Planned Parenthood Sues to Allow Non-Doctors to Commit Abortions

By Lisa Bourne
Life Site News

Planned Parenthood is suing the state of Idaho so that medical professionals other than doctors can commit lawful abortions there.

The lawsuit filed December 14 by the abortion company and Seattle-based feminist group Legal Voice argues that an Idaho law requiring that a licensed physician perform abortions is unconstitutional.

It cites research showing that medical professionals such as nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and nurse midwives are also medically qualified to “safely and effectively” commit abortions, The Lewiston Tribune reports. The medical professionals belong to a class known as advanced practice clinicians.

Idaho is one of 42 U.S. states requiring that only licensed physicians perform abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, the Planned Parenthood-founded research organization.

Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion chain, and other pro-abortion groups have also sued in the past to allow non-doctors in Maine and Montana to commit abortions. Per Guttmacher, non-physician abortion is allowed in California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Vermont.

The plaintiffs in the Idaho suit say a shortage of doctors, particularly in rural areas, limits the availability of abortion. Three of the state’s five abortion facilities belong to Planned Parenthood. The abortion giant has locations in Twin Falls, Boise, and Meridian.

Ninety-five percent of Idaho’s counties do not have an abortion facility, the Lewiston Tribune report said, based upon 2014 data, with 68 percent of the state’s women living in those counties.

Existing abortion locations could offer abortion more days a week if the law were changed, the plaintiffs say, and new abortion sites may be able to open.

One plaintiff is Mary Stark, an Oregon-based nurse practitioner who lived previously in Idaho. She worked in two Idaho Planned Parenthood locations.

Because a physician is only present at the Twin Falls Planned Parenthood two days a month and one day a week at its Boise site, Stark said pregnant women have had to travel extensively to get an abortion.

She said, “The woman would have to decide, ‘Can I rearrange my life around that one day or do I have to continue this pregnancy?’”

Stark is legally allowed in Oregon to perform chemical (medication) abortions and vacuum aspiration (“suction”) abortions. She can also administer chemical abortions in Washington.

Continue reading here 

Planned Parenthood Sues Trump Admin for Wanting Sex Ed Programs to Focus on Abstinence

By Micaiah Bilger
Life News

Planned Parenthood wants taxpayers’ money, and it’s doing everything it can to keep it.

On Friday, it filed another lawsuit against the Trump administration, this time challenging a Department of Health and Human Services decision to prioritize sexual risk avoidance programs instead of the abortion giant’s risky sex education programs, Courthouse News reports.

The Trump administration cut millions of dollars in Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program grants to the abortion chain in 2017 after evidence showed the program was not effective. However, the abortion chain is suing to stop those cuts as well in a separate lawsuit.

The new Planned Parenthood lawsuit claims HHS is wrong to prioritize abstinence-based sex education programs over its own.

Here’s more from the AP:

The lawsuits were filed in federal courts in New York City and Spokane, Washington, by four different Planned Parenthood affiliates covering New York City and the states of Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska and Washington.
Planned Parenthood says the lawsuits are intended to protect the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program from what they termed ineffective abstinence-only-until-marriage curriculums.

“Young people have the right to the information and skills they need to protect their health,” Dawn Laguens said in a press release, vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “The Trump-Pence administration is trying to impose their abstinence-only agenda on young people across the country.”
Health and Human Services Department spokesman Mark Vafiades previously told the New York Times there is very little evidence that the TPP programs are working.

Vafiades said the evidence of a positive impact is “very weak,” and the Trump administration wants to support science-based programs that provide “youth with the information and skills they need to avoid the many risks associated with teen sex.”

In 2017, the Office of Adolescent Health issued two reports evaluating the program. Of the 38 programs examined in the report, only one “reported a long-term reduction in overall rates of teen sexual activity. Nearly all of the evaluations found no long-term difference in sexual activity, use of contraception, or pregnancy rates between students enrolling in these programs and students in control groups,” Dr. Michael New, a professor at Ave Maria University, wrote in 2017.

HHS also pointed to research indicating that 73 percent of the TPP programs under the Obama administration either had a negative impact or none at all.

