I remember Alan Keyes — I ran against Alan Keyes — but I remember him using this in his campaign against me, saying, ‘Barack Obama supports teaching sex education to kindergartners’.

And you know, I didn’t know what to tell him. But it is the right thing to do, to provide age-appropriate sex education, science-based sex education in the schools.

~ President Barack Obama being quoted in light of the Chicago Public Schools system “mandating that the district’s kindergarten classes include sex education”, CNS News, August 30

[HT: Drudge Report, Laura Loo; photo via Catalogs.com]

by Hans Johnson

Fred Stobaugh was in the home he had shared with his wife Lorraine in East Peoria, Illinois. It would soon have been their 74th wedding anniversary, but she died two months to the day before that. “I was sitting here one night, oh about six weeks after she passed, and just sat here kind of hummin’ a little bit and it finally came to me.”

He had begun to formulate a song in tribute to his wife. And, having read in the paper of a songwriting contest being held by Green Shoe Studio, he decided to send it in. But what singer and songwriter Jacob Colgan received wasn’t the typical submission. It came in a manila envelope with a handwritten note – not a YouTube link.

He said, “I started to read the lyrics and was so touched by the song, and without even meeting Fred we thought, ‘We’re going to do something.’” With Fred’s blessing, they set about preparing a professional recording.

He was very pleased with the result:

Wonderful! Just wonderful!… It just touched me. And I know Lorraine, she heard that too. It just has been a great life – if I could do over again, I would do it.

The song really helps me. It really helps me. It just seemed like she’s just sort of with me, which I know -  she’s smiling. She’s smiling down and she likes that song, I know.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/KDi4hBWsvkY[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: TheBlaze]

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.

• At Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, Reggie Littlejohn reports on Lili Zeng of China, who was forced to abort her first child at nine months pregnant and watch him die in her arms. She has attempted suicide three times since this horrific event. Where is the outrage from feminists and pro-choicers?
  

  Her experience shows that full-term babies born alive after a botched forced abortion may be left to die. Her experience also shows that a woman can be forcibly aborted up to the ninth month of pregnancy with the consent of her presumed husband.

  Finally, Ms. Zeng’s experience shows that – even when a woman is pregnant with her first child – if it is her husband’s second child, she can be forcibly aborted.

• Pro-life Action League comments on the new California law which aims to remedy the abortion doctor shortage by allowing non-physicians (nurses, midwives, and physician assistants) to perform abortions. They must have access to a doctor in the event of complications. Perhaps abortion will now have to be “between a woman and her ‘provider of choice’.” Reminder: CA does not report their state abortion statistics.
• Secular Pro-Life takes on the abortion industry’s claims that complications are rare and that abortion regulations are unnecessary:
  

  According to the Guttmacher Institute, which strongly supports abortion, approximately 0.5% of abortion patients have a complication that requires hospitalization. That’s likely a low figure, but let’s assume that they’re right for the sake of argument. When you consider that there are well over one million abortions performed in the United States annually, the number of patients requiring hospitalization after an abortion would be over 5,000! Don’t these 5,000+ women deserve optimal care?…

  [T]hink about all the government-required safeguards in place in case a school [catches] fire. There are alarm pull stations, portable and overhead fire extinguishers, emergency exit doors, fire drills, and fire lanes around the school building. Even though school fires are rare, we still plan for the worst-case scenario regardless of the chances of such an event happening.

  Good point. But the abortion industry is really concerned with their bottom line, not with safety.

• Wesley J. Smith comments on new research that reveals how children remember words they heard prior to birth and how that relates to personhood:
  

  Will this make the Peter Singers and the “after-birth abortion” advocates of the world back off from their dehumanization of late term fetuses and infants? Will we now look at late term abortion as the killing of a full member of the moral community?

  Dream on, Wesley! We can’t let evidence of cognitive function get in the way of expedient desires or utilitarian outcomes.

• Pro-Life New Mexico thinks there may be a lot of attention and press surrounding Albuquerque’s expected certification of a ballot initiative to ban abortions past 20 weeks.
• At National Review Online, Michael J. New discusses the findings of a new Pew research poll showing 49% of Americans find abortion “morally wrong” with only 15% of Americans deeming it “morally acceptable.” The poll also found that women were more likely than men to consider it wrong.

• At Stand True, Bryan Kemper has an update on a baby (Michael, pictured left) and mother helped by faithful pro-life workers:
  

  Earlier this year, we told you about a woman who called our office upset at our newsletter asking for donations. God softened her heart as we were on the phone and she opened up and shared with us about her plans to have an abortion. We were able to talk with her and help connect her to a wonderful counselor in her city. After meeting with this counselor she decided to keep her baby and cancelled her abortion.

  She lost her job due to this pregnancy and I asked all of you to donate so we could cover her rent and car payment that month. Your generosity was touching and we were able to help her pay her bills and then the counselor was able to help find her a job.

