Big News: Department of Health and Human Services Mandate Change

By Brian Burch
Catholic Vote

I am happy to report more promising news from the Trump administration…

We have obtained a draft of a proposed rule change to the HHS mandate. While only a draft, we have reviewed the document and can confirm that the Department of Health and Human Services is considering a major revision to the unconstitutional abortion pill mandate.

This could be a major victory for religious liberty and the conscience rights of all Americans.

In the proposed rule change, religious organizations like the Little Sisters of the Poor, Notre Dame, and EWTN would be free to purchase health care plans without morally objectionable services like sterilizations, contraception, and abortifacients. The Obama-era phony ‘accommodation’ rules would be gone.

Employers would not need to apply to the federal government in order to receive an exemption from the contraception mandate. Instead, employers would simply be free to select health care plans without the mandate altogether. Finally! No American should have to ask permission for their First Amendment right to religious liberty!

Even better: the proposed draft isn’t limited to religious organizations. The draft language would allow any employer, including for-profit businesses who have moral or ethical objections, to opt out of this birth control mandate.

And this updated regulation would become effective immediately as soon as it is published in the Federal Register.

The Draft states:

“Congress has consistently protected religious beliefs and moral convictions in the context of healthcare, including health insurance. In doing so, Congress has promoted access to health services while respecting the ethical or faith-based views held by persons and entities regarding sensitive medical procedures.”

Did you notice the exact language used here? Religious and moral. Ethical or faith-based. Persons and entities. This is the exact opposite of Obama’s hyper-narrow “exemptions.” This language seeks to protect individuals and organizations — including all those with religious or moral objections.

Catholic Vote 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, and Pinterest.  Help us spread the pro-life message by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks.

Pregnant, need help or know someone who does?  

National Hotline: Call 1-800-712-HELP or Text 'HELPLINE' to 313131.
In Southeast Penna:  Call or text 610-626-4006  

If you or someone you know is suffering after abortion, confidential non-judgmental help is available.  Call Project Rachel's national toll-free number 888-456-HOPE (4673) or visit hopeafterabortion.org.  

When He Found Out His Fiance’ Aborted Their Baby, He Was Overcome With Grief and Killed Himself

LifeNews Note: File photo

By SPUC, International
Life News

A journalist for the Australian Daily Telegraph has written on the link between abortion trauma and male suicide.

Corrine Barraclough wrote the article after talking to Julie Cook, national director of ­Abortion Grief Australia (AGA), and concluded that what she learned about the effect abortion has on men “is a heartbreaking ocean of pain I had no idea existed”.

Overcome With Grief

For some men, the grief of losing their unborn son or daughter to abortion is so extreme that they end up committing suicide. This is one story Julie Cook told:

“A woman called recently crying hysterically. It would have been her wedding day, she was inconsolable,” says Cook. “Her fiance had taken his life a few weeks before. She had been pregnant and thought it was too soon to add a baby to their relationship, so went for an abortion and didn’t say a word. When he found out he was overcome with grief and took his life. It’s not uncommon. This is something we must recognize and discuss more openly as a society.”

Another story involved a 16 year old boy, who was saved from suicide “by two seconds”. “He had been doing well at school but following his girlfriend’s abortion and their subsequent breakup, his grades fell. He dropped out of school and became homeless. Sadly, he also told the counsellor of a friend’s suicide because of abortion too,” Cook said.

Abortion Doesn’t Just Hurt Women

Part of the problem is that there is very little recognition of a link between abortion and male depression and suicide. 

“Most suicide counsellors aren’t trained to identify abortion trauma,” Ms Cook told the paper. “In fact, the vast majority aren’t even aware that it can be an issue for men. Most women have no concept that abortion can hurt men.”

“Male suicides can be both directly and indirectly related to abortion,” she went on. “One of the biggest predictors of male suicide is relationship breakdown. Unless work is done towards resolution, abortion trauma often ­destroys relationships.

Life News 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, and Pinterest.  Help us spread the pro-life message by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks.

Pregnant, need help or know someone who does?  

National Hotline: Call 1-800-712-HELP or Text 'HELPLINE' to 313131.
In Southeast Penna:  Call or text 610-626-4006  

If you or someone you know is suffering after abortion, confidential non-judgmental help is available.  Call Project Rachel's national toll-free number 888-456-HOPE (4673) or visit hopeafterabortion.org.  

“Miscarriage Management:” What Planned Parenthood Will Call Abortion When It’s Illegal

By Kristan Hawkins
Life News

The nation’s largest abortion vendor, Planned Parenthood, finally got around to releasing their 2015-2016 annual report so their stakeholders (taxpayers) can get a look at what their hard-earned dollars are going toward.

