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WASHINGTON, D.C., June 17, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – President Barack Obama has announced that, if Trent Franks' bill to restrict late-term abortion nationwide passes, he will veto it. In a Statement of Administration Policy, the president called the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” (H.R. 1797) “an assault on a woman's right to choose” and said it shows “contempt for...the Constitution.” “The administration strongly opposes H.R. 1797, which would unacceptably restrict women's health and reproductive rights and is an assault on a woman's right to choose,” he said. “This bill is a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade and shows contempt...

At a recent Thursday-morning press conference, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi was asked to explain the moral difference between the 20-week-old babies whom Dr. Kermit Gosnell killed in his Philadelphia clinic and the unborn children that legislation sponsored by Arizona Republican Rep. Trent Franks would help protect. It's a perfectly reasonable question, one she answered with derision and evasion. The incident perfectly illustrated something that was noted more than four decades ago by the journal California Medicine: "The very considerable semantic gymnastics required to rationalize abortion as anything but taking a human life would be ludicrous if they were not...

Fr. Frank Pavone delivers his homily at a memorial service held in May at which the babies were named PHILADELPHIA, June 14, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Philadelphia Medical Examiner is standing by its decision not to release the bodies of Kermit Gosnell’s victims to any third party to provide a burial, according to a spokesman for the city. Instead the bodies will be treated the way other unclaimed bodies are treated – by being cremated and buried. “This would be something that would happen quietly, in a proper and dignified way,” spokesman Kenneth Gavin told the National Catholic Register. In...

After the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s office denied a request from a leading pro-life Catholic priest to give the babies abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell killed in brutal infanticides, official now say the babies will be cremated and buried. Gosnell was convicted last month of first-degree murder and he has 30 days to reconsider his decision not to appeal the conviction. Once that process is over, tomorrow, the city will follow its normal procedures by conducting cremation and burial of the bodies of the 47 babies, according to city spokesman Mark McDonald said. McDonald did not say where the cremation and burial...

A request from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia appears to have been rebuffed, but pro-life groups plan a National Day of Remembrance for babies killed by abortions.PHILADELPHIA — The city of Philadelphia has rejected overtures made by Archbishop Charles Chaput and others to give the babies killed by notorious “House of Horrors” abortionist Kermit Gosnell a fitting burial. For now, the unclaimed fetal remains of Gosnell’s victims, once stored in the abortionist’s freezer, will have their final resting place at the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office. At the close of the trial that resulted in Gosnell’s conviction on three charges of first-degree...

Now that the trial for abortion provider Kermit Gosnell has ended with a conviction, many are asking what Philadelphia plans to do with the 47 bodies from the case. After Gosnell's arrest in 2011, then-Archbishop Justin Rigali asked the district attorney's office for the bodies of the aborted fetuses. After [the trial] ended and Gosnell was sentenced to life in prison, Rigali's successor, Archbishop Charles Chaput, has renewed the request to bury the bodies. Francis Maier, assistant to Chaput, said "We're not interested in turning it into a circus. Points were made in the trial; now we just want...

Jason and Anne Ponton with their twin daughters, age 11 and their sons, ages 6 and 4. Photo courtesy of Jason and Anne Ponton. Dallas, Texas, Jun 8, 2013 / 06:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- When her twin girls were born suddenly at only 26 weeks, Anne Ponton said doctors and nurses in her home town of Irving, Texas fought diligently for her babies' survival.    But the twins, born to Anne and her husband Jason in December 2001, “were the same size” as the babies murdered by late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell. Gosnell, who ran the Philadelphia-based Women's Medical Society...

The Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s office has denied a request from a leading pro-life Catholic priest who wanted to ensure the babies abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell killed in infanticides are given a proper burial. In April, Father Frank Pavone, the director of Priests for Life, asked officials in the Kermit Gosnell murder trial case if he can have the bodies of the babies after the all of the court proceedings are finished. He wants a proper burial of the remains of 45 babies killed by the abortion practitioner and his abortion clinic staff. “These are not just medical waste. These are...

Recent high profile events—the Gosnell trial and the septicemia of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland—have again raised the question if abortion is ever acceptable, such as in attempts to save the life of the mother. There are at least two ways of thinking about such dilemmas in the Christian moral tradition. The first, which can be traced at least as far back as Thomas Aquinas, relies on the principle of double effect. The second, more familiar to the Lutheran communion, is the method of casuistry, the detailed study of all the factors and circumstances of a case in order to determine...

The D.C. lobby office of the United Methodist Church, the General Board of Church and Society (GBCS), has finally broken its silence about the “health care” offered by abortion and infanticide provider Kermit Gosnell. The GBCS likes to boast that it “has not been silent” on pressing issues of social concern. But when it comes to arguably the most pressing social-justice issue of our day, which according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute globally claims the lives of tens of millions of precious babies created in God’s image every year, the GBCS has been absolutely silent. Or rather, when it has...