• Priests for Life’s Father Frank Pavone and Dr. Alveda King commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington by recalling some words from her uncle, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
  

  The next thing we must be concerned about if we are to have peace on earth and good will toward men is the nonviolent affirmation of the sacredness of all human life…. When we truly believe in the sacredness of human personality, we won’t exploit people, we won’t trample over people with the iron feet of oppression, we won’t kill anybody.

[Photos via ansirh.org, sciencemag.org by Veikko Somerpuro/The University of Helsinki]

by LauraLoo

As reported by the DailyMail:

A Houston, Texas couple was horrified when the baby monitor in their young child’s room was taken over by a hacker who verbally attacked them and even used their daughter’s name.  Marc Gilbert says he was doing the dishes following his birthday celebration when he heard strange sounds coming from 2-year-old Allyson’s bedroom.  He discovered they were coming from the baby monitor as a stranger’s voice called his sleeping daughter an “effing moron” and “little sl*t” before he quickly unplugged it.

Thankfully, this did not bother Allyson in the least – because she is hearing impaired.

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

Set aside the spin and snarkiness, and the August 27 New Republic article, “Pro-lifers aren’t even trying to make abortion restrictions sound nice anymore,” contains exciting news:

The year 2011 was “The Year of Abortion Restrictions,” when states enacted more new laws narrowing abortion rights than in any other year since Roe v. Wade….

The era of warm and fuzzy-sounding abortion laws, though, may be behind us. The success they saw in 2011, and 2012 – another unprecedented year for abortion restrictions – have galvanized pro-lifers to undo a set of rights that they had previously left well enough alone: exceptions for victims of rape and incest. A new report out from the National Women’s Law Center found that a staggering number of new curtailments on abortion rights don’t make exceptions when a woman has become pregnant by rape.

This comes despite the negative publicity drawn to the “no exceptions” stance ineptly explained by political candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock in 2012. Here was NWLC’s breakdown of 298 pro-life bills introduced (and 27 enacted) in the first half of 2013:

• 86% (235 provisions) of the 273 provisions that were introduced in state legislatures to restrict a woman’s access to abortion apply to a woman whose pregnancy resulted from rape.

• 71% (27 provisions) of the 38 state provisions restricting women’s access to abortion enacted by the states apply to a woman whose pregnancy resulted from rape.

• 72% (18 bills) of the 25 bills introduced in the United States Congress to restrict a woman’s access to abortion apply to a woman whose pregnancy resulted from rape.

Here was Americans United for Life’s apt response to New Republic:

Clearly, this life-affirming trend has staying power, and it is terrifying Big Abortion.

For example, rather than focus on the protective effect pro-life legislation has for women’s health, abortion advocates wrongfully accuse pro-life legislators of ignoring the needs of women facing pregnancies conceived through rape.… In fact, women who have been victimized by rape are arguably more in need of legislation aimed at protecting their physical and mental health. But abortion advocates have made rape their political straw man to advocate for unregulated and unrestricted abortion-on-demand. It is dishonest. It further victimizes women by making them a tool to advance Big Abortion’s agenda.

To be clear, a person professing to be pro-life who holds a rape/incest exception is actually pro-abortion with exceptions. Thankfully, we are surmounting that obstacle to save the 1%. Now, politicians have to learn to articulate our rationale better. Learn from AUL’s Charmaine Yoest, who responded to the rape/incest question this way in a 2012 New Republic piece:

I asked whether she thought abortion should be illegal in cases of rape and incest…. She wouldn’t say yes or no explicitly, but her positions seemed clear. “There are many women in the pro-life movement who brought babies to term who talk about the importance of not adding another tragedy to a tragedy, so that is the way we look at it in the cases of rape and incest,” she told me. “Deal with the perpetrator in that crime, not the innocent lives caught up in that crime.”

[Graphic via Save The 1; HT: Rebecca Kiessling]

In the interactive experience “Choice: Texas,” players choose a female avatar to navigate “the struggle with geography, time, and money to obtain abortions,” according to the developers behind the idea, Carly Kocurek and Allyson Whipple…

An effort is now underway to raise $9,250 to cover the costs of developing the game, which is slated to drop in February.

~ Leslie Larson reporting on the abortion-seeking gaming experience whose serious development was inspired by Texas State Senator Wendy Davis’ filibuster of a pro-life Texas law, New York Daily News, August 29

by Hans Johnson

A sidewalk counselor tries to convince Landis to rescue his child.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/v1ueOepRoI8[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: Sharon]

“I cannot get inside this lady’s head,” Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli said of [a] potential motive. “I have no clue.”

The suspect’s stepmother… sobbed when she learned the horrific details. She didn’t know Amanda was expecting, but recalled seeing a letter from Planned Parenthood addressed to her.

~ David K. Li, reporting on the discovery of a near full-term infant wrapped in plastic and hidden inside a pub’s toilet tank, New York Post, August 27

Pennsylvania has a safe haven law, which would have allowed Hein to leave the baby at any local hospital, no questions asked.

Media originally reported that a “fetus” had been found in a toilet tank. The pub’s owner was visibly shaken by the discovery:

[HT: LauraLoo; photo via NY Daily News]