Tag Archives: Category: Sanctity of Life

LifeNews.com: “I have no names for you, it’s presumptuous, I’m not the nominee,” Romney began, then adding, “There probably are 15 names of people, including Kelly Ayotte.”

LifeNews.com: Motorists in Texas now have the opportunity to purchase Choose Life license plates, the sales of which will benefit efforts to help women find abortion alternatives and promote adoption.

Washington Post: Del. Bob Marshall filed legislation Monday that states that human life begins at fertilization, and that Virginia’s laws should grant rights, privileges and immunities to what the bill calls “unborn children.”

ADF Attorney Steven Aden appeared on the Zeb Bell Show to discuss this. | MP3 audio 12 mins

Hospital accused of bullying nurses who oppose abortion: But according to a report from the Alliance Defense Fund, the hospital – after the judge’s order – told nurses who objected to being ordered to participate in abortions that among the “accommodations” that could be arranged would be “changes in duties, changes in scheduling, and/or transfer to another nursing position that does not involve duties that are objectionable.”

LifeNews.com: Matt Bowman of the Alliance Defense Fund says Judge Garbis’ ruling was a correct one. “The judge ruled that the law’s attempt to burden speech unconstitutionally discriminated against noncommercial, unlicensed speech on the explicit basis that it came from a perspective disfavoring abortion,” he said, calling it a “monumental decision protecting free speech and women’s health.”

LifeNews.com: Herman Cain has reversed position and decided to sign a pro-life pledge on abortion a prominent pro-life group has had other Republican presidential hopefuls sign that Cain initially declined to attach his name to months ago.

LifeNews.com: Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is at it again, bashing Catholics for their pro-life position when she has promoted abortion in defiance of Catholic Church teaching at every turn.

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys representing 12 pro-life nurses filed a motion for an emergency court order Friday against the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. In violation of an existing court order, UMDNJ is attempting to force the nurses into meetings that would impose discriminatory job “transfer” and other “changes” to their employment solely because of their objections to helping with abortions.

LifeSiteNews.com: With a court battle over Canada’s laws against euthanasia and assisted suicide proceeding just north of the border, a lawyer in Washington State has proposed that his state expand their Death with Dignity Act.

Christian Newswire: Georgia Right to Life (GRTL) has named Mike Griffin as its State Field Director.

The New American: Citing the uncertain economy and the scarcity of needed capital, the company that launched the first government funded embryonic stem-cell trials announced that it is halting further stem-cell research and will lay off nearly 40 percent of its staff. The California-based Geron Corp., which began the first FDA-approved stem-cell trials in 2010, said that it would shift its focus to cancer research.

LifeNews.com: The attorney general for the state of Michigan has permanently closed down two abortion centers in the state, saying they had been operating without a valid license since last summer.

Herald Tribune: Women who have had ovarian stimulation to produce eggs for in vitro fertilization are at slightly increased risk for a type of ovarian cancer, a large study has found.

LifeNews.com: These pro-life nurses shouldn’t be bullied into employment discrimination that is forbidden both by federal law and a court order,” said ADF Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. “The hospital is threatening to impose discriminatory transfers or changes in the employment conditions for these nurses because of their religious and moral objections to abortion. Such discrimination against pro-life nurses violates state and federal law, the court’s order in this case, and even the hospital’s own public statements saying that no nurse must assist in procedures to which they object.”

LifeNews.com: A recent investigation conducted by Project Defending Life with the help of Operation Rescue has revealed that tax money received by the University of New Mexico (UNM) flows freely to the university-run UNM Center for Reproductive Health (UNMCRH) abortion clinic in Albuquerque.

WRAL.com: A potential showdown in court this month over whether North Carolina can sell anti-abortion specialty license plates that say “Choose Life” will be a mere sideshow if the lawmaker who shepherded the plates through the legislature has anything to say about it.

The Denver Post: Denver-based anti-abortion group that sponsored an unsuccessful personhood amendment in Mississippi — declaring fertilization the starting point of life — is mobilizing again to push a fortified measure in Colorado, Oregon and Montana.

