Georgia Right to Life Responds

A response to the February 8 Atlanta Journal-Constitution Politifact article; by Dan Becker, President Georgia Right to Life

Your February 8^th Politifact-Georgia article: “Abortion foe overreaches in describing context of court ruling” suggested I misread a recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling.

The ruling upheld—and even expanded—a lower court decision that applied the state’s chemical endangerment statute to pre-born children.

The lower court only said the endangerment statue applies to viable pre-born children. The Supreme Court expanded the meaning to pre-born children at all stages of development.

The court’s decision did advance the cause of protecting innocent life by in effect applying personhood status to a new area of Alabama law.

Your article incorrectly pointed to a South Carolina ruling as proof that the decision was not unique.  That’s not an apples-to-apples comparison since the South Carolina ruling only applied to a viable fetus, not pre-viable as the Alabama ruling does. This latest ruling extended personhood status for the first time to all pre-born children in a different area of Alabama law without juridical restrictions on viability.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Tom Parker said Roe v. Wade—aside from authorizing the right to abortion—was not relevant in deciding the case.

“Subsequently, Roe has sometimes been misread as holding that those unborn children are not persons and do not have the same fundamental rights as does every other person, which rights are protected by law. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

This encouraging decision reflects a broader nationwide trend aimed at establishing personhood status to all children from the moment of conception.

A few recent examples include:

• Last August, 66 percent of Georgia Republican voters approved a non-binding primary ballot question calling on the state to place human rights amendment before all voters.
• This month, the North Dakota House of Representatives and the Montana Senate approved bills that grant legal protection to children at all stages of development.

These, and developments in other states, prove that the tide is indeed turning as more and more people recognize that it’s time to end the culture of death that has plagued our nation for 40 years.  That shadow has resulted in the death of more than 55 million innocent children.

That’s why our opponents are so worried; they know Georgia, and many other states, are rejecting the idea that some lives are more valuable than others.

 All Rights Reserved © 2012

Georgia Right to Life

783 Holcomb Bridge Rd, Norcross, GA 30071

Phone: (770) 339-6880  |  Fax: (770) 339-1711

Dear Pro-life Friends

St. Paul said it best. “For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.” Ephesians 6:12

Even though we “wrestled with the principalities,” Georgia Right to Life (GRTL) has had a banner year. We are one of the most respected pro-life organizations in the nation. This is due to three things: the faithfulness of God, the faithfulness of GRTL staff, and the faithfulness of you, our donors.

We like to think that the best is yet to come as we end this year and head into 2013. We are filled with a profound gladness for blessings already received and with profound rejoicing for blessings that will be coming.

Your gifts determined our projects in 2012 and what you give now will help determine our projects going forward into the New Year.

Here is what you have accomplished in 2012:

• We worked toward the passage of a Personhood-compliant Fetal Pain Law. Georgia had the second highest number of late term abortions in the nation; being a destination state for these abortions. As of January 1^st, 2013 this is FINISHED. There will be babies saved because of this law. Praise God!. UPDATE: The ACLU has file an injunction – the law Is in danger of not going into effect on 1/1/13!

• During the primary election, 66% of the Republicans in the State voted for putting a Personhood Amendment in the Constitution. Yes, it was non-binding; however, we sent a message to our legislators that Georgia is pro-life and they should be, too.

• People have joined the movement because of our web presence. A woman in the Panhandle of Florida drove 7 hours to Orlando to become a part of Personhood there. Why? She saw our Memorial Wall, named her aborted child, and was directed to Orlando from our website.

• The states of Alaska and Iowa want to copy our “program” in its entirety. They want the complete package from our by-laws to our Personhood displays and training to our Life and Liberty Tracker.

• We are still reaching at-risk women with our helpline, our billboards, and our Google keyword searches.

• We use email newsletters, social media, and speakers to reach people everywhere with our principled message of the Sanctity of Life and Personhood.

