From TFP Student Action comes this video from the 2013 March for Life:

Despite the freezing conditions and snow, an immense crowd could be seen in all directions, composed mostly of young people full of enthusiasm for the cause of the unborn and the future of the family.

A veritable sea of banners and signs from groups around the nation blanketed the National Mall as the opening rally began Friday afternoon.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/t1OJaCB9gW8[/youtube]

[HT: John R.]

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.

• Suzy B says many members of Congress were busy tweeting their support for life during the March for Life. Are your representatives included?

• Secular ProLife had a busy March for Life week and was noticed several times in news publications. With an eye-catching banner like theirs, how could they not be?
• Wesley J. Smith points out that pro-choicers are beginning to finally admit the humanity of the preborn – and also admitting that they just don’t care. As Salon writer Mary Elizabeth Williams stated, “I would put the life of a mother over the life of a fetus every single time — even if I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the fetus is indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing.” Will “A life worth sacrificing” become the new bumper sticker slogan replacing “My body my choice”?
• ProWomanProLife applauds AUL’s Dr. Charmaine Yoest’s statements last week at the National Press Club, including:
  

  The abortion lobby today is a little like the old Soviet bloc, that looked invincible right up to the very day it collapsed under the weight of its own stagnation…. The old guard of the Kremlin were on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of science and the truth in very much the same way that Big Abortion is today.

• Moral Outcry shares biographer Eric Metaxas’ tweet about Nazi-era pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s thoughts (click to enlarge, right) on abortion – 70 years ago.
• New Feminism has photos of the West Coast Walk for Life 2013. The pro-life crowd seems to be young, smiling and vibrant, while the pro-choicers are older, very angry, and anti-religious, with inaccurate and shrill messaging. One of the pro-choice chants and banners was “Fetuses are Not Babies, Women are Not Incubators.” NF notes, “This was an interesting shift away from ‘Keep your rosaries off my ovaries’ and ‘My body, my choice’ chants from prior years.”
• Reflections of a Paralytic recommends a very informative article (in case you missed it here) on the often “misunderstood history of abortion law in the United States.”
• Stand for Life shares an excellent video from TooManyAborted.com, which encourages each of us, individually, to do something to stop the horror of abortion:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/09nTU_58V7k[/youtube]

L – R: Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards; actresses Tatyana Ali, Sophia Bush, Aisha Tyler, and Kate Walsh; and Rock the Vote president Heather Smith; click to enlarge…

From The Huffington Post, January 21:

“We were lucky enough to get hugs from Michelle Obama. It was like hugging America,” the lead singer of folk-rock band Delta Rae told a cheering audience at Planned Parenthood’s January 20th “Plan To Rock” event in Washington, D.C.…

The party was held at the 9:30 Club, a D.C. music scene staple, and sponsored by Planned Parenthood and Rock the Vote, a non-profit focused on getting young people to the polls.

Condoms and chocolates covered the bars while young professionals danced, drank and brushed shoulders with politicians and celebrity co-hosts Kate Walsh, Aisha Tyler, Tatyana Ali and Sophia Bush. There was even a young woman walking around dressed as a life-size pack of birth control pills….

In addition to Q-Tip’s set and a performance from Delta Rae, party-goers were treated to energetic speeches from Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards – decked out in a sequined mini-dress – along with Tyler and Walsh.

Planned Parenthood will say the Planned Parenthood Action Fund co-sponsored its soirée. Indeed, if you look hard you can see PPAF’s name in the fine print on the photo backdrop above.

But PPAF isn’t noted in the stage backdrop. Names as well as funds are fungible in Planned Parenthood World. And that world now snags over $500 million in taxpayer funding every year.

(Word to the wise. Before getting snarky about the expense of Richards’ gold sequined dress, know that she’s worn it before. Although that doesn’t necessarily mean we didn’t pay for it. It just means she recycles.)

Below are more photos. (Larger views of individual photos are available here.)

The bottom middle photo is of Richards with abortionist Kenneth Edelin and his wife Barbara. In 1975 Edelin was convicted of manslaughter in the death of a 20-24 week, 1.5 pound preborn baby he aborted and sentenced to one year of probation. The Massachusetts Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 1976.

Bottom right photo is of Richards and two of her three children.

Richards should see how the other half – who paid for her party – lives sometime.

At The Dubliner with pro-life friends in town for the March for Life, we all paid for our own food and bought each other drinks. We sang along with an Irish folk singer.

And I didn’t see one gold sequined mini-dress.

[HT: Carole of Life Dynamics; top and middle photo via Getty Images; bottom montage via Washington Life]

by Hans Johnson

In his commentary about the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, MSNBC host Touré gave thanks for the death of his child to abortion 15 years ago. Stating his child would have just “made a mess of three lives,” he is grateful that “abortion was there to save me”:

Wrote Katie Pavlich at Townhall:

Toure went on what he called an abortion rant in which he thanked God and country abortion was there to “save him” at a time when taking care of a baby and becoming a father would have been inconvenient for him. He also refers to abortion as a “safety net.”

Got that? Toure was willing to end the life of an unborn child so his own life could remain convenient and less responsible. He’s proud of it, too.

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: TheBlaze]

I published some articles about being the product of gay parenting and received hundreds of e-mails from around the world pleading with me to fight against a growing human-rights crisis caused by the LGBT movement….

[T]hey were children of sperm donors, troubled adoptees, people agonized by the baby-farming in India and elsewhere, gays horrified at what is being done in the name of “gay families,” religious people, atheists, people who know for whatever reason that buying babies and erasing fatherhood or motherhood is not the fruit of love….

