Free Republic

AUSTIN — The fight over the death of Marlise Muñoz, the pregnant and brain-dead North Texas woman who was left on life support for two months, appears likely to begin again soon at the Capitol. A Fort Worth lawmaker is pushing a new state law that would provide representation for fetuses in court hearings — an idea that Muñoz’s family opposes. A blood clot caused Muñoz, 33, to collapse at her Haltom City home in November 2013. Two scans taken at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth revealed that she was brain-dead. Her family immediately asked the hospital to...

HARRISBURG — The president of Planned Parenthood pointed to the recent election of Gov. Tom Wolf as a good sign for advocates for women’s reproductive choice, calling Mr. Wolf “the first governor in the history of the country who was also a former Planned Parenthood clinic escort.” Speaking Friday evening in Harrisburg, Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, was speaking at the Pennsylvania Progressive Summit in Harrisburg, a gathering of left-leaning activists and elected officials. “It’s pretty darn exciting to see a state where you actually bucked the national trend,” she said to the crowd, referring to...

Abortion clinics should be inspected at least as frequently as pizzerias, tanning salons and movie theaters, according to new radio ads decrying the sanitary conditions at some of New York’s facilities. The 30-second and 60-second spots paid for by the pro-life Chiaroscuro Group quote what the organization claims are scathing reviews culled from social-media Web sites and penned by horrified patients who visited some of the clinics. A sample of the reviews: “Avoid at all costs”; “The Waiting Room is dirty and smelled of dried urine”; “DO NOT EVER GO HERE”; “Filthy Medical Equipment looks like it’s from the 1970s”;...

SANTA FE (KRQE) – It doesn’t seem like that long ago that Albuquerque became the center of the national abortion debate. Now, New Mexico itself is set to be front and center. On Friday, lawmakers announced a new bill to ban late term abortions in a state with one of the only known late-term abortion clinics in the nation. The bill would ban abortions after five months and once the fetus is capable of living outside the womb. Unlike the failed November 2013 measure in Albuquerque, the bill provides exceptions for rape, abuse, incest, and when the mother’s life is...

Democratic state Rep. Brandon Dillon represents the 75th House District, which includes part of the city of Grand Rapids. He is in his third and final term in the House. Growing up, I always considered myself "pro-life." As someone who was raised in Grand Rapids, went to Catholic school for 13 years, and has been blessed with beautiful (and active!) twin 12-year-old boys of my own, it was just part of who I was and the community I came from. That's why, as an elected official at both the county and state level, I previously sought the endorsement of Right...

The percentage of Americans who say they’re satisfied with the current abortion policies in the United States has dropped to the lowest point in more than a decade, according to new polling from Gallup. Researchers found that the decline is largely driven by people who think the country’s abortion laws should be even stricter. ~~sinp~~ The real battleground in the fight for abortion access is at the state level, where abortion opponents have enacted a record-breaking number of new restrictions since taking control of statehouses across the country in 2010. Thanks largely to the draft legislation circulated by right-wing groups,...

Just one-third of Americans say they are satisfied with the country's policies on abortion, the lowest rate in more than a decade, according to a new poll. Approval among Republicans has plummeted to 21 percent this year, compared to Democratic approval which has hovered around 46 percent for several years, according to a Gallup poll released Monday. The percent of Republicans who dislike the country's abortion policies has steadily dropped under President Barack Obama, falling from a high of 44 percent approval rating under President George W. Bush. While abortion has largely stayed off Congress' agenda under Obama, abortion has...

Last night, I read this blog post and felt nauseous. It’s horrible. A woman named Lana admitted to aborting her child because she was going to have a boy. She also said if this “curse” returned (i.e. finding out she’s pregnant with a boy) she would do it again. This comes after she proudly states she has a healthy 1-year-old girl, who will “be just as strong and driven as her mother.” Nothing wrong with having girls, but sex-selective abortion–or any abortion–is especially wrong.

Planned Parenthood hides behind phrases like “Care. No Matter What.” It makes up strange slogans like “We’re your sexual experience.” In an insane statement, Planned Parenthood claimed in an online ad that “[y]our baby will thank you.” For killing him? Wow…that’s an all-time low. Speaking of all-time lows, let’s cover five little known facts about Planned Parenthood. They may surprise you…or not. 1) Planned Parenthood preys on victims of human trafficking. The U.S. Department of Justice named the top 20 “human trafficking jurisdictions” in the nation. Based on 2014 information, Planned Parenthood has a whopping 58 clinics in these jurisdictions....

Former abortion clinic worker Carol Everett wrote a book about her time in the abortion industry. In this passage, she is describing a D&E (dismemberment) abortion performed in her clinic. The abortionist has already pulled off the torso, arms and legs of the child and removed them from the woman’s body. Dr. Johnson handed the suction tube back to Leslie [another clinic worker] and once again used forceps to probe for the [baby’s] head. I saw the muscles of his right arm tighten and knew what that meant: He had located the head and was crushing it. Harvey used to...

