Tag Archives: Abortion

News

Appeals court upholds Texas’ tough pro-life laws

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From Texas Right to Life. (H/T Dad)

Excerpt:

A panel of three judges in the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit released its ruling upholding HB2, Texas’ Pro-Life law, which took full effect in October of last year.  The opinion affirms the constitutionality of the legislation passed last summer and rejects Planned Parenthood’s argument that HB2 places an “undue burden” upon abortionists, abortion facilities, and women seeking abortion.

The court upheld sections of the law that require abortionists hold admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, and that the dangerous RU-486 abortion drug be administered according to FDA procedure. The judges wrote,

“The district court held that parts of both provisions were unconstitutional and granted, in substantial part, the requested injunctive relief.  A motions panel of this court granted a stay pending appeal, and the Supreme Court upheld the stay.  We conclude that both of the challenged provisions are constitutional and, therefore, reverse and render judgment, with one exception, for the State.”

There is a minor caveat to the ruling, abortionists who have applied for admitting privileges prior to the law going into effect, but have not yet received a reply from local hospitals may continue to commit abortions until their applications for privileges are officially denied.

The court asserted that higher standards for an abortionist are, in fact, justified,

“During these proceedings, Planned Parenthood conceded that at least 210 women in Texas annually must be hospitalized after seeking an abortion.  Witnesses on both sides further testified that some of the women who are hospitalized after an abortion have complications that require an Ob/Gyn specialist’s treatment.”

This is the third time recently that this Court of Appeals has upheld Pro-Life policies attacked by abortion advocates.  The same court upheld Texas’ 2011 Sonogram Law and a policy that kept the abortion business Planned Parenthood out of the taxpayer-funded Women’s Health Program.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has my absolute favorite judge, Edith Hollan Jones. If I were President, that’s who I would choose, and then Janice Rogers Brown if I had two picks. Well, it might not ever happen, but a guy can dream… about Supreme Court picks.

At the beginning of the month, there was a story on Life News about how these laws are closing abortion clinics.

Excerpt:

The Dallas Morning News is reporting that the last two abortion clinics outside of big Texas cities will close Thursday because they can’t meet the restrictions placed on facilities under the state’s new abortion law.

Whole Woman’s Health in Beaumont and McAllen will close after providing abortions in the areas for a decade. Amy Hagstrom Miller, president of Whole Woman’s Health, which operated five abortion clinics before the law went into effect, said the provision requiring physicians to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic was proving the most problematic.

Miller said hospitals near her McAllen clinic refused to grant her physicians’ applications for privileges. Some hospitals in the area require their privileged physicians to live nearby. Others require a current physician to co-sign applications for privileges, which many are unwilling to do for fear of being targeted or stigmatized.

In Beaumont, one 75-year-old physician secured privileges, but a second one could not, Miller said.

In addition to that Texas news, there is also a story this morning from National Right to Life about the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has allowed Kansas to suspending taxpayer-funding of Planned Parenthood pending resolution of a court challenge. (H/T J.W. Wartick tweet) So there is more good news!

News

Six bad arguments against religious liberty from the SCOTUS Hobby Lobby hearing

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From the Federalist. (H/T Jay Richards)

Here are the 6 arguments:

  1. A Government Surtax On Religious Exercise Is Totally Acceptable
  2. The Mandate Isn’t Really A Mandate
  3. This Is Just A Sneaky Way To Undo The Civil Rights Act
  4. Corporations Can Have A Racial Identity, Just Not A Religious One
  5. Don’t Start A Business If You Want The Government To Respect Your Religious Rights
  6. Abortifacients Aren’t Really Abortifacients

I want to highlight two of these.

First, number 1 makes clear that the Obama administration thinks that you should have to pay a tax in order to follow your conscience. Obama explained that very well in his campaign speeches. If you have a business, you didn’t build that. The government made that happen, and so they have a right to tell you how to run your business.

Here’s #1:

During her questioning of Hobby Lobby’s lead attorney, Justice Sonia Sotomayor appeared to endorse the concept of a religion surtax. Sotomayor’s rationale was that rather than providing health coverage that included abortifacient coverage, companies could refuse outright to provide any health insurance at all, thereby getting around the mandate.

