California Judge Refuses Attorney General Request to Seal Planned Parenthood Baby Parts Video During Preliminary Hearing

By Dave Andrusko
National Right to Life

Citizen journalists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, who have been under siege by the attorney general of California for their undercover work exposing Planned Parenthood , received good news Thursday.

In his decision, Judge Christopher Hite of the San Francisco Superior Court “denied the requests of California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and his abortion allies to seal and shield from public viewing the video evidence to be shown in the courtroom during Sandra Merritt’s upcoming preliminary hearing, scheduled for April 22 to May 3, 2019,” according to Liberty Counsel. Liberty Counsel is defending Ms. Merritt against 15 felony charges brought against her by Becerra “in connection with her undercover journalism work which exposed Planned Parenthood’s trade in baby body parts.”

However Judge Hite also said he “will seal the video evidence after the hearing,” 

Liberty Counsel said. “He will also allow Merritt’s accusers to continue to press their charges anonymously, under ‘Doe’ pseudonyms.”

As NRL News Today previously reported, Daleiden and others from the Center for Medical Progress posed as buyers of “fetal tissue” (an umbrella term that includes intact hearts and lungs and pancreas and brains), and asked the kinds of questions someone who is the middleman would ask of the abortion industry. The CMP’s series of 14 videos were incredibly shocking.

Horatio Mihet, Liberty Counsel’s Vice President of Legal Affairs and Chief Litigation Counsel, said of Judge Hite’s decision, 

“Attorney General Becerra’s attempt to shield from the public the very same videos upon which he bases his political prosecution of Sandra Merritt is truly astonishing.”

Mihet added, “The only reason the attorney general wants to have these videos sealed and kept from the public eye is because the videos themselves provide damning evidence that these allegedly confidential conversations were not in fact confidential. The videos themselves put the lie to the Attorney General’s case and reveal it for the fraud that it is.”

Judge Hite wrote in his 24-page decision, 

“The Attorney General has failed to rebut the strong presumption in favor of open public trials in this instance.”

National Right to Life continues here

Pro-life ‘Unplanned’ Movie Receives R-Rating…Likely for Violence of Abortion

By Nancy Flanders
Live Action News

Unplanned, the movie of the life story of Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood worker turned pro-life activist, has unexpectedly received an R-rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The MPAA cites the reasoning for the rating as “some disturbing/bloody images” but Ben Kayser of Movie Guide has stated that other 2019 films that include killing, murder, and death have only received a rating of PG-13.

While Unplanned features simulated abortion scenes that include blood, it doesn’t contain any of the MPAA cautions for profanity, nudity, or sex. Therefore, the MPAA decision to give the film an R-rating is quite possibly because of the abortion scenes — and the MPAA’s opinion that these scenes depict violence. The rating essentially means that the MPAA is (perhaps unintentionally) supporting the pro-life community’s long-held argument that abortion is an act of violence against innocent human life — one pro-lifers believe should be illegal.

READ: ‘Unplanned’ star shocked by mother’s revelation: ‘I was going to abort you’

In addition to stating the obvious – that abortion is an act of violence – the R-rating sets up quite a hypocritical situation for our pro-abortion organizations and leaders. The bizarre situation is that teens in many states can legally undergo an abortion without a parent’s permission, but won’t be able to see a movie about abortion withouta parent’s permission: 

‘Dear teenage girls, you are mature enough to have this violent act done to you and your child and your parents don’t need to know, but you can’t see a movie about it without your parents saying it’s okay.’

Planned Parenthood works overtime to fight and overturn laws concerning parental notification for abortion, so it’s ironic that teenage girls can’t enter a movie about Planned Parenthood without parental notification.

The writers/directors of Unplanned — Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman — aren’t worried about the R-rating, although it may stop teenage girls who should see the movie from seeing the movie. In their opinion, it’s a film teens should see with their parents.

“But, maybe it’s all for the best: As the wife of our lead film attorney put it: ‘This is a movie that every mother of a teenage girl needs to take her daughter by the hand and go see with her.’ So as far as we’re concerned, ‘R’ means ‘Recommended,'” they said as reported by Movie Guide. They say they don’t plan on fighting the R-rating.

