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.

• The Guiding Star Project points out how “reproductive healthcare” for women is actually biased against helping women who wish to reproduce:
  

  Let me take a pause for a moment, I am not agreeing that abortion should be considered “healthcare”, but I want to talk about other facets of healthcare for women. Why do I (and others like me) have to pay high premiums to find out why I can’t achieve a healthy and normal pregnancy?If it is an equal right for a woman to terminate a healthy, or even an unhealthy pregnancy (for her or the baby), paid for by taxpayers or her insurance, why do I have to pay all costs trying to find out what is wrong with my body?

• Euthanasia Prevention Coalition reports that Belgian euthanasia practitioner Dr. Wim Distelmans is actually organizing tours to the death camps of Auschwitz:
  

  In a travel brochure he describes Auschwitz as an ‘inspiring’ surrounding in which to ‘clarify confusion about euthanasia’….

Linking the right to die and the Nazis is a no-no in most circles. In fact, opponents are usually deemed to have lost the argument as soon as they mention the word “Nazi”. But Dr Distelmans’s breath-taking initiative could change that rule. To hold a seminar on euthanasia in an extermination camp where the idea of ‘lives not worth living’ took its most extreme form, is peculiar, to say the least….

It is gratifying for us to see Dr Distelmans connect the dots between euthanasia in Brussels and the atrocities of Auschwitz. It confirms for us the dark future of Belgium’s legal euthanasia. It should terrify all the chronically ill and disabled who live there.

• Americans United for Life joins senators calling for a vote on the ban on abortions after 20 weeks gestation:
  

  U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell along with pro-life leaders, calling on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to allow a vote on legislation Senator Graham introduced, S. 1670, The Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, a ban on abortion at 20 weeks which will protect women’s health and unborn children from fetal pain. The Capitol Hill news conference took place on the one-year anniversary of the murder conviction of notorious abortionist Dr. Kermit Gosnell….The United States is one of 4 out of 195 nations, standing with North Korea, China and Canada, allowing abortion through all 9 months of pregnancy, for any reason at all, including sex selection, and sometimes with taxpayer subsidies. And under the Affordable Care Act, that could be expanding.

• Live Action posts an article discussing how “Terry O’Neill (pictured right), president of the National Organization for Women, has written a column for Huffington Post, irrationally claiming that abortion is essential health care and that it actually saves the lives of babies.” Hey, great idea! Instead of improving actual medical care, let’s kill more babies before they’re born so they can’t die after they’re born. Really, Terry?
• Fletcher Armstrong reports that their second visit to the University of Buffalo with the Genocide Awareness Project enjoyed the protection of free speech from the University officials who “got religion” after a federal lawsuit was filed. On the group’s first visit, officials allowed an unruly mob of “pro abortion protestors to disrupt their peaceful pro life demonstration”:
  

  For those keeping score, this was only the second time in the history of GAP that CBR has been forced to file a lawsuit against a public university. Usually, the knowledge of our willingness to defend speech rights is enough to ensure their enforcement.

• At Secular Pro-Life, Clinton Wilcox discusses personhood:
  

  My preferred definition of “person” comes from medieval philosopher Boethius, that a person is an individual substance of a rational nature. There are many things we think of when we think of persons, and various philosophers like Mary Anne Warren and Peter Singer have identified: the capacity for rational thought, the ability to express oneself through language, the ability to form concepts, etc. And of course, I have argued in the past that it’s not our present capacities that ground our personhood, but our inherent capacities. This is why the unborn qualify as persons.It’s simply counterintuitive to refer to anything other than humans as persons. Even pro-choice writers use the terms “human” and “person” interchangeably… until they want to justify abortion. Then they suddenly want to make a distinction between the two.

[O’Neill photo via robinholland.wordpress.com]

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• The Missouri House has passed a bill to extend the abortion waiting period to 72 hours. It passed 111-39. Pro-aborts are lamely doing a ceremonial filibuster outside the Capitol:
  

  The House voted 111-39 in favor of the measure Wednesday, sending it to [Gov. Jay] Nixon, who has previously allowed other abortion restrictions to become law without his signature. That included a measure last year that requires doctors to be in the room for the initial dose of a drug used in medical abortions.

  Nixon said Tuesday that he would review the extended waiting period and act in a manner consistent with his other actions on abortion legislation.

