by LauraLoo

As reported by Us Magazine, Selena Gomez (of Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place fame) is going to be a big sister!

On Mother’s Day, Selena celebrated Mother’s Day with a sweet Twitpic with her mom, Mandy Teefey. In the snapshot, the pretty (and strikingly similar looking) mother and daughter smile for the cameras, with Selena holding her mother’s unmistakeable baby bump.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oo0x5PmAgFA[/youtube]

Mandy divorced Selena’s father, Ricardo, when Selena was five years old.  It will be the second child together for Mandy and her husband Brian Teefey, whom she wed in 2006. Sadly, the couple lost their first child to miscarriage.

Congratulations to the happy family!

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As you know, President Obama is trying to crush our religious freedom by forcing religious employers to provide contraceptives, abortion drugs, and sterilization coverage in their insurance plans.

To that end, several pro-life/pro-family organizations have banded together to synchronize an email/Facebook/Twitter/blog alert to their people, asking them to contact their members of Congress during a two hour window this morning: from 10a to 12p EST, and to tweet during those same hours.

The message to Congress is to support H.R. 940, the Health Care Conscience Rights Act. As Eric Scheidler of Pro-Life Action League explained to his email list this morning:

Do you want to be a part of this MASSIVE effort to WAKE UP Congress on this critical issue? Here’s what to do:

Between 10 a.m. and noon EST, call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell your Congressman: “Please CO-SPONSOR H.R. 940, the Health Care Conscience Rights Act, and ensure it comes to a vote before July 4.”

The Conscience Rights Act is designed to protect our medical professionals and business owners from the pernicious HHS Mandate we’ve been fighting so hard over the past year.

When you call, you will be one of MILLIONS pushing this urgent issue back into the forefront of our Representatives minds.

But it’s crucial that we all call at the same time — from 10 a.m. to noon Eastern time TODAY – to overwhelm Congress with a clear picture of our strength and determination.

On Twitter use the hashtags #ReligiousFreedom and #ConscienceProtection.

Please post this blog on your Facebook, to alert your friends.

The timing of this event couldn’t be better. As you’re likely aware, scandals are erupting around the Obama administration this week, all on variations of the same theme, liberal government overreach. From Politico, today:

The narrative is ideological. For five years, this president has been making the case that a growing and activist government has good intentions and can carry these intentions out with competence. Conservatives have warned that government is dangerous, and even good intentions get bungled in the execution.

In different ways, the IRS uproar, the Justice Department leak investigations, the Benghazi tragedy and the misleading attempts to explain it, and the growing problems with implementation of health care reform all bolster the conservative worldview.

Please remind your congressman that the HHS Mandate is another scandal that needs to be overturned. If you don’t know who your congressman is, go here.

Q: Did you have the feeling that abortion was something that needed to be portrayed more realistically on screen?

Several of my friends have had abortions, and I’ve never really seen an abortion on a TV show that reflected their experience. I’m not saying it’s fun, but it’s not always the horribly conflicted, nightmarishly difficult decision it’s made out to be.

~ Actor, writer, playwright, and director Kit Williamson (pictured) explaining his decision to feature an abortion storyline on the
“comedic and gay-leaning web series EastSiders,” in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, May 14

[Video at the link; Photo credit: Kit Williamson’s Twitter page]

by Kelli

We welcome your suggestions for additions to our Top Blogs (see tab on right side of home page)! Email Susie@jillstanek.com.

Today, some Kermit Gosnell verdict reactions:

• At Live Action News, Kristen Hatten questions whether people will “turn off the TV and think, ‘Well, that Gosnell guy was doing abortions the wrong way, but he’s been caught. The system works, and most abortions aren’t like that anyway.’ Are they going to snuggle down in their beds feeling like the one bad guy has been caught, and remain pro-choice?”
• Big Blue Wave is furious at the pro-choice side’s reaction to the guilty verdict – which is, naturally, to blame pro-lifers for Gosnell’s existence.

• Former abortion worker Abby Johnson (pictured left) urges compassion, saying of Gosnell, “That was me”:
  

  It was Christ who changed me. It was the merciful and compassionate words of His people. It was no condemnation. It was not prayers that I would burn in hell. It was not those who yelled and called me names. It was the words of people… who prayed that I would, one day, walk out of that clinic….

  Don’t we want that for every abortion clinic worker and abortion provider? Don’t we want that for Kermit Gosnell?

• At Coming Home, Dr. Gerard Nadal says that though Gosnell was found guilty, abortion remains an embedded part of American society:
  

  If the murder of these babies is indeed regarded as first degree murder because of their location, then their abortions would have been no less an act of murder five minutes earlier when inside their mothers.

  If Gosnell is put to death by the state it will not be for taking these babies’ lives at the developmental stages when they were killed. No, Gosnell will be put to death for not following medical protocol as dictated by law, namely failing to call 911 and to keep the baby alive because it couldn’t be murdered in a place prescribed by law.

• Down on the Pharm says the trial is “hugely significant,” mainly “for having been ignored by the media, most of which only began covering the issue when forced to by its repetition in the social media.”
• Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life says abortionists seem to be confused on the issue of rights, not unlike President Obama:
  

  The guilty verdict on charges of killing babies following abortion shows that the law recognizes a point at which the “right to choose” must yield to the right to life, and also shows that abortionists don’t know where that point is. Such laws must be strengthened in every state.