Life News continues here

Lawsuit Charges University of Minnesota with Illegal Procurement of Aborted Fetal Tissue

By Thomas Moore Society
National Right to Life

A three-judge panel of the Minnesota Court of Appeals heard oral arguments on June 7, 2018 in an appeal of a lower court’s dismissal of a taxpayer lawsuit that charged the University of Minnesota with illegally procuring and using human fetal tissue for research. 

The fetal tissue consisted of body parts that had been harvested from aborted babies. The university had adopted a policy that authorized its researchers to obtain and use fetal tissue from outside of the state, thereby purporting to circumvent the restrictions on using aborted fetal remains that had been enacted by the Minnesota legislature.

Attorney Erick Kaardal, Thomas More Society Special Counsel, explained that Minnesota law makes it a “gross misdemeanor” to procure or use aborted human fetal tissue in most cases, and that the University of Minnesota had sought to dodge that prohibition by using out-of-state providers.

The lawsuit charges the university with being “engaged in a continuous unauthorized usurpation of authority,” and the plaintiff, Pro-Life Action Ministries of St. Paul (PLAM), had urged the court to require the school to explain and prove how it did not violate the state’s fetal tissue research law by procuring fetal remains from outside of Minnesota.  Kaardal commented,

“I really appreciated the appellate judges’ attention to detail at the oral argument, held on June 7th. The University of Minnesota had argued that a recent law, enacted in 2017, had carved out a special exemption from Minnesota’s 1987 legal ban on post-embryonic fetal tissue testing and research. However, the 2017 law does not support the university’s position.”

"Instead, the university, just like the rest of us, has had to follow and abide by Minnesota’s 1987 ban. The actual purpose of the 2017 law was to require the university to annually report to the state legislature as to its fetal tissue testing—both legal and illegal. With this information provided annually by the university, the state legislature could better monitor and manage the university’s fetal tissue testing—a result that is good for all Minnesotans because of the serious ethical issues involved.”

"The lawsuit contends that the University of Minnesota, as a public institution that receives taxpayer money, has “used public funds for improper and unauthorized purposes.”

The initial discovery of this suspected illegal activity was made by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP). This non-profit, pro-life organization, based in California, had gained national attention when its founder, David Daleiden, an undercover investigator and journalist, exposed Planned Parenthood’s and other abortionists’ role in the alleged trafficking of aborted baby body parts. 

CMP’s investigators and videos revealed that University of Minnesota procured human fetal tissue from Advanced Bioscience Resources Inc. (ABR) of Alameda, California. Additionally, it was acknowledged that ABR obtained tissue from induced abortions at clinics throughout the country.

National Right to Life article continues here

Planned Parenthood Sues President Trump After He Defunded Its Programs Pushing Sex on Kids

By Micaiah Bilger
Life News

There’s nothing, it seems, that the abortion chain Planned Parenthood won’t sue over.

On Thursday, affiliates of the abortion chain in seven states sued the Trump administration for cutting funding for their questionable teen pregnancy prevention programs.

The Daily Nonpareil reports the lawsuits argue that the Trump administration wrongly cut their funding prematurely and without cause. Nine groups, including Planned Parenthood affiliates in Washington, Iowa, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Texas and Maryland, are part of the lawsuit.

Last year, the Trump administration announced plans to cut about $200 million in grants to the abortion chain and other participants in the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPPP). It said the program did not help reduce teen pregnancies and wasted tax dollars.

Planned Parenthood contends that its sex education programs are effective.

“The suits filed today argue that the termination of TPPP without cause is contrary to HHS’s own regulations, in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act,” said Healthy Teen Network, a partner of the abortion chain, in a statement. “TPPP is a gold-star example of evidence-based policymaking in action and the grantees were given no explanation for the termination.”

Here’s more from the Iowa report:

The grant was $965,988 per year and was scheduled to last until 2020, said Becca Lee, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the Heartland.

She said Planned Parenthood worked with other organizations to deliver abstinence education and other sex education programs to youth at risk for unwanted pregnancy. The program also collected data on what works and what doesn’t so that money would be well spent, Lee said. It also helped the youths recognize the need for birth control until they decide to become parents, she said.

The Teen Pregnancy and Prevention Program was launched by the Obama administration in 2010. Funding was to last until 2020, but the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last year that it would terminate funding this June.

