It strikes me as bitterly ironic that the same people who tell us there is a “war on women” have no problem laughing at the recording of my daughter crying as she tells police about being assaulted by a man.

~ Sarah Palin, as quoted by Politico, October 24, on the mainstream media’s mockery of daughter Bristol’s recount to police of being attacked, transcribed here:

So we were in a limo. I walk back up. “Did you push my sister?” And some guy gets up, pushes me down on the grass, drags me across the grass. “You slut, you f—ing c—, you f—ing this.” I get back up, he pushes me down on the grass again. And he pulls me by my f—ing feet. And he’s the one that’s leaving and I have my 5-year-old, they took my $300 sunglasses, they took my f—ing shoes, and I’m f—ing just left here?

[tweet_box]”Same ppl who say there is a war on women laugh at my daughter crying after assault.”~Sarah Palin[/tweet_box]

Here’s video of CNN Carol Costello’s lead-in to the aforementioned audio. Costello has since offered a written apology but has thus far refused to do so on air.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOJTLjkQGJw[/youtube]

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

• At Stand True, Bryan Kemper gives an update about TLC’s censorship of the Duggar family’s pro-life t-shirts, which were created by Stand True:
  

  Our Stand True missionaries have been working hard all week getting ready for the Pro-life Day of Silent Solidarity and answering questions and comments coming in from all over the world about TLC censoring the t-shirt. In all reality what TLC did was help to make sure the pro-life message was heard far and wide.

  We asked all of you — the Stand True family — to help us send a message to TLC and you overwhelmed us with your response. We saw thousands of tweets and e-mails going out to TLC along with tens of thousands of signatures on petitions. We know that TLC heard our message loud and clear but we need to keep the pressure on as Josh asked us to do.

• Ethika Politika discusses the anniversary of the Pill, which was touted to be a breakthrough for women’s rights but has had some unintended consequences:
  

  Unfortunately for the more than 10 million American women who take oral contraceptives, hardly anyone reported that the World Health Organization also classified the combination Pill as a carcinogen. In fact, the Pill continues to be the most popular method of contraception in this country, particularly for women under the age of 30. A little over a year after the World Health Organization announced its findings, the prestigious medical journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings published an article called “Oral Contraceptive Use as a Risk Factor for Premenopausal Breast Cancer.”

• At Secular Pro-Life, guest blogger Rebecca Stapleford, a “proud physically disabled and autistic woman” says the entire pro-choice mindset is based on ableism and “ableist assumptions about a disabled person’s quality of life… in order to promote late-term abortion”:
  

  The pro-choice movement insists that the unborn are not persons, for a myriad of reasons. However, all of these reasons are based on functionalism, which is the belief that what you are currently able to do is what makes you a person, not who you are….Often, the ableist reasons given for denying personhood to fetuses and embryos would also deny personhood to disabled or temporarily impaired human beings that are already born, if abortion supporters were logically consistent.

• Wesley J. Smith is astonished that the ever morally-challenged, pro-abortion Dr. Peter Singer wants chimps to be declared persons so they are no longer used for testing. He prefers that humans in persistent vegetative states be used instead:
  

  Singer simply asserts that chimps are persons because of their intelligence and supposed rudimentary moral sense. (No way are chimps moral agents. Only we are.)…

But as I said, even that, isn’t what the case is really all about. It’s just the pretext. For if some animals can be elevated to personhood, it also means some people will be demoted to non-personhood–essentially dehumanization, for which Singer has advocated for decades. As I wrote some time ago in the Weekly Standard:

These and other concerted efforts to knock ourselves off the pedestal of exceptionalism are terribly misguided. The way we act is based substantially on what kind of being we perceive ourselves to be. Thus, if we truly want to make this a better and more humane world, the answer is not to think of ourselves as inhabiting the same moral plane as animals – none of which can even begin to comprehend rights. Rather, it is to embrace the unique importance of being human.

[Images via menstruationresearch.org and pinterest.com]

by Kelli

At long last, the film that raised nearly $6 million for pregnancy resource centers has been released on YouTube.

Crescendo, produced by Pattie Mallette (Justin Bieber’s mother) and Bella producers Jason Jones and Eduardo Verástegui, is the winner of 15 international film festival awards.

