Dr. Monica Miller of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society related a pretty incredible story, as posted on LifeNews.com:. It’s a heart-pounding but uplifting read. Excerpts…

Alicia had a terrible feeling that Maria intended to go through with the abortion. Alicia made a decision.  “I knew I had to go to the Planned Parenthood clinic myself and try and intercept Maria.” But Alicia did not know what Maria looked like.  Only Iris knew. 

After entering Alicia saw a reception window. She explains: “I was afraid some of the PP workers were going to ask me what I was there for.  And someone did. I quickly answered “I am just here to wait for someone.” I was allowed to go to the waiting room….

Iris kept a look-out to see if Maria would arrive. Just before 2:15 Maria drove into the PP lot.  Indeed, she had come for her scheduled abortion!

Iris immediately called Alicia.  “Maria just arrived - she’s walking into the clinic now. She’s wearing a blue jacket.”

A few moments later Maria entered the waiting room carrying a clip board with medical forms to fill out.  She sat down.  Alicia got up from her seat, walked across the room and took the seat next to Maria.  She turned to her and addressing her in Spanish said:  “Hello Maria - I am Alicia.”

Maria stared at Alicia completely stunned.  She could not believe that the woman who had tried to talk her out of killing her baby the day before [by telephone] was now sitting in the PP waiting room! It was obvious that Alicia had come to get her out.  Maria put down the clip board and said “Let’s get out of here now before I change my mind!”

What a great ending to a death-defying story. I don’t know if I could have done what Alicia did.

Yet, I think about standing up to the powers that be at Christ Hospital, and many people tell me they couldn’t have done that. But it was only last week that chicken me became bold enough to wear an anti-abortion t-shirt in public!

I can’t explain what triggers courage and boldness in the moment.

Sometimes the moments are smaller than we think… like the first time I held a poster featuring the image of an aborted baby or left an anti-abortion dropcard in a women’s restroom stall. The first move is always the hardest.

Nevertheless, these simple actions are still more than most of the people who call themselves pro-life would take.

Have you had such a moment?

Miss Pennsylvania Valerie Gatto, 24, a self-described “product of rape,” hopes her experience growing up as well as her mother’s attack can show that anything is possible from a bleak starting point….

Gatto, a marketing consultant, told TODAY.com. “Being a child of a rape, not knowing who my father is, not knowing if he’s ever been found, most people would think it’s such a negative situation.

“I grew up with my mom and my grandparents. They never looked at it as something negative. I have a loving, supportive family who told me I could be the President of the United States.”…

Gatto began asking questions about her father when she was young. In third grade, she was told the version appropriate for someone her age: “Something bad happened to me. A very bad man hurt me but God gave me you.”

She said her mother was a 19-year-old coming out of work on a busy Pittsburgh street when a man dressed in black attacked her at knifepoint and raped her behind some buildings. When he was spooked by a passing car with its high beams on, she managed to get away. She uses her mother’s example as a teaching point, speaking to young women 18 to 30 about sexual assault awareness.

~ Today.com, June 5; the 2014 Miss USA Competition will air Sunday, June 8, at 8:00p EST

[HT: reader Bryan; photo via Today.com]

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.

• Pro-Life Action League does not apologize for picketing hospitals that invite the “P.R. disaster” that will come as a result of granting abortionists admitting privileges:
  

  Admitting privileges legislation has made hospitals the gatekeeper for abortion clinics’ ability to remain open. That’s allowed protests to move away from the clinics themselves and back to the hospitals, a far more vulnerable target.

• At National Review, Michael J. New points out the media bias in the Detroit News’ latest reporting on abortion numbers in Michigan.

• At Reproductive Research Audit, Dr. Rebecca G. Oas discusses Ann Starrs (pictured left), the new director of the Guttmacher Institute, and her strong advocacy for abortion rights – which appears to have affected her ability to be objective:
  

  In 2010, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), led by former World Health Organization (WHO) employee Dr. Christopher Murray, published a study in the journal Lancet refuting the UN’s numbers, showing maternal mortality levels were far lower than the WHO had long claimed. Lancet editor Dr. Richard Horton faced pressure from advocacy groups to delay publication. Among them was Ann Starrs, who urged the scientists to “at least hide that there is disagreement” lest the conflicting numbers compromise advocacy efforts.

  Abortion advocates hiding the truth to continue pushing the lie that abortion is necessary? Now, there’s a real shocker.

• ProLife NZ and Secular Pro-Life effectively point how correlation does not necessarily imply causation in the case of maternal mortality and abortion:
  

  One of the pillars of the abortion movement is the idea that legalized abortion prevents maternal deaths. They can point to improved maternal mortality rates after the legalisation of abortion in New Zealand and elsewhere….

