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Three Important Articvles from WWW.LifeNews.com

Study: Teen Pregnancy Rate Drops by Half When Planned Parenthood Leaves Town

by Paul Rondeau | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 1/15/14 3:50 PM

A study across the Texas Panhandle, using government statistics from 16 counties, found that the teen pregnancy rates among 13-17-year olds from 1994 through 2010 showed dramatic declines even as Planned Parenthood Federation of America facilities in the region shut down—dwindling from 19 family planning facilities to zero.

For decades, PPFA has publicly maintained that it serves a key healthcare role for the American public by educating teens on “safe sex,” providing contraceptives, and reducing pregnancies. The breakthrough study titled “A Longitudinal Analysis of PPFA and Teen Pregnancy in the Texas Panhandle” refutes that claim. Found within a meta-analysis of Planned Parenthood, the report states that the teen pregnancy rate “reached its lowest point in recorded history two years after disaffiliation of the last two remaining facilities.”

The study analyzed data obtained from the Texas Department of State Health Services, Vital Statistics Annual Report, Table 14B, for the years 1994 through 2010:  “In 1996, the year before opposition to Planned Parenthood began, the average teen pregnancy rate in the 16 counties where Planned Parenthood operated facilities was 43.6 per 1,000 girls aged 13 to 17. By 2002, the rate had dropped to 28.6. In 2008, the year the last two Planned Parenthood facilities disaffiliated from PPFA (Planned Parenthood Federation of America), the teen pregnancy rate was 27.2. And in 2010, two years after the Texas Panhandle became Planned Parenthood-free, the teen pregnancy rate had fallen to 24.1.”

The raw data gleaned from government files shows that with a teen population stable at about 13,000, the actual number of teen pregnancies fell from an average of 544 per year in the five years before Planned Parenthood started closing its doors to an average of 373 in the last five years.

PPFA’s fact sheet, Reducing Teen Pregnancy, proposes to reduce the quantity of teen pregnancies through a number of initiatives. To that end, it calls for initiatives that:

• Incorporate responsible, medically accurate sexuality education and information in the schools and in the media.

• Incorporate improvements in funding for and access to family planning services.

• Incorporate youth development programs to improve the life options of impoverished teens.

PPFA scorns abstinence-based education and praises the Obama administration for effectively defunding it: “In 2009, recognizing that evidence-based sex education programs were effective in promoting sexual health among teenagers, the Obama administration transferred funds from the community-based Abstinence Education Program and budgeted $114.5 million to support evidence-based sex education programs across the country.”

The report does not specifically claim that PPFA presence in a community actually drives up teen pregnancy. The report simply states “The Texas Panhandle statistics show conclusively that neither access to Planned Parenthood ‘reproductive healthcare’ clinics nor PPFA ‘evidence-based, comprehensive sex education’ is a necessary component in reducing the teen pregnancy rate.”

However, when pressed on this point, Jim Sedlak, a recognized expert on PPFA and vice president of American Life League—the organization that underwrote the five-part meta-study in which the Panhandle report is contained—did point to Planned Parenthood’s business model.

“Based on the retention rates that Planned Parenthood published routinely until the mid-1990s, it consistently lost 43 percent of its customers annually. Today, PPFA is a $1 billion business,” said Sedlak. “The only demographic big enough to furnish that many new customers every year is teens and young adults who engage in frequent sex. Planned Parenthood can make millions on preaching safe sex. It goes broke on abstinence.”

Under Obamacare, Planned Parenthood was first in line to start receiving funds for the comprehensive sex education program—funds totaling $375 million.

The PPFA fact sheet also claims that “influential minorities promote unrealistic, abstinence-only programs and parental consent requirements . . . an unrealistic emphasis is placed on preventing adolescent sexual behavior which overlooks the fact that sexual expression is an essential component of healthy human development for individuals of all ages.”

Planned Parenthood argues that comprehensive sex education, including an introduction to homosexuality and all its variations, must start in kindergarten. From kindergarten through college, Planned Parenthood promotes sexual rights, sexual freedom, and even dangerous sexual acts such as anal sex and fisting.

To see where this philosophy leads, one need only look at International Planned Parenthood Federation.  It promotes “sexual rights” for people under 18 years of age, even as young 10.

While PPFA decries the spread of HIV/AIDS it simultaneously fights for laws protecting homosexuality and against laws requiring people who are HIV positive to disclose that information to sex partners.

IPPF argues that laws requiring disclosure of the potentially lethal infection to a new sexual partner violates of the sexual rights of the HIV infected person.