There is so much more. As we come toward the end of an exhausting but most successful year, there is hardly time to appreciate all that has been accomplished because we have so much more to do in 2013.

The ACLU has filed an injunction against the fetal pain bill to keep it from going into effect on January 1, 2013. We will keep you posted on the status of the bill.

We will pause on January 22^nd of 2013, to mourn the 40^th anniversary of Roe v Wade on the Capitol steps. I don’t know why it has taken 40 years to abolish abortion on demand in this country. I hope that we are seeing the Joshua generation step up to end this wandering in the wilderness by the pro-life movement. We, at GRTL, believe that Personhood is the way out of the wilderness and we will continue to lead in that direction if we have the resources.

Please, I urge you to send your most generous sacrificial year-end gift so we can continue to promote Personhood and defend life at all stages. I can’t ask you for more than you can afford, but please send what you can. We need your help to continue our good work, together.

We thank you for your past generosity and your prayers and we thank you in advance for your gift today.

Together for Life,

Daniel C. Becker, President

Yes On 26 Celebrates Victory at Mississippi Supreme Court

Our State’s High Court Allows Personhood to Remain on the November 8 Ballot

Contact: Greg Sanders, 662-523-6722

TUPELO, Miss., Sept. 8, 2011 /Christian Newswire/ — The Mississippi Supreme Court ruled today that Measure No. 26, the Personhood Amendment, did not violate the state constitutional rules governing citizen initiatives, and so the citizens of Mississippi will have the chance to vote on it in November. The Court thus rejected a challenge by the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights to keep the Personhood Amendment off the ballot, claiming that it was an improper attempt to modify the Bill of Rights.

For over two years, scores of men and women, sons and daughters across our fair state patiently and prayerfully labored to successfully bring forth the Mississippi Personhood Amendment, Measure No. 26, to its rightful place on the November 8, 2011, general election ballot. With over 106,000 certified signatures, the first hurdle to secure a constitutionally defensible means of protecting the unborn from the earliest stages of life was achieved.

Recognizing the grave threat a favorable Mississippi vote in November posed to the interstate abortion trade, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood imposed a second hurdle, by filing suit to strip this initiative off the ballot, and as a result, deny Mississippians their right to declare on November 8 that in Mississippi, under God, the unborn are persons, possessed of those “unalienable rights” to life as our Founders opined in the Declaration of Independence.

Thankfully, the Hinds County Circuit Court and now our Supreme Court rejected the arguments of these bastions of liberal, anti-Christian activism and affirmed the right of Mississippians to cast a vote for life — to say “yes” on 26 on Election Day. We applaud the Court’s common sense and correct ruling.

“With the first two hurdles overcome, only the third hurdle of Election Day remains for us to claim victory in our state’s personhood movement. We need Mississippi’s prolife public officials, pastors, and patriots to stand up and be counted in the days ahead as we seek to become the first state in the nation to grant civil rights to the unborn,” said Brad Prewitt, Executive Director of Yes on 26.

“There have been nationwide attempts to silence the personhood message, so we are very pleased that a high court has ruled against the ACLU and Planned Parenthood yet again. The nation is watching Amendment 26, and it is time now to move forward and pass this crucial prolife amendment to defend human life,” said Keith Mason, President of Personhood USA.

“Today we rejoice and celebrate this hard-won victory, but tomorrow we roll up our sleeves and return to work. Our opponents are discouraged, but not yet ultimately defeated. They will be back, spreading fear, confusion, and dire ‘sky-is-falling’ warnings about this simple Amendment, and we must be ready to rebut their baseless charges and set the record straight,” said Stephen Crampton, Liberty Counsel’s lead attorney for Personhood Mississippi in the case.

