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An estimated 300 motorists and a hearse took part Saturday morning in a symbolic funeral procession through downtown Knoxville to commemorate abortions performed in Knox County last year. The procession started at the Knoxville Civic Coliseum and wound down Gay Street before ending at Depot Avenue. It drew fewer participants than originally expected. Officials had estimated 15 area funeral homes would provide hearses for the event, held the day before Mother's Day. Gentry-Griffey Funeral Chapel provided the hearse. "You know, we're still thankful for the one hearse we had," said Aaron Jones, associate pastor with Knoxville's Trinity Chapel. "I really...

Abortion is back in the news yet, understandably, many women still find it difficult to talk about. Here Lucy Cavendish – who has been through it twice – offers a candid view Virtually every woman I know of my generation has had an abortion. The problem is that no one talks about it. It is hidden away as if it were a dirty secret. This week, however, every time I've opened a newspaper or turned on the radio, abortion has been the topic du jour. First, Conservative MP Nadine Dorries called for the legal limit for terminations to be...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — It's a happy Mother's Day for an Arkansas woman — she's pregnant with her 18th child. Michelle Duggar, 41, is due on New Year's Day, and the latest addition will join seven sisters and 10 brothers. There are two sets of twins. "We've had three in January, three in December. Those two months are a busy time for us," she said, laughing. The Duggars' oldest child, Josh, is 20, and the youngest, Jennifer, is nine months old.

MOUNTLAKE TERRACE -- Former Gov. Booth Gardner no longer runs the state, but now he'd like to be in control in a different way. He wants to be able to die on his own terms if his quality of life becomes seriously diminished, he said at a meeting of the Lynnwood Rotary Club on Thursday. Gardner, 72, has Parkinson's disease. For the past year, he has been promoting the controversial cause of physician-assisted suicide. "I recognize there are people here who won't like what I'm about to say, and others who will be with me implicitly," he said. "I respect...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The chances are good that your health insurance plan covers elective abortions since 46 percent of all health insurance plans in the United States do so. A leading researcher urges pro-life advocates to investigate their plans to find out whether they are unknowingly supporting abortion. During the Reagan administration, Dr. Robert Moffitt was the deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. He recently gave a speech at the Family Research Council warning that, because most health insurance plans are controlled by secular companies or government officials, many of them pay for abortions. The...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A leading post-abortion women's group is upset that Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards exploited Mother's Day for fundraising for the nation's largest abortion business. Planned Parenthood also came under fire for saying promoting abortion is more important than civil rights.As LifeNews.com reported this week, Richards honored Mother's Day by sharing part of an editorial her daughter wrote saying she got her pro-abortion views from her mother and grandmother, former Texas Gov. Ann Richards.Richard couldn't wait until the third paragraph of her Mother's Day letter to PPFA supporters to ask them to open their wallets."This Mother's...

Pop culture asks, “What would Jesus do?” Regarding today's NAACP, I ask, “What would MLK do?” With catastrophic school dropout rates among blacks, the NAACP has chosen to defend black youths wearing their pants low with their underwear showing. The racist and America hating Rev. Jeremiah Wright will be the keynote speaker for the 2008 NAACP Detroit branch's 53rd annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner. The NAACP supports gay marriage. Despite the fact that Black women are three times more likely than white women to have an abortion and 1452 black children are aborted every day, the NAACP supports abortion....

Memo to Arch-Tame Wuerl: Yes, sir, it can be done! Kansas, May. 9, 2008 (CWNews.com) - Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City has announced that Governor Kathleen Sebelius should not receive Communion because of her support for legal abortion. In a column appearing on May 9 in the archdiocesan newspaper, The Leaven, the archbishop said that Governor Sebelius has sent a "spiritually lethal message" by implying that she could remain a Catholic in good standing while supporting abortion on demand. The archbishop's column cited in particular the governor's veto of the Comprehensive Abortion Reform Act, which would have required abortionists...

