Tag Archives: Planned Parenthood

Good news for pro-lifers from Arizona and Texas

Republican Governor Jan Brewer
Republican Governor Jan Brewer

Good news for pro-lifers from Arizona!

Excerpt:

Thanks to a comprehensive pro-life law a court recently upheld, the Planned Parenthood abortion business will be stopping abortion at seven locations throughout the state, the abortion agency announced today.

As LifeNews.com reported earlier this month, the Arizona Court of Appeals issued a decision upholding a pro-life law that protects the health and safety of women and their unborn children by giving them information they don’t normally receive.

The Arizona Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in June in Planned Parenthood Arizona v. Horne, a case the abortion business filed which challenges key aspects of the 2009 Abortion Consent Act. The law is a pro-life measure Governor Jan Brewer signed which tells women of the risks associated with and alternatives to abortion. Planned Parenthood sued the state soon after its signing and a Superior Court judge blocked the law from taking effect while the case moves forward.

The law will now go into effect and it makes it so Arizona will require a notarized parental signature before an abortion can be performed on a minor child, women will be provided with full and accurate information by a doctor in person at least 24 hours before an abortion, medical professionals cannot be forced to perform abortions if it contradicts their sincerely held religious or moral beliefs and non-doctors will not be permitted by law to perform surgical abortions.

Responding to the decision, Planned Parenthood announced today that it will no longer do abortions at seven locations — including communities outside of Phoenix and Tucson. Planned Parenthood President Bryan Howard told the Arizona Republic newspaper the abortion business would be appealing the court’s decision but it has no choice to stop doing abortions until and unless another court rules because the laws are in effect now.

Jan Brewer is the famous Republican governor of Arizona. She’s tough as nails!

Republican Governor Rick Perry
Republican Governor Rick Perry

And now more good news for pro-lifers from Texas.

Excerpt:

Still reeling from funding cuts in Texas, Planned Parenthood is closing clinics and merging affiliates throughout the state, Texas Right to Life reports.
The national abortion giant received a major blow this summer when Texas Governor and presidential contender Rick Perry signed into law a bill that stripped the organization of its funding, and prohibited the state government from contracting with any organization that provides abortions.

A July report in the Gainesville Daily Register confirmed the closure of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Gainesville as a direct result of these legislative developments.

Texas Right to Life Legislative Director John Seago told LifeSiteNews.com that his organization called over 70 Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas and confirmed six additional closures in Arlington, Mesquite, Plano, Sherman, Terrell, and Waxahachie. All seven locations are scheduled to be closed by the end of September.

Additionally, Planned Parenthood’s website indicates that a center in Groesbeck is “temporarily closed.”

[…]He also said that a planned merger between Planned Parenthood’s Waco affiliates in Central Texas and their Austin affiliates is believed to be related to budget cuts, based on press reports of layoffs related to the merger.

[…]Elizabeth Graham, Director of Texas Right to Life, called the developments “historic for the pro-life movement and the protection of women’s health.”

Pro-life advocates in the state are also celebrating an end to tax-funded abortions as a result of the new law, which denies state funds to county hospital districts that use local tax money to fund abortion services.

The Austin American-Statesman reports that the Central Health Board in Travis County, formerly the only county in the state financing abortions with tax revenue, voted unanimously last week to end publicly funded abortion services.

As LifeSiteNews reported in April, funds stripped from family planning organizations have been re-allocated to pregnancy centers, among other programs.

According to a recent Texas Tribune report, the Texas legislature allocated an additional $300,000 to the state’s Alternative to Abortion Services program, for a total of $8.3 million in state funding.

Don’t mess with Texas.

Obama administration wants birth control to be covered by health insurance

Here’s the raw story from U.S. News and World Report.

Excerpt:

Beginning Aug. 1, 2012, women in the United States will have their birth control covered by insurance companies, free of co-pays, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Monday.

“Most private health care plans, including the private health care plan available to members of Congress, already include most of these services, including contraception. Family planning is something that keeps women healthy, and it was an important piece of today’s announcement,” Stephanie Cutter, a White House advisor, told ABC News Monday.

The move to make contraception free to women is one of eight new measures aimed at providing “preventive health services” to women, the HHS said. They follow on recommendations from a report issued July 19 by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), which advises the federal government.

The new initiatives are based on those recommendations and seek to expand women’s access to preventive services under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

“The Affordable Care Act helps stop health problems before they start,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in an agency statement released Monday. “These historic guidelines are based on science and existing literature, and will help ensure women get the preventive health benefits they need.”

The IOM report was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to identify “gaps in preventive services for women as well as measures that will further ensure women’s health and well-being,” the agency said.

The problem with this is that taxpayer-funded contraception has been tried in the UK and it has been found to raise unwanted pregnancy rates. So why would anyone do this? Well, because more premarital sex means fewer stable marriages. And marital breakdown results in fatherlessness, which gives the state a crisis to solve. And whenever the state has a crisis to solve, they can push for higher taxes and more social engineering. For example, they can equalize life outcomes between single mothers and married couples by subsidizing the one former with the wealth generated by the latter.  Besides, children accept what public schools teach them much better when there is no pesky father around to compete with the government-run schools.

But there’s a more sinister reason. More unwanted pregnancies means more abortions, which are mainly provided by Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood will get more fees and the Democrat Party will get more donations.

I think that Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse is going to be discussing this tonight on Catholic Radio of San Diego from 6 to 7 PM Pacific Standard Time.

Guttmacher Institute: states enact record number of abortion restrictions

Enacted Abortion Restrictions By Year
Enacted Abortion Restrictions By Year

Great news from the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion think tank. (H/T John from Truth in Religion & Politics)

Excerpt:

In the first six months of 2011, states enacted 162 new provisions related to reproductive health and rights. Fully 49% of these new laws seek to restrict access to abortion services, a sharp increase from 2010, when 26% of new laws restricted abortion. The 80 abortion restrictions enacted this year are more than double the previous record of 34 abortion restrictions enacted in 2005—and more than triple the 23 enacted in 2010. All of these new provisions were enacted in just 19 states.

The post breaks down the pro-life measures by category:

  • Counseling and waiting periods
  • Gestational bans
  • “Heartbeat” bill
  • Banning abortion coverage in new insurance exchanges
  • Medication abortion
  • Cuts to abortion subsidies

All of these bills were supported by Republicans, and opposed by Democrats.

Elections have consequences. We elected a massive number of Republicans in 2010, and now we are seeing the results of that effort. I could not be more proud of the Republicans who voted in these measures to protect the unborn.

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