by Hans Johnson

Ella Mae, age 20 months, enjoys covering the famous “An American Trilogy” by Elvis Presley. Still being an amateur singer, she will have to learn to hold down the back and forth with the audience.

However, “Hi Daddy!” is always understandable, especially to the video’s owner, HoundDogBilly:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/fmWa1gKrp6Q[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: Kelli & GodVine]

Some of us were raised to have a passion for the pro-life issue.

Some of us had an eye-opening conversation, or read something.

Some of us had a life-altering experience.

What sparked your passion on the abortion issue?

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.

• Secular Pro-Life has two excellent posts. In the first, their press release rejects the stereotype of pro-lifers advanced by Comedy Central’s The Daily Show guest host, John Oliver, [who] “implied that abortion restrictions are motivated solely by religion and not by secular concern for the human right to life.” The second post, discusses the censoring of three pro-life female physicians who “were scheduled to give presentations at a Medical Women’s International Association (MWIA) meeting in Seoul” but were told after they arrived that their presentations had been cancelled because they “had prepared presentations on risks of abortion.”

• When it rains, it pours. Operation Rescue reveals that on August 7, an ambulance was called to the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the only remaining abortion mill in Mississippi, run by embattled abortion entrepreneur Diane Derzis and abortionist Bruce Norman.

  It was a busy week for the pair as they were, according to ProLifeBlogs, in an Alabama court this week due to a “lawsuit from the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) [alleging] that “though Derzis was made to surrender her abortion provider license in 2012, she and Norman have continued holding themselves out as an abortion clinic in the very same building, with Norman performing unlicensed abortions and Derzis deceptively managing the clinic’s staff and insurance through her Georgia abortion facility.”

  A judge ruled just yesterday that Derzis’ Alabama facility must be shut down.

  This kind of damning information about the abortion industry is not publicized as it should be by mainstream media, much to the detriment of women’s safety.

• Right to Life of Michigan shares an Ohio RTL blog discussing the recent attention to the city of Detroit, which has filed for bankruptcy. Mainstream media has revealed some more obvious examples of the deteriorating conditions there (like the fact that 40% of the city’s traffic lights are not operational), but here is an even more staggering statistic not reported:
  

  In 2012, Detroit claimed an abortion rate of 37.9 (number of abortions per 1,000 females, ages 15-44) – a rate far higher than Michigan’s statewide rate of 11 and the country’s rate of approximately 20.

• Pro-Life New Mexico says pro-lifers have descended on Albuquerque in an effort to give citizens a “crash course” on abortion in their city:
  

  For the last three days, Survivors, UNM Students for Life, Created Equal, and local pro-lifers have taken over Albuquerque. They have been in front of UNM, Southwestern Women’s Options, the Holocaust Museum, Planned Parenthood, and along major streets in the city. They have canvassed the neighborhoods around the killing mills and left flyers informing the citizens what’s happening down the street from them. Town hall meetings are being held every evening at St. Pius here in Albuquerque with many prominent speakers from varied backgrounds in the pro-life movement.

  For a recap of the first day’s activities go here. For a list of events and updates go here.

• Pro-Life Wisconsin has more on the reports that Catholic hospitals who fail to grant admitting privileges to doctors because they perform abortions may be compelled by the courts to violate the tenets of their faith in order to stay in business. A newly-passed law in the state requires abortionists to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the abortion facility.

[Photos via Operation Rescue, Pro-Life New Mexico, and Pro-Life Action League]

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• Kirsten Powers uses her latest column to point out how Wendy Davis doesn’t know what she’s talking about when she speaks on abortion:
  

  Despite frequently mocking anti-abortion activists as anti-science know-nothings, abortion rights absolutists are the ones who play fast and loose with the facts of abortion. Because they are so rarely asked to defend their positions, Davis and her ilk apparently don’t feel the need to be informed.

  Follow-up questions to their strange and often empirically false statements are almost nonexistent, while offensive or misinformed comments from GOP back benchers are greeted with full-scale media hysteria.

• The Toledo Blade covers the possible closure of the last abortion clinic in Toledo:
  

  Dr. Theodore Wymyslo, director of the Ohio Department of Health, notified the facility in a letter dated Aug. 2 that it had 30 days to request an administrative hearing. [Health Dept. spokesperson] Ms. [Tessie] Pollock said that if Capital Care does not respond within that time, the health department will proceed with revocation.

  Terrie Hubbard, identified by the health department as Capital Care Network of Toledo’s owner, did not return phone calls or an email seeking comment.

  However, as of Thursday morning, Capital Care was open and seeing patients.

• Ross Douthat (pictured left) responds to his critics regarding his comparison between abortion laws in Europe and the U.S.:
  

  This variation, in turn, gives us more data on the original question that my column asked: What happens to a modern society when abortion is restricted? And I don’t think that either Pollitt or Lemieux offered much of a rebuttal to my suggestion that Europe’s variations and their apparent consequences pose a problem for two commonplace pro-choice assumptions: That restrictions on abortion don’t actually reduce abortion rates (which appears to be true in neither the U.S. nor in Europe), and more importantly, that any restrictions on abortion are necessarily threats to female professional advancement and bodily health.