Planned Parenthood affiliates received several million dollars in taxpayer funds through the program. Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and Hawaiian Islands received $1 million annually to target rural teens. And Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho, as well as Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, also received grants of nearly $1 million each annually to promote their risky sex agenda to teens.

Life News article continues here

Video Producer Sues YouTube for Censoring Pro-Life Videos

By Micaiah Bilger
Life News

A conservative talk show host is suing YouTube for censoring his videos about abortion and other issues.

Dennis Prager filed a lawsuit against the internet giant Google in October, claiming it is wrongly censoring conservatives like himself on YouTube, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

His Prager University publishes a YouTube series that discusses political and social issues from a conservative perspective. One of the videos that he alleges YouTube censored was “The Most Important Question About Abortion,” which examines the morality of abortion, including whether an unborn baby should have rights.

On Friday, Prager asked a judge for a preliminary injunction against YouTube that would lift the restricted status from his videos, according to the report.

YouTube restricts videos that it considers “potentially mature” because of nudity, violence, profanity, obscene material, hate speech or other offensive content. People still can view videos that are restricted if they look for them.

Prager’s lawyers argued that because YouTube is so large, it basically is a public forum where the First Amendment freedom of speech should apply.

“Among others, legal scholars Professors Jeffrey Rosen and Timothy Wu warn that private corporations like Defendants ‘have more power over free speech and privacy than any president, king, or Supreme Court justice,’” they argued in a court brief.

“Because the First Amendment is ‘centered on the problem of wrongful discrimination in communications’ these scholars point out that ‘anyone who wants to understand free speech in the twenty-first century needs to know how the concept has expanded over time’ to include the vast and concentrated power over speech wielded by purportedly private internet intermediaries,” they continued.

Lawyers for Google argued that YouTube is a private company with First Amendment rights and it should not be compelled to host videos that it deems objectionable.

“While Plaintiff’s Complaint invokes the First Amendment, it seeks to invert the protections that it provides,” Google attorney Brian Willen wrote. “Rather than allowing PragerU to compel a private party like YouTube to make certain videos available to all users, the First Amendment gives YouTube the freedom to decide whether and how to present content on its service.”

Whether or not Prager’s lawsuit has merit, pro-life advocates have become increasingly concerned about online censorship on widely-used social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

In October, Twitter rejected an ad from pro-life Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn because she mentioned Planned Parenthood’s sales of aborted baby body parts. Twitter later reversed its decision after LifeNews and other news outlets reported about the matter.

Facebook and Twitter have blocked other pro-life advertisements in the past, as well. In September, Live Action, the youth-centered pro-life organization known for its undercover investigations of Planned Parenthood, said Twitter has been censoring its ads. Live Action and founder Lila Rose said the social media site blocked their ability to advertise and told them to change information on their websites if they want to start advertising again.

Life News continues here

ACLU Sues to Force Every Pharmacy in America to Sell the Abortion Drug to Kill Babies

By Micaiah Bilger
Life News

A Hawaii abortion activist is suing the federal government in a case that could force every pharmacy in America to sell dangerous abortion drugs.

Dr. Graham Chelius, an ob-gyn in Waimea, Hawaii, is suing the FDA and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union.

In the lawsuit filed Tuesday, the ACLU argues that the FDA is restricting women’s access to abortion by requiring that the abortion drug be dispensed at a medical facility under the supervision of a certified provider (not necessarily even a doctor), KHON News 2 reports.

Chelius and the pro-abortion legal group want the FDA to allow pharmacies to give out the abortion drug mifeprex, also known as mifepristone or RU-486.

The abortion drug works by blocking the hormone progesterone, causing the uterine wall to break down and basically suffocating the unborn baby. A second abortion drug, misoprostol, typically is taken a day or two later to induce contractions to expel the dead baby’s body.

Because of the high failure rate and the risks involved with the abortion drug in later pregnancies, the FDA limited approval for use only in the first 49 days from the start of a woman’s last menstrual period. However, last year under pro-abortion President Barack Obama’s administration, the FDA changed its guidelines for the drug, allowing it to be used later in pregnancy and in smaller doses.

Now, abortion activists are pushing for even fewer regulations.  NPR reports more about the lawsuit:

The suit, filed Tuesday in federal court in Hawaii, challenges a longstanding U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulation allowing the abortion pill, Mifeprex, to be dispensed only at a medical facility under the care of a certified provider. Among other requirements, those providers must pre-register with the drug manufacturer, keep the medication in stock, and be capable of providing a surgical abortion if complications arise.