Pro-life advocates are launching an e-mail campaign in an attempt to save the life of a young woman injured by a drug overdose who now is facing the possibility of a court-ordered death by dehydration and starvation.WND previously has reported on the case involve Randy Richardson, who is fighting his ex-wife, the medical establishment and the court system for the life of his 23-year-old daughter, Lauren Marie Richardson."She's committed no crime and doesn't deserve to have this death imposed on her," he told the Wilmington, Del., News Journal earlier, citing the case that carries striking parallels to the 2005...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Actresses Blythe Danner and Gwyneth Paltrow are at it again, asking abortion advocates across the country to donate money to the nation's largest abortion business. In an email Friday prior to Mother's Day, the mother and daughter Hollywood stars primped the pump for more donations for Planned Parenthood. "We are Blythe Danner and Gwyneth Paltrow, and this is the third time we've written a Mother's Day letter to people like you who support Planned Parenthood," they wrote in the email LifeNews.com received. The pair apparently believe promoting abortion is the best way to honor mothers. "We...

Despite a 2004 order from the future Pope Benedict XVI barring pro-choice Catholic politicians from the Communion table, a quintet of elected officials flouted his wishes twice during his recent six-day visit here by partaking of the sacrament right before his eyes. The bishops whose job it is to enforce the pope's wishes have been all over the map in responding. While New York Cardinal Edward Egan publicly chastised former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani for taking Communion during an April 19 Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, the bishops of Washington, Boston and Norwalk, Conn., have not disciplined members...

Washington, DC -- A leading pro-life Catholic is feuding with supporters of Barack Obama who claim to be Catholic but join the candidate in violating the Church's teachings by strongly supporting abortion and embryonic stem cell research. Catholic League President Bill Donahue says true Catholics would oppose Obama. Donahue began the exchange last week by issuing a press release calling on Obama to dissolve his National Advisory Council because the members of the panel and pro-abortion.

'Might our religion be killing us?' That's what a Baptist minister was asking recently in an editorial in USA Today. Rev. Oliver "Buzz" Thomas writes: Be fruitful and multiply," says the book of Genesis, and Lord knows we have. To the tune of more than 300 million at home and more than 6 billion abroad. But as we go about the heavenly task of multiplying, a poignant question arises: Might our religion be killing us? Insert the deep dark foreboding music. We all remember the Aztecs. Some say their religion, with its penchant for violence and human sacrifice, played a...

LITTLE ROCK - It’s a happy Mother’s Day for an Arkansas woman — she’s pregnant with her 18th child. Michelle Duggar, 41, is due on New Year’s Day, and the latest addition will join seven sisters and 10 brothers. There are two sets of twins. "We’ve had three in January, three in December. Those two months are a busy time for us," she said, laughing.

Rockford, IL, May 7, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Rockford abortuary has made the demonic side of the abortion industry readily apparent to the public by decorating its facility with a nun in a coffin, a crucified rubber chicken, and a set of sacred images arranged in a voodoo-style altar.Kevin Rilott, an Illinois pro-life activist who has often prayerfully protested in front of the Rockford Northern Illinois Women's Center (NIWC) abortuary that features the sacrilegious display, hopes that images of the offensive exhibition will expose the evil carried out at the facility."This clinic affects the lives of thousands of Rockford...

Livonia, MI -- Local pro-life advocates in the Detroit area have found the bodies of babies killed in abortions and patient medical records in another Michigan abortion center's dumpster. The finding comes on the hells of one abortion facility that ran afoul of illegal dumping laws and was investigated by the state. This time, members of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society found the bodies, biohazard waste and medical records at the Women's Advisory abortion business in Livonia.

A student senate leader at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point has told pro-life display supporters they have no right to express their opinion on the volatile issue of abortion. "It's not your responsibility," Roderick King, a sophomore at the school and member of its student senate, shouted at those who had assembled a display of white crosses in the campus lawn – with university permission. "This [abortion] is a right. You don't have the right to challenge it. Write a paper. Do NOT! Do NOT put this in front of all of us. This is not your right," he hollered,...

