Planned Parenthood’s demographic winter

According to the Indiana Economic Digest, Planned Parenthood unwittingly admitted partial responsibility for the Bedford clinic’s demise - ”a decline in patients coming to Planned Parenthood. It added, “Lawrence County’s demographics have shifted to an older population and younger adults have sought other options for health and reproductive care.”

Of course, Planned Parenthood’s demographic winter is in part due to the future patients it has aborted.

The Bedford clinic has been in operation 39 years, since 1975, enough time to aid in aborting two generations.

Planned Parenthood boasted 34 Indiana clinics in 2009. That number is now down to 27 and will sink to 24 by summer’s end.

Since 2008, Indiana Planned Parenthood abortion clinics and feeders have been the target of several Live Action investigations, although they involved none of the currently closing shops.

Most recently a counselor at the Planned Parenthood Midtown abortion referral clinic in Indianapolis was caught on tape encouraging a Live Action investigator she thought was a 15-year-old to participate in dangerous sado-masochistic sex.

Back in 2009, Live Action caught a now closed Planned Parenthood in Indy lying to its investigator about fetal development.

And in 2008, Live Action exposed Planned Parenthoods in Bloomington and the Georgetown Road/Indianapolis, both of which are still open, as willing to cover up the statutory rape of an investigator posing as a 13-year-old impregnated by her 31-year-old boyfriend.

In 2013 a federal judge permanently blocked the Indiana legislature’s attempt to defund Planned Parenthood.

by Hans Johnson

17-year old Abby Anderson wrote and performed this song based on “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/CabLh8jJ_Lk[/youtube]

Abby was interviewed by Glenn Beck regarding the song.

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.