• AUL’s Charmaine Yoest appeared on Fox News’ Special Report following the Gosnell guilty verdict on Monday:

[Photo via catholicmoxie.wordpress.com]

For 28 years Chris Slattery (pictured right), founder of Expectant Mother Care Frontline Pregnancy Centers, has focused on helping pregnant mothers in crisis in the New York City area, where 40% of all babies are killed by abortion, and worse, 60% of all black babies.

EMC now operates in 12 locations in four NYC boroughs.

But this summer Slattery plans to exponentially expand EMC’s urban outreach to 10 other major U.S. cities with high abortion rates and underrepresented crisis pregnancy outreach – Austin, Baltimore, Buffalo, Charlotte, Cleveland, Detroit, Miami, Philadelphia, San Antonio, and Washington, D.C.

EMC offices are already open in Charlotte, Detroit, and DC. EMC’s Miami branch will launch next week.

Slattery plans to accomplish this ambitious expansion through innovative use of flexible workplace rental space and high caliber college and grad school interns.

Slattery is affordably locating in typically high rent districts by renting day offices, which come complete with furniture and receptionists. Pictured left is EMC’s Detroit suite.

“A typical city has half a dozen of these sorts of offices in a central part of the city or suburbs,” Slattery explained to me a phone interview. “We will make use of these efficient and attractive offices two to five days per week depending on the market.”

These urban prcs will be marketed primarily on the Internet and through referral from suburban and rural prcs.

Slattery will staff his prcs with college and graduate school interns, most from outside the U.S. Forty have been recruited thus far, 90% from Spain. Pictured right is intern Betty Cona, already staffing the Charlotte office.

“All of these young people have had experience serving the poor around the world,” Chris explained. “On average these kids have completed two to three summers of service to the poor. They are all aged 20 to 28 and are fluent in multiple languages, particularly Spanish.”

Slattery’s secondary goal is to bolster Hispanic outreach, which is lacking in our movement.

The interns will receive three to four weeks of training in New York before teams of four are sent to various cities. There they will receive free housing and be connected with American counterparts, local female college and grad students who it is hoped will expand this effort into year-round operation of the prcs. In most markets there will also be seasoned, older pro-life women also working with them side-by-side.

A 45-hour work week will be equally divided between sidewalk counseling in front of urban abortion clinics and peer-to-peer counseling and education in the office. On any given day two interns will stand in front of an abortion clinic while two staff the office.

“We will be at Santangelo’s clinic all summer, for instance,” Chris said, referring to the late-term D.C. abortionist recently exposed by Live Action as conducive to infanticide.

Interns will receive $110 stipend per week.

Slattery says they still need housing and local talent. He is also open to expanding to other cities if he can find solid partners. “I’m not looking at small towns,” Chris reiterated. “Large cities are our underserved market.”

Slattery can establish a new urban market for $2,000-$3,000 a month, which covers office space, intern stipends, and advertising.

Stage II will be to partner with pro-life ob/gyns and clinics. In NYC, eight of these partner with EMC.

If you live in one of these locations, and can provide housing or financial aid, email Chris at slatteryny@gmail.com.

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• At Slate, Emily Bazelon claims Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro has never killed, even though he allegedly killed Michelle Knight’s five preborn children. Apparently in Bazelon’s mind, unborn children can’t be killed:
  

  The Supreme Court has so far ruled out the death penalty for crimes other than murder. If you think that’s the right line to draw — that the state should not take the life of someone who has not killed — then Castro shouldn’t be executed. I have to say I’m having some trouble typing those words. But in this case, I think that’s the right call.

• Illinois Review suggests pro-life groups may have been among the conservative groups harassed by the IRS during Obama’s first term.
• The New York Times interviewed Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards. To me she comes off as standoffish even though a good deal of the questions are softballs. There’s even a Todd Akin question.

• NARAL and Planned Parenthood probably don’t like hearing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg talk like this publicly. Also note that Ginsburg considers herself a proponent of judicial restraint:
  

  Asked about the continuing challenges to abortion rights, Ginsburg said that in her view Roe’s legacy will ultimately hold up.

“It’s not going to matter that much,” she said. “Take the worst-case scenario… suppose the decision were overruled; you would have a number of states that will never go back to the way it was.”

Kind of hurts the old “End of the world if Roe was overturned” fear mongering when Justice Ginsburg is saying “It’s not going to matter that much.”

[Photo via NY Times]

by Hans Johnson

Baby Audrina is beating the odds of a rare birth anomaly.

Here’s the report from  Inside Edition.

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

My mother fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.

We often speak of “Mommy’s mommy,” and I find myself trying to explain the illness that took her away from us. They have asked if the same could happen to me. I have always told them not to worry, but the truth is I carry a “faulty” gene, BRCA1, which sharply increases my risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer.

My doctors estimated that I had an 87% risk of breast cancer and a 50% risk of ovarian cancer….

Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy….

My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87% to under 5%. I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer….

And they know that I love them and will do anything to be with them as long as I can.

~ Actress Angelina Jolie, op-ed in The New York Times, May 14

[Photo of Angelina Jolie with mother Marcheline Bertrand in 2001. Bertrand died of ovarian cancer in 2007]