The report is a doozy, as many in the pro-life movement guessed it would be. After all, 2015 was the year the public got a behind-the-scenes look at how Planned Parenthood abortionists sort through baby body parts to find ones they can sell and make money on — that’s illegal by the way.

Planned Parenthood kindly addresses this scandal on page 11, where they take the opportunity to repeat their talking points that the videos were “highly edited” and have been “discredited.”

Both are false. Planned Parenthood’s own forensic analysis, which was done by a sketchy Democratic firm, even said “that there was no ‘widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation.'” Another forensic analysis declared the videos from the Center for Medical Progress to be authentic.

There are plenty of things to note about the annual report: The number of abortions have increased, taxpayer money to Planned Parenthood has increased, cancer screenings have decreased, clients have decreased, breast exams have decreased, prenatal care was nearly cut in half.

But Planned Parenthood added an entirely new subcategory under “Other Women’s Health Services” called “Miscarriage Care.” 

Students for Life and other pro-life organizations have no intentions or will ever shame a woman who miscarries, but this stood out for a specific reason. A former Planned Parenthood director talked about a similar term that would be used when abortion was eventually made illegal: “miscarriage management.”

Live Action News continues

Concentration Camp Survivor Urges Americans to Defend the Preborn: ‘Stand Up For the Innocent’

“I wish that the Christians had laid down their lives to save us. They were all pro-life; they were against what the government was doing. But they did nothing.”

By Carole Novielli
Live Action News

As a long time pro-life journalist and activist, I do not think I have ever been as moved speaking with an older pro-life activist as I was when I interviewed concentration camp survivor, Eva Edl, about her recent arrest during a pro-life rescue. 

At 82 years old, Eva was one of eleven Christians arrested on May 13, 2017, at the EMW abortion facility in Louisville, Kentucky, at a rescue organized by Operation Save America.

Eva once told an audience that her definition of courage is to “Do what you know you have to do no matter how much fear you experience.” Eva’s surname, Edl, means “noble” in German, but she jokingly says it’s really an acronym for “extremely determined lady.”

Eva considers a rescue — placing her body in front of an abortion facility — to be an act of obedience and worship to God.

She described the first time she participated in such an event. 

“The first time I realized there were abortion clinics in our country was in 1988. I said to my husband, ‘these are the death camps of America.’ I saw people sitting in front of abortion clinics in Atlanta and I’ve been involved ever since.”

Eva says that when she chose to sit in front of the Kentucky abortion facility, she knew the cost, but she believes that intervening on behalf of innocent children being led to their deaths is an act of mercy. 

“When the government decided to make it a Federal offense by passing the F.A.C.E. Act [Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances], most people didn’t dare to interpose and put their bodies in front of the door anymore,” Eva said. “I only rescued once in Philadelphia – but I knew that the time would come that we would have to risk it in order to give God the excuse to be merciful to our nation. I think it’s our last chance.”

Eva knows all too well what can happen when Christians are silent in the face of evil.

Eva is ethnic German, and at the age of nine, was one of many men, women, and children who were forcefully removed from their homes and taken to a communist concentration camp during the Hungarian occupation of Yugoslavia.

Live Action News report continues

Israel’s Modern-Day Midwives Offer Solutions, Not Abortion

By Jay Hobbs
Live Action News

(Pregnancy Help News) Enslaved in a foreign land for 430 years, Israel’s mothers were once confronted with a gut-wrenching choice: either put their newborn sons to death or face the wrath of a powerful king.

Rather than give into the demands of the Egyptian Pharoah, however, two heroic midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, led Israel in a resistance that led to the birth of Moses, who would grow up to lead his people out of captivity and into the Promised Land.

The problem is actually twice as bad, says Sandy Shoshani, national director of a pro-life group called Be’ad Chaim. Even as taxpayers fund 20,000 legal abortions each year—an official number that has stayed the same since the mid-1980s—private clinics abort another 20-30,000 children on an annual basis.

Many of the non-reported abortions take place while young women are serving a compulsory term in the military. Rather than going through the shame of accessing an abortion through the state, young women in the military routinely opt for private abortions—a trend Shoshani’s daughter saw firsthand while she was in the armed service.

Since 1948, Shoshani estimates over 2 million babies have been aborted. Currently, Israel’s population of just 8.4 million aborts as many as one in four preborn babies—a ratio just below that of China. 

It was numbers and anecdotes like these that shocked Shoshani into action back in 2005 when she was asked to take the reins of Be’ad Chaim, an organization serving Israeli women since 1988.

Many of the non-reported abortions take place while young women are serving a compulsory term in the military. Rather than going through the shame of accessing an abortion through the state, young women in the military routinely opt for private abortions—a trend Shoshani’s daughter saw firsthand while she was in the armed service.