When passed, the Mississippi Personhood Amendment will recognize what science and medicine have long established — namely that every human being is fully human and fully alive from the moment of fertilization — and will grant the unborn the full and equal protection of the law as the rest of us possess. In the days ahead, we pray that our work to protect the unborn might be successful and that our State of Mississippi might take that first step nationwide to stop abortion and to choose life over death.

www.yeson26.net

PERSONHOOD GAINS MOMENTUM

It seems that Personhood is repeatedly in the news – and rightfully so.  Support is swelling right here in Georgia and across the nation for the personhood initiatives that seek to protect all human life from conception forward as a matter of constitutional law.  It would restore respect and effective legal protection for all human beings, including the unborn.  The idea is simple and bold and ultimately, may provide a direct challenge to the central holding of Roe v Wade, the landmark decision that made abortion legal in the United States.

In our time of science and technology, we know that life begins at conception.  It would seem that confusion still exists.  Modern medicine is not confused, however.  The unborn child is their patient in genetic problems, vitamin deficiencies, spina bifida and more.  Consider the case of Samuel, a Georgia boy, operated on at 7 months of pregnancy.  The surgery helped repair a major spinal defect and a healthy, active baby boy was the result. I have seen him captivate a room full of people with his bright, smiling face and of course, his favorite truck! Who is the patient, but a tiny unborn human being?  These days we protect turtles, wolves, eagles, and whales, and yet we “do away” with babies at the rate of over 400,000 per year.

Legalized abortion has been a part of the American cultural scene since 1973.  In the Roe v. Wade decision, Justice Harry Blackmun said that, “(If the) suggestion of personhood [of the preborn] is established, the [abortion rights] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the 14th Amendment.”  If an unborn child is a person, then their right to life trumps their mother’s right to choose their death.  With the states passing of the Personhood Amendment the litigation would eventually be taken up by the Supreme Court. Whether the Supreme Court acts – or how – is an open debate.  Previous challenges and pro-life strategies have been viewed in the courts as an attempt to take away from the rights of the mother.  The recognition of unborn children as persons does not take away from the mother but recognizes unborn children with all legal rights and protection due them under the 14th amendment.

We cannot continue to diminish the value of any one category of human life – the unborn – without diminishing the value of all human life.  The personhood of the unborn child is the single point on which the entire debate turns.  This is not the first time America has been divided by a Supreme Court decision that denied the value of human lives.  The Dred Scott decision of 1857 was not overturned in a year, or even a decade.  The good news was that the minority persisted in their vision and finally prevailed.  It will take time to educate, clearly frame and present the issue at hand.   Change is possible,  however… and it begins with you and with me.

Let Georgia Right to Life help you educate your local chapter, your church or the citizens of your community on the value of Personhood.  Contact Suzanne Ward, Director of Public Relations & Education, at suzanneward@grtl.org.

Georgia Leading the Fight for Personhood

 

THOMASVILLE — Georgia is a good place to live — especially for fetuses.

A recent poll suggested that 57 percent of likely Georgia voters want Roe v. Wade overturned. Roe v. Wade is the controversial 1973 Supreme Court ruling that established that most laws against abortion violated a constitutional right to privacy under the liberty clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, thus overturning all state and federal laws outlawing or restricting abortion that were inconsistent with the decision.

There have been more than 52 million legal abortions in the United States since Roe v. Wade became the law of the land.

read more here…http://timesenterprise.com/x947032027/A-place-to-live

Encouraging news on the prolife front…

The New Pro-Life Surge

Political gains by U.S. conservatives unleash waves of
anti-abortion legislation.

Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra | posted
6/10/2011 09:24AM

The summer before Katey Tryon’s senior year of high school, she
got pregnant. Recently split from her boyfriend, she was sad and vulnerable when
she hooked up with her older brother’s friend. They had sex once. Six weeks
later, she was tired and her period was late.

“It was terrifying,” Tryon said. “I’m from a small town in Oregon.
My parents are pillars in the community. I was born and raised here, fourth
generation. So my sin was very apparent.” Tryon’s parents, both believers,
rallied around her. Abortion was out of the question. Two days before high
school graduation, Tryon gave birth to a girl and gave her up for adoption.