But isn’t there another choice nobody talks about, which is paying the tax, which is a lot less than a penalty and a lot less than — than the cost of health insurance at all? These employers could choose not to give health insurance and pay not that high a penalty ­­– not that high a tax.

Given that the American Revolution started in large part due to a tax on stamps, it seems odd that the Founders would have agreed that citizens should be forced to pay a tax for the privilege of not doing things that might lead to the eternal damnation of their souls. At any rate, Chief Justice John Roberts interjected, and noted that Hobby Lobby’s owners believed they had a religious duty to provide health coverage to their employees. As a result, they would be forced to violate their beliefs no matter what: providing abortifacient coverage would be a violation, as would a failure to provide any health insurance coverage at all.

Number 4 is also interesting. The Democrats basically argued that although companies can be regarded by the law as Black-owned or Hispanic-owned, they cannot be regarded as Christian-owned. A Black-owned company can complain about racial discrimination, but a Christian-owned company can’t complain about religious discrimination. So corporations can have a race, but not a religion.

Here’s #4:

Corporations are people, my friend, just as long as they’re not religious people. That’s the essence of one argument offered by Verrilli. A major issue in the case is whether a for-profit company or corporation even has standing to sue under RFRA, or whether that right is granted only to individuals or non-profits. The Obama administration has argued that for-profit companies do not have standing. That argument led Roberts to ask the following:

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, that’s a question of State corporate law. It’s not a question of who can bring an action under RFRA.

Could I just raise — eight courts of appeals, every court of appeal to have looked at the situation have held that Corporations can bring racial discrimination claims as corporations.

Now, does the government have a position on whether corporations have a race?

GENERAL VERRILLI: Yes. We think those are correct and that this situation is different.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: So that — so that a corporation does have a race for purposes of discrimination laws.

“So the person — the corporation can bring as a person a claim of racial discrimination[?]” Roberts asked.

“That’s correct, but not exercise of religion,” Verrilli replied.

My opinion of this Hobby Lobby case is that the government’s real aim is to force Christian churches, groups and businesses to offer abortion as another service in a health insurance plan. They have no respect for religious liberty or conscience. They just want to make sure that no Christian can judge because we would all be complicit in the mass murder of millions of unborn children. There would be no one on the outside who could claim to stand in judgment over the pro-abortion people. That’s why it’s so important to make evil taxpayer-funded. That normalizes it and removes the stigma from the people who take advantage of it. “The whole society paid for this, so I don’t need to feel guilty about it – it’s normal”.

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News

Women’s studies professor accused of assaulting peaceful pro-life demonstrators

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Mireille Miller-Young (right)
Mireille Miller-Young (on the right)

From The College Fix.

Excerpt:

A department of feminist studies professor has been accused of going berserk after coming across a campus prolife demonstration that used extremely graphic displays, leading a small mob of students to chant “tear down the sign” before grabbing one of the signs, storming off with it, then allegedly engaging in an altercation with a 16-year-old prolife protestor who had followed the educator to retrieve it.

Much of the scuffle was recorded on a smartphone by the 16-year-old, Thrin Short. The yet-to-be-released video is now in the custody of Santa Barbara law enforcement officials, who are investigating the March 4 incident.

The professor at the heart of the controversy is Mireille Miller-Young, an associate professor whose area of emphasis is black cultural studies, pornography and sex work, according to her faculty webpage. She could not be reached for comment Tuesday by The College Fix.

The confrontation took place at the coastal, public university’s “free speech” area, a heavily traversed part of the quad.

The roughly 3-feet by 5-feet displays included images of aborted fetuses, as well as diagrams detailing the abortion process and other “educational” information, according to Kristina Garza, a spokeswoman for 16-year-old Thrin. Garza heads up campus outreach for the nonprofit, Riverside-based Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust – a group that had trained the Short sisters and other students on how to conduct campus antiabortion events.

[…]According to Garza, when Miller-Young came across the prolife demonstration, the professor started yelling at the protestors, saying abortion is a woman’s right. Then things got uglier, as the scholar allegedly enticed about 15 students to begin shouting “tear down the sign, tear down the sign” at the group, which consisted of 12 young women and one young man, Garza said.