Since 1948, Shoshani estimates over 2 million babies have been aborted. Currently, Israel’s population of just 8.4 million aborts as many as one in four preborn babies—a ratio just below that of China. It was numbers and anecdotes like these that shocked Shoshani into action back in 2005 when she was asked to take the reins of Be’ad Chaim, an organization serving Israeli women since 1988.

“The Lord spoke to my heart Proverbs 24:10-12,” Shoshani said. “The Lord showed me a picture of myself like an ostrich and said, ‘You can stick your head in the sand and pretend you don’t know about the abortions in Israel, or you can do something amazing. So, I took up the challenge.

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Live Action News story 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, and Pinterest.  Help us spread the pro-life message by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks.

Pregnant, need help or know someone who does?  

National Hotline: Call 1-800-712-HELP or Text 'HELPLINE' to 313131.
In Southeast Penna:  Call or text 610-626-4006

If you or someone you know is suffering after abortion, confidential non-judgmental help is available.  Call Project Rachel's national toll-free number 888-456-HOPE (4673) or visit hopeafterabortion.org.  

Join Us for Breakfast on Saturday, June 10th in Feasterville, Pa.

from Ellen Gifford, President
Bucks County Pro-Life Coalition

The Knights of Columbus Regina Mundi Council #4052 are having a pancake breakfast next Saturday to benefit the Bucks County Pro-Life Coalition! The information is below.

Saturday, June 10, 2017

8:00 am - 11:00 am

Assumption BVM

Feasterville, Pa. 19053 (map)

Unlimited pancakes, sausage, and a beverage!

$6.00 per person
$4.00 for children under 10

Tickets can be purchased at the Assumption BVM Rectory or by contacting Rick Saldutti at 215-450-3533 or Chris Dern at 215-962-9956.

Tickets can also be purchased at the door!

I am asking everyone who can possibly attend to support the Knights in this effort. As you are aware, we have been in a financial bind this year and this would be a great way to both support the Knights and the Coalition, and fill your hungry bellies.

Hope to see you on Saturday!!

This event is sponsored by the Knights of Columbus 

Regina Mundi Council #4052

 

The mission of the Bucks County Pro-Life Coalition is to provide financial support to area crisis pregnancy centers and educate the community regarding sanctity of life issues from conception until natural death.  For more information,  please follow us on Facebook using this link.

“Comedian” Sarah Silverman Mocks Jesus and Promotes Abortion in New Netflix Show

By Mark Judge
Life News

Vulgar and tiresome comedian Sarah Silverman has just posted a new promo trailer for “A Speck of Dust,” her new comedy special on Netflix.

In the trailer, Silverman brings in “Republican Congressman Tom Virtue” to shoot an ad for the special. Tom Virtue is actually an actor who plays the dad on “Even Stevens.”

“Congressman Virtue” says Silverman has left behind her edgy “blue humor and politics meddling.”

“This is not the inappropriate Sarah Silverman of recent times,” he declares, “but a wholesome comedy special about family. Sarah’s days of blue humor and politics meddling are over. That ship has sailed, as she’s had a true come to Jesus moment and is writing clean material that the whole family can enjoy…We are one nation under God.”

Silverman is then shown in the edit bay, where she cuts the spot to make Virtue sound like he is promoting abortion, “s—ting,” a vulgar phonographic term, and Jesus among the topics to be discussed.

“It’s perfect,” says Silverman.

LifeNews Note: Mark Judge writes for the Media Research Center.

Website: Life News

Disability Activists Rally Against Assisted Suicide at NY Court of Appeals

National Right to Life

Disability rights activists from across the state rallied Tuesday as the New York Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in the Myers v. Schneiderman assisted suicide case.

Not Dead Yet led the filing of a Disability Rights friend-of-the-court brief in the Court of Appeals in support of the New York State Attorney General, and earlier rulings in the case by the Supreme Court and Appellate Division, both of which dismissed a case seeking to legalize physician assisted suicide.

Joining in the Not Dead Yet brief were ten other national and New York state disability rights organizations: ADAPT, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, the Center for Disability Rights, the Disability Rights Center, the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund (DREDF), the National Council on Independent Living, the New York Association on Independent Living, Regional Center for Independent Living and United Spinal Association, collectively referred to as the “Disability Rights Amici.”

New York attorney Adam Prizio handled the filing on behalf of the disability organizations. “Our basic position is that when some people get suicide prevention while other people get suicide assistance, and the difference is the person’s age, disability or health status, that’s unlawful discrimination,” said Prizio.

