Yesterday was the first day of session for the new Tennessee legislature.

It was particularly notable for those involved in the abortion issue because it symbolized a new day for the Tennessee pro-life movement in the wake of Amendment 1’s passage last November.

Amendment 1 undid a radical 2000 Tennessee Supreme Court decision claiming the right to abortion was sacrosanct in the state constitution. As a result, previously passed pro-life protections were struck down, and pro-lifers have been unable to enact any new pro-life laws since.

Tennessee Right to Life is backing three bills that would restore laws the Supremes struck down – informed consent, a waiting period, and abortion clinic regulations.

Another legislator is introducing a bill requiring abortionists to show ultrasounds to abortion-minded mothers of the baby they are about to kill.

And so, a lawfully executed pro-life floodgate has been opened in Tennessee… which pro-abortion extremists apparently can’t handle

The abortion lobby boasted it would have 1,500 marchers “greet” legislators at the capitol yesterday.

But it’s never a good idea to pre-advertise crowd numbers. Commercialappeal.com reported the actual tally was 1/3 that, 500-600, which is close to the 400-500 I’m told pro-lifers on the ground counted.

From that throng about 50 wild hairs left before speakers had even finished and stormed the capitol building.

Why, because that tactic worked so well for them in Texas? Here’s a bit of video of the mob scene…

[youtube]http://youtu.be/INezDEJEOUA?list=PL82051D7C7F98484C[/youtube]

At least I don’t hear anyone chanting “Hail, Satan” or hurling used tampons or bags of feces. That’s an improvement.

Republican lawmakers were unfazed, even finding the scene a bit humorous. Reported timesfreepress.com:

More than 20 Tennessee state troopers initially barred their way to the stairwell leading to the second floor where the house and senate chambers are located and where lawmakers were being sworn in.

As a man with a drum pounded and protesters demanded to go upstairs, troopers let a number go….

About a dozen or so young women chanted “pro-choice, pro-family” as senators streamed out of the chamber.

Senate Speaker Pro Tempore Bo Watson, R-Hixson, watched, smiling.

“Welcome to America,” Watson said when asked by a reporter what he thought about the protest. “That’s fine. It’s part of the process.”

Once the legislators left, so did the protesters.

“It’s America at it’s best,” said Senate Republican Majority Leader Mark Norris.

[Top photo via Tennesseean; bottom photo via Rick Locker on Twitter]

by Carder

Last year at this time, I cited a statistical abstract using the ratio of professions to population and the number of infants aborted. The resulting estimate showed that in the last 35 years, those lives destroyed could have included: two U.S. presidents; seven Supreme Court justices; 102 U.S. senators and 589 congressmen; 8,123 judges; 31 Nobel Prize laureates; 328 Olympic medalists; 6,092 professional athletes; 134,841 physicians and surgeons; 392,500 registered nurses; 70,669 clergy, including 6,852 Catholic priests and 11,010 nuns; 1,102,443 elementary and high-school teachers; 553,821 truck drivers; 224,518 maids and housekeepers; 33,939 janitors; 134,028 farmers and ranchers; 109,984 police officers; and 39,477 firefighters.

~ Fr. George Rutler illustrating what the loss of millions of lives through abortion have cost American society, Church of St. Michael, January 11

[HT: Fr. Z]

In the span of two years, the number of abortion clinics in Texas has dropped from 44 to 17, with the possibility of another drop to seven, pending a 5th Circuit panel’s decision on whether the state can impose clinic regulations on abortion clinics and force abortionists to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.

At issue is whether trying to make abortion clinics and abortionists follow the same health and safety guidelines as legitimate healthcare facilities and doctors places an “undue burden” on women seeking an abortions.

“Undue burden”… that elusive and undefined term thrown into the judicial abortion morass by Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v Casey decision.

Left to decide for themselves, liberal judges have pounced upon the term to overturn all kinds of pro-life laws, while strict constructionist judges have ruled oppositely. As Politico recently reported, the resulting “patchwork of contradictory rulings” may finally force the Supremes to tighten their verbiage – or nix it.

Meanwhile, even with only seven abortion clinics, 83% of Texas women, or five of six, would still live within 150 miles of a Texas abortion clinic. Does that place an undue burden?

State borders became an issue in Mississippi last year, when a different 5th Circuit panel ruled that shutting down the state’s last abortion clinic, whether or not there were clinics nearby in neighboring states, would place an “undue burden” on women.

