by Kelli

The Independent Journal Review has video of EMILY’s List darling, abortion advocate Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, admitting that she and her colleagues “all knew” Americans would not be able to keep their insurance plans, despite President Obama’s repeated promises.

While the Senator seems to believe the point of Obamacare is to cover “preventive care” and “birth control,” the IJ Review says that’s not quite how it was sold:

So if Senator Gillibrand wants to talk about “the whole point” of the Unaffordable Care Act, it wasn’t sold as a way to make people’s existing insurance plans better. It was sold as a way to cover 30 million uninsured citizens (which the plan fails to do), lower healthcare spending (which it fails to do), reduce spending on insurance premiums for families by $2,500 (which it fails to do), all while allowing people to keep their preferred insurance plans and their doctors (which it fails to do).

[youtube]http://youtu.be/KAvH3XuTiWk[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

by Kelli

If the purpose of this article was to assist women to overcome the stigma of abortion, it is hard to imagine that it succeeded. The fact that this article appears four decades after Roe is proof that the decision failed to reset the nation’s conscience on abortion….

The baby refuses to leave the picture.

~ Albert Mohler, commenting on a New York Magazine feature in which 26 women share their abortion stories, November 15

[Photo via ifrl.org]

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• Mollie Hemingway writes about Planned Parenthood’s abortion theater:
  

  So the question is obvious. If 97% of Planned Parenthood’s services aren’t abortion, why in the world would an abortion regulation cause a dozen Planned Parenthood clinics to close?

  Closing clinics make for great headlines and more dramatic court briefs. But a media mildly more skeptical of savvy public relations campaigns and well-scripted legal wrangling might serve the public a bit more.

• The Toronto Star reports on declassified information from abortion debates within Prime Minister Mulroney’s cabinet in the late 80’s/early 90’s.
• The UK’s Daily Mail has a story about a Chinese man who begged his girlfriend not to have an abortion:
  

  A Chinese man sunk to his knees in an abortion clinic and made a tearful plea to his girlfriend’s mother not to force her to have an abortion, it was reported in local media.

  The mother, Liu Rong, had deemed the man, called Zhang, as being unworthy of her daughter as his social standing was too low.

  Because Zhang worked in IT and was not from the civil servant class – the new ruling elite of China – she allegedly declared him to be ‘beneath’ her daughter’s status.

• Slate’s L.V. Anderson thinks horrific abortion stories appearing in pro-choice media outlets are good for the pro-choice movement:
  

  It helps no one when women feel that their feelings about their own personal experiences with abortion and contraception are somehow “not okay.” Which is why it’s wonderful that New York and Elle are reclaiming these stories from religious conservatives.

  Some women are pressured into getting abortions, and not every abortion provider is skilled and compassionate. Some women get depressed when they take the pill, and some experience agony during their medication abortions. Abortion and contraception can be good or bad for the patient, depending on her biology, her socioeconomic circumstances, her provider. To acknowledge these realities is to treat reproductive healthcare like any other kind of medical care — and isn’t that what feminists have been fighting for all along?

  I doubt that NARAL and Planned Parenthood will be sharing horrific abortion stories (unless they are pre-legalization ones) anytime soon.

[Photo via thinkprogress.org]

by Sarah Cleveland

Shortly after graduating from college and obtaining my board certification to become a Registered Diagnostic Medical Sonographer nearly 10 years ago, I was asked to fill in for a tech at a nearby OB/GYN office. I was honored by the request and accepted the offer.

When I arrived to work, I noticed there was an amniocentesis scheduled that afternoon. (In short, an amnio is a quick procedure that samples the fluid surrounding a baby in utero for further testing on the pregnancy.) And although I had assisted in dozens of procedures during clinical rotations in college, I had never before assisted with a live amniocentesis. And I was nervous about doing it. I knew the risks to the baby and momma (increased risk of miscarriage and uterine infection, albeit still low).

But what I didn’t anticipate was what I was actually going to see on the screen.

