Tag Archives: Topic: Abortion

AP: Kansas’ law that restricts private health insurance coverage for abortions will go to trial to resolve whether it poses a substantial obstacle to women seeking to end pregnancies, a federal judge ruled Monday.

WBTW.com: The state of North Carolina is appealing a federal judge’s ruling that it can’t offer anti-abortion license plates unless it also makes plates available for people who support abortion rights.

LifeNews: The new report released by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) shows the abortion giant did a record 333,964 abortions on unborn children during the 2011-2012 fiscal year. Those abortions were estimated to have generated $150 million dollars for the “nonprofit” organization.

NY Times: With free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, along with diapers, parenting classes and even temporary housing, pregnancy centers are playing an increasingly influential role in the anti-abortion movement. While most attention has focused on scores of new state laws restricting abortion, the centers have been growing in numbers and gaining state financing and support.

One News Now: Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Michael Norton tells OneNewsNow his firm is “very disappointed in this result, but we are not giving up.” “We have an opportunity, we think, to present some of these specifics to this judge, and we’re in the process of putting that together so that we can file a request that the judge reconsider this order and accept the specific evidence that we do have,” the attorney continues.

Bangor Daily News: Chanting, arguing and sometimes yelling, dozens of Planned Parenthood supporters turned out Friday morning in opposition to weekly protests by anti-abortion activists at the organization’s Congress Street location in Portland.

Religion Clause Blog: In Triune Health Group, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, (ND IL, Jan. 3, 2012), an Illinois federal district court granted a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of the Affordable Care Act contraceptive coverage mandate against a for-profit company that that facilitates re-entry of injured workers into the workforce

LifeNews: The letter from Hobby Lobby CEO David Green that LifeNews received follows . . .

New York Times: Volunteers for the Safe Abortion Hot Line in Chile routinely wear masks when showing support in public for the organization in a country where abortion is illegal under any circumstances.

LifeNews: “Americans deserve to know if their hard-earned tax money is being funneled to groups that are misusing it,” said Senior Counsel Michael Norton, a former United States Attorney who is handling the lawsuit for ADF. “People may hold different views about abortion, but everyone can agree that Planned Parenthood should play by the same rules as everyone else. It certainly isn’t entitled to any public funds, especially if it is defrauding Medicaid and the American taxpayer.”

LifeSiteNews: Israel’s two chief rabbis have again issued a letter to all synagogue and community rabbis urging them to condemn abortion and to support the work of Efrat, the country’s pro-life organization.

Scientific American: The link between a mother and child is profound, and new research suggests a physical connection even deeper than anyone thought. The profound psychological and physical bonds shared by the mother and her child begin during gestation when the mother is everything for the developing fetus, supplying warmth and sustenance, while her heartbeat provides a soothing constant rhythm.

C-FAM: Advocates for legal abortion in all circumstances continue to make their case in terms of reducing maternal mortality, despite a growing body of evidence showing that dramatic improvements in maternal health worldwide have been achieved without the liberalization of laws restricting abortion.

LifeSiteNews: Oklahoma had the right to deny Planned Parenthood nearly half-a-million dollars in state contracts because of the abortion provider’s “persistent unresponsiveness” to state queries for routine information, a federal judge has ruled.

LifeSiteNews: This is an astonishing comment given that Lord Steele remains supportive of abortion, but it reflects concerns regarding the staggering number of abortions carried out in Britain – up to 200,000 every single year, with some 20 percent of all pregnancies ended by abortion.

LifeNews: Since August 1991 more than 3.5 million human embryos have been created, producing only 235,480 “gestational sacs” or evidence of successful implantation.

Cincinnati.com: A combination of new Republicans in the Kentucky House of Representatives and conservative Democrats might get long-stalled anti-abortion legislation passed in 2013, Republican lawmakers said.

LifeNews: The cover article makes the case that the pro-abortion side is losing the abortion debate, saying, “40 Years Ago, Abortion Rights Activists Won an Epic Victory With Roe v. Wade. They’re been losing ever since.”

