It was definitely the most incredible moment of my life… I never imagined I would be in a delivery room with my mother in this particular situation.

~ Sara Connell describing the moment that her mother, Kristine Casey, gave birth to her own grandson via in-vitro fertilization, as discussed on an episode highlighting infertility, Katie Couric, June 18

by Hans Johnson

Saturday on the  Melissa Harris-Perry program an all-pro-choice panel discussed  the bill that would outlaw abortions after 20 weeks (passed by the House of Representatives Tuesday).

Salamisha Tillet, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania, had a rather puzzling take on the underlying motive behind the recent spate of legislation:

… I think this is one response to that sense that there’s a decreasing white majority in the country and that women’s bodies and white women’s bodies in particular are obviously a crucial way of reproducing whiteness, white supremacy, white privilege.

And so I think it’s just a kind of clamping down on women’s bodies, in particular white women’s bodies, even though women of color are really caught in the fray.

Of course, the facts tell a different story: Minorities constitute an inordinately greater percentage of the abortions committed (4.8 times more than non-Hispanic whites). In other words, abortion is the white supremacist’s “friend.”

Here is the video from MSNBC:

Bill O’Reilly discussed this Tuesday night.

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

The Associated Press tells us that the “GOP-led House on Tuesday passed a far-reaching anti-abortion bill.” But don’t worry, Politico adds. It is “largely symbolic: The bill will be dead on arrival in the Senate.”

That is the reason, of course, that coverage tends to conflate all positions on abortion — throwing together those who believe that 22-week-old fetuses can feel pain and those who believe that a woman can avoid pregnancy while being raped if she prays hard enough — so they can focus on the all-important political implications (hint: terrible for Republicans) of a debate they’re already distorting.

~ David Harsanyi, Human Events, June 19

[Image of 20-week fetus by Science Photo Library via pregnancymomandbaby.com]

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• Joe Carter responds to the NY Times story editorial on the passage of the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act:
  

  Which Republican leaders made the claim? Peters doesn’t say. He also doesn’t explain how — or even if — the abortion issue hurt the GOP with women in 2012. But everyone at the New York Times already knows it did, and common knowledge doesn’t need to be supported with facts, right? And there is no issue here of married women vs. single women, when it comes to voting. Right? All women support abortion rights, or so Peters would have us think.

• The Texas Senate has passed legislation to toughen regulation of abortion clinics:
  

  Senate Bill 5 would increase regulatory standards for facilities that perform abortions, require doctors who perform abortions to have admitting procedures at nearby hospitals and require doctors who administer abortion-inducing drugs to do so in person.

• Planned Parenthood is opening a new clinic in the Bay Area with the help of $250,000 in local tax-dollars:
  

  Planned Parenthood opened the new San Rafael clinic Wednesday after buying the $2.3 million property at 2 H St. and investing $900,000 to renovate it. Many protesters [pictured left] took issue with a recent Marin County Board of Supervisors’ grant to the clinic of $250,000 to put toward its renovations.

• By cutting off the digits of mice, scientists have discovered that stem cells under the fingernail help fingertips regrow:
  

  The digit bones can regenerate only if the amputated stump still has some nail stem cells, the researchers found. But the cells alone are not enough; also crucial is a zone of tissue that grows from the stem cells during normal nail growth. After amputation, this tissue sends signals that attract new nerves into the end of the stump and begin the bone regeneration process. If amputation removes the nail zone or if the signals are blocked, the digits will not regenerate.

[Photo by Frankie Frost/Marin Independent Journal]

by LauraLoo

This shadow dance about the life and loss of a mother moved Simon Cowell so deeply that it brought him (and other judges on Britain’s Got Talent) to tears.

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

Encore – they’re amazing!

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: GodTube]

Then she said she impregnated; that’s the night your heart died

‘Til death but do your part – unholy matrimony.

~ Lyrics to rapper Kanye West’s new single, Blood On the Leaves, “which glorifies aborting the babies men conceive with their mistresses, leaked out to the public just as Kim Kardashian was about to give birth to his baby girl,” via LifeSite News, June 17

[HT: Kel]

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 discusses the vote this week on the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act and gives analysis of some of the concerns/objections to this legislation from pro-life activists.

• Tennessee GOP Rep. Marsha Blackburn (pictured left) has an op-ed in Politico on the House’s legislation, which seeks to ban abortion past 20 weeks:
  

  A vote in favor is a vote for human decency and public health safety. A vote against is simply indefensible. Our bipartisan proposal doesn’t stop all abortions as Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi claimed last week. Will other Democrats join me in protecting women and children who feel pain or will they be on Pelosi’s side protecting Gosnell-like, late-term abortions as sacred ground?

