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

• Saynsumthn’s Blog is also covering the story out of Rockford, Illinois, which reveals that “some Rockford Police officers are refusing to work in the former death mill which city leaders are considering using as a police station.”

• At Bound4Life, Stacie Kuhns reveals the fact that abortion is available to 11-year-olds in most states… but Chapstick? Now, that’s another story:
  

  The assistant superintendent of administration for Augusta County Public Schools informed reporters that Chapstick is considered an over-the-counter medication by the school board. In Augusta County Public Schools, Chapstick may only be administered by a school nurse and only if a physician has prescribed its use.

  When viewed without a national context, this may seem like a somewhat silly story about bureaucracy gone too far. However, it is outrageous and infuriating when you consider that a child may need a physician’s note to apply Chapstick — but, in 26 states and Washington, D.C., teenagers and pre-teens don’t even need parental permission to obtain an abortion.

• Big Blue Wave quotes a NYMag.com article which recounts the work of an abortion doula. It is interesting that the doula has to distract herself from the child, reminding herself that it is the woman’s future aspirations that really matter to her:
  

  The fetus comes out easily; they put it in the bucket and shove it near me. It is fully intact, curled on its left side, fists closed, knees bent up. He sleeps just like you, I think. Then, a second thought, an act of distancing: He looks more like an alien than a person. I have, by this point, seen lots of women and lots of fetuses, and the sight of the second doesn’t change my feelings about the first. The mourning for what could have been is countered by an appreciation for what is — a woman’s life, allowed to proceed as she wants it to.

• Live Action News features an interview with Dave Sterrett of OnlineForLife.org regarding the do’s and don’ts of sidewalk counseling, in light of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling “striking down an anti-sidewalk counseling buffer zone law enacted in Massachusetts in 2007”:
  

  It’s encouraging to read that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court acknowledges that sidewalk counselors are focused on compassionate interaction with those entering abortion clinics. Unfortunately, many Americans still base their opinions of sidewalk counselors on what is reported by the liberal media. According to this portrayal, pro-life activists — specifically sidewalk counselors — are often perceived as antagonistic, incendiary, and confrontational.

• Abolish Human Abortion has a thought provoking post and graphic (pictured right) regarding the sin of silence and inaction:
  

  Count the cost of your fear. Who are you afraid of? Will you invest what the Lord has given you? Will you hear on that last day “Well done, my good and faithful servant?”

• At Ethika Politika, Alana Newman says “we don’t need more sexual education, we need more virtues education” to solve many of the life issues our society is facing:
  

  All of the virtues play into our fertility or marriageability. And if virtues and trustworthiness are too slow to develop, we may miss out on our natural fertility window. If a certain amount of virtues education is not observed after the wedding day there will be more divorces — which I’ve come to understand increases the use of egg donors and surrogates as divorced women in their 40s and 50s seek to remarry and bond their new relationship with a child, or remedy loneliness as single mothers by choice.

  … It’s not enough to slap hands and bemoan the use of IVF and sold gametes or wombs….

  For our fertility and flourishing too we must confront our rotten roots, the root of evil, our fallen selves. If you hate abortion, and trends of surrogacy and third party reproduction, then give glory and attention to the established virtues. Teach the people in your life about moral truths — for your sake and the sake of a coming generation.

• Abstinence Clearinghouse features a three-minute video of a “talented young lady [who] exposes abortion for what is really is through a… spoken word performance.” Unfortunately (and unsurprisingly), the “pro-choice” comments for this YouTube video are vitriolic and laced with obscenities. Just par for the course with many hardcore abortion supporters:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/pXPv12YwJ7Y[/youtube]

[Image via eagnews.org]

by Hans Johnson

Sam Jones says about abortion that “this isn’t really a big deal.” What do you say?

[youtube]http://youtu.be/G7QrBA-0CBo[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

[HT: Maria]

by Kelli

By repeating only the gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, terrifying abortion stories, we protect a lie: that abortion isn’t normal. We have learned to think of abortion with shame and fear. We have accepted the damaging idea that a person who wants an abortion must grovel before the consciences of others….

The reasons, the feelings, the personal contexts — these we can also talk about, but only after we grant to each woman the right to make and do with her body what she will. Regardless of whether or not a compelling story is on offer.