Website: Live Action News

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12,000 Viable Unborn Babies are Killed in Late-Term Abortions Every Year

By Steven Ertelt
Life News

Nothing speaks louder in the ongoing debate over late-term abortion than a crying newborn baby, particularly a baby who was accidentally born alive after an attempted abortion. The voices of these abortion survivors are very powerful. Now adults, they have been speaking out to tell their stories.

The Senate is about to vote on a bill to protect such infants. The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, sponsored by Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., requires appropriate medical care be given to a baby who survives an abortion. President Trump is going further, pressing Congress to ban late-term abortions altogether. The rhetoric surrounding both bills has become heated and has left many people wondering how to separate fact from fiction.

To determine the truth about late-term abortion, look at the abortion industry itself. Examining its research tells us whether late-term abortions are rare, the reasons why women seek them, and whether the president’s graphic descriptions are over the top.

Media outlets routinely describe the numbers of late-term abortions as ” very rare,” citing the fact that they account for only 1.3 percent of all abortions. But the percentage value minimizes the actual numbers. There are more than 12,000 abortions annually after 20 weeks of pregnancy, according to the Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of the abortion lobby. 

It does not refer to the number of children who die annually in car crashes (about 4,000), gun violence (about 3,000), or childhood cancers (about 2,000) as “very rare.” Yet each of these tragic numbers is only a fraction of the 12,000 viable children aborted late in pregnancy.

Abortion lobbyists admit that most late-term abortions are done on healthy mothers carrying healthy babies. Guttmacher Institute statistics confirm that “most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.” 

Instead, data suggest that “most women seeking later abortion fit at least one of five profiles: They were raising children alone, were depressed or using illicit substances, were in conflict with a male partner or experiencing domestic violence, had trouble deciding and then had access problems, or were young and nulliparous.”

As to whether the president’s description in his State of the Union address of a baby being “ripped from the mother’s womb” is accurate, consider the imagery used by Justice Anthony Kennedy in a 2000 Supreme Court decision. Kennedy uses a description from LeRoy Carhart, a late-term abortion specialist who currently operates a clinic in suburban Washington, D.C.:

Continue reading Life News article here

Arkansas Governor Signs Law to Automatically Ban Abortion After Roe v. Wade Falls

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson

By Calvin Freiburger  
Life Site News

Abortion will automatically become illegal in Arkansas after Roe v. Wade is invalidated, thanks to a law just signed by the state’s Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson.

Earlier this month the state legislature voted to pass the Arkansas Human Life Protection Act, which declares it is “time for the United States Supreme Court to redress and correct the grave injustice and the crime against humanity” that is abortion. 

It provides that after Roe’scentral holding is either overruled “in whole or in part” by the Supreme Court, or nullified by an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, legal abortion will be “abolished” in the state except to save a pregnant woman’s life from a “physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury.”

Abortionists who violate the law would face a fine of up to $100,000 and/or up to ten years in prison. Women seeking abortions could not be prosecuted, and the bill says it would not apply to the use of contraceptives administered “before the time when a pregnancy could be determined through conventional medical testing.”

Hutchinson, who has previously signed a ban on dismemberment abortions and canceled the state’s Medicaid contract with Planned Parenthood, signed the new law late Tuesday afternoon, the Associated Press reports. This makes Arkansas the fifth state to enact such a “trigger law”; another nine still have their unenforced, pre-Roe abortion bans on the books.

Because it wouldn’t take effect until after Roe falls, the Arkansas Human Life Protection Act won’t impact future abortion deliberations at the Supreme Court. Supporters say it’s important to prepare state laws for a favorable ruling they hope President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees will deliver in the near future.

In the meantime, the legislatures of Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas are currently working to pass bills banning abortion as soon as a fetal heartbeat is detectable, in hopes of provoking legal challenges and instigating such a review.