• Politico has an article on the GAO’s investigation into Planned Parenthood:
  

  On Friday, the GAO confirmed to POLITICO that the request from the lawmakers was accepted and an investigation opened. No press release or pubic statement was put out by the office at the time.

  Chuck Young, GAO managing director of public affairs, said the scope of the investigation was still being determined, and no completion date had been set.

The SBA List has related video from Fox News:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjufnMu2lx4&feature=share&list=UUweaynfcfOijvB8icPqU3sQ[/youtube]

[Photo via motherjones.com]

by LauraLoo

As reported by People:

Like many mothers, Christina Applegate [pictured right with husband Martyn LeNoble] can’t decide if she wants to have more kids.

“I’m 41 years old and I don’t know if I could do the whole not sleeping thing again….  If I was 35, then maybe I’d have the energy.”…

Still Applegate admits that she may change her mind….

“I think we both want to make another Sadie.  We watch this little person and she’s so perfect and she enhances our life so much that you go, God — how could we not produce more of these?

We’re both kind of like, ‘Eh, we’re a little old’ — we don’t know,'” she says.

Moms, how did you feel at 41? Were you “too old” and lacking the stamina required to have more children?

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

It seems that women these days are too clever for their own good, at least when it comes to making babies. Research emerging from the London School of Economics examining the links between intelligence and maternal urges in women claims that more of the former means less of the latter.

In an ideal world, such findings might be interpreted as smart women making smart choices, but instead it seems that this research is just adding fuel to the argument that women who don’t have children, regardless of the reason, are not just selfish losers but dumb ones as well.

~ Sadhbh Walshe criticizing research that finds a link between women’s intelligence and their child-bearing choices, The Guardian, August 7

[HT: Laura Loo]

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• Salon has a piece by Katie McDonough in which fetal pain is called “a lie.” McDonough’s cited source for this conclusion is one review of studies by abortion advocates and late-term abortionist Anne Davis, who is also the consulting medical director at Physicians for Reproductive Health. Davis claims children (born or unborn) can’t feel pain until 26 weeks. The following might be one reason Davis is so opposed to fetal pain legislation:
  

  “Patients are now asking me about fetal pain. This was not happening 15 years ago,” Davis says. “When you’re sitting in your office with a woman who is 22 weeks into a pregnancy with a severe fetal anomaly — she’s depressed, she’s stressed and now she’s worried, ‘Is my baby going to feel pain?’ It’s just another thing these women have to struggle with. And why? These are created concerns. They are not based in science, they are based in politics.”

• Cleveland Right to Life is now no longer affiliated with National Right to Life since CRTL added opposition to same-sex marriage to their mission statement.
• Yesterday, an ambulance was called to Mississippi’s only abortion clinic:
  

  The Clarion-Ledger reached out to Jackson Women’s Health Organization owner Diane Derzis but she declined to comment.

• Wisconsin Attorney General J. B. Van Hollen (pictured left) issued a court filing that hospitals in Wisconsin can’t deny admitting privileges to abortionists just because they provide abortions:
  

  Federal law “provides that hospitals accepting federal funds may not discriminate against a physician because that physician has participated in or refused to participate in abortions,” the state Justice Department said in its filing in federal court.

  According to experts on federal law, if doctors can prove they were not granted privileges specifically because they perform the procedure, the hospital systems — Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare, Columbia St. Mary’s Health System and Hospital Sisters Health System — could lose federal dollars in the form of research and public health grants.

• In the New Yorker, Amy Davidson tries to defend Wendy Davis and attack Erick Erickson for his “Abortion Barbie” tweet. I’m not surprised Davidson doesn’t include Davis’ actual quote. Here’s how Davidson describes the exchange:
  

  Kermit Gosnell was the doctor convicted on murder charges after running an unsafe, illegal operation. Davis had answered a question about him and, after saying that she didn’t know much about the case, had gotten a fact about it wrong. (It had to do with whether Gosnell’s clinic was licensed as an ambulatory-surgical center.) Davis, who has a degree from Harvard Law School, rightly pointed out its disconnect from the Texas bill.

  Had gotten a fact wrong about it? Yeah, she got wrong the only thing she said about it (her incorrect claim that Gosnell was operating a surgical ambulatory facility) and I don’t know how you could think there is a “disconnect” between tightening regulations on abortion clinics and the reality that Gosnell was allowed to operate without being inspected for more than a decade.

[Photo via post-crescent.com]

by Hans Johnson

At least two old sayings went by the wayside on the 4th of July. Not only did lightning strike twice in the same place, but after three strikes, an Albuquerque, New Mexico couple was not out – not permanently, anyway.

Said Ian Gordon, via KRGE:

We were actually going inside because we heard the lightning and the thunder, The next thing we know, we woke up on the ground and everybody was just trying to keep us calm.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/lnK8bx11u0c[/youtube]

Ian’s girlfriend Kendra Villaneuva was only two weeks from her due date. Luckily firefighters were in the area and they were rushed to the University of New Mexico Hospital, where Kimberly Samantha Rose Gordon was born via c-section.

Kimberly’s father already has an idea for a nickname: “Last name’s Gordon, so:  “Little Flash Gordon”… We’re hoping for, you know… run fast, or save the universe.”

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: TheBlaze]