LifeNews.com Pro-Life News Report
Monday, May 23, 2011
| For pro-life news updated throughout the day, visit LifeNews.com. |
Current Headlines
Top Stories
• Gallup Poll: Americans Want All or Most Abortions Illegal
• Pro-Life Governor Tim Pawlenty Seeks GOP Nomination for 2012
• Obama Admin May Target Indiana Law De-Funding Planned Parenthood
• Catholics Must Reject Pro-Abortion Obama in 2012 Election
More Pro-Life News
• Aborting Imperfection: Abortions on Disabled Babies are Dead Wrong
• Reflecting on Baby Joseph: Families Must Fight When Doctors Don t
• Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana: Not Running for President
• The Gipper Got it Right: Pro-Life Ronald Reagan on Abortion
• Notre Dame Trustee Makes Donations to Pro-Abortion Group
• New Jersey Votes for Planned Parenthood Funds, Not Veto-Proof
• Herman Cain Makes Republican Presidential Run Official
• Nebraska Sends Pro-Life Webcam Abortion Ban Bill to Governor
• Outlawing Abortion: Making the Case for an Incremental Approach
• Abortion Funding Battle Continues 20 Years After Rust v. Sullivan
---> Is your pro-life group or pregnancy center looking for an affordable speaker? Need a speaker for a conference, convention, church presentation or on short notice? Consider LifeNews.com Editor Steven Ertelt. Email us for details.
Gallup Poll: Americans Want All or Most Abortions Illegal
Gallup released its annual abortion poll today showing Americans want all or most abortions made illegal and saying they believe abortion to be morally wrong, but the poll found Americans split on what they call their abortion position.
The Gallup polling firm conducted a national survey from May 5-8 with a random sample of 1,018 adults, aged 18 and older from across the nation. The poll has a 4 percentage point margin of error.
By a 24 percent margin, 61-37 percent, Americans take the pro-life view that abortions should either be legal under no circumstances or legal only under a few circumstances. Although Gallup doesn t specify those few circumstances, polling data has consistently shown that, when asked about cases such as rape, incest, or the life of the mother, a majority of Americans want all or almost all abortions made illegal leaving only life of the mother or rape and incest as the exceptions.
Americans are rather conservative in their stance on abortion, with 61% now preferring that abortion be legal in only a few circumstances or no circumstances. By contrast, 37% want abortion legal in all or most circumstances, Gallup analyst Lydia Saad writes. Over the past two decades, Americans have consistently leaned toward believing abortion should be legal in only a few or no circumstances, although less so in the mid-1990s than since about 1997, when combined support for these has averaged close to 60%.
In fact, Gallup polling shows that, since 1994, a majority of Americans have held a pro-life view wanting all or almost all abortions made illegal and that pro-life view has strengthened with an average of 60 percent of Americans saying that over the years.
Breaking down those numbers further, Gallup finds that pro-life view as seen across the board with 60 percent of women and 61 percent of men saying they want all or almost all abortions illegal. Women actually take a stronger pro-life view than men with 24 percent of American women wanting all abortions made illegal and 36 percent wanting almost all illegal, compared with 19 percent of men who want to ban all abortions and 42 percent of men who want to prohibit almost all.
By age, Americans also oppose abortions with 59 percent of people aged 18-34, 58 percent of those 35-54 and 64 percent of those over the age of 55 saying all or almost all abortions should become illegal. Younger Americans are most supportive of making all abortions illegal, with 24 percent of 18-34 year-olds saying so and 35 percent saying they want abortions legal only in a few circumstances. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/05/23/gallup-poll-americans-want-all-or-most-abortions-illegal/
Pro-Life Governor Tim Pawlenty Seeks GOP Nomination for 2012
Tim Pawlenty, the former Republican governor of Minnesota and a pro-life advocate, made his presidential campaign official today with an announcement speech an rally in Iowa, the site of the first votes in the GOP campaign.
Pawlenty has spared no punches over the last few months as he s prepared for the official announcement to seek the GOP nod to take on pro-abortion President Barack Obama and today s speech was no exception.
We live in the greatest country the world has ever known. But, as we all know, America is in big trouble, and it won t get fixed if we keep going down the same path. If we want a new and better direction, we need a new and better President, he said. President Obama s policies have failed. But more than that, he won t even tell us the truth about what it s really going to take to get out of the mess we re in. I m going to take a different approach. I am going to tell you the truth.
We ve tried Barack Obama s way and his way has failed. Three years into his term, we re no longer just running out of money. We re running out of time. It s time for new leadership. It s time for a new approach. And, it s time for America s president and anyone who wants to be president to look you in the eye and tell you the truth, Pawlenty added.
But the fiscally and socially conservative former governor, state legislator and city elected official also outlined a positive view of the future reminding some conservative columnists of Ronald Reagan.