The New American: Among the pro-life groups applauding the ruling was Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing a former Texas Planned Parenthood clinic director, Abby Johnson, who has charged that the abortion giant is guilty of defrauding the Texas Women’s Health Program of more than $5.7 million. ADF said that the case against Planned Parenthood of Southeast Texas represents just a fraction of more than $100 million in waste, fraud, and abuse the conservative legal advocacy group exposed in a report it presented to the U.S. Congress last February. “Texans shouldn’t be forced to fund abortion industry giants like Planned Parenthood, so the court got this right,” said ADF Senior Counsel Mike Norton in response to the latest court ruling. “Texas law reserves taxpayer money for real healthcare for women and protects Texans from being financially coerced into abortion advocacy.” He added that women “deserve better than Big Abortion’s predatory business model and taxpayers deserve better than to be victims of Planned Parenthood’s waste and abuse of public dollars.”

LifeSiteNews: U.S. District Judge John Jarvey dismissed her case last Friday with prejudice, citing its lack of specificity. The Alliance Defending Freedom helped Thayer file suit in March 2011 . . . Planned Parenthood of the Heartland CEO Jill June calls such lawsuits a form of harassment.

Melissa Moschella at Public Discourse: Are judges more competent to determine what a particular religion requires or forbids than that religion’s own leaders or adherents? Most would think not. Yet that’s what two of the recent rulings related to the Health and Human Services contraception, sterilization, and abortion-drug mandate seem to claim.

Engage Family Minute: Some of the standards abortion clinics will have to meet include . . .

LifeNews: The founder and editor of the highly-popular Drudge Report surprised pro-life advocates on twitter this morning with a tweet condemning abortion an highlighting how thousands of babies are killed on a daily basis.

MSNBC: The folks at Guttmacher Institute track anti-abortion legislation in the states each year, and today they’ve released the data from 2012. The raw number showing actual enacted, new abortion restrictions is predictably down from last year’s record high of 92.

CNSNews: Congress, in the pre-Christmas rush, passed a Democrat-sponsored provision that will allow women in the U.S. military to use their health insurance to pay for abortion in cases of rape or incest.

LifeSiteNews: The Muskegon Fire Department has posted closure notices on the Women’s Medical Services in Muskegon, Michigan, and boarded up the abortion clinic until further notice, Operation Rescue has announced.

LifeSiteNews: For the third time since Thanksgiving, a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in St. Louis, Missouri, has transported a woman to the hospital for emergency care, which, according to Operation Rescue, makes it one of the most dangerous abortion clinics in the nation.

Ken Klukowski at Breitbart: On Dec. 28, 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that the HHS Mandate violates this family’s religious liberty as guaranteed by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Kathleen Sebelius’ mandate could be argued to violate the First Amendment as well, but if a court can resolve a case by looking to a statute, it will avoid issuing an opinion regarding constitutional issues. The Seventh Circuit has issued an injunction while the appeal in this case, Korte v. Sebelius, is pending.

Ed Whelan reports at National Review Bench Memos.

Kansas City Star: Another big showdown over abortion brewing in the federal courts could have meaning for Kansas. Two years ago, Kansas was among just a handful of states to ban abortion starting at 22 weeks — with some limited exceptions — regardless of whether the fetus was able to survive outside the womb.

Constitution Center: Lyle Denniston looks at one company’s claim it has religious rights that exempt it from the Affordable Care Act’s requirement for free birth-control services.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State: Owners of secular businesses don’t have the right to tailor employee health care plans to meet the owners’ religious beliefs, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and other groups have told a federal appeals court. Americans United and three other groups on Friday filed a friend-of-the-court brief before the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the case O’Brien v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Washington Times: Pro-life forces have legislative momentum across the country heading into 2013, but pro-choice supporters also see plenty of opportunities to win in and out of the courts, as the nation’s political clash over abortion rights shows no signs of easing ahead of the 40th anniversary this month of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision.

French Tribune: The privately funded Alliance Defending Freedom’s attorney Steven Aden says that allowing it to get funds means frustrating the public’s interest in making sure that abortions are not directly or indirectly aided by taxpayer dollars. “The question of who is qualified makes the whole law vague and amorphous”, said he.