~ Merritt Tierce (pictured), who has had two abortions and is the former executive director of the Texas Equal Access Fund, exhorting pro-choicers to stick to the script when it comes to discussing abortion, The New York Times, September 13

[Photo via merritttierce.com]

Police officers in Rockford, Illinois, are balking at the suggestion that a police station inhabit the building where a notorious abortion clinic was once located. Per WIFR.com, September 12:

Some Rockford Police officers are refusing to work in one of the buildings city leaders are considering using as a police station. The city wants the old Turner School on Broadway to be the new District Two headquarters.

“A number of people have an objection to the Turner School building because of what it represents and they have some serious moral objections to being in that building,” PBPA Union President Terry Peterson, said….

“That was definitely an issue that came up and it came up overwhelmingly,” Peterson said.

Peterson says he’s heard from more than a dozen officers who say they won’t work in that building because it used to be an abortion clinic.

“You know that’s ridiculous, it’s for the community. You’ve got to do what’s good for the area,” Bobby Dahlberg, owner of Bobby’s on Broadway, said….

“This police station is a win-win situation, you know. Jesus Christ himself can forgive anything right, so let’s go forward, not backwards,” Dahlberg said….

The abortion clinic under consideration isn’t just any abortion clinic. It’s the infamous Northern Illinois Women’s Center, where the former owner once hung a rubber chicken by a noose in one window (photo above right), and a rubber chicken on a cross and blasphemous signs in others (photo right).

Deathscorts were known to cheer and do a happy dance when mothers drove in for abortions, and several times owner Wayne Webster put horse manure next to the public sidewalk to dissuade pro-life protesters and once traipsed around outside in a devil costume…

After being closed in September 2011 by the Illinois Department of Public Health for health violations, Webster voluntarily shut down in January 2012 after 40 years of killing children… 40 years….

The building has stood vacant since then.

I am of the belief that all abortion mills are satanic and inhabited by demons. Even when they’re closed and converted for good… even when “every nook and cranny of the place” has been exorcised… I don’t know… I still have trouble. That’s just me.

That said, there are demonic abortion clinics, and there are demonic abortion clinics on steroids. Three I recall making me want to jump out of my skin when I visited them were Gosnell’s clinic in Philadelphia, LeRoy Carhart’s clinic in Nebraska, and this one.

I’m with the police. No way would I work in that place. And what of citizens who would also be forced to go there? Not just Christians and pro-lifers but others, as prolifecorner.com pointed out:

It is unjust to expect people who live in the Broadway neighborhood to go to a building for help where their own children may have been brutally and viciously killed in by abortion.

It is cruel and unusual punishment to force people who may be arrested to be taken and held in a building that may have been used to kill their own children.

Kevin Rilott of Rockford Pro-Life Initiative told me his group was contacted by both the police department and an alderman asking if they would object to the old abortion mill being purchased by the city. Initially the group said no, but when hearing of opposition by officers they changed their position. Here is their statement:

When the Rockford abortion mill was open not only did they celebrate the deaths of babies in the womb as a victory over God, they also mocked African Americans, put up signs ridiculing people with HIV, and spent years attacking Christians with brutally profane language both over their loud speakers and with signs in the windows. 

Many Rockford police officers heard and saw this on a weekly basis.  Can anyone blame them for not wanting to reward the owner of that building by having the city purchase it? No officer or citizen should be forced to enter a build where 100,000 children were murdered. No one should have to work in a place that publicly celebrated the pain, suffering and death they inflicted on babies and mothers.

A building that may once have been useful, and a historic landmark even, has been ruined by abortion. The blood of thousands of murdered children will forever cry out.

[Photo of building via rrstar.com; all other photos via pro-lifers]

by Hans Johnson

In the new book The Race to Save Our Century: Five Core Principles to Promote Peace, Freedom, and a Culture of Life, to be released today, authors Jason Jones and John Zmirak (both pictured right) warn that the unprecedented death toll in the 20th century could be eclipsed in the 21st. They “call on readers to embrace and promote five core principles of a Culture of Life”:

1. The innate dignity of every human person, regardless of race, age, or handicap.

2. The existence of a transcendent moral order, by which we judge the justice of all laws and policies.

3. The need for a humane economy that embraces freedom in a context of social responsibility.

4. The crucial importance of decentralized, responsive government that preserves civil society and freedom.

5. The need for solidarity, for a sense of fellow feeling and common obligation toward each and every member of the human race.