Hence, abortion proponents are pushing a story line that procuring an abortion at an out-of-state clinic, which may, in fact, be closer for a woman than an in-state clinic, is fraught with intrigue and difficulty.

So, some abortion zealots have begun to take on the role of abortion coyotes, as the Feminist Majority Blog dramatically reported…

“Coyote” is the term for people who smuggle illegals across the Mexican border into the U.S. And they now have abortion counterparts. Reported FMB:

Texas abortion clinics have been under attack in recent years, significantly reducing women’s access to comprehensive reproductive health care…. As a result, abortion rights advocates are increasingly helping women seeking an abortion travel from Texas to neighboring New Mexico….

Whole Woman’s Health successfully opened a clinic in Las Cruces, New Mexico last fall, just 50 miles away from El Paso, Texas.  “Going into Las Cruces felt like a really smart thing to do on behalf of the women of west Texas and south Texas so that they could have an option no matter what,” [clinic owner Amy] Hagstrom Miller continued.

Abortion coyotes would have us believe that getting a woman 50 miles from El Paso to Las Cruces is laden with more hardship and expense than taking them 1,100 miles to San Antonio.

If crossing state borders for abortions is so awful, you’d think abortion proponents would support the federal Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, which would ban nonparental adults from trafficking minors across state lines for abortion without parental authorization.

But no. And no.

by Susie Allen, host of the blog, Pro-Life in TN, and Kelli

• ProLife365 gives six answers to the common pro-abortion argument that claims abortion is better than a child being raised in poverty.
• Priests for Life’s Kevin Burke is excited about the introduction of The Shockwave Initiative, which “will reveal how abortion impacts not only the child, the Mom, and the Dad, but entire families, including grandparents and siblings” and so forth. The initiative will “present[] a vision and resources for communicating this in a new way to our churches, families and nation devastated by abortion loss.”

• Secular Pro-Life comments on the amazing story of Martin Pistorius (pictured left), who was considered in a persistent vegetative state for over a decade but claims he was fully aware of everything going on around him:
  

  Mr. Pistorius’ story ends well, but I cannot begin to imagine what he went through.

  I can think of only one thing worse than hearing “I hope you die,” and that is hearing “We are withdrawing your hydration and nutrition.”

  Mr. Pistorius is not the first person to be misdiagnosed as a hopeless case. But the fact that it took twelve years to obtain a correct diagnosis has disturbing implications — how many families have the strength to wait that long? How many doctors would be supportive for that long? How many would instead urge the family to “let go” and end their loved one’s life prematurely?

• ProLifeBlogs links to a post from Life Site News noting that Obamacare is requiring colleges to provide birth control, sterilizations and abortion producing drugs to students and employees. This greatly expands the original, publicized intent of the law.

by Hans Johnson

The U.S. Debt Clock just passed $18 trillion. There are many attempts to explain that amount, such as how many trips to the moon and back a stack of that many $1 bills would make – and it’s still too much for us to grasp.

While the 57 million abortions since Roe v. Wade are fewer, they are worth so much more, and it’s also difficult for us to really fathom. To give us more of a sense of this kind of loss, Oregon Right to Life has produced a video called:”How Many Is 55 Million?”, now updated:

Fifty-seven tolls of the bell for the 57 million who have been lost to abortion since the Roe v. Wade decision on January 22nd, 1973. States disappear as their populations are exceeded by the number of babies who have been aborted. This is a visual representation of the young lives that have been extinguished since that fateful day.Please take a moment to honor these lives and remember with us.

Please, DO ask for whom the bell tolls.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/5Qv6UDT__iU[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

(HT: National Right To Life News Today)

Who can forget the pink Minuzos former Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis wore when in 2013 she filibustered an omnibus pro-life bill for 13 hours?

The tennis shoes became sacred, as Andrea Grimes of RH Reality Check dramatized in an article lambasting Texas Monthly for desecrating them on its December 2014 cover:

Those sneakers carried so much more than a single legislator through her history-making stand against the most extreme package of anti-abortion laws in the country.

They carried the hopes of thousands of Texans who came to occupy the halls of the capitol building during the summer of 2013, some of whom drove hundreds of miles….

And this month, those sneakers are slathered in cow sh** on the cover of Texas Monthly.Wearing them is a grotesque caricature of Wendy Davis, the exaggerated wrinkles on her face contorted in abject horror as she realizes she’s stepped in manure, her body twisted into a kind of faux-dainty, Barbie-esque revulsion. Alongside her is a cow that looks personally offended that Davis had the gall to smear its precious turd pile….