If straight couples get to have undiluted custody of such a child, so should gay couples. So they must have the “right” to enforce contracts preventing surrogate mothers from wanting their babies back, the “right” to have sperm banks operate and sell them sperm, the “right” to jump the queue in line for Catholic Charities, the “right” to farm babies in the third world, the “right” to extort gratitude from the children they’ve placed in these situations, and the “right” to blind a child to at least one of his or her biological parents. If any of these “rights” is not held up with the full force of a state apparatus, then the slogan fails….

The fight for marriage has never been about marriage. Marriage is the only way to have legal cover and shield themselves from criticism for their bioethical stunts.

~ Robert Oscar Lopez (pictured), American Thinker, January 27

I was fortunate enough to be in the second row, center stage, when this great young couple (from 16 and Pregnant) spoke at the Students for Life of America conference on January 26.

Catelynn Lowell and Tyler Baltierra were made famous on MTV’s “16 and Pregnant” in 2009 when they decided to place their daughter Carly for adoption. MTV continued to track the couple in its “Teen Mom” series through 2012.

Since then the two have become strong advocates for adoption, speaking around the country at high school and college campuses.

And lately, Catelynn and Tyler have become more outspoken advocates for the sanctity of preborn human life as well, much to the chagrin of abortion pushers.

I don’t think video is available yet of their speech at SFLA’s conference, but I tweeted a couple of their statements during their speech…

"I am completely pro-life. Let's save those babies!" Tyler of @MTV's "16 & Pregnant" @ @Students4LifeHQ #SFLA2013.

— Jill Stanek (@JillStanek) January 27, 2013

"We are the generation that will abolish abortion, right?! Let's put an end to abortion!" Catelynn of @MTV's "16 & Pregnant" #SFLA2013.

— Jill Stanek (@JillStanek) January 27, 2013

Wetpaint.com reported today:

Catelynn later proudly tweeted several pro-life proclamations as well as this photo…

Catelynn and Tyler are remarkable spokespersons for adoption and life, swimming upstream against the very MTV culture that gave them rise. Find info here about having them come to your campus. And remember to pray for these two.

[Top photo via Daena Moore]

It was this 2010 billboard ad by the Susan B. Anthony List against then-Congressman Steve Driehaus that started it (click to enlarge)…

Driehaus was a supposedly pro-life Democrat who voted for Obamacare.

Driehaus went on to lose his race to pro-life Republican Steve Chabot, only to turn around and file a complaint with the Ohio Election Commission, accusing SBA list of fraudulent advertising that resulted in his defeat. This despite the fact Obamacare indeed funds abortions.

Driehaus dropped that complaint only to file a federal complaint of defamation.

Judge Timothy Black, pictured right, who had been nominated by President Obama, and who was a previous president of the Planned Parenthood Association of Cincinnati, initially moved the case forward in 2011.

Kristen Day, president of Democrats for Life, became involved by filing affidavits that (inaccurately) betrayed private meetings and conversations with pro-life groups and leaders and also issued a press release praising the lawsuit. This action by DFL resulted in its being shunned by the pro-life community, which justly believes it cannot trust Day.

Conversely, the ACLU took SBA List’s side. Nevertheless the lawsuit negatively impacted SBA List’s efforts in the 2012 campaign, when Lamar Companies refused to erect its billboards.

Yesterday, SBA List was vindicated. Reported Coast on January 26:

Interestingly, Black initially saw merit in the Driehaus arguments and denied summary judgment to the SBA List.  That decision is here.  But in the meantime, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in U.S. v. Alvarez in which the notion that government can stand in judgment of the truth or falsity of statements, and punish false statements was rejected under the First Amendment….

This Alvarez decision apparently was enough to convince Black that Driehaus defamation counterclaim was not well founded under First Amendment principles.

Comment from SBA List:

“While we’re pleased with the outcome, this was a protracted legal battle that was taxing on our resources and should never have happened in a country that enshrines free speech,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, President of SBA List. “The blatant disregard for the First Amendment and the Constitutional right of people to speak out against the actions of those elected to represent them is unacceptable.”

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• New York Times editorial writer Juliet Lapidos seems to favor a rapist’s right to choose. She believes somehow legislative language – which is clearly designed to punish rapists who coerce their victims into abortion – will ban abortion in cases of rape. I’m not sure if she is willfully ignoring the section of the legislation which reads “with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime” or if in her attempt to parrot pro-abortion blogs, she never actually read the text carefully.

• Ross Douthat on the various attempts to claim “Misogyny!” is the main motivating factor of the pro-life movement:
  

  But such an understanding was too simplistic when Nellie Gray [pictured left] founded the March for Life, and it’s grown steadily less compelling with time. As Jon Shields of Claremont McKenna College pointed out last year, pro-life sentiment has been steady over the last four decades even as opposition to women in the work force (or the military, or the White House) has largely collapsed. Most anti-abortion Americans today are also gender egalitarians: indeed, Shields notes, pro-life attitudes toward women’s professional advancement have converged so quickly with pro-choice attitudes that “the average moderately pro-life citizen is a stronger supporter of gender equality than even the typical strongly pro-choice citizen was in the early 1980s.” Among the younger generation, any “divide over women’s roles nearly disappears entirely.”

  The pro-life cause has proved unexpectedly resilient, in other words, not because millions of Americans are nostalgists for a world of stricter gender norms, but because they have convinced themselves that the opportunities the feminist revolution won for women can be sustained without unrestricted access to abortion.

[Gray photo via gpb.org]