by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• NBC/Wall Street Journal has a new poll out on abortion and Roe v. Wade. The poll results again show that large swaths of the population (41%) in this poll don’t know anything about Roe v. Wade, and when the pollsters give an inaccurate description (“first three month” baloney) of Roe’s results, the majority are opposed to overturning it. 31% claimed they thought abortion should always be legal which seems high. Imagine this follow-up: “So you think it should be legal to have an abortion in the 8th month of pregnancy?”The poll’s options seem to favor the pro-choice side as the pro-choice options are “always legal” or “legal most of the time” while the pro-life options are “illegal without exceptions” and “illegal with rape/incest/mother’s life exceptions.” There is a rather large gap and many plausible positions between legal “most of the time” and illegal except for exceptions.
• National Review’s editors discuss Roe at 40:
  

  Pro-lifers are not winning: The suggestion is obscene. Nearly 56 million human beings have been killed in the womb since Roe, a toll that rises another million each year. The pro-life movement’s achievement is a witness, not a victory. We have maintained resistance to an injustice rather than vanquished it.But neither have we suffered a final defeat, nor will we so long as Americans remain who are willing to stand for the country’s true founding principle: that all men are created equal by their Creator; that all of them have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, whatever their creed or station, their race or their place, their might or their weakness.

• At First Things, John Murdock wonders why more evangelicals don’t participate in the March for Life:
  

  My experience is that rank and file evangelical Protestants like myself generally just give lip service and votes to the life issue and are a small minority at the March for Life. I don’t know exactly why that is the case. Certainly, there are thousands of evangelicals doing important grass roots pro-life work like running crisis pregnancy centers, and there are many notable examples of passionate peaceful protest efforts flowing from non-Catholic traditions.

• Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary asks, “Is the Pro-Life Cause Winning?”:
  

  Yes, it’s a win just that the concept of “pro-life” is still alive. The abortion rights movement probably assumed that forty years after the Supreme Court legalized abortion that the issue would be as settled as school integration or women’s suffrage. It’s still a controversy, and the pro-life side hasn’t been sidelined by history.And it’s true that there have been some gains in the numbers of doctors who, for conscience reasons, are unwilling to go along with the lie that abortion is “health-care.”

  That said, we must remember that the large numbers of self-identified pro-life people might itself in some instances be an indicator of just how embedded the abortion rights culture is in American life.

[Photo via catholicexchange.com]

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.

• Fr. Frank Pavone publishes an open letter to President Obama on Inauguration Day, protesting Obama’s “unwillingness to recognize [preborn children’s] equal dignity” and his “unrelenting attack on religious freedom and on the institution of marriage.”
• Kansans for Life has more information on plans to reopen George Tiller’s infamous abortion clinic in Wichita.

• Accepting Abundance points out that in the audio of oral arguments from the 1973 Roe v. Wade case, there is nervous laughter (listen here) from pro-Roe attorney Sarah Weddington (pictured left, in 1973 and in more recent years), when she acknowledged that if the preborn child were to be declared a person, her argument would fail:
  

  Justice Potter Stewart pressed further, “Well, if it were established that an unborn fetus is a person within the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment, you would have almost an impossible case here, would you not?” Mrs. Weddington replied, “I would have a very difficult case.” And then she laughed nervously. Justice Stewart, not laughing at all, continued that this is akin to ruling that if a “mother thought that it bothered her health having the child around, she could have it killed.” Mrs. Weddington said, “That’s correct,” and declined any further response.

• Judie Brown of American Life League has strong words for Cardinal Dolan, who “needs to set aside the politics as well as his love affair with the media and begin being the apostle he is called to be” on the issue of dealing with “Catholic” politicians who support abortion.
• Americans United for Life has an upcoming legal conference this week on “The Future of Roe: Women, Health and Law in the Obama Era” – a great opportunity for anyone who is in Washington, D.C. for the March for Life.
• The Guiding Star Project shares a sobering memorial to the unborn, available for Sanctity of Human Life Sunday programs or for publishing in local newspapers.

• Family Research Council is again sponsoring the ProLifeCon, which will feature Rep. Trent Franks, along with other excellent speakers. The conference will also be available online.
• Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life believe Roe v. Wade will eventually fall thanks to reason, democracy and human rights.
• Albert Mohler lists five reasons why the conflict over abortion will not go away as many hoped it would after Roe:
  

  First… the judicial imposition of abortion on demand, virtually without restriction until the third trimester, produced both shock and outrage among those who believe that the unborn child has an inalienable right to life… [and] an organized pro-life movement came into shape….