Website: Life Site News

Report: Planned Parenthood Purging Staffers Linked to Body Parts Scandal

By Carole Novielli
Live Action News

Is Planned Parenthood purging staffers connected to aborted baby parts scandal? An analysis of recently retired Planned Parenthood staffers, conducted by the pro-life group Operation Rescue, may indicate that the largest provider of abortions is cleaning house of anyone exposed by the investigative journalism of the Center for Medical Progress as being connected to the trafficking and harvesting of aborted baby parts. 

“[O]ut of 21 executive and senior leaders mentioned in Planned Parenthood’s latest annual report… 13 are new hires or promotions from within that were previously not included in Cecile Richard’s upper organizational echelons,” Operation Rescue found.

Planned Parenthood’s retiring staffers (Image credit: Operation Rescue)

In 2015, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released video footage which captured a number of high ranking Planned Parenthood officials involved in the grisly body parts scandal. Operation Rescue president, Troy Newman, who served as a founding board member for CMP while the undercover investigation took place, speculates that Planned Parenthood’s staffers may be “are running from prosecution” and feels the changes may be related to an ongoing FBI investigation of the abortion corporation.

“In December 2015, the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives both referred the Planned Parenthood Federation of American and six regional affiliates to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation and prosecution for the illegal sale of aborted baby parts and other federal crimes,” the report states.

“Pretty much every one who had anything to do with the trafficking of aborted babies is gone from Planned Parenthood, including their CEO Cecile Richards,” Newman said.

A review of OR’s partial list of retired PP staffers (seen below) makes a compelling case for OR’s suspicions.

Live Action article continues here

Supreme Court Lets Ruling Protecting Texas Bishops From Subpoena on Abortion Talk Stand

Planned Parenthood went back to the district court and asked for a
temporary restraining order to block the law late Tuesday
night, May 29, 2018. | Pixabay/Free-Photos

By Michael Gryboski
Christian Post

The U.S. Supreme Court will not hear an appeal from a case on whether a Texas-based Roman Catholic Church body must disclose its private discussions on abortion and fetal burial.

In an order released Tuesday, the high court denied certiorari in the case of Whole Woman’s Health et al v. Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops, allowing an earlier decision in favor of the Catholic body to stand.

Eric Rassbach, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, a law firm involved in the case on behalf of the Catholic Bishops, celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision.

“Thank goodness the Supreme Court saw this appeal for what it was: a nasty attempt to intimidate the bishops and force them to withdraw their offer to bury every child aborted in Texas,” said Rassbach in a statement released Tuesday.

“Abortion groups may think the bishops ‘troublesome,’ but it is wrong to weaponize the law to stop the bishops from standing up for their beliefs.”

In 2016, multiple abortion providers filed a lawsuit against Texas over regulations requiring that aborted fetuses be given a proper burial rather than disposing of them in landfill or sewers, as previously allowed.

The abortion providers argued that the regulations violated Due Process rights by placing a burden on the woman seeking an abortion to find and arrange for a dignified burial.

At the preliminary injunction hearing, Catholic Conference Executive Director Jennifer Allmon testified in favor of the regulations, noting that the Conference was willing to work with Catholic churches to provide free common burials.

In March 2018, the abortion providers served the Catholic Conference a “third-party subpoena” demanding all documents regarding abortion, embryonic and fetal tissue remains, as well as all communication, including confidential, the bishops may have had with state government officials or the state legislature.

In response, the bishops filed a motion against the subpoena in April of last year, arguing that the order violated the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Last July, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled 2-1 in favor of the bishops, with Circuit Judge Edith Jones writing the majority opinion.

Christian Post report continues here

Twitter Bans Pro-Life Accounts for Exposing Planned Parenthood Selling Aborted Baby Parts

By Steven Ertelt
Life News

Two pro-life advocates were banned from Twitter last week for sharing what they said is already public information about Planned Parenthood’s baby body parts trade.

The information has to do with the prosecution of David Daleiden, leader of the Center for Medical Progress, which exposed the abortion chain’s practices several years ago. Last week, a California judge refused to allow the names of 14 abortion workers to be released in the case.

National Review reports Twitter locked the accounts Pro-Life San Francisco (@prolifesf) and Eric Cochran (@Eric_Cochran) a few days later because they refused to delete posts that identified the 14 employees.