So, does PPFA promote “reproductive health” or just peddle sex?

One thing for sure: to Planned Parenthood, sexual pleasure is more important than life itself.

LifeNews Note: Paul Rondeau is the executive director of American Life League.

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House Committee Passes Bill to Completely Ban Taxpayer Funding of Abortions

by Steven Ertelt | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 1/15/14 5:32 PM

The House Judiciary Committee today approved legislation that will put in place a complete ban on taxpayer funding of abortions that ensures abortions are not directly funded in any federal governmental program or department.

The legislation combines several policies that must be enacted every year in Congressional battles and puts them into law where they will not be in jeopardy of being overturned every time Congress changes hands from pro-life lawmakers to those who support abortions.

The bill has been around a few years but has only been approved in the House thanks to a pro-abortion Senate. On May 4, 2011, the House passed HR 3, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, on a 251-175 vote with Republicans voting 235-0 for the bill and Democrats voting 175-16 against it.

The House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice will hold a hearing on H.R. 7, the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” this week.

Congressman Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican who is the lead sponsor of the bill, informed the House that a study by the Guttmacher Institute, the pro-abortion former research apparatus of Planned Parenthood, released a study noting that one-quarter of women who otherwise would have had abortions chose to give birth when taxpayer dollars were not available to pay for abortions of their children.

The Family Research Council is a strong supporter of the bill and FRC president Tony Perkins applauded Smith’s leadership.

“Chris Smith’s leadership in the cause of life has been historic. Most Americans, regardless of their view on abortion, oppose government funding for abortion. The ‘No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act’ will make sure that the Hyde Amendment applies across the government, including fixing the abortion funding provisions in Obamacare. H.R. 7 will restore government neutrality on abortion,” he told LifeNews.

“Abortion causes enduring pain to millions of American women, and the revelation that so many of them are so young is tragic. Bringing help and healing to America’s young women and their families has to be coupled with public policies that will curtail this victimization,” Perkins noted.

Smith spoke on the House floor during debate over the last version of the bill about what he said was growing public opinion against abortion. He also praised women who regret having terminated their pregnancies and speak out against abortions.

“For decades, a patchwork of short-term policies have prevented abortion funding in many programs authorized by Congress, but it is time for a single, government-wide permanent protection against taxpayer funding for elective abortion,” Smith said. “Abortion is lethal violence against children and exploitation of women. This legislation would establish a comprehensive policy prohibiting public funding for elective abortion in all federal programs.”

A majority of Americans object to the use of taxpayer money for funding abortion, according to numerous polls — including a survey CNN conducted in early April showing Americans oppose public funding of abortion by a margin of 61% to 35%.

The bill will also mitigate concerns about abortion funding in the various loopholes in the Obamacare national health care bill that various pro-life organizations warned about during debate on the law. The legislation did not contain language banning funding of abortions in its provisions and the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act would fix that problem.

The National Right to Life Committee sent a letter to House members urging support for the legislation that explains how the bill will help:

“Regrettably, however, the 111th Congress enacted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). During consideration of that legislation, language was proposed (the Stupak-Pitts Amendment) to apply the principles of the Hyde Amendment to the multitude of programs created by the bill, and the House initially approved that language – but no such provision was part of the enacted law, due to opposition from President Obama and the Senate majority. Consequently, the enacted PPACA contains multiple provisions authorizing funding of abortion and funding of health plans that cover abortion.”

The National Right to Life letter also commented on another lesser-known provision of the tax-funded abortion ban — it’s language to protect health care professionals who don’t want to be involved in abortions.

“The bill would codify the principles of the Hyde-Weldon Amendment, which has been appended to the original Hyde Amendment on every Health and Human Services appropriations bill since 2004. This provision would solidify important protections for health care providers who do not wish to participate in providing abortions – which is especially important in light of the Obama Administration’s February 23, 2011 action rescinding the conscience protection regulation issued by the Bush Administration.”

Also, before the vote in 2011, the White House said President Barack Obama would add to his lengthy pro-abortion record by vetoing the legislation. Obama would veto HR 3, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, with the White House saying the president opposes the bill because it would supposedly make it tougher for women to obtain abortion coverage from private insurance companies thereby expanding the current Hyde Amendment, which only limits tax-funded abortions under Medicaid, beyond its current reach.

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Irony: Kagan Compares Abortion Clinics to Slaughterhouses at Supreme Court

by Matthew Clark | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 1/15/14 6:09 PM

Do pro-life Americans have free speech rights – the right to quietly talk to willing passerby’s on the street corner – or are the public sidewalks surrounding abortion clinics somehow speech free zones impervious to the protections of the First Amendment?

