Those who are wise will shine like the brightness on the horizon. Those who lead many people to righteousness will shine like the stars forever and ever.

~ Daniel 12:3, God’s Word translation

[Graphic (Click to enlarge) via mudmelly]

by Hans Johnson

Popular British folk rock group Mumford & Sons has a song called “Timshel” which many feel has a supportive, decidedly pro-life bent. It was inspired by a friend who was dealing with an unplanned pregnancy.

The favorite novel of lead singer Marcus Mumford is John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. In it is a philosophical discussion of the story of Cain and Abel: that the Hebrew word “timshel” as addressed to Cain by God means “thou mayest” overcome sin. Thus, humanity has a profound privilege and responsibility in possessing free will.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=984eY9Yeqb0[/youtube]

They won the Grammy for last year’s album of the year. See live performances of this song here, at the 2011 BRIT Awards, and also here.

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.comwith your video suggestions.

[HT: xalisae]

The story is horrific, the most stark evidence of abortion’s outcome.

Pro-lifers know Kermit Gosnell was not an outlier. He may not have been typical, but there are and have been plenty of abortionist hacks, quacks, and pervs since abortion was made “safe and legal” in 1973.

But due to pro-abortion bias in the media and politics, and the abortion industry’s big PR budget, we had trouble reaching through to the public.

So now there has been a breakthrough. The media is paying attention and in some cases introspective. The public is learning of the horror.

Do you think these revelations will result in a noticable decline in abortion support?

Steinberg said that when Gosnell was in practice, women would sometimes come to Planned Parenthood for services after first visiting Gosnell’s West Philadelphia clinic, and would complain to staff about the conditions there.

“We would always encourage them to report it to the Department of Health,” Steinberg said….

~ Philly.com, April 18, quoting Planned Parenthood Southeast Pennsylvania president and CEO Dayle Steinberg

The advent of “safe, legal abortion” didn’t interfere with Gosnell’s back-alley career. The grand jury’s account suggests that other abortionists treated him less as an outlaw than as a niche player in the abortion market. He earned a bad reputation in Philadelphia but received referrals from across the Eastern Seaboard. Many of the women dispatched to him were “well beyond” 24 weeks pregnant, the legal limit in Pennsylvania.

~ James Taranto, Wall Street Journal, April 18

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.

• Down on the Pharm highlights a report showing the abortion industry’s claim that the problem with abortionist Kermit Gosnell isn’t infanticide. The real problems – to them – are the restrictions, regulations, and lack of taxpayer funding for late-term abortions.
• Big Blue Wave posts a list of top ten most notorious abortionists, demonstrating that Kermit Gosnell is far from being the outlier that pro-choicers claim he is.

• Abstinence Clearinghouse shares an article about a new dating website – for people with STDs. Using a drop-down menu, users can find potential mates with their same STD. Looks like some entrepreneurs found a new way to cash in on our culture’s promotion of recreational sex.
• At Coming Home, Dr. Gerard Nadal offers his perspective on why the Gosnell case matters and why society wants to avoid it:
  

  We cannot long survive as a civilization of rational human beings with that sort of mentality. American exceptionalism has been consumed by radicalized autonomy, and in the process biomedical ethics, politics, and common decency have been savaged….

  To look into the face of Kermit Gosnell is to look in the American mirror, a rare glimpse of clarity as the fog temporarily lifts from the mirror.

• Clinic Quotes has a quote from former staffer for the late abortionist George Tiller on how Tiller managed to keep his employees from learning the realities of the late-term abortion practice.
• Americans United for Life applauds the Florida House’s unanimous passage of Born Alive Infants Protection legislation. AUL’s Dr. Charmaine Yoest urges the Florida Senate to pass the bill and send it to the governor.

• FRC Blog writes about the lawsuit filed against the HHS Mandate by Michael Potter, CEO of Eden Foods – a company which is “organic” and popular with liberals. In typical liberal fashion, Salon published a “hit piece” publicizing the suit and “fram[ing] Potter as a man with an anti-birth control agenda.”
• MN Citizens Concerned for Life calls out Whole Woman’s Health, an abortion clinic in Minneapolis, which advertises same-day abortions – which makes them either guilty of false advertising or of illegally ignoring the state’s mandatory 24-hour waiting period before an abortion.
• Ethika Politika compares the drone program to the sexual revolution ushered in with the birth control pill and later, the morning-after pill:
  

  The promises of drones, like those of The Pill, are fraught with unintended ramifications that dramatically outweigh any potential benefits the technology can offer. The aftermath of widespread birth control and the sexual revolution are present before our eyes, a testament to the disastrous results of allowing technological potential to have mastery over our behavior.