For the “national magazine of Texas” to smear cow sh** on those shoes, and all that they and Wendy Davis stood for, is to punch many, many orders of magnitude down….

[W]hat Wendy Davis did, and what she stood for in those now-sh**-smeared pink sneakers, is something that is worthy of our utmost respect….

Oh, for heaven’s sake and big eye roll. Those pink tennis shoes “carried the hopes of thousands of Texans”? Give me a break.

Those tennis shoes stood for continuing the slaughter of 20-week-old and up preborn babies by unaccountable snake-oil abortionists in unregulated Wild West abortion mills – some dispensing abortion pills in gross violation of FDA protocol.

That’s what those infamous pink tennis shoes really stand for.

Meanwhile, Davis has been replaced in the state senate by pro-lifer Konni Burton, pictured left.

And when Burton is sworn in today, her footwear will send quite a different message, “a pair of custom made black leather boots with a ‘Stand for Life’ logo in purple lettering on the front,” writes Sarah Rumpf at Breitbart.

Rumpf adds, “During Davis’ filibuster, #stand4life became a nationally trending hashtag, and it remains a popular slogan among pro-life activists to use on social media.”

Kick some pro-abortion a** with those boots, Senator Burton.

by Kelli

At the time, it was a doctors office. And then I started doing abortions in my office. I was kind of thinking about it, and one of my family practice patients had an unplanned pregnancy. I told her, ‘if you want to come back in two days, we can do it, like any other medical thing.’ So she went home, we did a couple of consent forms, and that was it. Then I started getting referrals. Literally I needed a pulse oximeter to monitor their vitals, a vacuum machine and staff and a recovery room, and the knowledge and skills to do it….

I feel like jumping up and down. We are suffering here, women are suffering. It just puts people underground. My numbers are the same as they’ve ever been. It’s harder, it’s more expensive, people come in later.

~ Arizona abortionist Gabrielle Goodrick (pictured), owner of Camelback Family Planning, complaining about how rough things have gotten for the abortion business in her state in recent years, as quoted by The Washington Post, January 9

Note: Camelback Family Planning was one of the abortion clinics exposed during Live Action’s “Gendercide: Sex Selection in America” sting, in which an employee suggested that the client not mention sex-selection as the reason for her abortion due to a law prohibiting such abortions in AZ.

[Goodrick photo via Facebook]

What I find most interesting about this strange story, as reported on by Katie Yoder at NewsBusters, is that TMZ asked the question in the first place. As told by Yoder:

TMZ paparazzi found actor Jack Black in Beverly Hills to ask their latest “gotcha question:” “What do you think is good music to play at Planned Parenthood?” To their amusement, Black recommended Led Zeppelin when “squeezing out a baby.” The clip aired during TMZ’s entertainment news show on Jan. 6.

Black (understandably) looked dazed when he heard TMZ’s question, and reacted, “I mean … what?”

But the TMZ “reporters” offered plenty of suggestions. For Planned Parenthood, they recommended listening to songs like Spice Girls’ “When Two Become One” and “I Saw the Sign” (Ace of Base). The latter’s lyrics read:

How could a person like me care for you
Why do I bother
When you’re not the one for me

And:

I saw the sign and it opened up my mind
And I am happy now living without you.

But “Jack Black takes it another direction,” the TMZ staff continued.

As the camera panned back to Black, he concluded, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong to squeezing out a baby to Led Zeppelin.” (“It actually would be perfect,” one TMZ staffer agreed.)

Black then imitated one of Zeppelin’s cries and continued, “And then a baby comes out and screams the same way.”

The TMZ staff roared with laughter.

Taxpayer-funded Planned Parenthood does not deliver babies as one of its services, but performed nearly one million abortions in the past five years.

The entire clip was tacky and gross, and it appears Black doesn’t know Planned Parenthood is the United States’ largest abortion provider, not a baby hospital.

But TMZ knew. That’s why its reporter asked Black the question. And its staff was prepared to suggest songs and lyrics that would wincingly work with abortion – not contraception, not breast exams.

The incident just demonstrates that while Planned Parenthood and its lackeys continue to promote the false narrative that “[a]bortions make up about 3 percent of all Planned Parenthood’s services,” as The Hill just duly reported, everyone really knows.