  But there are two major problems with that theory. The first is that the numbers themselves are often either wrong or manipulated….

  The second problem is the spurious correlation problem. The movement for the legalization of abortion happened to coincide with medical breakthroughs that dramatically improved Americans’ health in general, and in particular, allowed doctors to manage infection, hemorrhage, and other issues that may appear as complications of abortion. It also coincided, in the developing world, with independent foreign aid focused on maternal health issues, such as the provision of midwives.

• ProWomanProLife gives an example of how we can know that late-term abortions are done in Canada – when abortion facilities advertise it. But one clinic in Toronto also actually links to a website which claims even the Pope says abortion is acceptable. Oh, really?
• At The Vine, Breeanne Howe gives her take on how our society is beginning to react to extreme, pro-abortion views.
• At Priests for Life, Kevin Burke reviews the pro-abortion movie, Obvious Child.
• At thirtyone8, Andy Moore has a great post about how to frame the abortion language. Let’s learn to use it on behalf of life.

• Suzy B reports on the consequences of Terry McAuliffe’s election as the governor of Virginia, following the term of pro-life Gov. Bob McDonnell. As promised, McAuliffe (pictured right) is trying to remove all limits on abortion in the state (home of the infamously lawbreaking abortionist Steven Brigham, lest we forget):
  

  Abortion facility safety regulations signed into law by former Gov. McDonnell were designed to protect Virginia women from Gosnell-like abortionists such as Steven Brigham. Brigham continues his dangerous practice of beginning late-term abortions in Virginia then transporting women across state lines to his facility in Maryland. Now Terry McAuliffe has replaced 5 members of the Virginia Board of Health with his chosen appointees, and asked them to reconsider Virginia’s life-saving regulations requiring abortion facilities to meet basic medical safety standards.

• At Real Choice, Christina Dunigan writes about the likely upcoming strategy of the abortion movement to counter the impact of pro-life state legislation. She says we need to be ready for the inevitable:
  

  Having established the “legal = safe” and that the alternative to “safe, legal abortion” is only “unsafe abortion” and not help addressing the woman’s actual problems, the preparations are already in the works for any contingency that they can play to the abortion lobby’s benefit. You can be certain they’re ready for those states that will soon be without a dedicated abortion facility. We’ve seen this sort of thing play out before, so we know what’s going to happen….

  It’s important to note up front that it is not the average pro-choice citizen who is gearing up to create and exploit a tragedy. It’s Big Abortion — an unholy alliance of population control zealots, abortion practitioners, eugenicists, and Sandra Fluke-style feminists. They are putting the pieces in place, and average prochoice citizens are being primed to play their part in protecting Big Abortion’s interests under the guise of protecting women.

  Big Abortion is losing traction. The main thing they need to regain momentum is a corpse. If you think they’re not gearing up to produce one, think again.

[Photos via guttmacher.org, politico.com]

On June 3, RH Reality Check’s Andrea Grimes wrote about the “abortion access crisis” in East Texas where, due to clinic closures, women are being forced to “travel hundreds of miles roundtrip to Houston, Dallas, or Shreveport for legal abortion care.”

Save one, the examples Grimes gave to draw sympathy didn’t, at least from me:

“I am 23 years old. I live in McAllen. I’m a single mother, with one child.” Another: “I’m from Mercedes, I’m 33 years old, a mother of two, and I’m living with my parents.” And another: “I just turned 18 years old. I am unemployed and a full-time college student. I cannot afford to have a child.”…

The stories of East Texans who seek abortion care… are as varied as the folks who live there: there’s the woman left “high and dry” by an ex who “didn’t really care” about her pregnancy, the newly pregnant woman already raising a 10-month-old, the woman whose partner “disappeared as soon as she told him about the pregnancy,” the woman who went in for a prenatal check-up only to find her baby had no cranial structure.

Setting aside the tragic case of the mother carrying a handicapped baby, the other six supposedly tragic figures knew how babies are made and either knew they didn’t want one or exercised poor judgment and chose to have sex with creeps.

How many of those women, like Emily Letts  (pictured left), didn’t even try to preempt pregnancy by using contraception? How many of the men they had sex with didn’t care?

How many may have used contraception but were lulled into a false sense of security to believe it works, when most methods have a high failure rate?

It’s time women in states with disappearing abortion clinics woke up to the fact they can no longer rely on abortion for primary or “back-up” birth control.

Contrary to feminist myth, sex is not a bodily function that can’t be stopped. It’s an action, a decision, a behavior.