That is the precise question considered by the Supreme Court today in McCullen v. Coakley.

Pro-abortion legislators in Massachusetts passed legislation making it illegal for anyone to speak on the public sidewalks – otherwise known as exercising the First Amendment – within 35 feet of abortion clinics.  Illegal that is for everyone but employees of the abortion clinics.

Today’s case was the epitome of the abortion distortion – the fact that abortion changes the calculus of longstanding legal principles.

It is axiomatic in Supreme Court jurisprudence that public sidewalks are open public fora.  In other words, your free speech rights are guaranteed on public sidewalks.  For the government to prove otherwise, they would have to show that any restriction is based on some overwhelming or compelling government interest and that the restriction they wish to place on that speech is limited or narrowly tailored in such a way that it imposes the smallest imposition reasonably possible on your free speech.

Just because the government doesn’t like your speech or agree with it does not mean that they get to restrict it – not liking it is not a compelling interest and banning it is not narrowly tailored.

That’s First Amendment law in a nutshell … in every case that is but abortion.  Regarding abortion the rules too often become distorted in favor of abortion and against pro-life viewpoints.  To some, the First Amendment just doesn’t cover pro-life speech.

That abortion distortion was front and center today.

For years before this pro-abortion restriction passed, Eleanor McCullen, an elderly pro-life sidewalk counselor, had ministered to women seeking an abortion.  She would kindly and quietly counsel women approaching abortion clinics about the value of human life, even helping them find assistance from pro-life groups when they chose to keep their babies.  She was literally saving lives.  And she is one of the nicest women you would ever hope to meet; I had the privilege of meeting her today at our office after the oral argument (pictured above along with a fellow plaintiff Father Eric Cadin, standing behind her).

After the statue passed, Mrs. McCullen’s ministry was essentially shut down.  Refusing to be silenced, she challenged this unconstitutional law.

Most disturbing about this case though is that it was not just Massachusetts defending this pro-abortion law, the Obama Administration sent its lawyers to the Supreme Court to argue that this anti-pro-life speech law in no way violated the Constitution.

At one point the Obama Administration’s lawyer actually argued that there was no such thing a right to conduct a quite conversation on a public sidewalk.  Justice Kennedy was baffled.

In a painfully ironic moment, Justice Kagan compared abortion clinics to slaughterhouses, asking what if this statute had been written about slaughterhouses to keep animal rights activists from blocking the entrance and exits.

Jaws dropped throughout the Courtroom when she said that.  The comparison is eerie, as abortion clinics take the lives of millions of unborn Americans each year.

This case should be decided later this summer, and a lot rides on the Court’s opinion.  Will it uphold free speech or will it continue to promulgate the abortion distortion?

Fourteen years ago, ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow argued an almost identical case, Hill v. Colorado.  Importantly, it was a case in which Justice Kennedy issued a stinging dissenting opinion on the side of pro-life speech stating that the court’s ruling upholding a similar buffer zone “contradict[ed] more than a half century of well-established First Amendment principles.”  The three dissenting voices in Hill, Justices Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas, remain on the Court today.

While it is never safe to make a presumption about a case based on oral argument, there were a number of justices who questioned the constitutionality of this Massachusetts statute.

Today, Justices Kennedy, Scalia, and Alito were highly critical of the Massachusetts statue. Even Justice Kagan, seemed concerned about how far this particular law went, asking why a 35-foot buffer zone, why so large, saying that the buffer zone would be almost as large as the Courtroom.  However, Justice Kagan, like Justice Sotomayor, took a more nuanced approach in their questions.  Justices Breyer and Ginsburg who are the only Justices from the Hill majority still on the Court, appeared dismissive of the pro-life arguments.

Justice Thomas, who is traditionally silent during oral argument, did not have any questions, but surprisingly Chief Justice Roberts didn’t say a word during the course of oral arguments.

We filed an amicus brief in this case, arguing in no uncertain terms that Hill was wrongly decided and that pro-life free speech should hold the same place as other free speech under the Constitution.

Pro-life sidewalk counselors like Mrs. McCullen and Father Cadin should not be treated as second-class citizens.  The public sidewalks outside of abortion clinics should no longer be speech free zones for those with pro-life views, but should be constitutionally protected free speech zones for all Americans.

LifeNews Note: Matthew Clark is an attorney for the ACLJ, residing in northern Virginia, where this originally appeared. He has been actively involved in Virginia politics for over a decade.  You can follow Matthew on Twitter @_MatthewClark.