There were broad hints from Kermit Gosnell’s attorney on the day the abortionist was convicted of three counts of first degree murder that his client would plead guilty to charges that he operated what the grand jury described as a “pill mill.” A further and unmistakable sign was that yesterday he filed a “change-of-plea notice “with the U.S. Attorney’s Office. That new plea will be formally entered in front of U.S. District Court Judge Cynthia M. Rufe June 6. “Gosnell and six of his employees are accused of writing thousands of prescriptions for controlled substances with no legitimate medical purpose...

Pearl Gosnell, the wife of abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell, will spend anywhere from seven to 23 months in prison for her role in the House of Horrors abortion clinic. Pearl Gosnell was convicted on charges of racketeering and performing illegal abortion but saw her sentenced reduced after spending two years under house arrest. Pearl’s children had asked the judge, according to local reports in court, to spare her prison time. Gosnell’s sister-in-law was sentenced in court yesterday for her role in the House of Horrors abortion clinic that eventually resulted in Gosnell’s conviction on multiple murder counts. Like other Gosnell...

What became of many of the babies abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell killed in horrific abortions and infanticides? One researcher has the answers. Michael Marcavage of Stop Stericycle, a campaign to get the waste management company out of the abortion business, released a report showing many of the bodies of the babies killed eventually made their way to Pennsylvania landfills. Marcavage says the bodies were supposed to be taken to be incinerated, as is appropriate under Pennsylvania state law. However, he says many of the bodies of Gosnell’s abortion victims were mislabeled and, as a result, were taken to landfills, which...

Abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell’s sister-in-law was sentenced in court today for her role in the House of Horrors abortion clinic that eventually resulted in Gosnell’s conviction on multiple murder counts. The gruesomeness of what happened at the clinic was not limited to Gosnell, but extended to his staff — some of whom were family members. Elizabeth Hampton testified that it was it was part of her cleaning duties to dispose of the large bottle on the suction machine that would fill with blood and fetal remains. She would pour the blood and baby parts into the sink and grind them...

Via Greg Hengler, this testimony to the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice may be even more chilling than some of the testimony at Kermit Gosnell’s trial. In part, that&http://media.hotair.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/abortion-levantino.jpg#8217;s because former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levantino describes the “normal” process of later-term abortions, and not just the supposedly outlier practices of Gosnell and his co-defendants. Levantino, speaking in support of a bill to ban all abortions after 20 weeks offered by Rep. Trent Franks in response to the exposure of the Gosnell case and others like it, dispassionately describes how abortionists tear fetuses apart limb from limb in such...

Mark Crutcher of Life Dynamics, Inc. appeared on “Focal Point” with Bryan Fischer on the AFR Talk Radio Network Friday afternoon to say the nightmarish testimony of the last few months is only the tip of the iceberg. Assistants and employees at abortion clinics who “have been involved in these things are starting to panic,” Crutcher said. “I know you're going to see more and more of these people coming forward and...trying to make deals with prosecutors like some of those people in Pennsylvania probably wish they had.” “One of the things that has gotten glossed over in the Gosnell...

[ . . .] Perhaps because the Obama speech to Planned Parenthood coincided with Gosnell’s homicide trial, the president did not utter the word “abortion” once. But the timing notwithstanding, that omission was hardly surprising in an address that may have set a new standard for deliberate misrepresentation of reality. For it requires willful moral blindness about reality to say that “what Planned Parenthood is about” is helping “a woman from Chicago named Courtney” make sure she could start a family, by providing “access to affordable contraceptive care to keep her healthy” in the face of a fertility-threatening disease. Today,...

Following the national outrage over Kermit Gosnell and his late-term abortions that were essentially infanticide, a pro-life Republican member of Congress is pushing legislation that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy nationwide. Congressman Trent Franks informed LifeNews today that he will advance legislation to provide protection nationwide for unborn children who have the capacity to experience pain while being aborted, a capacity defined in the bill as existing by 20 weeks fetal age. Franks is the prime sponsor of the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. The current version of the bill, which garnered a majority vote in the...

For nearly three years, Philadelphia Police crime scene investigator John Taggart has remained silent about what he saw after stepping inside Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s two homes and West Philadelphia clinic -- nicknamed the “House of Horrors.” Now that the former Philadelphia abortion doctor has been sentenced to life in prison and the case's gag order lifted, Taggart is speaking out about what he found. Taggart and his team began searching Gosnell’s properties for fetal remains in February 2010 following an FBI raid of the doctor’s West Philadelphia clinic, the Women’s Medical Society. Inside Gosnell’s West Philadelphia home, the doctor spared...

The surest way for sin to prosper is for a culture to stop calling it sin. In America, the foremost example of the rotten fruit born of neglected sin is Kermit Gosnell. In case you missed it -- which is very likely, given the way the mainstream media had to be dragged kicking and screaming into covering Gosnell's trial (after Gosnell's guilt was pronounced, 56 days since the trial began, ABC News finally broke its silence!) -- Gosnell was found guilty of, among hundreds of other things, first-degree murder in the cases of three babies born alive after botched abortions....