Tryon enrolled in a Christian college in Portland, determined to
turn her life around, but still felt vulnerable. “I started dating a guy who
embraced me for what I had just gone through, who understood that I didn’t want
to have sex until I got married,” she said.

But they started sleeping together, and one night the condom
didn’t work. Over spring break, at an intercollegiate softball tournament, Tryon
found out she was pregnant again. Her daughter was nine months old. “My world
came crashing down tenfold from the first time,” she said.

Abortion was never a serious option, she said, although “trust me,
it went through my mind. I recognize why other women go there. You want to get
away from your situation. We want to cover up our mistakes and have them all go
away.”

Tryon found support at a local pregnancy center, which sparked in
her a fresh sense of purpose. She gave birth to a boy and gave him up for
adoption. She went back to college, double majoring in social work and
sociology. Eventually she became the development director at Lane Pregnancy
Support Center in Eugene, Oregon.

In April, Tryon testified before the Oregon State Legislature
about how a pregnancy center changed her life for the better. A Senate committee
was considering a bill to force pregnancy centers to publicly post on doors, in
waiting areas, and in brochures that they are not abortion providers. If centers
did not post these notices in five days, they could be fined up to $1,000, up to
$5,000 if not posted in two weeks.

This is one of many new legislative initiatives on abortion, but
the majority of them are working in the other direction.

Flood of LegislationThe Oregon bill is one of 576 measures related to abortion that
have been introduced so far in 2011 in 48 states, according to Elizabeth Nash,
public policy associate for the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute.

Like the Oregon bill, many of them will never pass committee. Yet
by early April, 142 abortion-related provisions had passed at least one chamber
of a state legislature, compared with 67 in 2009. More than half of the 142
bills (57 percent) introduced this year seek to restrict abortion access,
compared with 38 percent in 2010.

About 40 new anti-abortion laws were on the books by mid-April.
They include:

• expanding the waiting period requirement in South Dakota from 24
  hours to 72 hours, and requiring women to visit a crisis pregnancy center in the
  interim.
• requiring a physician who performs an abortion in South Dakota to
  provide counseling on all risk factors related to abortion.
• allowing any hospital employee in Utah to refuse to “participate
  in any way” in an abortion.
• making it a felony in Arizona to perform or provide money for
  abortions sought because of a baby’s race or sex.
• prohibiting insurance plans that participate in the state
  insurance exchange from including abortion coverage in Virginia, Arizona, Idaho,
  Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee.
• prohibiting the abortion of a fetus capable of feeling pain in
  Nebraska, Kansas, Idaho, and Oklahoma. The organization National Right to Life
  has drafted a model bill for pro-life lawmakers to use.

Republican victories in the 2010 mid-term elections account for
much of the legislative surge. Republicans won control of the House of
Representatives and made gains in the Senate. But their success at the state
level was more significant. They took 29 governorships and 680 seats in state
legislatures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

It’s the largest gain in modern history. The previous record was
held by Democrats in the post-Watergate 1974 election, in which they picked up
628 seats. Republicans now control the governor’s office and both legislative
chambers of 21 states, according to the National Conference of State
Legislatures.

“The November elections brought huge change in the state houses,”
said Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life. “But we’ve been
tilling this ground for a while.”

The forward momentum began, Yoest said, when the Supreme Court
upheld the federal ban on partial-birth abortion in 2007.

‘My life and the life of my unborn baby were forever
changed the minute I called for help.’—Katey Tyron, a director at Lane Pregnancy
Support Center

“They chipped away at the absolute right to abortion,” Yoest said.
“The Supreme Court said that states do have the right to limit abortion. That
was a seismic shift.” Pro-life advocates began to see how far they could get
with restrictions, such as parental notification and informed consent laws, she
said.