The following quotes are taken from Live Action’s Inhuman Investigation, where late-term abortionists were discovered agreeing to not resuscitate babies who might be born alive after an abortion. 1) “So it’s like putting meat in a Crock-pot, OK, it doesn’t get, it doesn’t get broke, but it just gets softer…” (Leroy Carhart) In this horrifying statement, late-term abortionist Carhart was describing what happens to a baby’s body after poison has been injected into her heart. She dies inside her mother’s womb and stays there for days, waiting to be born, dead. Basically, the preborn, well-developed baby begins the first stages...

This is from a brochure by Priests for Life’s Father Frank Pavone that can be found here. Priests for Life has been kind enough to allow me to republish material from their site. The pictures of unborn babies throughout are my addition. All of the babies pictured could be legally aborted in at least one US state. Most people admit that abortion is wrong; surveys show, in fact, that half of all Americans are willing to call it “murder.” (See, for example, the January 1998 New York Times/CBS News Poll.) Yet a disturbing number of these same people will not...

“I perform abortions‬ because of my religious belief. I would feel I wasn’t living up to my Christian responsibility if I saw the need to not offer an answer to that need. We have a saying among Presbyterians that God alone is Lord of the conscience.” Abortionist James Armstrong, in the 1990′s film Whose Choice?

On February 5, 2015 the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) released updates and new additions to the Health and Human Services (HHS) Teen Pregnancy Prevention Evidence Review and evidence-based programs list. The revised list of 37 programs now includes GET REAL a curriculum developed by abortion giant Planned Parenthood. Get Real is a sex education program for middle and high school students and was developed by Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. The Get Real middle school curriculum is a three-year program comprising a total of 27 lessons—9 lessons delivered in each of the 6th, 7th,...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A central Ohio pro-life group is seeking restitution after a man damaged its signs at a demonstration. The attack on the signs happened Wednesday afternoon outside Beechcroft High School as school was letting out for the day. A group called Created Equal was staging a demonstration with signs displaying graphic images of aborted fetuses. The group members were on the sidewalk in front of the school when a man who lives across the street approached them. “Get them off or I'll take them,” the man could be heard yelling on video shot by Created Equal. The video...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Women in Missouri could be required to watch an informational video produced by the Department of Health and Senior services prior to having an abortion under a bill passed out of a House committee Tuesday. Missouri has an “informed consent” law that requires physicians to present details of the procedure in written form. State Representative Linda Black says her bill would ‘enhance’ that. “It would be a mere image of the printed form, but only in a narrative documentary form,” said Black. Black says her bill would help those who are illiterate or do not learn...

A widely supported bill to let Washington State University open a medical school in Spokane hit a snag when a Seattle lawmaker asked the school to promise that it would not limit teaching on reproductive health or end-of-life care because of its partnerships with religious hospitals. House Bill 1559 was scheduled to be voted out of the House Higher Education Committee on Friday, but the vote was delayed after Rep. Gerry Pollet, D-Seattle, pushed that amendment, the Seattle Times reported. WSU supporters say they have no intention of restricting medical education. But they say Pollet's amendment has no place in...

NEW YORK, January 6 (C-Fam) A group of U.S. senators is urging President Obama to fund the UN’s controversial population agency despite its ties to abortion and coercive population control programs, and its new push for countries to legalize prostitution. “We are disappointed that despite UNFPA’s critical work around the world, a number of misperceptions about the organization persist,” wrote Senator Barbara Boxer and 21 of her Democratic colleagues. “UNFPA does not promote abortion as a method of family planning and does not condone coercion in family planning, coercive abortion or forced sterilizations,” according to the senators, each an ardent...

According to New Mexico 2013 state population estimates, 46.4% of New Mexicans were Hispanic, and 41.3 % were White, so why do Hispanic women account for the majority of abortions in the state? Hispanics in New Mexico In New Mexico, reporting of legal induced abortion became law in 1977, and 1978 was the first full year of reporting. The number of abortions reported in New Mexico in 2013 was 3,408. This is an 8.7% increase from the 2012 number. In 2013, 67.6% of abortions in New Mexico were to women who were less than nine weeks pregnant and 86.0% of...

Santorums’ New Book Reveals How Faith And Love Are Tested By A Daughter’s Disability By Karen Tumulty and Colby Itkowitz February 7 Over and over, Rick Santorum has watched the old video of himself at a presidential candidate forum in Iowa. He can read in his strained expression the struggle that was going on in his mind as he tried to figure out how to answer a challenge put to the Republican contenders: “Bare your soul.” The shadow on Santorum’s soul was the memory of a time when he hadn’t loved his own child as a father should. Could there...