Chelius argues those rules are unnecessary and cumbersome. Hawaii has one of the nation’s highest poverty rates, and the delays and expenses are sometimes insurmountable barriers, Chelius said. The case could have implications beyond Hawaii.

“The FDA restrictions create delays that often push medication abortion out of reach of my patients,” he said. “And some of my patients are simply unable to make this trip and instead have been forced to carry a pregnancy to term against their will.”

Life News continues

California Hospital Sued for Refusing to Assist Suicide

Kathryn L. Tucker

By Wesley Smith
National Right to Life

This lawsuit is a little before its time. Should assisted suicide become widely accepted in this country, activists will try to force all doctors to participate–either by doing the deed or referring to a doctor known to be willing to lethally prescribe.

But it isn’t yet, and so the pretense of the movement that they only want an itsy-bitsy, teensy-weensy change in mores and law continues as SOP.

But sometimes they show their true intentions. Thus, when UCSF oncologists refused to assist a cancer patient’s suicide, the woman died of her disease.

Now, her family is suing–using the same attorney (Kathryn Tucker) who tried (unsuccessfully) to obtain an assisted suicide Roe v Wade in 1997 and has brought other pro-assisted suicide cases around the country.

From the San Francisco Chronicle story:

Judy Dale died of cancer in her San Francisco home in September, in agony, after being denied the pain-relieving medication she might have received under the state’s aid-in-dying law that had taken effect three months earlier.

Bias alert! Pain relieving medication is palliative, to ease pain or other very uncomfortable. Dale was not issued a lethal prescription intended to kill her. That’s not the same thing. Back to the story:

A lawsuit by her children will determine whether UCSF Medical Center, where Dale first went for treatment, was responsible for her suffering by allegedly concealing its oncologists’ decision not to provide life-ending drugs to patients who ask for them. More broadly, their suit illuminates the inner workings of a law that confers new rights on terminally ill patients, but few obligations on their health care providers.

Specifically, doctors and hospitals are provided clear and explicit conscience protections in the law. No hospital or physician can be forced to participate or refer in an assisted suicide.

National Right to Life continues

Pro-Life Midwife Sues Swedish Healthcare Officials

Pro-life Swedish midwife Ellinor Grimmark

By Dave Andrusko
National Right to Life

When last we reported on Swedish midwife Ellinor Grimmark, she had just been told yet again she must assist with abortions in order to be employed.

In November 2015, the district court of Jönköping County Council found that Ms. Grimmark’s right to freedom of conscience had not been violated and awarded substantial costs against her. Grimmark has been denied employment by three different medical clinics in the district of Jönköping because she would not assist with abortions.

At the time Grimmark said she planned to appeal the decision.

Fast-forward to 2017 and Ms. Grimmark is suing healthcare officials for discrimination. Grimmark is being assisted by Alliance Defending Freedom International.

According to an update posted at ADF International’s webpage, the Labour Court of Appeal was scheduled to hear the case January 24-27.

“Being required to participate in abortions should not be a requirement for employment as a midwife,” said Robert Clarke, Director of European Advocacy for ADF International. “The desire to protect life is what leads many midwives and nurses to enter the medical profession in the first place. Employers should respect that desire and look to safeguard the moral convictions of their staff.”

In its expert brief in support of Grimmark’s appeal, ADF International highlighted the protection for freedom of conscience that exists under international law.

National Right to Life News continues

Planned Parenthood Sues Pregnancy Center for Offering Women Abortion Alternatives

We Cannot Allow Planned Parenthood to Bully Us

By Micaiah Bilger
Life News

An Idaho Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit against a neighboring pro-life women’s healthcare group last week, claiming the group is misusing the common area for its mobile medical unit and pro-lifers affiliated with the group are intimidating its patients.

Stanton Healthcare is located in the same business complex as Planned Parenthood in Idaho, and provides life-affirming comprehensive health care services. Founder and Director Brandi Swindell said she began the healthcare group as a life-affirming replacement to Planned Parenthood.