LAUREN RICHARDSON - YOU CAN HELP!By Judie BrownIt has been a source of ongoing sadness to read of the difficulties Lauren Richardson’s father has had over the course of the past several months. For those of you who are not familiar with her case, Lauren overdosed on heroin on August 28, 2006. She suffered oxygen deprivation and, as a result of the overdose, is now in a coma and unable to speak out for herself. At the time of the overdose, Lauren was expecting a baby. Her parents honored what they knew would have been her wish and did all they could to...

Dover, DE (LifeNews.com) -- The family of Lauren Richardson continues to press her case and is now calling on the governor of Delaware for help to save her life. Richardson has become the next Terri Schiavo as her parents engage in a massive legal and philosophical debate about whether she should live or die.Richardson is a 23-year-old woman who overdosed on heroin in August 2006 while she was three months pregnant with a baby girl.Doctors kept Lauren on life support until she delivered her baby in February 2007. Shortly thereafter, her parents began a fight that is reminiscent of...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- With Mother's Day coming up this weekend, Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion business, has a message for moms: send us more money. Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, sent out a fund-raising request this week one pro-life advocate says is grotesque. Richards honored mother's day by sharing part of an editorial her daughter wrote saying she got her pro-abortion views from her mother and grandmother, former Texas Gov. Ann Richards. "It's true that I have had lots of rewarding moments in my career. So did my mother," Cecile wrote in the...

A University of Wisconsin Stevens Point student government leader is coming under fire for allegedly trashing a pro-life display on campus. Student senator Roderick King is said to have vandalized a display featuring crosses erected by the campus pro-life group to memorialize those babies killed in abortions. The UWSP pro-life group Pointers for Life put up the Cemetery of the Innocents display and spent the morning last Thursday repairing the damage someone caused in an apparent vandalizism. That's when they were trashed a second time. As students repaired the earlier damage, King led a group of angry students by walking...

Madison, WI -- A University of Wisconsin Stevens Point student government leader is coming under fire for allegedly trashing a pro-life display on campus. Student senator Roderick King is said to have vandalized a display featuring crosses erected by the campus pro-life group to memorialize those babies killed in abortions. Full story at: http://www.lifenews.com/state3207.html

On April 24, Kansas pro-life U.S. Sens. Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts issued a press release endorsing Steve Howe for Johnson County district attorney.... Phill Kline is currently the appointed district attorney and has been urged to reconsider his decision not to run to retain his seat in November. Why? Kline is the only DA in the country with a pending criminal case against a Planned Parenthood and is likely the only DA in the country with the intestinal fortitude to stick with such an investigation.... Brownback knows pro-lifers are encouraging Kline to stay. He knows because many influential pro-lifers...

I met John McCain for the first time on Wednesday at a luncheon here in the Lehigh Valley. To test his sense of humor, I wore a black baseball cap from West Point with gold letters: U.S.M.A. 1958. As I shook his hand, I said, ''John, we were the same class, but you went to the wrong academy!'' He laughed and said, ''Nice cap!'' We were that same 1958 class, he at Annapolis, and I at West Point. And, we are the same age, but all similarities end there. McCain is eminently qualified to be president for a host of...

Call it censored, call it buried, call it lost—the search term “abortion” was all of the above for approximately a month on POPLINE—a publicly-funded database that its administrators describe as “Your connection to the world’s reproductive health literature.”Last week, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, uncovered this ironic situation while trying to “connect” to “reproductive health literature.” Health care providers, researchers, and advocates around the country were alarmed to learn that POPLINE (POPulation information onLINE), had rendered the search term “abortion” a stopword—which directs the database to ignore the term when used in a search. UCSF librarians discovered...

May 5, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Ben Stein has suffered extensive media criticism for drawing the connection between Darwin, Hitler, and the modern eugenics movements in a powerful 10-minute section of his film "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed".In an MSNBC.com review, Arthur Caplan calls the connection Stein draws between Darwin's theory and the Holocaust "despicable".  Neo-Darwinians on the whole have unleashed a barrage of insults at Stein and his work. They have also, however, completely failed to address the intimidating body of evidence Stein presents to support his claims.  While Stein has explicitly asserted that not every neo-Darwinist is a eugenicist, an examination of the historic...