Alliance Defending Freedom at LifeNews: As we look back on the past year, we conclude that 2012 is a year that will go down in infamy. For the first time in history, the government has attempted to force Americans to pay for the ending of human life – even if abortion violates their religious beliefs.

Religion Clause Blog: In Sharpe Holdings, Inc. v. United States Department of Health and Human Services, (ED MO, Dec. 31, 2012), a Missouri federal magistrate judge issued a temporary restraining order barring enforcement of the Affordable Care Act contraceptive coverage mandate to require a for-profit dairy farming and cheese making business to cover abortifacient devices ( Plan B, Ella and copper IUDs) and related counseling.

Christian Newswire: Attorneys for Jubilee Campaign’s Law of Life Project and Thomas More Society await decisions by federal and state courts on their motions for preliminary injunction to stop the State of Illinois and the Federal Government from imposing confiscatory fines and other legal sanctions on a Roman Catholic health management company for exercising their state and federal free exercise of religion rights not to be forced to pay for abortifacients, sterilization, contraception and the related counseling now being imposed upon non-exempt businesses by state and federal law.

Janice Shaw Crouse at the Washington Times: How many abortions, legal and illegal, are performed annually, nationally and worldwide? The answer depends upon whom you ask and whether the data come from the United States or from developing nations. More important, it depends on the assumptions, methodology and honesty of those compiling the numbers. Recent research calls into question data that heretofore had been considered authoritative.

WSFA (includes video): The new restriction were to take effect on the first of the New Year but Fulton County judge Doris Downs has temporarily blocked the law after a union group challenged it.

Jerusalem Post: Activists set to demonstrate against Jerusalem Conference for awarding a prize to Efrat, an anti-abortion organization.

Boston Globe: In a largely symbolic move, New Hampshire is adding to its books Jan. 1 its second law limiting abortion — the state’s only such law affecting adults — a ban on partial-birth abortions.

Religion Clause Blog: Now in Priests for Life v. Sebelius, (ED NY, Dec. 21, 2012), the parties have filed a stipulation in a New York federal district court agreeing that Priests for Life qualifies for the temporary enforcement safe harbor.

Religion Clause Blog: Yesterday in Grote Industries, LLC v. Sebelius, (SD IN, Dec. 27, 2012), an Indiana federal district court refused to grant a preliminary injunction to a for-profit business that manufactures vehicle safety systems and its Catholic owners who claim that their religious liberty rights are infringed by the contraceptive coverage mandate under the Affordable Care Act.

LifeNews: The governor of Michigan has signed a major piece of pro-life legislation that will stop abortions by protecting women and holding abortion facilities accountable for following basic health and safety standards.

AP: A federal judge has ruled a property management company owned by the founder of Domino’s Pizza doesn’t have to immediately implement mandatory contraception coverage in the health care law.

“Texans shouldn’t forced to fund abortion industry giants like Planned Parenthood, so the court got this right,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Mike Norton. “Texas law reserves taxpayer money for real healthcare for women and protects Texans from being financially coerced into abortion advocacy. Women deserve better than Big Abortion’s predatory business model and taxpayers deserve better than to be victims of Planned Parenthood’s waste and abuse of public dollars.”

Religion Clause Blog: In Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius, (ED PA, Dec. 28, 2012), a Pennsylvania federal district court issued a 14-day temporary restraining order barring enforcement of the Affordable Care Act contraceptive coverage mandate against a cabinet and wood specialties company whose Mennonite

How Appealing links to reports on the ruling and the opinion in Pickup v. Brown. Liberty Counsel press release: Ninth Circut Court of Appeals Blocks California’s Ban on Change Therapy

How Appealing reports on the ruling in Korte v. Sebelius.

Juleanna Glover at New York Times: TWO weeks ago, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2016, proposed making oral contraceptives available “over the counter.”

Alliance Defending Freedom Blog: With the implementation of ObamaCare, the government has become the dictator of conscience. Because of the abortion pill mandate, people must either comply and violate their religious beliefs, or resist and pay the penalty for their faith.