RedState reports the abortion chain’s lawsuit alleges that Stanton misuses the common area of the business complex by parking and using its mobile unit to conduct ultrasounds and consultations in the parking lot. The abortion group claims Stanton is violating the rules for use of the common area.

It also claims the healthcare group encourages people to protest Planned Parenthood, directs its patients toward Stanton’s mobile unit and “intimidate[s]” its patients and staff.

“They’re saying that we’re inviting other groups to our property and they’re blaming us for any nuisances brought by groups,” Swindell said. “We have very strict policies of code of conduct. Our brand is getting bigger and bigger and women are responding.”

The pro-life healthcare facility says Planned Parenthood is the only group in the business complex that ever has complained.

“Planned Parenthood is always fighting for access issues; they’re always accusing the pro-life community of trying to block access and here they are trying to block access!” Swindell added.

Life News article continues

Voices for Life is an e-publication dedicated to informing and educating the public on pro-life and pro-family issues. To read our Mission Statement, use this link. Follow us on Facebook, Google, Pinterest and The Tea Party Community. Help us spread the pro-life message by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks.

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Pro-lifers Win Battle to Publcize Baby Body Disposal

“We are pleased to have successfully defended the vital First Amendment rights that were at stake in this case."

By Bob Unruh
World Net Daily

A major corporation that contracted with Planned Parenthood to dispose of baby bodies from the abortion industry giant has given up in its fight against a grassroots organization that launched a campaign to unveil the company’s actions.

The Thomas More Society on Friday announced that a lawsuit brought against the Ohio-based pro-life advocacy group Created Equal and its national director, Mark Harrington, over their speech was being dropped.

The legal team confirmed Stericycle Inc. and its CEO, Charles Alutto, moved to dismiss the complaint it had brought against the citizens group.

The Thomas More Society originally had claimed defamation, false light invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress after the citizens group launched a protest campaign in Lake Forest, Bannockburn and Lincolnshire, Illinois.

The campaign urged Stericycle’s CEO, board members and the public to cease handling the disposal of “medical waste” for Planned Parenthood affiliates around the United States.

Two months ago, Judge Margarete A. Marcouiller of the 19th Judicial Circuit Court in Illinois had dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice – except she allowed the emotional distress count to be continued if the plaintiffs filed an amended claim with factual allegations.

“Apparently, the reputed Fortune 500 multinational waste hauling company, headquartered in Lake Forest, and its CEO, himself a Lake Forest resident, chose rather to drop this last part of their lawsuit,” the legal team said.

 World Net Daily report continues

"DAVID AND GOLIATH" COURTROOM MATCHUP GIVES VICTORY TO PRO-LIFE GROUP

PLANNED PARENTHOOD HENCHMEN WILL PAY THE PRICE

By Mark Harrington
Breaking Christian News

"Pro-life free speech and the rule of law prevailed today. Corporate bullies like Stericycle are not immune to exposure for their involvement in abortion killing.” – Mark Harrington
Yesterday, Judge Margaret A. Marcoullier of the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit Court of Illinois released her decision on Stericycle, Inc. v. Created Equal(and Mark Harrington). (Photo Credit: Commons Wikimedia.org)

Judge Marcoullier dismissed all three charges against Created Equal and Mark Harrington: defamation, false light, and intentional infliction of emotional distress...

Over the past six months, arguments were presented in a lawsuit by Stericycle, Inc. against the pro-life group Created Equal. The Thomas More Society, a national non-profit law firm, represented Created Equal and its Executive Director Mark Harrington, against the temporary restraining order. This order was intended to stifle Created Equal's first amendment protected message that Stericycle is "enabling" abortion giant Planned Parenthood to kill preborn children.

Here’s what happened:

Created Equal launched #ProjectWeakLink on March 29, 2016 by distributing informational postcards in the Lake Forest, Illinois area — home to Planned Parenthood business partner Stericycle. 

On March 31, Created Equal was notified by Stericycle's attorneys that the company was seeking a temporary restraining order to stop the campaign.

Created Equal's #ProjectWeakLink was devised after a Michigan abortionist's leaked statement that abortion clinics are "one incineration company away from being closed." Additionally, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine's investigation of Planned Parenthood confirmed that Stericycle disposes of aborted fetuses for Planned Parenthood. 

"David and Goliath" courtroom matchup continues