LifeNews.com: The re-election campaign of President Barack Obama has hired an activist who formerly worked for one of the top pro-abortion groups to head up a new women’s outreach effort for the 2012 presidential election.

OneNewsNow.com: Two Georgia lawmakers are considering legislation similar to the “personhood” referendum rejected by voters in Mississippi last week.

Townhall: Editor’s note: Robert George made the following comments as he was presented with the Alliance Defense Fund’s Edwin Meese Award at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington, DC, on Oct. 26, 2011.

Baptist Press – Life Digest: The order protected two nurses, Lorna Mendoze and Julita Ching, who were scheduled to help with abortions the next day, according to the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), which represents the nurses in the case.

Kathryn Jean Lopez at NCRegister.com: “Public funding should go toward helping and caring for the most vulnerable Americans, not killing them,” said Matt Bowman, legal counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund, which frequently goes to bat for conscience issues in court. “Clearly, the American taxpayers should not be forced to fund abortions, especially during tough economic times, but the health-care act threatens to do that and more. It threatens the conscience rights of health professionals, payers and employers, because it is not subject to existing federal conscience-protection laws, and Congress failed to apply comprehensive conscience protections to the statute. In addition, HHS recently mandated that all employers provide plans that cover abortifacients, contraception and sterilization.”

LifeNews.com: The West Virginia state legislature has chosen a pro-life advocate to lead the state Senate as West Virginians for Life continues working with lawmakers to pass measures designed to protect unborn children.

LifeSiteNews.com: The only abortion clinic in Santa Fe will close as of December 23, 2011, when abortionist Lucia Ceis retires from private practice. The last day abortions will be done is December 16, 2011.

Dale Alhquist at Crisis Magazine: But just as most people don’t want to hear about the sin of contraception, most people don’t want to hear about the sin of usury. Because most people don’t want to hear about sin. That continues to be a problem.

The Hill: The American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday that the Obama administration shouldn’t scale back new rules requiring healthcare plans to cover contraception.

AlbertMohler.com: The bitter lesson of Mississippi’s defeat of the human personhood amendment is this: When it comes to moral reasoning concerning the unborn child, far too many just adopt Harry Blackmun’s moral framework and want to tweak it. Many in the pro-life movement want to shift his lines of moral judgment, but not to repudiate his deadly logic. We may think we are pro-life, but if we do not affirm the personhood of every human being at every point of development, from fertilization onward, we are not really so pro-life as we think. Or, in other words, we’re all Harry Blackmun now.

ADF Attorney Michael Norton at Townhall: In a growing number of states around the country, legislators and other office holders are doing their best to stem the flow of taxpayer monies into Planned Parenthood’s coffers. And as they do this, it’s understood that they’re one judge away from having their legislation crippled or thrown out, and the financial lifeline to Planned Parenthood reopened.

A federal judge indicated Wednesday she may block the state from cutting off tax credits available to those who donate to organizations that tell their clients about abortions.

NewsWorks: Pennsylvania lawmakers are considering stricter regulations for health centers that perform abortions.

LifeNews.com: The late-term abortion business in southern California founded by the abortion practitioner who invented the partial-birth abortion procedure has closed down for good.

Bill Saunders and Mary Novick at LifeNews.com: The fight for legal recognition and protection of the unborn child is not fatally diminished by the recent rejection of the Mississippi personhood initiative. In fact, there have been multiple victories for the recognition of the unborn child as a person under the law across the country this year, and there is a winning strategy in place to continue setting legal precedent for personhood.

LifeNews.com: Thousands of pro-life advocates on Monday night were introduced to the latest Planned Parenthood official to quit working for the abortion business and become a pro-life advocate. Sue Thayer, former Planned Parenthood manager from Storm Lake, Iowa, shared her conversion . . .