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

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.

Affirmation comes from the strangest places.

Actually, the sort of affirmation I might strangely prefer is acknowledgement from the other side, backhanded as it may be, that I’m being heard. The hope is the messaging is getting through to someone over there, somewhere, and that I’m not just preaching to the choir.

Most here know of Amanda Marcotte, a militant pro-abortion feminist who writes some of the most acerbic, jaw-dropping stuff out there. Amanda may be exasperating and even infuriating, but she is refreshing in that she takes her movement’s beliefs to their fanatical conclusions, which they more often than not try to hide.

That’s the set-up for a piece Marcotte just had posted on Salon entitled, “7 women working tirelessly to attack equal rights for other women” (same piece at AlterNet: “7 women working tirelessly to screw over other women,”) with the subtitle, “Sadly, these women find it personally advantageous to reject feminism and continue perpetuating sexist social norms.”

So I made Marcotte’s list of “women who have made a career out of opposing women’s struggle for social, political and economic equality,” along with icons Phyllis Schlafly (“original gangster”) and Lila Rose (Planned Parenthood demoniz[er]”) and other dedicated conservative women I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting – quite an honor.

About me Marcotte wrote:

3. Jill Stanek. Many women have found their calling in attacking contraception and abortion access, but Stanek, an ardent blogger, brings a hatefulness and obsessiveness that helps her stand out from an already unpleasant crowd. After getting old enough that unwanted pregnancy stopped being a personal concern, Stanek “discovered” that contraception has been evil all along, dedicating much of her blog to arguing that pregnancy prevention is a uniquely modern evil.

Stanek also notoriously celebrated domestic violence, arguing that men should hit women who have abortions. “That spontaneous slap was the reaction of a real man who a woman had just told she aborted his baby,” she said of a notorious scene in Godfather II in which a gangster hits his wife. “Compare that to the modern-day cowardly male response, ‘It’s your choice. Whatever you decide, I’ll support you.’”

Sometimes I wonder if what I write does any good. And I’m not as prolific as I’d like to be. To be viewed by someone on the other side as “an ardent blogger,” who “stand[s] out from an already unpleasant crowd” is quite the compliment.

I don’t need to tell you that which pro-lifers promote is the opposite of how Marcotte portrays it. The reality of Marcotte’s ”equal rights” movement is that over half the preborn babies they kill are female, the pills they push are dangerous artificial steroids that kill women as well as their tiny human offspring, and the sexual abandonment they hail has wrought nothing but brokenness and disease.

And so, as hateful, obsessive, and unpleasant our messaging may be, we press on, although we do try to present truths in the spirit of Christ. He was hated, too, but He presented His messaging in a God-pleasing way. That’s my goal. I fail more than succeed at that, but I’m working on it.

So, thanks for the encouragement, Amanda. And seriously, I’d love to someday meet you for coffee.

Apologies in advance if that was somehow a misogynist request. :)

by Carder

We had the immense joy of knowing Aila on this Earth for 46 minutes. The hospital allowed me to hold her for 12 hours and I was able to study her sweet face all night long. The pain that we feel from missing her each day is inexplicable. I ache for the day when I can kiss her forehead and hold her in my arms again…

It has been 11 weeks since she was born, and I continue to stare at those photos daily. I have not a single regret that we had them taken, and am so grateful for the gift of her precious memory through photos.

~ Author and photographer Danielle Walker, pictured above with her husband and newborn daughter (click to enlarge), sharing her experience of having professional photographs taken during the birth and final moments of her newborn daughter, Aila, who was born with a fatal genetic disorder, Today Parents, September 10

He said, “I am the LORD your God. Listen carefully to my voice. Do what is right in my eyes. Pay attention to my commands. Obey all of my rules. If you do, I will not send on you any of the sicknesses I sent on the Egyptians. I am the LORD who heals you.”

~ Exodus 15:26, New International Reader’s Version, recalling Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty’s thoughts on diseases wrought by sexual immorality

[Graphic via about-std.com]