[…]As the prolife demonstrators tried to engage students one-on-one in conversation during a lull in the chanting, that’s when Miller-Young allegedly grabbed one of their signs and stormed off, followed by two UCSB students, Garza said, adding Thrin followed the threesome with her older sister, Joan, in tow and calling 9-1-1.

The pro-life students have posted their account of the events:

The parade weaved through two buildings and entered an elevator in the third. Thrin attempted to get on the elevator with them, but Young blocked the doorway. Thrin stuck her foot in the door, but Young pushed it out with her foot. Tenaciously, Thrin put it back. This happened several times as Thrin pleaded with the students to not get involved. “The police are on their way,” she told them …

Suddenly Young reached out and pushed 16 year old Thrin. “Don’t touch me!” Thrin cried, startled. Young’s long fingernails scratched Thrin’s arm. Young pushed Thrin twice more and each time Thrin kept the door from closing with her arm. Finally, Young got out of the elevator, and tried to pull Thrin away from the elevator door. Thrin held onto the elevator with her other hand, the one holding the camera. Realizing that students were trying to take the camera out of her hand, Thrin let go of the elevator.

The elevator doors closed. Professor Young let go of Thrin, leaving several scratches on her arms, and got on another elevator. Then the police arrived. The police did not seem overly concerned about the incident until they saw the video and realized how violent the professor had been. Police identified the assailant and found the remains of the sign – it had been destroyed. UC Santa Barbara police are completing their report …

Something similar happened last year at DePaul University.

Excerpt:

The head of a conservative student organization at DePaul University has been sanctioned by the university and could be expelled after he released the names of vandals who destroyed a pro-life flag display.

Kristopher Del Campo, the chairman of the Young Americans for Freedom chapter, was found guilty by the university on two counts – “Disorderly, Violent, Intimidating or Dangerous Behavior to Self or Others” and “Judicial Process Compliance.”

DePaul University did not return calls seeking comment.

Last January Del Campo and other pro-life students received permission from the university to erect a pro-life display featuring 500 flags. Vandals later destroyed the display – stuffing a number of the flags into trash cans.

The university’s public safety department launched an investigation and eventually identified 13 students who confessed to the crime. Those names were then released by the university to Del Campo.

On Feb. 5 the national Young Americans for Freedom organization posted the names of the vandals on their website. The posting generated negative comments directed at the vandals – and the university held Del Campo responsible.

Three days later, Del Campo was informed that he had violated DePaul’s Code of Student Responsibility. He was formally charged ten days later.

Here’s another example of the tolerant left, from Life Site News.

Excerpt:

A group of youths arrested and charged with vandalizing a Kentucky pro-life campus display said that destroying the display was an expression of their “right to free speech.”

Pro-life leaders of Northern Right to Life at Northern Kentucky University (NKU) say they first set up the display on Monday morning. It consisted of tiny onesies hanging on a line with red “X” taped onto every fourth outfit to symbolize a life lost to abortion. The display included a sign explaining its significance and citing the Guttmacher Institute.

But after the display was torn down twice within the first two days, members of the pro-life group began taking night shifts to watch for the vandals. On Friday morning around 1am, they say they spotted four young men beginning to cut down the line and throwing the clothing, which was to be donated to needy local children, in the trash.

[…]Both Piron and the Kentucky Post report that the three suspects police caught – Travis Black, Steven White and Montez Jenkins Copeland – have been charged with Criminal Mischief.

“Though the vandals don’t think they deserve to be faced with consequences, we at NRTL believe that it’s important for people to understand that they cannot just rip down a display simply because they disagree with its message,” said Piron.

A fourth suspect who had turned himself in, Kyle Pickett, agreed with pro-lifers that they had a right to display the clothing as free speech – but justified the vandalism as equally protected.

“Tearing it down was expressing our right to free speech,” he said, according to the Post.

I think the troubling thing about these stories is that pro-abortion radicals are moving beyond mere disagreement and into coercion, threats, vandalism and violence. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that they would attack grown-ups. They advocate for killing babies, after all. That’s even worse.

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