For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.After months of the repetitious drone on Obama's faith and ministers, why isn't it time that Hillary Clinton's faith be oggled? If Obama has been effected by Rev Wright and the Africentric gospel, what has motivated Hillary, spiritually? Obama has confessed that he "prays to Jesus every night," and that he has attended church on many a Sunday morning. The most I know about Hillary's spiritual...

LONDON, May 5, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In the May 2 installment of his regular health feature in The Times, Dr. Thomas Stuttaford responded to a reader who complained of a loss of interest in sex following an abortion. "Though my boyfriend and I agreed it was the right thing to do, I feel guilty and I've gone off sex," wrote the questioner. Dr. Stuttaford responded by saying that loss of libido after an abortion is "so common that it can almost be said to be expected". Asked if the feelings would pass, Stuttaford wrote, "It is possible, but by no...

LifeNews.com Note: Maria Vitale is a LifeNews.com Opinion Columnist and the Education Director of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation. Vitale has written and reported for various broadcast and print media outlets, including National Public Radio, CBS Radio, and AP Radio. Mother's Day will be bittersweet in some segments of our nation this year.For some women, there will be no flowers, no chocolates—just the painful memory of a child lost forever to abortion.It may seem incongruous to talk about abortion in connection with Mother's Day. After all, this is a holiday meant to celebrate the amazing, life-affirming gift of motherhood. Yet,...

Sacramento, CA (LifeNews.com) -- Undaunted by their repeated failure to get the California legislature to approve a bill legalizing assisted suicide, the sponsors of the bill are moving forward with a new measure that promotes euthanasia in limited circumstances. Pro-life groups are asking for phone calls to defeat the bill. Last Tuesday, on a straight party line vote, the Assembly Judiciary Committee sent AB 2747 to the Assembly floor.Assemblymembers Patty Berg and Lloyd Levine, the authors of the pro-assisted suicide bill, are behind the bill.Brian Johnston, the head of the California Pro-Life Council and the author of a seminal...

One moment can change your life. That’s what Michael Clancy has discovered in the eight and a half years since he snapped the groundbreaking photo of an unborn baby clutching his doctor’s hand during fetal surgery. Clancy is now a fervent pro-lifer, spreading the message that unborn babies are precious human beings and deserve protection. He will be a featured speaker at the upcoming NRL Convention in Washington, D.C., July 3–5. “It was the earliest human interaction ever recorded,” Clancy told NRL News. “It proved that the child at 21 weeks in utero is a reactive human being.” When he...

by Steven Ertelt LifeNews.com Editor May 5, 2008 Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The Democratic Party has the strongest pro-abortion stance possible, but the Reverend Tony Campolo, author and evangelical leader, has been appointed to the committee that will review the platform. Campolo has vowed to represent pro-lifers to the highest members of the Democratic Party. Campolo says he believes in pro-life issues so strongly that he pledged a vigorous defense at the national convention in Denver this summer

Dear Father, we thank you and praise You for the grace and mercy You bestow on us each day. Thank You for life and health, in whatever measure You have given it to us. Father God we lift up the sidewalk counselors, prayer warriors and others who are doing battle on the frontlines against the Spirit of Death in the form of Planned Parenthood. Father, we thank and praise You that our voices are being heard, that others are lifting up their voices to join in this spiritual battle. Father God thank you that there were 1,000,000 praying the rosary...

In the last few weeks, I have been repeatedly asked if my endorsement of Senator Obama stands. To some of my fellow Catholics, Senator Obama's answers on abortion make him categorically unacceptable.I understand that view, respect it, but find it prudentially the second-best answer in 2008. ....Senator Obama’s emphasis on personal responsibility, rather than legal bickering over potential Supreme Court nominations in my judgment, best moves this issue forward. The Republican Party has had a better claim to be pro-life because of words in its platform supporting the overruling of Roe v. Wade. Roe is bad constitutional law, because it's...