ADF Attorney Matt Bowman appeared on the Drew Mariani Show to discuss the erosion of conscience rights in America and the NJ Nurses case. | MP3 audio 8:50 mins

Christian Post: Attorney Jeffrey Shafer from The Alliance Defense Fund, who is representing the pro-life organization, said that First Amendment rights were at stake here, and he was confident that the ruling would stand and allow even more states to adopt the plates.

State Senator Jim Shockley and Margaret Dor at the Montana Lawyer at p. 8 (Nov. 2011): Attorneys Greg Jackson and Matt Bowman provide this analysis: If the idea of suicide itself is suggested to the patient first by the doctor or even by the family, instead of being on the patient’s sole initiative, the situation exceeds “aid in dying” as conceived by the Court. If a particular suicide decision process is anything but “private, civil, and compassionate,” . . . , the Court’s decision wouldn’t guarantee a consent defense. If the patient is less than “conscious,” is unable to “vocalize” his decision, or gets help because he is unable to “self-administer,” or the drug fails and someone helps complete the killing, Baxter would not apply. No doctor can prevent these human contingencies from occurring in a given case . . . in order to make sure that he can later use the consent defense if he is charged with murder. (Analysis of Implications of the Baxter Case on Potential Criminal Liability, Spring 2010, at www.montanansagainstassistedsuicide.org/p/baxter-case-analysis.html)

Jonathan Berry at The Federalist Society: April Mack sued to recover for the wrongful death of her unborn child, who miscarried after a car accident. The Alabama Supreme Court ultimately vindicated her right to recovery, despite her having miscarried her child before the point of viability. In order to do so, the court found that viability made no sense as a prerequisite to wrongful-death recovery, holding an unborn child’s gestational age irrelevant as a matter of law. Conspicuously, the court never saw fit to even mention the U.S. Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence and its treatment of viability.

Is the prospect of group marriage far-fetched? Probably not. There are several avenues that could soon lead to legal recognition of unions involving three or more people.

The Republic: Supporters of the so-called personhood movement, which defines life as beginning at fertilization, have formed a political action committee to help elect anti-abortion candidates and to educate voters.

The Hill: Local Washington lawmakers are praising House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) for his efforts to give the District more control over its local budget, but they are rejecting his proposed legislation limiting local funding for abortions.

LifeNews.com: It’s very interesting that the abortion business’ legal team has changed venues, having filed this new case in a state court, presumably so if they lose in the first round, they can get their appeal up to the abortion-leaning, Sebelius-stacked state supreme court.

LifeSiteNews.com: A study published in one of the most respected medical journals in the world this month has found that many “vegetative” patients are in fact fully conscious and aware.

When Bethany Saros got pregnant shortly after deploying to Iraq, she came face-to-face with what she claims is the military’s “unspoken code”: that “a good soldier will have an abortion, continue the mission, and get some sympathy because she chose duty over motherhood.”

LifeNews.com: Senate Democrats are attempting to gut four pro-life policies in the minibus bill the Senate will consider next week, and Concerned Women for America is urging pro-life advocates to contact senators to urge support for them.

LifeNews.com: Abortion practitioner Neal Adam Poch has quit doing abortions at a Fort Worth, Texas Planned Parenthood abortion clinic and local pro-life advocates say a new pro-life law the state legislature approved is the reason why.

David Savage at ChicagoTribune.com: If reproductive technology allows a child to be conceived after a father’s death, can the child claim Social Security survivor’s benefits? Justices will decide a mother’s case.

Congressman Chris Smith (NJ) appeared on the Hugh Hewitt Show. | MP3 audio 8:38 mins | Cong. Smith Supports Nurses at Press Conference at UMDNJ

ADF Attorney Steven Aden at Townhall: The American Civil Liberties Union is offering us a 21st century rendition of this riddle in North Carolina, where they’ve pulled out all stops to keep women from viewing ultrasound pictures of their babies in the womb before deciding whether to abort them. The ACLU asks, “If you don’t see the baby, is it still a baby?”