The legislation has been snowballing since the Republican sweep:
“Just in the first three months of this year, we’ve provided testimony on 17
life-related legislative matters,” she said. In previous years, the average
number of testimonies provided was two or three for the entire year.

Public Opinion ChangesRestricting abortion through new state laws seems to be highly
effective in reducing abortion rates.

“We see that the number of abortions has gone down by 22 percent
between 1990 and 2005,” said Michael New, political science professor at the
University of Alabama. “An important reason is the restrictions that more and
more states are passing.”

New examined the effects of three laws on abortion rates. Opting
not to fund abortions through Medicaid was most significant, dropping state
abortion rates by about 9 percent, he said.

“That’s a strong consistent finding,” he said, pointing to a
Guttmacher report that 20 of 24 peer-reviewed studies found that public funding
restrictions reduced the number of abortions. The second is informed-consent
laws, which require abortion providers to inform a woman about the potential
risks to her health, fetal development, and available assistance before an
abortion is performed. Those laws were connected with in-state abortion
reductions of 5 to 7 percent, he said.

New also analyzed parental involvement laws, which require minors
to either tell or get permission from their parents before having an abortion.
While these laws don’t have a large impact on the overall abortion rate, they
correlate with a 15 percent decline in in-state abortions obtained by
minors.

Recent pro-life legislation is changing gears, pushing for laws
that give women the opportunity to view an ultrasound before an abortion or
banning abortion after the fetus can feel pain. Fetal-pain laws have been a big
goal of National Right to Life. Director of state legislation Mary Spaulding
Balch told Christianity Today, “The Pain-Capable
Unborn Child Protection Act very clearly talks about the humanity of the unborn
child.” So far, abortion supporters have not initiated court challenges to the
new fetal-pain laws.

The effect on the abortion rate from pain-related or ultrasound
laws may not be dramatic, New said. Requiring ultrasounds can be tricky because
abortion providers have to self-enforce, and relatively few abortions are
performed after the second trimester, when the fetus begins to feel pain, he
said.

But those laws are still important, New said. “You have to make
progress incrementally. We have made more progress than we think. We’ve
convinced a lot of people that abortion is wrong. Most doctors and hospitals
want nothing to do with it.”

Indeed, public opinion now lines up against abortion for the first
time since Gallup began asking the question in 1995. In 2010, 47 percent of
Americans called themselves pro-life, while 45 percent identified as
pro-choice.

The pro-life advantage held through three surveys, prompting
Gallup to label it a “real change in public opinion,” one that’s showing itself
at the polls.

Last year’s health care debate put abortion back on the national
stage, and President Obama had to issue an executive order strengthening the
limits on abortion to get the health care reform bill passed.

In addition, the House of Representatives passed a bill this
spring that would defund Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in
the country. The bill failed in the Senate, but the victory in the House was
historic, Yoest said.

‘We see that the number of abortions has gone down by 22
percent between 1990 and 2005. An important reason is the restrictions more and
more states are passing.’—Michael New, political science professor at the
University of Alabama

“I absolutely think this is a swelling tide, regardless of what
happens in this particular skirmish. There is very much a future in terms of
bringing more and more attention to the massive federal subsidy of the abortion
industry.”

CounteroffensiveAll this leaves the pro-choice movement “definitely defensive,”
said Nash of the Guttmacher Institute. “We need to make the case for why these
services are important.”

The public questioning of Planned Parenthood is “a major shift,”
said Melinda Delahoyde, president of Care Net, a network of more than 1,000
pregnancy centers.

Care Net’s pregnancy centers are among the targets of the
pro-choice counteroffensive. New York City’s new disclosure law is “the most
difficult thing we’re facing,” she said. The law, like the one Tryon testified
against in Oregon, requires all pregnancy centers to post in waiting rooms and
in all literature whether they offer or make referrals for abortions,
contraception, and prenatal care. The American Center for Law and Justice is
challenging the constitutionality of the law in federal court.