Piero A. Tozzi at C-FAM: Late last week the Inter-American Court on Human Rights struck down a Costa Rican law that banned in vitro fertilization, ruling that the restrictions violated rights to privacy, personal autonomy and “sexual and reproductive health” under the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR), commonly known as the Pact of San José. The Court further ruled that that a human embryo lacks the legal status of “person.” The 5-1 decision, Murillo v. Costa Rica . . . | also posted at LifeSiteNews

Austin Ruse at The Catholic Thing: Last week the court struck down a Costa Rican law that banned in vitro fertilization. Piero Tozzi of Alliance Defending Freedom explains that the court ruled such “restrictions violated rights to privacy, personal autonomy, and ‘sexual and reproductive health’ under the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR), commonly knows as the Pact of San José.” He says the Court also “ruled that a human embryo lacks the legal status of a ‘person,’” and that life begins not at conception, but at implantation – even though the ACHR is the only international treaty that explicitly protects the right to life “from conception.”

Ken Klukowski at Breitbart: Now that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has denied Hobby Lobby’s application for an emergency injunction protecting them from Obamacare’s HHS Mandate on abortion and birth control, Hobby Lobby has decided to defy the federal government to remain true to their religious beliefs, at enormous risk and financial cost.

Washington Times: An attorney for Hobby Lobby Stores said Thursday that the arts-and-crafts chain plans to defy a federal mandate requiring it to offer employees health coverage that includes access to the morning-after pill, despite risking potential fines of up to $1.3 million per day.

Ken Klukowski at Breitbart: Becket’s loss thus far in this case is in contrast with the major victory Becket won last week in another federal appeals court, where (as we rightly predicted) the D.C. Circuit issued an injunction forbidding HHS from enforcing its regulation as currently written against Christian colleges. It’s also in contrast with early court victories in some of the other lawsuits by the Alliance Defending Freedom, among others.

Molly Worthen at the New York Times: Alan Sears, president of the legal advocacy organization Alliance Defending Freedom, sees an unprecedented threat to religious liberty in the harsh fines facing employers who refuse to cover contraception in their insurance programs. “It is a death penalty. It is a radical change,” he told me. “It’s one thing when you’re debating about public space, but it’s another when you say, if you don’t surrender your conscience, you’re out of business.” . . . These legal efforts are less an attempt to redefine religious liberty than a campaign to preserve Christians’ historic right to police the boundary between secular principles and religious beliefs. Only now that conservative Christians have less control over organs of public power, they cannot rely on the political process. Now that the “nones” are declaring themselves, and more Americans — including many Christians — see birth control as a medical necessity rather than a sin, Mr. Sears sees a stark course of action for the Catholic and evangelical business owners he represents: “Litigation is all that our clients have.” Their problem, however, is more fundamental than legal precedent. Their problem is that America’s Christian consensus is fragmenting. We are left groping for something far messier: an evolving, this-worldly, compromise.

DFW Catholic: “Every American should be free to live and do business according to their faith,” said Senior Counsel Kevin Theriot. “The government shouldn’t punish people of faith for following their beliefs when making decisions for themselves or their organizations. That’s why this lawsuit should not be casually dismissed as the Obama administration would like to see happen.” “This mandate leaves religious employers with no true choice: either comply and abandon your religious freedom and conscience, or resist and be punished,” said allied attorney and co-counsel Mike Johnson, dean of Louisiana College’s Pressler School of Law. “It is a shame that the Obama administration is opposing religious freedom rather than supporting it.”

WOI-TV.com: Thayer was assisted in filing the lawsuit by the nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian group that opposes abortions.

Christian Examiner: The full 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling July 24 means that the last remaining contested provision of the state’s informed-consent law, passed in 2005, is constitutional. “A woman’s right to make a fully informed choice is more important than Planned Parenthood’s bottom line,” said Steven H. Aden, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) senior counsel. “If Planned Parenthood truly cared about the well-being of women, it would not try to prevent them from being informed of the well-documented risk of suicide that accompanies abortion.” Planned Parenthood sued South Dakota over the law in 2006.

Ed Whelan at National Review: In five of seven cases, the owners of for-profit businesses have obtained injunctive relief against the HHS mandate. Of the two cases that have gone wrong, I’ve already discussed the Tenth Circuit’s mess-up yesterday in the Hobby Lobby case. Here I’ll briefly address the adverse ruling a week ago in Korte v. U.S. Dep’t of HHS.