Pawlenty said: No president deserves to win an election by dividing the American people picking winners and losers, protecting his own party s spending and cutting only the other guys ; pitting classes, and ethnicities, and generations against each other. The truth is, we re all in this together. So we need to work to get out of this mess together. I ll unite our party and unite our nation, because to solve a fourteen-trillion-dollar problem, we re going to need three hundred million people. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/05/23/pro-life-governor-tim-pawlenty-seeks-gop-nomination-for-2012/
Obama Admin May Target Indiana Law De-Funding Planned Parenthood
Not content that its friends at Planned Parenthood are losing out on taxpayer funds in Indiana, the Obama administration is considering challenging the law, which the state is already enforcing.
Governor Mitch Daniels signed the law, which would cut off anywhere from $2 million to $3 million the Planned Parenthood abortion business receives in federal funds via the Indiana government through Medicaid.
The law also contains several pro-life provisions that directly affect abortion, such as banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy based on fetal pain. The legislation also contains provisions to end all state-directed funding for businesses that do abortions, to protect pain-capable unborn children beginning at 20 weeks, to opt-out of abortion coverage in any state health exchanges required under the new federal health law, to require that women considering abortion be given full, factual information in writing, and to require doctors who do abortions, or their designees, to maintain local hospital admitting privileges in order to streamline access to emergency care for women injured by abortion.
Planned Parenthood challenged the constitutionality of the law and filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis yesterday just hours after Daniels signed the legislation into law. It alleges the law would violate contracts already in place between it and the state and that it forces Planned Parenthood to choose between doing abortions and getting taxpayer funding.
However, Judge Tanya Walton Pratt declined to issue the injunction while she takes more time to analyze the legal issues involved in the lawsuit. That type of decision is usually an indicator that the judge will eventually issue a ruling against the party bringing the lawsuit.
Now, the New York Times reports the Obama administration may exercise its right to federal review of the law, because of the changes to Medicaid, and Obama official told the newspaper the administration will not approve the changes as adopted by Indiana. Although federal officials have 90 days to challenge the new law, the Obama administration may move sooner because of the current enforcement of it. The challenge may come in the form of partially or totally withholding federal Medicaid money from Indiana and threatening to do so often makes states comply. Of course, if the Obama administration follows through on the threat, it would hurt the poor Indiana residents the Medicaid program is designed to help. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/05/23/obama-admin-may-target-indiana-law-de-funding-planned-parenthood/
Catholics Must Reject Pro-Abortion Obama in 2012 Election
During the 2008 campaign, Sister Anita Baird, the director of the Archdiocese of Chicago s Office of Racial Justice, described then Senator Obama as pro-choice, but not pro-abortion. Granted, she was put in the impossible position of having to defend Obama apologist Fr. Michael Pfleger s repeated public endorsements of Obama, but that is no excuse.
The approximately 13 million African Americans aborted since Roe v. Wade could not be reached for comment when the Archdiocese s Racial Justice Lifetime Achievement award was bestowed upon Fr. Pfleger last year.
Father Ffleger has now been suspended by Cardinal George, and Obama has earned the reputation as the most pro-abortion president in history.
Though the claim that Obama is just pro-choice was never defensible, even Sister Baird will never use it again after Obama s staff promised that he would veto H.R. 3, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.
The historic bill, already passed in the House, seeks to close accounting and other loopholes in existing laws, allowing the tax dollars of American citizens, including all Catholics, from going to abortion providers. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/05/22/catholics-must-reject-pro-abortion-obama-in-2012-election/
Aborting Imperfection: Abortions on Disabled Babies are Dead Wrong
Reading this sickens me. My own son was born severely premature and ended up with the diagnosis of autism. He was on medications, oxygen, etc. when he came home from the hospital four months later after surgeries and fears including blindness, palsy, mental retardation. We didn t know what we d end up with. For that matter, we still don t know our son s ultimate path.
You might think that makes me condemn this family for their decision to abort their baby. No. I m too crushed to cast stones.
Their decision to abort is utterly, completely, and frightfully hopeless. There is no room for God. There is no room for hope. There is no room for the expansion of human frailty. And by frailty, I m not talking about the disabled child, I m talking about the parents their selfishness, weakness, limitations of spirit. By aborting him, they ll never fully know what they re capable of as people.
I think about my own walk parenting my son. The limitations, I can assure you, are mine, not his. My humor, my patience, my vision, my work-ethic are non-stop challenged and unfortunately, I fall short embarrassingly often.