In January, a federal judge struck down a similar disclosure law
in Baltimore, calling it an unconstitutional violation of free speech and
“viewpoint-based discrimination.”

“It puts onerous regulations on pregnancy centers,” Delahoyde
said. “It opens centers up to costly lawsuits—a right to action by aggrieved
persons. There are very harsh restrictions put up all over against pregnancy
centers, and we know their goal is to shut us down.”

But most of the bills targeting pregnancy centers fail to pass.
Two bills in Virginia—one that proposed to limit the revenue pregnancy centers
receive from license plates, the other to require disclosure that abortions are
not offered at the centers—were withdrawn in March. A resolution praising the
work of pregnancy centers was passed instead. Another disclosure bill in
Washington made it out of committee but failed in the House of
Representatives.

When pro-choice groups can’t get bills passed at the state level,
they look for local municipalities where they can get propositions passed,
Delahoyde said.

Care Net prepares their centers for the legislation, she said. “We
send our public relations and legal people on the road. We provide a united
front at the state house, and that’s very effective.”

Alliance Defense Fund also provides legal help through hundreds of
attorneys connected to local pregnancy centers, she said.

“We train extensively,” Delahoyde said. “We are pressing forward.
Look, there are so many encouraging signs. The pro-choice brand is
eroding.”

Pendulum SwingsWhen Tryon gave birth to her second baby in December 1992, she was
part of a trend. U.S. teen pregnancy rates had swelled to their all-time
high—almost 12 percent of teenage girls—in 1990, according to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Abortion rates peaked at the same time, with 1.4 million abortions
performed in 1990, according to the CDC. Public support of abortion was also
high, with 56 percent of Americans labeling themselves pro-choice, according to
Gallup. Just 33 percent self-identified as pro-life.

Some 20 years after Tryon was a pregnant teenager, the pendulum is
swinging the other way. She is now an articulate leader at a pregnancy center,
wife of a worship pastor, and mother of three school-age children.

“As a teenager, finding myself in an unplanned pregnancy was scary
at best. Thankfully, I turned to a pregnancy resource center that provided not
only free and confidential services to me, but treated me in a fair and
professional manner, provided me life-giving options when I needed them most,
and eased my fears,” she testified before an Oregon Senate committee.

“My life and the life of my unborn baby were forever changed the
minute I called on them for help. After being educated about all of my options,
I chose an adoption plan that not only gave my baby a hope and a future, but it
also gave it to me.

“It is devastating to think that the vital services I received so
many years ago could be torn from those that so desperately need them today. I
urge you to vote ‘No’ on this bill.”

That bill in Oregon never came to a vote. But neither did another
bill calling for a ban on abortions after 19 weeks.

Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra is a journalist based in the Chicago
area.

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click
for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:Previous coverage related to abortion legislation and life
ethics includes:

State Laws That Lower Abortions | Examining legal measures
enacted to lower abortion rates. (April 4, 2011)

Live Action, Planned Parenthood, and a Year of Change|
Surveying two months of dramatic news on the abortion front in the U.S.
(February 24, 2011)

Abortion Case: Womb vs. Egg | Ethical issues abound in case of
British Columbia couple who wanted surrogate mom to terminate pregnancy after
baby was found to have Down Syndrome. (October 15, 2010)

CT covers more political developments on the politics blog.

Michelle Bachman: 100% Prolife

Republican
Candidate Michelle Bachmann: “I am 100% pro-life.”

jillstanek.com

I am 100 percent pro-life.
I’ve given birth to five babies, and I’ve taken 23 foster children into my
home. I believe in the dignity of life from conception until natural death. I
believe in the sanctity of human life…

And I think the most eloquent words ever written were those in our
Declaration of Independence that said it’s a creator who endowed us with
inalienable rights given to us from God, not from government. And the beauty of
that is that government cannot take those rights away. Only God can give, and
only God can take…

And the first of those rights is life. And I stand for that right. I
stand for the right to life. The very few cases that deal with those
exceptions are the very tiniest of fraction of cases, and yet they get
all the attention. Where all of the firepower is and where the real
battle is, is on the general — genuine issue of taking an innocent human life.
I stand for life from conception until natural death.