Jason Jones says the team’s goal for the film was “to create a monument to the incomparable dignity of the human person that would transcend time and culture.”

Watch the entire film for free:

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

You can also read the stories behind the filmmakers here.

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

by Carder

I think, I think the top leadership issue in the world today is how to deal with the continuing, growing population of the world and all the resource demands it places on the world and uh uh burgeoning populations in Africa and Asia that lack the resources to have a happy healthy life and I think we have got to find a way to make the world work for everyone…. Climate change is an issue that impacts that greatly.

~ Former Democrat operative and newly-appointed Ebola Czar Ron Klain, in a 2008 Georgetown University interview advocating population control, American Thinker, October 23

by Kelli

Sidewalk Advocates for Life is a new sidewalk counseling organization which meets women on the “front lines” of the abortion issue – at the abortion facilities. Their goal is to train pro-lifers to peacefully reach out to abortion-vulnerable women in their own communities throughout the year, after the 40 Days for Life campaigns have ended.

Lauren Muzyka, executive director of SAFL, writes:

We take a very woman-oriented approach to Sidewalk Advocacy, believing that one cannot save preborn children without also helping their mothers and families.

Even though we just launched April 1, we already have 42 sidewalk counseling locations – 40 in the United States, 1 in Canada and 1 in Romania. And the results in such a short period of time are even more amazing – since we started, we’ve seen 228 babies saved along with 47 “hopefuls” (those who left to “think about it”). Four abortion workers have left and business has plummeted at several locations.

Watch this video of Lizanne, a woman directly impacted by this ministry:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/u6hJIItqnBU[/youtube]

Lauren (pictured below, right) is also a licensed attorney and has been a sidewalk counselor for 15 years. She continues:

I ended up in grassroots pro-life work and used to work for the 40 Days for Life National Team. In fact, many members of our staff and Board of Directors are graduates of Ave Maria School of Law — very fitting considering the possible legal challenges that sidewalk counselors and prayer volunteers may face as they exercise their First Amendment rights.

We equip the Sidewalk Advocate to reach out to those who might be entering the abortion or abortion-referral facility for services other than abortion, admonishing them to think about where their money is going; then, we teach them to fill that need with another local resource that doesn’t support the abortion business. We also equip one to serve in unusual situations, such as when the mother says she was raped or her life is in danger; similarly, we teach participants how to most effectively reach out to abortion workers and post-abortive women. Besides this, we provide a variety of real-life examples in the training and offer full time staff support so participants can be as effective as possible.

You can bring Sidewalk Advocates for Life to your community by applying here.

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[Photos via SAFL]

On the heels of showing the reality of abortion last week on a huge, video-streaming JumboTron at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia - where the term “created equal” was penned by our Founding Fathers - pro-life group Created Equal was blocked in San Antonio yesterday from erecting the same display at the Alamo.

This was a clear violation of Created Equal’s constitutional right to free speech – content based discrimination.

At the last minute City officials claimed Created Equal’s JumboTron violated city code regarding digital signs, but the city had previously approved jumbotrons for a Floyd Mayweather boxing event (kudos to ksat for pointing that out to the city) and a Glenn Beck Tea Party rally (starts at 1:26).

Furthermore, Created Equal had followed the letter of the law and city ordinances in preparing to show images of abortion victims at the Alamo. I will detail the chain of events below, but here is video laying out the drama yesterday:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/_Ila3zp0WCc[/youtube]

Now, here are the facts, as provided to me by Created Equal’s Executive Director Mark Harrington in an email:

• We began the process of securing a permit for the Alamo Plaza on August 29, 2014.
• We listed the JumboTron as part of the display.
• We sent pictures and descriptions of the JumboTron to the Special Events Coordinator. They knew the nature of the event up front.
• We received an approved facility permit on September 22, 2014.
• Security for the event was arranged for us through the Special Events Coordinator.
• We received an email at 6:59pm CST (the night before the event) from the Director of Development Services informing us that the Jumbotron was in violation of city code provisions related to the use of digital signs. They waited to the 11th hour to inform us of the issue.
• No phone number was provided to contact the director or citation was provided for the particular sign code.
• Commercial sign codes cannot be applied to temporary first amendment displays. The city looked and found a way to keep us off of Alamo Plaza despite the fact that we had an approved permit.
• After arriving at the Alamo at 7:30am on Oct. 20, the planters were moved to block our entrance into the plaza.
• Around 9:30am Roderick Sanchez, Director of Development Services, shows up on site and admits that “they blew it” in handling the permit but tells us we cannot display the JumboTron. We asked for the sign code citation and were told it would be forthcoming.
• Hours pass and no one provides the sign code information.
• Around 11:00am police inform us that code compliance office workers will be moving the planters that will allow us to display the JumboTron. Police tell us they will protect our rights to free speech.
• Soon afterwards a suit for the city tells us they are going to cite us for violating the sign ordinance and possibly cite us for several other criminal infractions that they refused to disclose.
• Suit reneges on the agreement and tells us we cannot pull the Jumbotron onto the plaza.
• City vehicles block the entrance to the plaza and planters are put in the way.
• Stand-off ends as city refuses to honor their agreement to allow the JumboTron to be displayed.

This is by no means over. Harrington told me via phone this morning his group is in working with Life Legal Defense Foundation to determine a response. And as Harrington told a throng of news reporters who were on hand to witness the day’s events:

This was about abortion, not sign compliance. Once the City of San Antonio bureaucrats found out we had an approved permit to display the JumboTron they scoured the city code to find a way to stop us.

If we had wanted to perform an abortion at Alamo Plaza they would have protected our right to do so. But since we were going to show an abortion, they did all they could to stop us.

We will regroup. We will evaluate our legal options. But this battle is far from over. We are not going away. If city leaders think they got rid of us they have another thing coming.

The silver lining is the vast amount of local news coverage the cancelled event triggered:

mysanantonio.com 1
mysanantonio.com 2
news4sanantonio.com
ksat.com
kens5.com 1
kens5.com 2
foxsanantonio.com
woai.com
houstonpress.com

Pro-lifers will indeed remember the Alamo.

[Top two photos via mysanantonio.com]

by Kelli

Rampell argues that if only poor people in America could get free birth control and more comprehensive sex education, have “easy access” to abortions in unregulated clinics, and receive more government-sponsored childcare by expanding the welfare state, then unwanted pregnancies would be a thing of the past and Americans would live happily ever after.

Oh, the joy of a liberal utopia.

Rampell doesn’t pause to consider other factors that have seriously contributed to the disparity between the rich and poor on out-of-wedlock births. Instead of looking at the issue in terms of personal choice regarding marriage and childbirth, as well as personal responsibility, and respecting all people as rational human beings capable of self-government, she concludes that a “trap” is being laid; someone must be doing something to these women or not enough for them. Neither is truly the case….

When it comes to finding solutions that will help low-income single mothers, we need to do more than just dish out contraceptives (which will be ineffective for those who are actually choosing to have babies out of wedlock), herd them into unregulated abortion clinics, give them “comprehensive” sex education that fails to factor in the spiritual and moral dimension of human beings, and then continue their dependence on government and the cycle of poverty by increasing welfare programs….

I can just hear the mockery now and the hysterical screams of “Don’t stigmatize my choice to have sex!” But no one is stigmatizing sex, let alone your choice to have it. What’s being stigmatized in our culture is marriage and the choice not to have sex….

[S]ome of us have a higher view of women — that they don’t have to be controlled by their base desires, by poverty, by fear, by dependency — all of which drive us to more constricted and unhappy lives.

We can do better. We have done better. And we can be better again.

~ D.C. McAllister (pictured), responding to Catherine Rampell’s assertion that “sex is for rich people” and that “a trap” is laid for poor people who want to have sex, The Federalist, October 21

by Hans Johnson

The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins discusses family life and liberty issues with two leaders in the pro-life youth movement. LiveAction’s Lila Rose and Kristan Hawkins, President of Students for Life of America have both been activists since they were about 15. They see signs that the tide is turning in Life’s favor, spearheaded by the young.  Says Lila Rose:

We can end abortion in our lifetime. Part of that is a political solution, part of that is a prayer solution, and part of that is what we do everyday in our communities through activism and acts of compassion.”

Watch their remarks from 10:18 to 16:35…

[youtube]http://youtu.be/XxT-KXxN6uY?t=10m16s[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: Josh Shepherd]