On April 7 an article appeared on the Opinion page, "Terri Schiavo's lifesaving legacy" by Nat Hentoff. When Terri's story first appeared in the paper and on the news, I considered responding to the decisions that were made regarding her care and her future. I feel that God gave us life and only he has the right to take it away and we are charged with caring for one another until that time. In 1984 I was told to put my son in a nursing home because "he will never get better." Had we followed that advice we may have...

Jefferson City, MO (LifeNews.com) -- A measure that responds to the 2006 Amendment 2 proposal Missouri voters narrowly approved will not make the ballot this November. The measure would prohibit somatic cell nuclear transfer, a type of human cloning practice used by scientists to create and kill human beings for research purposes. It is designed to close a pro-cloning loophole in Amendment 2 that opponents hard warned would lead to human cloning. On Friday, the Missouri Court of Appeals ruled that part of Secretary of State Robin Carnahan’s ballot summary was “insufficient and unfair.” Carnahan released the ballot summary in...

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - The results of Gov. Sarah Palin's prenatal testing were in, and the doctor's tone was ominous: "You need to come to the office so we can talk about it." Palin, known for a resolve that quickly launched her from suburban hockey mom to a player on the national political stage, said, "No, go ahead and tell me over the phone." The physician replied, "Down syndrome," stunning the Republican governor, who had just completed what many political analysts called a startling first year in office. She had arrived at the Capitol on an ethics reform platform after...

A panel discussion on one of society's most controversial issues -- abortion -- took place Thursday at Princeton University. Seven panelists -- including Princeton's own professors Peter Singer, Don Marquis, Elizabeth Harman and Robert George -- offered wide-ranging views on the topic "Is It Wrong To End Early Human Life?" Still, as panelist Jeff McMahan of Rutgers University pointed out, the debate over whether it is wrong to end early human rights could be simplified dramatically. "I've only heard two answers to the question thus far," McMahan said midway through the discussion. "Yes, and no." McMahan presented his own "threshold...

OTTAWA, May 2, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Thousands of students and adults are gearing up for the much anticipated March for Life 2008, set to rock the national capital next Thursday, May 8.  Meanwhile, March for Life activities have already begun around the nation.  In Regina Saskatchewan the pro-life March is underway today and the March in Edmonton and Winnipeg are set for Sunday. African-Americans have brought a new vitality to the pro-life movement in the United States as they have seen the fight for the right to life as the greatest human rights struggle of the 21st century.  Alveda...

Four years at Yale costs $180,000. Here is how senior Aliza Shvarts planned to conclude hers: The art major would repeatedly artificially inseminate herself, then induce miscarriages, which she would record on video. She would build a four-foot-wide plastic cube and wrap it in layers of plastic. Between the layers would be Vaseline mixed with blood from the miscarriages. She would hang the cube at an exhibition and project video of the miscarriages onto four of its sides. "This piece," Shvarts wrote in the Yale Daily News, "is meant to call into question the relationship between form and function as...

Contact: Loralei Coyle, 202-905-6852 cell, lcoyle@TheIRD.org; Radio Interviews: Jeff Walton, 202-413-5639 cell, jwalton@TheIRD.org; both with the Institute on Religion and Democracy FT. WORTH, Texas, May 3 /Christian Newswire/ -- The United Methodist General Conference, the Church's governing body that meets every 4 years, overwhelmingly adopted several petitions affirming the sanctity of life during its quadrennial meeting in Fort Worth. Conference delegates voted to: "Affirm and encourage the Church to assist the ministry of crisis pregnancy centers and pregnancy resource centers that compassionately help women find feasible alternatives to abortion." "Respect the sacredness of the life and well-being of the mother...