Over at Talking Points Memo, abortion proponent Robin Marty warned of a coming abortion backlog due to “TRAP laws” being enacted around the country:

Planned Parenthood, the only other Milwaukee clinic, has stated  they already have a two to three week wait for patients to get in for terminations, and that if AMS is closed that wait will likely extend to eight to 10 weeks in order to handle the additional 2,500 patients a year.

That would make almost every patient need to seek a second trimester procedure, which increases the price drastically, or go to the next closest available city “abortion friendly” city….

As if any of this is the fault of any other than shoddy abortion clinics that can’t even live up to the same standards as veterinary clinics; crackpot, circuit-riding abortionists who can’t get hospital admitting privileges; or women who play Russian Roulette with their reproductive systems.

A feminist with common sense would be telling these women to take back their self-respect and stop having casual sex – no sex unless they are in a committed relationship with “a ring on it,” and where both partners are prepared to raise their children together if a pregnancy should happen, even if unintended.

Because obviously, the current anything-but-that advice of liberal feminists isn’t working.

But no, we have are feminists who are so brainwashed about abortion they are in turn brainwashing the next generation, coddling their poor decisions along the way.

This despite the obvious and catastrophic failures (examples were Grimes’, not mine) of the “reproductive freedom” mentality.

Tomorrow, Saturday, June 7, is American Life League’s The Pill Kills 2014 National Day of Action. The Pill’s legacy, according to ALL:

The pill is packaged and sold as a panacea for the world’s problems and as a ticket to freedom for women. In reality, the birth control pill and other contraceptives are making women sick, disabling them, and even killing them.

In 2005, the World Health Organization listed the pill (estrogen-progestogen oral contraceptives) as a Group 1 cancer-causing agent that raises risk for breast, liver, and cervical cancers.

Lawsuits against contraceptive manufacturers continue to mount, and millions of dollars are being awarded to victims—mostly because of blood clots that cause strokes, heart attacks, and death….

This video is a presentation by breast surgeon, professor, and head of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, Dr. Angela Lanfranchi. In it, she presents the scientific proof that the pill kills – both women and babies – and how it kills:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1f3qTt1YDk[/youtube]

[HT: Jill]

Although this particular Tennessee bride’s intentions to have her baby play an important part in her wedding ceremony may have been admirable, her means of bringing the newborn down the aisle may seem downright reckless by others.

As evidenced by Shona Carter-Brooks’ own admission, she did indeed have her one-month-old strapped to her gown and dragged her baby down the aisle, but asserted she had the child “firmly secured” and ultimately very safe throughout the entire celebration.

~ Ryan Arciero, reporting on the firestorm of criticism of Shona Carter-Brooks following the wedding picture posted of her one-month old anchored to her mother’s wedding gown on her wedding day, Examiner, June 5

Texas state Senator and gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, who catapulted to infamy by filibustering a 20-week abortion ban in 2013, is unhappy pro-lifers aren’t letting anyone forget.

Davis has taken out a Facebook ad calling on supporters to sign an “Open Letter Denouncing The “Abortion Barbie’ Attacks,” referring to life size posters that greeted her on May 22 when she came to Hollywood for a celebrity fundraiser.

The artist known as Sabo photoshopped Davis’s head onto a pregnant Midge doll and placed a pair of large open scissors over the head of a little black baby she was holding.

I don’t understand the problem. The scissors may not have been surgical instruments, but late-term babies are murdered by grabbing and stabbing them just the same. And minority babies are known targets. This is all what Davis stood in her pink shoes trying to protect for 11 hours. Own it, Wendy.

But Davis was not happy, calling the poster all sorts of names: “disgusting… wrong… offensive… vicious personal attacks… insulting… demeaning… degrading” – oh, my.

I have to ask, what exactly is disgusting? Does Davis not know abortion is a bloody hot mess?

EMILY’s List, the pro-abortion PAC that finances the campaigns solely of Democrat pro-abortion women, piled on with even more pejoratives about that which they support:

Again, what is “gruesome” about that poster, EMILY’s List?

It doesn’t even actually show the real deal.

[HT: Saynsumthn]

by Hans Johnson

In two incidents on the same day recently, the companions of abortion seekers at the All Women’s Health Center of Orlando contemplated “throwing the first stone” at protesters – and one actually did.

First, one angry man came back out and said he had picked up a rock to throw at the pro-life group on the way in, but was stopped by his girlfriend. He did ask for and accept a brochure, however.

Later, the friend of another woman threatened pro-lifers verbally and brandished a rock. When a security guard was called, she made a feeble throw, approached to pick it up, and threw it again.

This is a video of an interview afterward by HisServants4Life:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/WeO0_94_v58[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: Saynsumthn’s Blog]