• Louisiana may be the next state to pass a bill regulating abortion clinics and requiring admitting privileges. A bill passed their Senate by a 34-3 vote:
  

  Abortion-rights groups say the restrictions would close three of Louisiana’s five abortion clinics, but in the strongly-conservative state, those objections don’t sway many lawmakers. The protests and sharply-divided debates of Texas haven’t taken place during the Louisiana Legislature’s discussion of the proposal, which has received bipartisan support.

• Amid protests, Planned Parenthood is opening a new abortion clinic in Kissimmee, Florida. Currently in the midst of a nasty divorce, Congressman Alan Grayson (pictured left) attended the ribbon cutting. Also attending was Peggy Howland, who doesn’t seem to realize her talking points from the 60’s and 70’s have been disproved:
  

  The Rev. Peggy Howland, 80, an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church since 1958, worked with fellow clergy in the 1960s to make abortion legal. She was on hand to give the invocation at the center — and make her case for abortion rights.

  Before Roe v. Wade, she said, “there were a million illegal abortions in the U.S. every year, and these were done in places that were unsafe, and many women died.

[Photo via aroundosceola.com]

Created Equal has open slots for their Summer Justice Ride, in which students will follow in the steps of the Freedom Riders, traveling from city to city, educating others about abortion.

The ride will take place from July 12-19, 2014, and will stop in the cities where Freedom Riders stopped years ago. The cost is $200 per person, and this covers travel, food, and lodging.

The deadline to apply is May 30, 2014, so hurry! Applications and payment must be submitted by this date.

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

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

For months the Birmingham, Alabama, Planned Parenthood has maintained a shroud of secrecy surrounding its “temporary” closing in December 2013.

The abortion giant is only now coming clean after the Alabama Attorney General and Alabama Department of Health filed a legal brief on May 13 revealing exactly why the Birmingham Planned Parenthood shut down.

Ironically, the brief was necessary only because Planned Parenthood was one of two abortion providers that sued to block a law enacted in Alabama in 2013 that forced abortionists to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. A trial date was set for May 19, inducing the need for the state to defend itself in this court document.

Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit left it and doctors killing babies in Alabama open to exposure. And expose this brief does. From page 6 (paragraph breaks and underline added):

Finally, the evidence will show, contrary to plaintiffs’ assertions (Doc 173 at 12), that the State has a legitimate need for additional credentialing for abortion doctors.

There are immediate reasons to question the competence and ethics of at least two of the five doctors (40%) who work for plaintiffs as well as their employees more generally. Dr. A is currently being sued for malpractice arising from his misdiagnosis of a patient at a Birmingham abortion clinic. Dr. P2 is currently being prosecuted by the federal government for Medicaid fraud.

And Planned Parenthood’s Birmingham clinic was recently closed after an employee of Planned Parenthood unlawfully sold prescription drugs in the clinic’s parking lot.

The legal brief adds (emphasis theirs):

The evidence will show the plaintiffs’ doctors remain in the city of a clinic for as few as six hours, perform scores of elective procedures, and then leave. They automatically transfer the care of their patients to outside physicians, and patients must go to the emergency room for care for complications. The defendants’ experts will testify that this is substandard practice….

Instead, it is standard medical practice for a physician to provide continuity of care to his or her own patients…. [P]hysicians with staff privileges at local hosptials will testify… that they do not follow the practice of referring patients to an emergency room for effectively all follow-up care.

Planned Parenthood filed its lawsuit several months before being closed for nefarious activity – slightly embarrassing and certainly not helpful to proving the merits of its case, although it should have anticipated something since it has a propensity for trouble.

Likewise, the abortionist identified as “Dr. P2” appears to be Yashica Robinson-White, pictured right, also charged after the abortion providers filed their suit.

So, “at least” two of five abortionists in Alabama have been refused hospital privileges for good reason. Such a system weeds out the quacks and hacks, surely what the abortion industry fears.

[Top photo via myfoxal.com; bottom photo via LifeNews.com]

by Carder

We gave you three days to recant but you insist on not returning to Islam. I sentence you to be hanged to death.

~ Twitter feed from the AmnestyUK Media team, quoting a judge who has sentenced a pregnant Christian in Sudan, Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, to death for converting to Christianity, along with lashing for alleged adultery, NBC News, May 15

[HT: Hot Air]

by Hans Johnson

Melissa Mantor, 31, claims on HLN’s Nancy Grace that she was asked to change her clothes or leave from the Planet Fitness in Charleston, S.C., where she was working out. Her offense? Her pregnant midriff was exposed.