  Second, Roe also had the effect, surely unforeseen by the Supreme Court, of bringing millions of evangelical Christians into the fight on behalf of the unborn. Prior to Roe, even many evangelicals believed that abortion was a Roman Catholic issue….

  Third, the death spiral of abortion simply defies adequate calculation. Over a million abortions are performed in America each year. Reports last year indicated that over 40% of all pregnancies in New York end in abortion, a rate that increases to almost 60% of pregnancies among African-American women.

  The sheer scale of the death toll sears the pro-life conscience. Young people can now see that millions are missing from their own generation.

  Fourth, abortion has proved to be exactly what pro-life activists warned it would be: a deadly threat to human dignity that would target specific populations. Prenatal testing has produced a deadly reality for unborn babies considered less than acceptable by their parents.

  The vast majority (90%) of unborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome are now aborted. Sex-selection abortions are legal in the wide-open “right” to abortion declared by the court. Prenatal testing of other characteristics means that parents can now abort a baby that does not meet their specifications and try again.

  Fifth, powerful imaging technologies now allow a look inside the womb, a privilege unknown to previous generations. That window has transformed the equation, as millions of parents have seen their unborn children and witnessed the miracle of life.

[Weddington photo via wweek.com; Franks photo via govfaces.com]

by Hans Johnson

This pro-life documentary, scheduled for release this summer, will include footage shot at the 2013 March For Life:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/0djVEGv4s00[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

On this, the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Time magazine’s perspective is that legalized abortion is on a losing path. And I haven’t found anyone on the other side who disagrees. Quick example, NARAL’s email heading this morning:

What makes abortion proponents think this gloom and doom, despite their hard-fought presidential victory?

In a nutshell: federalism, the growing pile of state anti-abortion laws….

Here is Guttmacher updated chart highlighting the stark reality…

From Guttmacher:

[N]ew provisions, 43 in 19 states, sought to restrict access to abortion services. Although this is a sharp decrease from the record-breaking 92 abortion restrictions enacted in 2011, it is the second highest annual number of new abortion restrictions.

Against the backdrop of a contentious presidential campaign in which abortion and even contraception were front-burner issues – to a degree unprecedented in recent memory – supporters of reproductive health and rights were able to block high-profile attacks on access to abortion in states as diverse as Alabama, Idaho, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Similarly, the number of attacks on state family planning funding was down sharply, and only two states disqualified family planning providers from funding in 2012, compared with seven in 2011. That said, no laws were enacted this year to facilitate or improve access to abortion, family planning or comprehensive sex education.

Altogether, 30 states passed 135 new abortion restrictions in 2011 and 2012.

In 2012 this came despite, as Guttmacher noted, a presidential election cycle while the other side, with MSM’s help, piled on Republicans with their “war on women” rhetoric; while the Republican presidential candidate played rope-a-dope on abortion while Obama kept on punching, and while two Republican U.S. Senate candidates handed abortion proponents tinder.

If, in that tough environment, pro-lifers could enact the second highest number of anti-abortion laws ever, what might 2013 bring? Particularly since, as ABC News reported the morning after the 2012 election:

It was a major milestone for the Republican party. Not only was it the first time North Carolina had elected a Republican governor since 1988, it also gave the GOP 30 statehouse seats, the highest number for either party in 12 years.

Republicans also increased their majority from 24 controlled state government in 2010 to 27 in 2012.

Fighting state pro-life efforts for the other side is like trying to put out hundreds of brush fires, because hundreds of pieces of pro-life legislation are introduced every year. Here’s another interesting chart created by Guttmacher.  Click to enlarge…

The other side’s power is centralized in Washington, D.C. For many years they were able to hold their own in the states, and they still can count on the courts, but momentum has shifted.

Here’s to another “unmitigated disaster for abortion rights” in 2013.

The complexity… the mathematical models of how these things are done are beyond human comprehension. Even though I’m a mathematician, I look at this with a marvel of, “how do these instruction sets not make these mistakes as they build what is us?”

It’s a mystery, it’s magic, it’s divinity….

~ Alexander Tsiaras, in his TED Talks presentation featured by The Huffington Post, January 18

[HT: Susie Allen]

UPDATE 1/21, 6:25p: Don’t forget to include paying your respects at a memorial to victims of abortion tomorrow in your activities.

1/16, 11:53a: Pro-life Action League has compiled a list of 263 memorial sites across the country that are dedicated to victims of abortion. These include 24 grave sites.

PLAL is calling on pro-lifers to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the infamous and tragic Roe v. Wade decision by visiting one of these memorial sites on January 22.

PLAL’s endeavor is called “Blessed Are They Who Mourn.”

I would add that bringing flowers to lay at the site would be another fitting tribute.