It has been thirty five years since that infamous U.S. Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade. With the stroke of a judicial pen, unelected Justices consigned an entire class of persons, children in the first home of the whole human race (their mothers womb), to the status of property. Like millions, I have prayed, marched and worked tirelessly to overturn this horrid decision and end the killing. As a human rights lawyer I went to the U.S. Supreme Court to defend pro-life protestors. I still try to join the thousands annually who travel to Washington, D.C. to pray and...

As you read today's column, you may be tempted to say, have we not been down this road many, many times? The answer is yes, we have. But since the question continues to be raised of how bishops should respond to Catholics in public life who support abortion legislation, I thought it would be helpful once again to highlight a number of issues for the record. All of these points have been addressed before by me, and collectively by the bishops of the United States. The first is the Church's position on abortion. In my column in the Catholic...

The controversial Roe v. Wade abortion-rights ruling will be overturned if John McCain is elected president, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin told a Baton Rouge audience Friday. “It’s gone,” Toobin, also a legal affairs staff writer at The New Yorker, said after giving a speech about the U.S. Supreme Court at LSU’s Paul M. Hebert Law Center. “Maybe not during his first year or second year, but it will be overturned,” Toobin said of the possible election of McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and a U.S. senator for Arizona. Toobin said overturning the case won’t mean all 50 states...

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, 43, a prolife freshman Republican from California, will chair the platform committee for the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., The Washington Times has learned today. Steven J. Duffield, former aide to conservative Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, will be the committee's executive director. In his first year in Congress, Mr. McCarthy had a 100 percent prolife voting record, according to the National Right to Life committee. Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has let it been known through associates that he will not work to "soften" — even behind the scenes — the...

Jefferson City, MO (LifeNews.com) -- After a long and successful legal battle, Missouri residents are now able to support adoption efforts with the purchase of a Choose Life license plate. Plate supporters unveiled the artwork for the plate in a capital reception surrounding by leaders of pro-life groups and state legislators. In January, a federal district court judge ruled Missouri officials must let a proposal for Choose Life license plates move forward despite a rejection from a committee of lawmakers.Choose Life of Missouri has been working on securing this life-affirming license play since 2005.Using a 2004 law that allows...

DETROIT, May 1, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A funeral Mass burial for eighteen unborn babies will be offered this Saturday, May 3, by Bishop John Quinn of Detroit.  The remains of their bodies were discovered in dumpsters at the Woman Care abortion clinic on Southfield Road in Lathrup Village, Michigan which is operated by abortionist Alberto Hodari. Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, called upon all of the nation's Catholic priests today to offer a Mass within the next few days for the "Hodari babies."  The pro-life group Citizens for a Pro-life Society headed by Monica Migliorino...

Federal Appeals Court Okays Injunction Protecting Pro-Life Pharmacists Los Angeles, CA -- A federal appeals court has upheld an injunction in a lower court ruling that halted a new state requirement forcing pharmacists to fill prescriptions for all drugs. The mandate included drugs that would violate their moral or religious beliefs of pharmacists who don't want to be involved in abortions. Washington state pharmacists who are pro-life were worried they could be forced to dispense the morning after pill or birth control drugs.

Contact: Jerry Horn, Priests for Life, 540-220-0095STATEN ISLAND, Ny., April 30 /Christian Newswire/ -- Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, today urged Christians to participate in tomorrow's 57th Annual National Day of Prayer, and to include the unborn in their prayers."On this National Day of Prayer, we turn to God in Jesus' Name, and His blessing on our nation, our leaders, and our fellow citizens. Moreover, we pray for an end to the most pervasive form of violence, that which occurs against children in the womb."Fr. Pavone praised Shirley Dobson and her entire team for the work...

Amsterdam, Netherlands (LifeNews.com) -- The official number of euthanasia cases in the Netherlands is on the rise, but not all cases of killing patients are included. The official report mentions only three cases involving physicians who didn't follow the proper protocols when killing the patient.The ANP news service indicated the number of euthanasia cases rose to 2,120 last year from 1,923 in 2006.In three instances, the regional committees responsible for ensuring the criteria for legal euthanasia are followed indicated doctors had not adhered to the law.The report indicated the committees forwarded information about the cases to the justice department and...