This particular facility, however, has a policy that prohibits “jeans, boots, men’s string tank tops, or revealing clothing… [and] also prohibits bare midriffs.”

So was she really kicked out because of her baby bump? Your thoughts.

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

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: LauraLoo]

by Kelli

Walking in the woods with her best friend one warm afternoon, the real world barreled into her idyllic life. Three men approached the 16-year-old girls; they were separated. [Minka] Disbrow, who still believed storks delivered babies, was raped by a man in a cowboy hat who called himself “Mack.”

Every year, she reached for that faded black-and-white photograph and said a prayer for Betty Jane on her birthday. She did the same in 2006 on Betty Jane’s 77th birthday. She prayed that God would finally let her meet her daughter.

~ Susannah Cahalan, telling the incredible story about how a birth mother and her daughter were reunited after more than 77 years apart, New York Post, May 11

[HT: Todd S.]

Following the tradition we started three years ago, we’re posting all the upcoming summer pro-life teen- and college-aged boot camps we found listed around the country. If we missed any, please let Kelli know.

As I’ve said before, if I had teens in the house  I’d not only send them to church camp every summer, I’d send them to at least one pro-life boot camp during their high school years. These provide a great opportunity to build strength and confidence in the sanctity of life and also launch lifelong pro-life friendships.

It’s great to see so many pro-life groups in so many states sponsoring these vital training programs for our young people.

Online:

Homeschool Connections Pro-Life Boot Camp for Teens will consist of four 90-minute online classes from June 16-19, 2014. Recommended for grades 9-12.

Alabama

Pro-Life Action Ministries will host its 4th Annual National Sidewalk Counseling Symposium on August 8-9 in Birmingham. Open to any pro-lifer interested in sidewalk counseling.

Arkansas

Arkansas Right to Life will host Camp Joshua in Humphrey from July 25-27.

California

Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust will host its 2014 ProLife Training Camp in Southern California from June 23 – July 4 for high school and college students.
UPDATE 5/19: This camp is full. Contact to be placed on waiting list.

Illinois

Living Exceptions will host two pro-life boot camps this year – June 17 in Red Bud and June 18 in Bethalto. Contact them for more details.

Indiana

Allen County Right to Life will host its Friends for Life Boot Camp in Fort Wayne from June 20-21 for high school and college students.

Lake County Right to Life will host a one-day Pro-Life Adult Summit and Teen Boot Camp on June 21 in Chesterton.

Kansas/Missouri

The Archdiocese of Kansas City will host their 4th Annual Truth Illuminated Teen Pro-Life Boot Camp in Kansas City from July 23-26 for ages 14-19.

Louisiana

Pro-Life Louisiana will host its Joshua Leadership Institute this year from July 27-31 for high school students and 1st year college students.

Nevada

Nevada Right to Life/Pro-Life League of Nevada will sponsor a Camp Joshua Institute for Life & Leadership in Lake Tahoe from May 2-4.

New York

New York State Right to Life will host Camp Esther from August 1-4 in Utica for teens.

North Carolina

North Carolina Right to Life will host Camp Joshua from July 18-20 in Smithfield for high school sophomores, juniors and seniors.

Texas

Catholic Pro-Life Committee, Catholics Respect Life et. al. will co-host their Pro-Life Boot Camp 2014 in Irving for ages 14-17. Two separate sessions are offered: June 27-29 or July 25-9.

Texas Right to Life will host REveAL Summer Camp in Trinity for high school students. Two separate sessions are offered: July 19-22 or July 22-26.

Virginia

Camp Joshua will be held from July 25-27 for high school students.

Washington, D.C.

National Right to Life will host the National Right to Life Academy for college students from June 26- August 1, in Washington, D.C.

Wisconsin

Wisconsin Teens for Life will host a south camp in Walworth from July 13-18 and a north camp in Osceola from August 10-15.

Multi-State

Created Equal will host a Summer Justice Ride through several Midwest cities from July 12-20 for high school and college students.

Rock for Life has an opportunity for you to be a Summer Festivals Pro-Life Intern, starting in June through the end of summer.

[Top graphic via Andy Moore]