“It’s a problem that certain people are being told that others not only agree with their suicide, which is bad enough, but will even help them carry it out. It’s a deadly form of discrimination and, as our brief says, it violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

Marilyn Golden, senior policy analyst with DREDF, summarizes concerns about a government authorized, medically administered public policy of assisted suicide as follows:

“If assisted suicide is legalized, some people’s lives will be ended without their consent, through mistakes and abuse. No safeguards have ever been enacted or proposed that can prevent this outcome, which can never be undone.”

Editor’s note. This was posted by the disability rights organization Not Dead Yet. According to New York Law Journal the plaintiffs are “challenging whether two anti-assisted suicide statutes in state Penal Law apply to physicians and, if they do, whether the physicians’ constitutional rights are violated by the statutes.” Their challenge has already been rejected by two lower courts.

National Right to Life continues

Baby Saved at Texas Fire Station Under Safe Haven Law

By Nancy Flanders
Live Action News

A baby was brought to a Plano, Texas, fire station under Texas’ Safe Haven Law on May 18 and placed with a foster family.

According to ABC, a woman arrived at Plano’s Fire Station 1 on K Avenue around 11:30 in the morning. She told a firefighter that the baby was two days old and that she didn’t feel as though she could take proper care of the child.

The child was then taken to Children’s Medical Center Plano and found to be healthy. After Child Protective Services received custody of the child, the baby was placed in a foster home.

This is the third baby to be left at a fire station in Plano since the Texas Safe Haven Law took effect in 1999.

“I believe this is the ultimate act of love,” said Fire Chief Sam Greif. “This mother knew, for whatever reason, she could not provide the home that others so badly want to provide. I hope others that find themselves in her position will show the love and compassion she demonstrated.”

Under the Safe Haven Law in Texas, parents can leave an infant 60 days old or younger with an employee at a hospital, fire station, EMS station, child welfare agency, or freestanding ER if they decide they can’t care for the baby.

Safe Haven laws exist throughout the United States, but vary from state to state. Parents can drop the baby off anonymously without fear of arrest so long as the child has not been abused in any way. Safe Haven laws were put in place to protect babies from being hurt or killed by parents who believe they are unable to be a parent or who are at risk of abandoning their child.

Rather than place the child in a dumpster, as has has happened so often, parents can remain anonymous and keep their child safe. As of 2017, 3,317 infants have been saved through Safe Haven laws. More information on Safe Haven laws is available here.

Website: Live Action News

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, and Pinterest.  Help us spread the pro-life message by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks.

Pregnant, need help or know someone who does?  

National Hotline: Call 1-800-712-HELP or Text 'HELPLINE' to 313131.
In Southeast Penna:  Call or text 610-626-4006 

If you or someone you know is suffering after abortion, confidential non-judgmental help is available.  Call Project Rachel's national toll-free number 888-456-HOPE (4673) or visit hopeafterabortion.org.  

Let's Seize This Opportunity! Join Us on June 6th in Harrisburg, Pa.

Mike McMonagle, President
Pro-Life Coalition of Pennsylvania

Our Coalition and other organizers expect a large turnout and have planned an excellent program for our Stand Up For Life Rally. This Rally, on Tuesday, June 6, 2017 at 11:00 AM in our State Capitol, is occurring at a crucial time as our State Legislature is considering some crucial life-saving legislation. The attached promotional flyer provides additional information and reasons to attend this Rally.

Our Requests of You

1. Will you personally attend this Rally?
2. Will you invite 5-10 other people to also attend this Rally?

Signs and Dress

You are welcome to bring signs. Our organization will provide "Mercy." and "Stop Funding Planned Parenthood" signs.

I encourage you to wear red to this Rally. Our Rally follows the Sunday, June 4, 2017 Feast of Pentecost. The color red would symbolize our commitment, as Christians, to spread the Gospel of Life with courage and zeal in Harrisburg, in our local communities, and in our Churches.

Post-Rally in the Capitol

After the Rally, we request that you visit your state legislators and request that they support the current pro-life legislative initiatives that are summarized in the promotional flyer. We will have materials available at the Rally that describe these initiatives.

Back at Home

Even more importantly, we request that you generate contact with your state legislators in their District Offices in support of these legislative initiatives. We can send you the materials that will be available at the Rally.

Transportation

Our Southwest Pa. affiliate, People Concerned for the Unborn Child, at 412-531-9272, is organizing a bus for this Rally. The www.PhillyAlive.net website lists transportation coordinators from Southeast Pa.

Conclusion

Please do your best to attend our Stand Up For Life Rally in the Capitol Rotunda in Harrisburg on Tuesday, June 6, 2017 at 11:00 AM.

 Note: We have created a Facebook event for this rally. You can access this event page by clicking here.  Please indicate that you are going to attend or are interested. 

   

 Here is a link for the flyer for this event. Please print out copies and distribute them to all your friends. We need to have as many people as possible attend this Rally this Tuesday.