[Top photo via USA Today]

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• At the Daily Caller, our own Jill Stanek writes about President Barack Obama’s history of “blind faith in abortion doctors” like Kermit Gosnell:
  

  Note Obama expressed concern that saving abortion survivors “might impact… the relationship between the doctor and the patient,” and that this [Illinois Born Alive] legislation was “really designed to burden the original decision….”

  … Obama apparently cannot fathom that an upstanding abortionist who had been paid to kill a baby wouldn’t turn around and try to save a viable baby’s life in the event of a botch.

  Kermit Gosnell would have been one of the abortionists in which Obama had “confidence.”

• Also at the Daily Caller, Michael J. New discusses how New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s new Reproductive Health Act would overturn certain safeguards put in place in NY state abortion law from 1970 – three years before Roe was passed. These safeguards include requiring that only physicians – not nurses or midwives – may perform abortions, as well as allowing abortion only through 24 weeks. Cuomo’s Act clearly puts women at greater risk.
• Michelle Malkin sums up the “lack of access led to Gosnell” meme quite well. She also notes that Gosnell isn’t an exception – citing Stephen Brigham, Andrew Rutland, and the Delaware Planned Parenthood currently under state investigation:
  

  Gosnell’s enablers have concocted all sorts of excuses for themselves.

  The billion-dollar abortion racket says “lack of funding” and “access” to “health care” is the real problem. But expanding “access” is exactly how Gosnell got away with murder after bloody murder. As the grand jury revealed, pro-choice bureaucrats in liberal GOP governor Tom Ridge’s administration concluded that increased inspections “would be ‘putting a barrier up to women’ seeking abortions. Better to leave clinics to do as they pleased, even though, as Gosnell proved, that meant both women and babies would pay.”

• The USA Today editorial on Gosnell’s trial includes this line:
  

  Unless evidence emerges that clinics like his exist in other parts of the country, the case looks like an appalling anomaly.

  They say this after noting how a simple internet search could have found other Pennsylvania abortionists willing to perform abortion up to 24 weeks. An internet search or having contact with a couple of people in the pro-life movement could have provided ample evidence that the filthy, unsanitary conditions in Gosnell’s clinic are not an anomaly and that there are plenty of incompetent, dangerous abortionists. Gosnell is an anomaly in the sense that he snipped the necks of babies who survived abortion and there was so much evidence against him, but pro-lifers have been chronicling shady abortionists for decades.

• Ross Douthat notes how abortion advocates have failed to put forward arguments which embrace the goriness of late-term abortion without helping the pro-life cause:
  

  To respond effectively to the doubts about abortion that fetal snipping summons up, pro-choice advocates would need arguments that… acknowledge and come to terms with the goriness of third-trimester abortions while simultaneously persuading the conflicted and uncommitted of their validity, and that somehow take ownership of the “violence” and “gruesomeness” of abortion… without giving aid and comfort to the pro-life cause.

  And in the absence of such arguments, the pro-choice response to Gosnell feels either evasive and euphemistic, or else logically consistent in ways that tend to horrify the unconvinced….

  But of course it’s possible that those arguments are absent because they simply don’t exist.

• James Taranto points out how Roe v. Wade didn’t make abortions safe for women. Instead of hiding in the back-alleys, shady abortionists can now bring the back-alley to main street (or 3801 Lancaster):
  

  Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Gosnell and have already obtained guilty pleas from eight of his former staffers. The grand jury’s report should also be seen as an indictment of America’s post-Roe abortion industry. Its indifference—at best—to legal limits made possible the deaths of untold numbers of babies, lending credence to the argument that legal abortion is a slippery slope to infanticide.

  Meanwhile, the claim that Roe v. Wade made America safe from back-alley abortion stands exposed as a cruel hoax, and a deadly one for women and children alike.

[Gosnell photo via philly.com]

by Hans Johnson

A poem by Clara Pederson.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6hPRjEq1gU[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: Jill]

Erickson and his students reasoned that any serious quest to reduce abortions would not focus exclusively on women, and so they satirically brainstormed potential roles that men might play in such a push.

They came up with such ideas as a “Mandatory Sex Savings Fund,” which would require men to pay $25,000 into an account prior to having sex; the cash would then be transferred to a woman if she becomes impregnated. Another notion was “Mandatory Vasectomies in Grade 7.”

~ Jonathan Goldsbie, reporting on a Canadian high school class’s reaction to graphic pro-life displays outside school property, moderated by Michael Erickson (photo via his Facebook page) their “queer-activist social sciences” teacher who happens to be a co-owner of an LGBTQ bookstore, Now Toronto, April 12