Religion Clause Blog: However, in American Pulverizer Co. v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, (WD MO, Dec. 20, 2012), a Missouri federal district court granted a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the contraceptive coverage mandate in a challenge filed by a group of metal recycling businesses owned by Evangelical Christians Paul and Henry Griesediek . . .

Matt Bowman at Life News: In the weeks before Christmas, many Christians read about John the Baptist in the Gospel of Luke. They see that ordinary people came asking John if it was possible for them, too, to prepare the way for the Lord. Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.” Soldiers came as well, asking, “And we, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.”

National Catholic Register: Matt Bowman, senior legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, a coalition of Christian attorneys formerly known as the Alliance Defense Fund, told the Register that the Dec. 18 ruling shows that religious nonprofits have standing “to protect themselves from bureaucrats that are attacking their religious freedom.” “It shows that federal bureaucrats who are trying to pick and choose what faith is and who can practice faith cannot do so without oversight to ensure they don’t trample on religious freedom,” said Bowman.

Piero Tozzi reports at Turtle Bay and Beyond: Late yesterday the Inter-American Court of Human Rights released a lengthy opinion (Murillo et al. v. Costa Rica, dated November 28, 2012) holding that Costa Rica’s law which protects life at its earliest stages by prohibiting in vitro fertilization violates the American Convention on Human Life. In so doing, the Court turned the Convention, which protects the right to life “from conception,” on its head.. . . Alliance Defending Freedom, C-FAM and Americans United for Life submitted a brief to the Court on article 4 of the American Convention, which is the article containing protection of life “from conception.”

Becket Fund: Today, a federal court denied a request to temporarily stop enforcement of the abortion pill mandate, which would force the Christian-owned-and-operated Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., to provide the “morning-after pill” and “week-after pill” in its health insurance plan, or face crippling fines up to $1.3 million per day.

TiwnCities.com (AP): The conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom filed the lawsuit late last month, claiming the state pays for abortions that aren’t really medically necessary, without the legal authority to do so, and without a meaningful review of whether these abortions really qualify as therapeutic.

LifeNews: President Barack Obama, in what appears to be a significant conflict of interest, has named a lobbyist for the maker of the Plan B morning after pill as the top attorney for the Health and Human Services Department.

MyFoxAtlanta: A judge is considering whether to block Georgia’s new law that bans abortions after 20 weeks pending the outcome of a legal challenge.

Alan Sears at the Human Life International Truth and Charity Forum: The 19th century Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky once wisely said, “If God does not exist, then everything is permitted.” Christians continue to wage a political and legal battle against a predominantly secular culture about the law and the meaning of life—both increasingly corrupted by what Blessed Pope John Paul II coined a “culture of death.”

AP: resident Vladimir Putin says a draft bill banning U.S. adoptions of Russian children is a legitimate response to a new U.S. law that calls for sanctions on Russians deemed to be human rights violators. But he has not committed to signing it.

Christian Civic League: According to the 2012 Annual Report of the Family Planning Association of Maine (the organization which runs the abortion clinic in Augusta on Gabriel Drive): “ This year we made strategic decisions that help ensure our future sustainability …” Sources of Funding for Family Planning Association of Maine in 2012 and % of total . . .

American Freedom Law Center: Today, Robert J. Muise, Co-Founder and Senior Counsel of the American Freedom Law Center (AFLC), is presenting oral argument in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in support of AFLC’s request that the court immediately halt the enforcement of the Obama administration’s “contraception” mandate.

Reality Check: Alliance Defending Freedom filed the suit on behalf of the Walkers, a pair of anti-choice activists who are claiming not only are the taxpayers of Minnesota being forced to pay for abortions for poor women against their will but that those abortions are an act of eugenics on the African American community. The suit ignores the fact that in Doe v. Gomez, Minnesota established that the right to an abortion is a civil right and that as long as the state pays for services related to pregnancy though Medicaid it must also pay to terminate pregnancies, too.

WKTV.com: Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced Wednesday that his office has secured a new court order protecting a Planned Parenthood site in Utica that is currently undergoing expansion from threatening and obstructive action by protesters.