ADF President and General Counsel Alan E. Sears at the TellADF Blog: In a day when so many Christians in America are under legal attack for things like handing out gospel tracts on a public sidewalk, leading a prayer before a public meeting, or even wishing someone a “Merry Christmas,” it’s perhaps not surprising that some states and groups have tried to drive efforts to create life-affirming license plates off the road.

NRL News Today: These statements were read yesterday at a press conference by nurses Fe Vinoya and Beryl Otieno Ngoje. They are two of twelve nurses who are asserting their fundamental civil rights guaranteed by both federal and state law by saying “no” to coerced participation in the killing of unborn children at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ).

OneNewsNow.com: Steven H. Aden is an attorney with the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, one of the groups that defended the law. “A woman’s right to make a fully informed choice is more important than Planned Parenthood’s desire to profit from abortions,” says Aden. “Without this legal roadblock, women will now be better protected — and so will pro-life medical professionals whom the law protects from being coerced into participating in abortions.”

NRL News Today: While the nuts and bolts of any story are essential, the “human element” is what makes it real to someone who is not directly involved . . . In response to a lawsuit filed on the nurses’ behalf by the Alliance Defense Fund, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey insists that nurses are not required to have direct involvement in abortions, which infuriates the nurses, Congressman Chris Smith, and the nurses’ attorney, Matt Bowman. Bowman quoted from an email from the hospital’s attorneys which Bowman pointed out was factually incorrect. First, nurses had been required—and had participated—in abortions. Second, the hospital conceded that “they [the nurses] are required to provide patients who have elected to terminate their pregnancies with pre-operative care (not including the administration of induction medications), and postoperative care.”

LifeNews.com: No nurse should be forced to violate her religious or moral beliefs in order to keep her job. Nursing is a healing profession, and the law protects our right not to provide any services related to abortion. We are thankful that the Alliance Defense Fund and Mr. Stratis are standing by our side to protect our rights. For a few weeks at least, we can sleep soundly at night knowing that we also will be respected in our right to choose not participate in killing innocent lives.

Huffington Post (Religion News Service): “The law said they don’t have to assist any part of the (abortion) case,” said Matt Bowman, the attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund.

Catholic News Agency (CNA): Alliance Defense Fund attorneys are representing the nurses in the lawsuit. “Pro-life nurses shouldn’t be forced to assist or train in services related to abortions,” said ADF legal counsel Matt Bowman. “These 12 nurses have encountered threats to their jobs at this hospital ever since a policy change required them to participate in abortion cases regardless of their religious and moral objections.”

NCRegister.com: Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and Matt Bowman, legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, joined some of the 12 nurses at a press conference yesterday, Nov. 14, outside of University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark, N.J.

Daily Mail Online: Matthew Bowman, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, filed the lawsuit on behalf of Vinoya and the eleven other nurses. He said each ‘possess[es] strongly held religious and moral beliefs that she may not participate in the process of an abortion that causes the death of a pre-born child’.

World Net Daily: hat’s according to Alan Sears, an executive with the Alliance Defense Fund, which has gone to court to obtain an order halting the hospital’s plans for now. “Cases like this are increasingly common in the U.S., as the battle over abortion spurs attacks on rights of individual conscience,” he penned in a website column posted by the ADF. “ADF is involved in a similar lawsuit in New York State court.”

Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund together with the Center for Arizona Policy, the Bioethics Defense Fund, and the Life Legal Defense Foundation defended the law.

The Washington Post: In 2009, the University of Notre Dame set off months of intra-Catholic controversy by inviting a champion of abortion rights to deliver the school’s commencement address. When the day arrived, President Obama skillfully deflated the tension. He extended a “presumption of good faith” to his pro-life opponents.

Todd Starnes at Fox News: Matthew Bowman, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, filed the lawsuit on behalf of Vinoya and the eleven other nurses. who “possess strongly held religious and moral beliefs that she may not participate in the process of an abortion that causes the death of a preborn child.”
Bowman told Fox News & Commentary that the hospital had been performing abortions for decades without forcing nurses to violate their religious beliefs. But that changed a few weeks ago.