Terrisa Bukovinac, who runs the Pro-life San Francisco account, said the names already are public, and she is appealing her suspension.

“The names of the [John Does] have already been circulated and seen by millions of viewers,” Bukovinac said. “This is public information because they have made themselves known!”She urged the social media site to stop censoring pro-lifers. Twitter has a history of blocking pro-life accounts.

Here’s more from the report:

Twitter asked to delete her tweets naming the 14 individuals Daleiden and his partner Sandra Merritt filmed. Their names have been publicly available on the Internet since 2017, but they are named as “Does” one through 14 in the felony case against Daleiden, People of the State of California vs. David Robert Daleiden, Sandra Merritt. …

“The ‘Does’ have made their own identities known by speaking publicly about the case and their own involvement,” Bukovinac told National Review. “Twitter’s selective targeting of our organization is either pure viewpoint discrimination or a pathetic submission to pressure from Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation.”

Life News article continues here

Former Abortion Worker: 98% of Babies Aborted in Third Trimester are Healthy

By Carole Novielli
Live Action News

A former staff member of a late-term abortion facility has admitted there was nothing wrong with over 98 percent of the babies aborted at her facility. Luhra Tivis spent one year working for George Tiller, one of a handful of abortionists who committed late abortions in the U.S. until he was murdered in 2009. Tivis shared eyewitness accounts of what she observed with radio host Pat Hurley of the South Florida talk radio station, WFTL.

Tiller rarely referred to the preborn child as a “baby,” and in a tape he produced for patients, he told women, “Our process is natural. We are going to help you have the premature delivery of a small stillborn under twilight anesthesia using nature’s technique of labor and delivery.” The abortionist also says, “The woman is the patient, the fetus is the problem.”

Tivis was a sold-out believer in abortion, having previously been active in her local National Organization for Women chapter before her employment with Tiller, where she handled his medical records and scheduled patient appointments. Tivis said that it was what she witnessed inside the abortion facility that made her pro-life.

“In 1988, I was a employee of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita who does almost all third trimester abortions… seven-, eight- and nine-month babies, perfectly healthy. Not even the poor excuse of them being handicapped to kill them. It was what I saw in that clinic that started turning me around, I was so horrified,” Tivis said.

Late abortionist George Tiller

“I was a medical secretary, a medical transcriptionist, I handled all the medical records — so even though I was not a nurse I had a full knowledge of all the medical facts of the case. And I also scheduled patient appointments….”

According to Tivis, during the time she was employed, Tiller ended the lives of approximately 1,000 babies a year in the third trimester, charging an average of $1,800 to $3,000 dollars at that time.

“He nets over a million dollars a year easily,” she stated. “And [patients] had to have cash.”

The first thing Tivis said she discovered was how Tiller lied. “He had told me that he only did late-term abortions for compelling medical reasons…. I saw that there was nothing wrong with well over 98% of these babies.”

She added, “A lot of the ones that had something wrong, it was very minor.”

Tivis claims that Tiller would manipulate the measurements of the BPD, a.k.a. the biparietal diameter, a measurement of the baby’s head, to determine the baby’s gestational age. Despite the fact that Tiller admitted the ordinary method of measurement was top to bottom, Tivis said Tiller measured from side to side.

READ: Abortion is violent and the photos are real, says late-term abortionist

“I was told to lie over the phone to these mothers…. I was required to falsify his medical records to indicate these were not third trimester abortions,” the former staffer claimed.

Tiller’s abortion process took four days, and according to Tivis, “basically what he would do is kill the baby and induce labor.”

She described how Tiller would inject “poison” called digoxin into the baby’s heart to begin fetal demise. The process ended with women “going down to the basement” on the third day where they “were heavily drugged,” and would go through “a full labor and deliver their baby.”

“[T]hese babies were definitely big enough that anybody could tell that was a real human being,” Tivis said. “There was no excuse for what’s going on.”

Tivis described the time that a former late-term abortion patient sent them a letter “vividly describing what was going on” at Tiller’s facility. “She said that all the women were screaming and crying and blood was running down their legs and it was the most horrible experience of her life.”