The afternoon came and pregnant Momma and in utero Baby arrived with Father, on time. We prepped and sterilized the surface of Momma’s belly as the OB doc got the long needle and syringe ready to sample the fluid. I placed the transducer over the uterus and saw a baby ~18 weeks gestation on the screen. He was kicking, playful, and happy. Then the doc inserted the needle.

Immediately, the baby knew something was in his space, that something was different. As I held the transducer to guide the needle to a safe area away from placenta and away from Baby, I saw Baby dart away from where we were in the uterus and move as far away as possible to the other side of the womb. He stopped kicking and playing.

Then the heart rate. His little heart rate sky rocketed. He was scared. In fact, I am convinced he was terrified.

After only about 20 seconds of withdrawing fluid, the needle was out. Procedure done. The doctor cleaned up and exited the room while I watched Baby for a few minutes longer, while the parents conversed with one another. The baby slowly, eventually, came out of the corner and the heart rate came down a little. It was time to stop scanning, and I said good-bye to the family.

Please think about this. This baby reacted this way when an instrument was introduced into his home – and this instrument’s intent was not to harm him. The baby was not the target, nor was the needle going after him. The needle never once touched him.

Then consider this: So what of it when something bigger than a needle is inserted into the uterus? What then, when the target is the baby? When a trained professional is aiming to remove this little guy, sometimes piece by piece, from the safety of his home? Image the terror he must feel when being pulled away from it. Image the physical pain that sometimes comes with it.

Let me be clear. It is neither the fear nor the baby’s pain that makes abortion the evil that it is. It is not because I could see the panic or because he had distinct and formed features that make it evil.

Abortion is evil because it destroys a child. It is evil because it murders a human being created in the image of God Himself. And I will fight against it until it is totally and utterly abolished.

Jill note: Sarah is in the hospital at this moment delivering baby #3 by c-section! Please join me in praying for their safety.

by Kelli

The Brownsville Herald shares the audio of an interview with Wendy Davis, speaking about how she is “pro-life” and how her stance in fighting to preserve abortion after 20 weeks in the Texas Senate was “not a fight [she] chose” but that she believed “women’s health was in danger.”

Davis also commented that “zero [abortions] is the optimal number… uh… but I have different ideas, I suppose, on how to get there.”

Yes, I would say that fighting for late-term abortions is definitely a “different idea” on how to achieve “zero abortions.”

[youtube]http://youtu.be/h1bWTx2ebe0[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

How would you like to stay at a hotel where in the room next door an aborting mother was delivering her dead baby into the toilet, and where the abortionist came to complete the abortion and wrap and remove the dead baby?

Worse, how would you like to stay in a hotel room where a late-term abortion was committed the night before? Where a mother delivered her dead baby on your toilet, in your bathroom, with all the blood and body secretions that come with it? Where the abortionist had the mother lie on your bed to finish it? Do you trust a hotel to sanitize a room as a hospital would?

If you have stayed at the Plaza Inn in Albuquerque, New Mexico, both scenarios are possible.

According to a new undercover video released by Live Action, Albuquerque’s Southwestern Women’s Options late-term abortion clinic has a cooperative agreement with Plaza Inn to provide a discounted rate to aborting mothers as well as chauffeur service to and from the airport and to and from their appointments, which can stretch as long as a week.

Pick-ups from the airport are necessary “because people come from all over the country and all over the world to our clinic,” explained SWWO abortionist Carmen Landau to Live Action’s undercover investigator, “because in most places you cannot get an abortion after 24 weeks, so we see a lot of people who are pretty late in their pregnancy.”

This is because, according to Landau, “New Mexico has, uh, laws… they don’t have a lot of restrictions.”

Actually, New Mexico has no abortion restrictions, making it the “Wild West of abortion.”

And if Southwestern Women’s Options will abort all the way through pregnancy, this makes Albuquerque the capital of the Wild West of abortion.

But tomorrow Albuquerque citizens can change all that if they pass an initiative that would ban abortions in their city past the point babies are known to feel pain, 20 weeks.