Philly.com (11/11): The hospital is playing word games, as noted by the nurses’ attorney, Matt Bowman: But once the media began asking UMDNJ about their illegal behavior, they lied to cover it up. As of the time of this writing, UMDNJ still will not tell ADF attorneys if it has backed off from its Nov. 2 directive requiring nurses to assist. Yet UMDNJ continues to tell the media that no nurse is so require.

LifeNews.com: Efforts by the watchdog group Judicial Watch to demand that Justice Elena Kagan recuse herself when the Affordable Care Act (Health Care Reform) is brought before the Supreme Court later this year resulted in the release of emails between Kagan (back when she was Solicitor General) and a top Department of Justice official. They unsurprisingly, confirm what pro-lifers have been saying all along about the phony agreement which Democrats have claimed prevented health care reform from creating new abortion funding streams.

CBS New York (AP)(includes audio): dozen nurses who object to assisting abortion procedures on religious and ethical grounds say they’re still being compelled to help with the procedures despite having filed suit against New Jersey hospital where they work. (ADF not mentioned directly)

OneNewsNow.com: The 1974 Church Amendment and the 2005 Hyde-Weldon Conscience Law prohibits violations of religious and moral beliefs. The Alliance Defense Fund sought and received a temporary order to halt the practice until the case is resolved.

OneNewsNow.com: Giving women the information they need before such a weighty decision is clearly more important than an abortionist’s bottom line,” contends ADF attorney Steven H. Aden. “Those attacking this law are obviously more concerned about financial gain from abortion than the best interests of women and their pre-born children.”

NJ Star Ledger: “The law said they don’t have to assist any part of the (abortion) case,” said Matt Bowman, the attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund. Demetrios Stratis, a Fair Lawn attorney who’s the local counsel, said the definition of what constitutes assisting in an abortion could be very fine.

News from Missouri Family Policy Council: The Alliance Defense Fund is representing the nurses in the case. Matt Bowman, legal counsel for ADF, says the hospital’s actions are “flatly illegal.” “These twelve nurses have encountered threats to their jobs at this hospital ever since the policy change required them to participate in abortions regardless of their religious and moral objections.” [more]

Christian Post: The Alliance Defense Fund, the legal firm defending the nurses, estimates that the university receives about $60 million annually in federal funds.

Greeley Gazette: ADF Senior Counsel, Jeff Shafer, says the court’s ruling is a victory for free speech. “Pro-adoption organizations should be allowed to express their message as part of a program where others are freely allowed to express theirs,” Shafer continued “The state’s not authorized to censor The Children First Foundation for its life-affirming viewpoint, but it’s gotten away with doing so for ten years now since the application was first submitted.”

Washington Examiner: Matt Bowman, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, a coalition of Christian lawyers and organizations that is representing the nurses, said the hospital had previously hired per-diem nurses or those who volunteered to assist with abortions to help perform them. Bowman said the hospital notified nurses in writing in September that its new policy would require same-day surgery unit nurses to assist in abortions. The nurses filed suit on Oct. 31, claiming the hospital was compelling them to undergo training that involved assisting in abortions, and indicated they could be subject to termination if they didn’t comply.

News from The Associated Press: The company doing the first government-approved test of embryonic stem cell therapy is discontinuing further stem cell work, a move with stark implications for a field offering hope of future medicines for conditions with inadequate or no current treatments.

The Supreme Court said on Monday it would decide whether children conceived through in vitro fertilization after the death of their parent were entitled to survivor benefits under the Social Security law.

LifeNews.com: As the Supreme Court announced today that it will hear oral arguments in March on the lawsuit Florida and more than two dozen states filed against the Obamacare law, more than 100 members of Congress are expected to support the lawsuit. The American Center for Law and Justice, a pro-life legal group which has been involved in the legal challenge of ObamaCare since the beginning . . .