PLAL is also asking to let them know of a memorial/grave site of which you are aware but is not on the list.

I think this would be an important way not only to honor our 55 million brothers and sisters who have been slaughtered by abortion (victims of choice), but also to avail ourselves to a time of reflection and rededication.

Please add this to your calendar on January 22.

[Photos taken when I visited the Tomb of the Unborn Child at Franciscan University, in Steubenville, Ohio, this past autumn]

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• The Crescat discusses her abortion experience:
  The glass container was half full and splattered with blood. Even the tube that fed into the container was crusted with blood….

  All those graphic photos you’ve ever seen of tiny dismembered arms and legs are accurate. Only this wasn’t just one set of tiny arms and legs… this looked like all the babies that had been aborted that day. All together in one glass container….

  They hadn’t even bothered to clean the equipment between patients and I suddenly realized they had every intention of using the same filthy equipment on me.

• Businessweek profiles Michigan abortion clinic owner Rene Chelian (pictured left). While the article seems to try to sympathetically paint Chelian as a victim of the pro-life movement, some facts could prevent most readers from seeing Chelian as a poor abortion provider – namely, her 6500 square foot home, 2-karat diamond ring (which she removes when she goes to Lansing to lobby), and the $200,000+ she and her husband are paid by the clinic.
• The AP has a long article on the abortion debate 40 years after Roe:
  Of the roughly 1.2 million U.S. women who have abortions each year, half are 25 or older, about 18 percent are teens, and the rest are 20-24. About 60 percent have given birth to least one child prior to getting an abortion. A disproportionately high number are black or Hispanic; and regardless of race, high abortion rates are linked to economic hard times.
• ABC has an article on the documentary film, After Tiller (clip below), which follows four abortionists (Warren Hern, LeRoy Carhart, Susan Robinson and Shelley Sella) who commit late-term abortions. Robinson notes that many of the 3rd trimester abortions are performed for completely elective reasons on women who didn’t know they were pregnant:
  Then there’s the group of women who didn’t know they were pregnant…. They were told they were not pregnant for one reason or another and they are just as desperate. ‘I already have three children, my husband just lost his job and I can barely put food on the table. If I add a new baby to this family, we’ll all go under.'”

[Chelian photo via Businessweek]

UPDATE 1/24, 10:30a: Thanks to all who participated, whether by the many great posts I read on your blogs (links below), or on Facebook, or on Twitter (where the conversation at #Tweet4Choice is still going strong!).

I think our effort this year was particularly impactful given the dust up in the pro-abortion community over the word “choice.”

Thanks again for doing such a great job pushing back on their euphemismistic cover-up of preborn murder.

1/21, 3:10p: In response to NARAL’s Blog for Choice Day, we are sponsoring our third annual Ask Them What They Mean When They Say “Choice” Day – tomorrow.

All online pro-lifers are invited to join in!

Read backstory here.

This year we are expanding beyond bloggers to the online pro-life community at large – you!

Click to join the event on Facebook here.

By doing so you will become part of a pro-life contingent that will challenge abortion supporters tomorrow, January 22, whenever and wherever we see them use the word “choice” online.

If on Twitter, use the hashtag #Tweet4Choice for all tweets tomorrow, which NARAL has designated for its Blog for Choice Day, the impetus for our day.

Thanks to Planned Parenthood we have added fodder for discussion tomorrow. Almost two weeks ago PP announced it was abandoning the term, “pro-choice.” You might want to ask “choice” advocates about that.

Thanks to bloggers who have signed up to blog on what “choice” really means tomorrow. So far they include:

A Catholic Mom in Hawaii

A Single Drop in the Ocean

A Star of Hope

A Voice for Hope

Abby Johnson

Aloha Life Advocates

Americans for the Life of the Nation

Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform

Candid Catholic Living

Catholic Bandita

Catholic Sistas

Catholic View

Crazy Cat Lady Mews

Eating Slowly

Family Research Council

Freedom Eden

Health & Home & Heritage

Josiah Concept Ministries

Let It Sparkle

Left Coast Refugee

Life Issues Institute

LifeNews.com

Live Action

Operation Rescue

Out My Front Door

Outside the Asylum

Post-Abortion Walk

Pro-Life in TN

Rai’s Mundo

Rosary Mom

Secular Pro-Life

SoapboxFive

Speaking 4 Life

Spiritual Workout

Stand for Life

Stand True

Star Studded Super Step

ThatMom.com

The Guiding Star Project

The Reformed Pro-Lifer

The Will County News

Tim Harlow

TN Smart Girl

Tradition Family Property Student Action

Victory Girls

Vital Signs

Wy Blog