It is bad enough that late-term clinics like Southwestern Women’s Options can and do commit abortions as far into a pregnancy as it wants, but seriously, how safe is it for a mother to deliver her dead baby seven, eight, and nine months into her pregnancy alone in a hotel room bathroom? How sanitary is it for the rest of us to use that same bathroom afterward?

The hotel doesn’t think it’s so safe. When asked by Live Action’s undercover investigator what to do if going into labor when the clinic isn’t open, the operator responded, “I think you wind up going to the hospital.”

Clinic staff recommended otherwise (beginning at 1:57 on the video)…

Really? This is disgusting. And where are the feminists?

In an effort to get abortion legalized, Ms. Magazine published a photo (against the family’s wishes) in 1973 of Gerri Santoro, who died alone in a hotel room in 1964 after an illegal abortion when she was 6-1/2 months pregnant.

The abortion industry has come full circle. Pro-lifers have always said back alley abortions never stopped – the shingle was just moved to main street. This is just that much more evidence.

But Albuquerque citizens can stop this madness in their community by voting YES tomorrow for a 20-week abortion ban.

by Carder

I am not just prolife…. I consider myself whole life. 

Do I support the SNAP program? Yes. 
Do I support Headstart? Yes. 
Do I support universal healthcare for children? Yes. 
Do I support WIC? Yes. 
Do I support the Medicaid program for those who are desperately impoverished and pregnant women? Yes. 
Do I support the death penalty? No. 
Do I support unjust wars? No. 
Would I take ANY child into my home who was neglected? Yes. We are in the process of adopting through the foster care system.
Would I take ANY pregnant mom into my home who was homeless? Absolutely. My family has supported many pregnant mothers. 

Moral of the story…don’t stereotype pro-lifers and put us in a box. We are not all the same.

~ Pro-life advocate Abby Johnson, via her Facebook page, November 15

President Obama’s signature domestic policy may have accomplished something previously unthinkable: taking an issue where one party had a dominant hold on public opinion, and reversing it in favor of the opposing party….

[W]e could be witnessing a political achievement unequaled in modern political history: the complete demolition of one party’s long-term dominance on an issue area – the Democrats’ ownership of the health care issue – in the space of a few months. 

~ Ben Domenech, The Federalist, November 13

 
by John Deering at GoComics.com…

 
Politically and substantively, this is a low for the administration. “Things suck right now,” says one Senate Democratic aide. “They suck unbelievably much, considering where we were six weeks ago.”

~ Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas, Washington Post, November 14

 
by Steve Kelley at Townhall.com…

 
For decades, Democratic strategists have viewed universal health care as their best opportunity to reverse the doubt among many voters, especially whites, that government programs can tangibly benefit their families. Now the catastrophic rollout of the health law threatens instead to reinforce those doubts. That outcome could threaten Democratic priorities for years….

Kettl says no major federal initiative has failed so thoroughly upon its unveiling since the ballistic-missile program’s first years in the 1950s produced a succession of explosions and failures to launch. “The last time something blew up on the runway like this,” Kettl says, “things were literally blowing up on the runway.”

~ Ronald Brownstein, National Journal, November 15

 
by Nate Beeler at Townhall.com…

 
For Democrats across the country, the reversal of political fortunes over the past month has been head-spinning.

~ Jonathan Weisman, New York Times, November 16

 
by Lisa Benson at GoComics.com…

 
If you can’t take some joy, some modicum of relief and mirth, in the unprecedentedly spectacular beclowning of the president, his administration, its enablers, and, to no small degree, liberalism itself, then you need to ask yourself why you’re following politics in the first place. Because, frankly, this has been one of the most enjoyable political moments of my lifetime. I wake up in the morning and rush to find my just-delivered newspaper with a joyful expectation of worsening news so intense, I feel like Morgan Freeman should be narrating my trek to the front lawn.

~ Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online, November 14

 
by Steve Benson at GoComics.com…