Just when I think I m going to lose it, there s a break-through. I ve had to expand beyond my pathetic, small, inwardness. My judgmental nature? Well, it s still there, but the wings have been clipped. Cavalier condemnation, so easy for someone who has had the bramble-free path, that s gone by the wayside, mostly. Thankfully. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/05/23/aborting-imperfection-abortions-on-disabled-babies-are-dead-wrong/
Reflecting on Baby Joseph: Families Must Fight When Doctors Don t
In the early hours of Holy Thursday, 2011, as Churches were preparing and in some parts of the world already celebrating the Mass of the Lord s Supper and the washing of the feet, Baby Joseph was flown from St Louis, where he has been treated since I brought him there in mid-March, to his home in Windsor, Canada.
As the Church prepared to celebrate the day when the Lord gave us the command to love one another, Baby Joseph s parents and older brother were enjoying the fruit of the hard fight that their love inspired. They fought to help their baby breathe and bring him home. Canadian medical and government authorities had resisted, trying to impose their own value judgment on his life.
Now, however, he was home, and the Priests for Life Family, including tens of thousands of people who sent emails to the Canadian authorities, is delighted to have helped.
Our mission to save Baby Joseph and help his family was never based on any prediction of the future, but rather on the value of his life here and now. Our critics, on the other hand, looking into the crystal ball that right to die advocates seem to always think they have, claimed our intervention was futile because Joseph would only end up having a machine do his breathing for him. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/05/23/reflecting-on-baby-joseph-families-must-fight-when-doctors-dont/
Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana: Not Running for President
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels surprised the political world wit a surprise weekend announcement that he will not run for the Republican nomination for president after approximately a year of speculation he would run.
Saying his wife and daughters were not interested in being subjected to the media spotlight and attention that comes with a presidential campaign and potential life in the White House, Daniels said I will not be a candidate, in a statement he sent to the Indianapolis Star newspaper very lat Saturday night.
What could have been a complicated decision was in the end very simple, Daniels said in a statement to the Indianapolis Star. On matters affecting us all, our family constitution gives a veto to the women s caucus, and there is no override provision. Simply put, I find myself caught between two duties. I love my country; I love my family more.
The counsel and encouragement I received from important citizens like you caused me to think very deeply about becoming a national candidate. In the end, I was able to resolve every competing consideration but one, but that, the interests and wishes of my family, is the most important consideration of all. If I have disappointed you, I will always be sorry, he told supporters in an email afterwards. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/05/22/governor-mitch-daniels-of-indiana-not-running-for-president/
The Gipper Got it Right: Pro-Life Ronald Reagan on Abortion
A few weeks ago a friend sent me something he thought I would enjoy reading something that had been published nearly 30 years ago by Ronald Reagan. I found it so moving, I wanted to share it with BreakPoint listeners. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/05/22/the-gipper-got-it-right-pro-life-ronald-reagan-on-abortion/
Notre Dame Trustee Makes Donations to Pro-Abortion Group
The University of Notre Dame can t seem to get itself out of hot water with pro-life advocates as, a Catholic educational watchdog, indicates one of its Board of Trustee members have given substantial donations to a radical pro-abortion group. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/05/23/notre-dame-trustee-makes-donations-to-pro-abortion-group/
New Jersey Votes for Planned Parenthood Funds, Not Veto-Proof
The New Jersey state Senate today voted to restore funding to the Planned Parenthood abortion business, but the vote came up one short of having enough to override an expected veto from pro-life Gov. Chris Christie. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/05/23/new-jersey-votes-for-planned-parenthood-funds-not-veto-proof/
Herman Cain Makes Republican Presidential Run Official
Businessman Herman Cain made his bid for the Republican nomination for president official today with an announcement and campaign rally at Olympic Park in Atlanta, Georgia, his home state. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/05/21/herman-cain-makes-republican-presidential-run-official/
Nebraska Sends Pro-Life Webcam Abortion Ban Bill to Governor
The Nebraska state legislature put the finishing touches on a bill that would prohibit Planned Parenthood and abortion businesses from giving women the dangerous abortion drug without an in-person visit with a physician. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/05/23/nebraska-sends-pro-life-webcam-abortion-ban-bill-to-governor/
Outlawing Abortion: Making the Case for an Incremental Approach
There is a discussion on FB about Texas passing a sonogram bill that does not protect certain groups of preborn babies, such as those conceived in rape, incest, or those with fetal anomalies. My friend Juda Myers is a pro-life warrior who was conceived in rape, and is understandably let down by these exceptions. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/05/23/outlawing-abortion-making-the-case-for-an-incremental-approach/
Abortion Funding Battle Continues 20 Years After Rust v. Sullivan
On May 23, 1991, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in the case Rust v. Sullivan, which upheld federal regulations prohibiting federal funds appropriated under Title X from being used to counsel on behalf of or refer women for an abortion as a method of family planning. Thus, we celebrate its 20th Anniversary this week. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/05/23/abortion-funding-battle-continues-20-years-after-rust-v-sullivan/
Encourage Friends to Sign Up for Free Pro-Life News From LifeNews.com