~ Representative Michelle Bachmann (R-Minnesota) stating
her pro-life position during the GOP 2012 debate hosted by CNN
as quoted by LifeNews,
June 14

The Gipper Got it Right: Pro-Life Ronald Reagan on Abortion

by Chuck Colson | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 5/22/11 2:16 PM

Opinion

A few weeks ago a friend sent me something he thought I would enjoy reading — something that had been published nearly 30 years ago by Ronald Reagan. I found it so moving, I wanted to share it with BreakPoint listeners.

In 1983, then-President Reagan sent an unsolicited manuscript to the editors of Human Life Review, who published it in a small book. It was a heart-felt plea to the American people to recognize the sanctity of life of unborn babies — and to never give up working to protect them in law.

Reagan reminded readers that neither the American people nor our legislators had ever had a chance to decide if they really wanted to legalize abortion through all nine months of pregnancy: That’s still true today.

Nor is abortion a right guaranteed by the Constitution. Reagan wrote that Roe v. Wade was “not the first time our country has been divided by a Supreme Court decision that denied the value of certain human lives.” The Dred Scott decision affirming slavery has that dubious distinction.

He wrote of the great need to clearly frame and present the issue of abortion — just as abolitionists exposed the terrible truth about slavery.

And what is the real issue? Reagan asked. “The real question today is not when human life begins,” he wrote, “but What is the value of human life? The abortionist who reassembles the [torn-apart] arms and legs of a tiny baby to make sure all its parts have been [removed] from its mother’s body can hardly doubt whether it is a human being.”

And in 1981, Senate hearings on the beginning of human life involved many medical and scientific witnesses who agreed, based on scientific evidence, “that the unborn child is alive, is a distinct individual, [and] is a member of the human species.”

So “the real question,” Reagan wrote, “… is whether that tiny human life has a God-given right to be protected by the law — the same right we have.”

Reagan quoted Lincoln, who wrote that “nothing stamped with the divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on.” He quoted sociologist William Brennan, who warned: “The cultural environment for a human holocaust is present whenever any society can be misled into defining individuals as less than human and therefore devoid of value and respect.” And he quoted Malcolm Muggeridge, who said that “Either life is always and in all circumstance sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some [cases] the other.”

How right these men were.

In order to bring back protection for the unborn, which involves fighting the powerful abortion lobby and activist judges, Reagan said, quoting Mother Teresa, we must become “a soul of prayer,” In fact, we must be like William Wilberforce and his friends, who, Reagan recalled, prayed for decades for the end of British slavery. “Let his faith and perseverance be our guide,” Reagan wrote.

The Gipper would be pleased to know that, thanks to the ceaseless efforts of many Christians, more Americans now call themselves prolife than ever before.

Come to our website, BreakPoint.org, and we’ll tell you how to get a copy of this wonderful little book, Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation.

For Nothing is Impossible with God

Your Own Hands shaped me; modeled me. Job 10:8

Chris has implanted in the wall of his mother’s uterus, which usually takes place 10-14 days after conception.  Immediately, physical changes start taking place in his mother.  The placenta starts to form.  The placenta protects the child and provides nutrients to the new baby.  The mother’s uterus will increase its capacity by 1000 times during the pregnancy!

Luke’s gospel says that Mary went “in haste” to visit her cousin Elizabeth who was six months pregnant with John the Baptist.  Jesus, an embryo, was greeted by a fetus (John) who leaped for joy at the presence of his Savior.