The facility had its own on-site crematorium where pro-lifers say they witnessed ashes descending from the sky after the ovens had been fired up.

Live Action News article continues here

New York Drops Lawsuit Against Christian Activist for Protesting Outside Abortion Clinic

By Michael Gryboski
Christian Post

A lawsuit New York state brought against a Christian pro-life activist who was accused of threatening patients and staff outside an abortion clinic in New York City was dropped earlier this week. 

New York Attorney General Letitia James ended a lawsuit leveled in 2017 against Scott Fitchett Jr., one of about a dozen activists from local churches and the community who regularly protest outside the Choices Women's Medical Center in Queens.

The Liberty Counsel, which represented Fitchett, released a statement Monday explaining that while the attorney general has continued an appeal against the group of activists, she “informed the appellate court that the appeal is abandoned as to Fitchett.”

Roger Gannam, Liberty Counsel’s assistant vice president of Legal Affairs, explained that it “was clear the Attorney General could prove no wrongdoing against Scott Fitchett, and never should have filed a lawsuit against him.”

“Perhaps the new attorney general has realized that Scott Fitchett not only has a constitutional right to speak on New York’s public sidewalks, but will not bow down to the state’s pro-abortion bullying and intimidation,” said Gannam in a statement.

In June 2017, then state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed a complaint against Fitchett and other pro-life demonstrators in the U.S. District Court for

the Eastern District of New York.

Former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. | (Photo: Facebook/Democrat And Chronicle)

Schneiderman’s lawsuit accused the pro-life protesters of engaging in “a weekly pattern of threatening, obstructive, and violent activity” at the Women’s Medical Center.“

Since 2012, protesters have subjected incoming patients to a barrage of unwanted physical contact, as well as verbal abuse, threats of harm, and lies about the clinic’s hours and its services,” read the complaint.

“Protesters descend on approaching patients to harangue them, sometimes pinning them against the clinic’s exterior wall or parking meters, and even forcing them into the street and oncoming traffic as they try to escape the protesters. Some protesters go so far as to touch or grab at patients to get their attention and force printed anti-choice materials on them.”

In July 2018, District Court Judge Carol Bagley Amon denied the state a preliminary injunction against the pro-life activists, with New York appealing the denial to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. 

Contnue reading Christian Post article here

California Must Pay Pro-life Pregnancy Centers $399K After Forcing Them to Promote Abortion By Katie Franklin

By Katie Franklin
National Right to Life

Adding to a mounting pile of fees for unconstitutional state mandates against pro-life organizations, California has been ordered to pay three pregnancy help centers and a conservative law firm $399,000 following a major loss at the Supreme Court last summer.

The order comes four years after California enacted the “Reproductive FACT Act” (AB 2775), which forced pro-life medical clinics to promote abortion by posting advertisements on their websites and waiting room walls. That mandate sparked a legal battle that was eventually brought to a halt in a 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court in Becerra last June.

Writing for the Court, Justice Clarence Thomas said the law “unduly burdens protected speech.”

In October, a district court declared the law unconstitutional, granting a permanent injunction against it.

Drawing the case to a close last week, U.S. District Court Judge Terry Hatter for the Central District of California said the state would have to pay $399,000 in legal fees and other costs to the Pregnancy and Family Resource Center of San Bernardino, His Nesting Place of Long Beach, Birth Choice of the Desert in La Quinta, and the Liberty Counsel.

The California order comes just as the state of Hawaii prepares to pay $60,000 in legal costs to pro-life pregnancy centers for their own law that violated free speech rights, and five months after the city of Baltimore’s spending board voted to pay $1.1 million to cover the legal fees of Greater Baltimore Center for Pregnancy Concerns for a similar city ordinance.

“Big Abortion is costing taxpayers extraordinary amounts of money to deny women accurate information about their options,” said Jor-El Godsey, president of Heartbeat International, a global network of 2,600 pregnancy help organizations."

 “If they truly believe in ‘choice,’ they will listen to the courts and let pregnancy centers serve women and their unborn children, unhampered by dictates that contradict their deeply held beliefs.”

Continue reading National Right to Life News article here