• Clinic Quotes points out how the abortion industry knowingly lies about fetal pain. Former clinic worker Amy states, “The hardest question you get asked is ‘does the baby feel pain?’ We had to lie to them or say we don’t know.”
• At Life Site News, John Jansen discusses the failure of emergency contraception in decreasing the “need” for abortion – even according the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute:
  

  Despite the fact that there has been a huge increase in the number of women who have used EC over the last decade, even the Guttmacher Institute admits that “there’s no evidence” that EC has lowered the overall national rate of unintended pregnancy. In moments of honesty, even the biggest cheerleaders for EC will admit that the best that can be said of it is that it’s “better than nothing.”

  Increased availability of EC hasn’t made a dent in the U.S. abortion rate, either. (And the U.S. isn’t alone. Consider this recent headline: “Abortion on rise in Sweden despite higher sales of morning-after pill.”) In this vein, it’s especially instructive to take a look at Planned Parenthood’s own figures.

• Our new blog addition, A Culture of Life, tells the story of one mother in New Zealand who stood courageously for her child against those who told her to abort because of a poor prenatal diagnosis:
  

  But at 32 weeks baby Ava was born. She had none of the anomalies diagnosed prior to birth, although she did have a horseshoe kidney, something the scans didn’t pick up. Because Ava was eight weeks premature, she spent time in NICU, but she was strong and was able to go home after two weeks.

  At a time when prenatal screening is routine, this story (and the countless more that are similar), should serve as a warning for medical professionals, for parents and for families. All too often, a prenatal diagnosis of an impairment, disability or life-limiting condition ends in abortion. Often this is because of pressure from the medical experts, from a lack of information about the conditions and a fear of the unknown.

  But Baby Ava’s story shows that sometimes doctors get it wrong. And even if they don’t get it wrong, why is the answer abortion?

• Down on the Pharm wonders if anyone in Catholic Church leadership is willing to stand up and address the Nancy Pelosis of the church who designate abortion and infanticide as “sacred ground,” citing their Catholic “faith” as a reason for their support.

• At Live Action News, Rebecca Downs documents another instance why Girl Scouts USA can no longer claim “neutrality” on the issue of abortion:
  

  While the Girl Scouts claims to not take a position on abortion, on May 9, 2013, MAKERS, a feminist, pro-abortion video of women whose “pioneering contributions” have apparently changed America, was screened as a Girl Scout-sponsored event.

  The video came with a warning to parents, stating:
  

  Parents need to know that Makers: Women Who Make America discusses potentially sensitive issues like abortion, birth control pills, domestic violence, and rape as they relate to the women’s movement beginning in the 1950s through today. Most of these topics are talked about, not visualized, though there are a handful of blurred images – one of a women who died after an illegal abortion and another of an image of a naked woman. There is also some discussion of how the lesbian movement fit in (and diverged from) the mainstream feminist movement.

  One of the promoters of the video is MAKERS Board member Amy Richards, “a co-founder of Third Wave Foundation, a pro-abortion group; an adviser to Planned Parenthood NYC” who recently posted a video casually discussing her own selective reduction abortions.

  Many churches are still hosting GSUSA. We cannot just stop buying cookies; we must not allow them access to our daughters.

• Americans United for Life shares video of Dr. Charmaine Yoest on a guest panel of four women on MSNBC. Naturally, Yoest is the sole representative of the pro-life view, and as always, defends it well, pointing out the extremism of the abortion lobby:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/uIdcKDIv5Rw[/youtube]

[Photos via sema.org, A Culture of Life, and protectamerica.com]

by Hans Johnson

Trish Staine of Duluth, Minnesota did a two-hour, nine-mile training run on Sunday, June 2 for an upcoming half-marathon race. She was concerned about a sore back that evening, and the next day the pain grew worse and worse. While on the phone with husband John it became excruciating -  too much for her stepsons to take her to the hospital. So an ambulance was called. “I felt like I was dying. I didn’t know what was going on,” she said.

They were stunned to hear at the ER that a fetal heartbeat had been detected. Not only had Trish not gained any weight, but John had had a vasectomy. But in short order, baby Mira – short for miracle – was born at 3:25 p.m., joining Trish’s two other biological children, three stepsons, as well as foster children.

From WDIO:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9J7G6DB7Vw[/youtube]

There was a discussion of the phenomenon of surprise pregnancies and births Thursday on NBC’s Today.

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: TheBlaze]