“for nothing is impossible with God.”  Luke 1:37

This Year Like Last Year

We have asked House Rep. Bill Hembree to kill SB 177, the Georgia House’s fake prolife bill.  Please call him at his District Office at 770-942-1656 or his Capitol House office at 404-656-6801 and give him that message politely but firmly.

A little history is in order.  This year, like last year, Speaker Ralston has pulled a last minute move to pass fake prolife legislation in order to say that he has “done something.” Last year, on the final 3 days and ultimately on the last day, the Speaker tried to pass a version of SB 529 that no committee had ever seen.  The Speaker’s version had never been discussed in any kind of hearing. It didn’t matter that the original bill (SB 529) that the Rules Committee saw, had been vetted by a number of different Judiciary committees and approved by 100% of the Senate in a 2-3 hour floor debate. No, Speaker Ralston and his attorney, Bill Reilly came up with their own version of the bill to try and save the day! In the end, GRTL was accused of being unwilling to negotiate and work within the process; however, GRTL had been negotiating with and working with legislative committees and the senate for months in producing a legitimate prolife bill.

Now the Speaker is again crying that we don’t have time to properly vet any other prolife legislation but his. In an interview with the AJC  (http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-politics-elections/legislatures-agenda-packed-in-887707.html) he says that SB 210 has not been vetted properly, therefore, he will not have time to have a hearing for it. He fails to mention the fact that SB 210 IS the Private Right of Action part of SB 529 that was vetted to “death” – all the way to the 40^th day last year!!

So, here we go again, to the last 4 days of the session and we find ourselves with a substituted, fake prolife bill (SB 177) for opting out of Obama Care.  This “opt-out” bill now will be offered to the House and sent to the Senate as the only pro-life legislation this year.

But that’s not all….there is more! Not only is this Obama Care opting-out legislation…it is opting out of abortion funding for all abortions except, life of the mother AND, now . . . rape and incest”! Last year one of the additions to SB 529 by the Speaker was to add “rape and incest” exceptions to the bill.  GRTL hasn’t supported “rape and incest” exceptions in years and never will.

My question is this. If prolife legislation is as important as the Speaker says then why doesn’t his version of the bill (SB 177) need to be vetted by the same committees that are required of GRTL? It seems improper to me to imply that a person can write a bill that doesn’t even have the need of being vetted before it is sent to the floor for debate and a vote. I would dare to say that this gives the impression that he is not interested in having his bill vetted and that this is why he waits until the last minute to bring it forward.

But that’s not all . . . there is more! As you know, Doe v Bolton gave us abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy—for ANY and for ALL reasons. The courts have defined a “life of the mother” exception to mean not just her physical health but also her mental and emotional health. The Speaker’s version of this Obama Care bill leaves the door wide-open for the court defined familial health exception. This means that, if passed AND if the poorly written language can withstand a court challenge, the end result is that NOT ONE child will be spared by this bill. All the mother has to do is claim that her emotional or mental health is impaired and she can get a late term abortion right up until the DAY BEFORE BIRTH! This is an outrage and a mockery of our prolife gains these last twelve years.

So a rabbit is being pulled out of the hat again at the last minute. And what we find is not really a rabbit but a RAT!  Prolife legislation that is really not prolife at all. Why don’t the other legislators see this? Some do, but most don’t! If you keep ignoring error you will eventually not notice it anymore. Some of those who do notice these facts are too afraid to speak up for fear that they will suffer political repercussions within the Republican caucus in general, but more specifically from Speaker Ralston.

The bottom line is that, in these last 2 years, Speaker Ralston, along with other House Leadership, are demonstrating that they are NOT principled prolife politicians, but, at best they are PrINO’s! Prolife In Name Only! And they must be exposed!

I am reminded of what Fredrick Douglas once said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

Now is the time for all prolife Georgians to get involved and to let the House Leadership know that you are tired of them playing political games with the lives of innocent babies! Their legislation does not pass the authenticity test.  We smell a rat – what about you?