2017 Youth Infographic Contest winners

Right to Life of Michigan would like to congratulate all of our participants in the 2017 Youth Infographic Contest!

The 2017 winner is Lucy Bratton. Her graphic on prolife feminism is at the bottom of the post. Congratulations Lucy! Our runners-up were Emma Klein, whose graphic compared adoption to abortion, and Emilee TenElshof, whose graphic was on post-abortion issues.

This year featured three great finalists. From July 17 to July 30 we shared their graphics on Facebook, and encouraged people to like and share them to help boost their scores. This year they were able to reach a combined 77,640 people! That is a huge audience utilizing a simple thing like an infographic.

An infographic is a visual representation of information, data or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly. In the age of social media, infographics are a very useful tool to display information in an aesthetically pleasing way. Our three finalists proved this year how effective a single one can be.

Please consider entering or promoting our 2018 contest next summer! This contest is a great way for youth to get involved in the prolife movement and make a difference with their message. The contest is open to all Michigan prolife youth ages 13 to 22.

A look back at 50 years: 1979

This is the second entry in a monthly series we'll be running throughout 2017 looking back at historically significant prolife moments in our state's history.

1979 was a big year for our organization.

Just as Right to Life of Michigan was born of grassroots groups and individuals coming together around the country, so too was the coalition of states that came together under the banner of the National Right to Life Committee. Many state right to life groups didn't have the term "right to life" in their names at first. Many groups used the "citizens for life" moniker, including Michigan. Some groups still use their original names today, for example, Massachusetts Citizens for Life or Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life.

As anyone who has worked in the prolife movement for some time will tell you, many in the general public just call every prolife group "right to life." In keeping with our broader identity as a movement, the leaders of Michigan Citizens for Life changed our name to Right to Life of Michigan. It's under that name that we've build decades of credibility as a nationally-recognized force in our areas of activity: education, legislation, and political action.

1979 was also pivotal in building the credibility we have today. We were involved in state legislation as Michigan Citizens for Life before 1979, but it was creating a dedicated legislative office in Lansing that allowed us to truly harness our grassroots efforts.

Back then our legislative office had little influence. If you look at our list of prolife laws in the state, you'll notice very few victories in the early 1980s. Building credibility is a difficult thing to do, but we've done it through those three legs of our prolife stool: education, legislation, and political action. Each activity mutually complements the other two

It's through education that we are able to move many in the public from apathy to advocacy for the unborn. It creates citizens lobbyists who will call the legislature when a critical issue is up for a vote. They keep the voting record of legislators in mind when it's time to head to the polling booth.

Our legislative office today is staffed by three people, including two lobbyists. Our Lansing team closely monitors legislative situations and are able to educate and engage the grassroots in action when needed. They routinely meet with legislators of both parties and differing views on abortion, educating them when opportunities arise. They host an annual Legislative Day that brings prolife legislators and the grassroots together.

The power of many lobbyists in Lansing or Washington, D.C. depends heavily on money or connections. The power of our advocacy in the halls of government depends entirely on the expertise of our lobbyists, who are backed by our grassroots members. Our organization is unparalleled in Michigan today. For example, Right to Life of Michigan is the only organization in the state that can consistently put issues on the ballot through petition drives without having to hire people to collect signatures.

After many years the legislative victories began materializing, and abortions began dropping. From their high of nearly 50,000 in 1987, abortions in Michigan are down 46.2 percent overall. Prolife laws save lives!

Visit our blog in August for our next notable prolife moment in Michigan history in 1981.

Honoring 50 years of prolife advocacy in Michigan
1972: The Voice of the Unborn

Remember when Renee Chelian tried to turn abortion into a standup comedy routine?

Back in 2014 the longtime owner of Northland Family Planning (a chain of abortion clinics in Southeast Michigan), Renee Chelian, was caught saying that she has five months’ worth of dead babies in rented freezers. Her abortion industry colleagues laughed when she said, "I was so consumed with fetal tissue that I was ready to drive to Upper Michigan to have a bonfire."

These abortion providers are so hardened that the thought of a truckload of dead babies makes them laugh. Sick!

SEE THE VIDEOS HERE

Chelian even took it one step further, saying, "We were really tempted to give the fetus back." She is heard saying in the audio, "Um, we thought, we’ll give it to everybody in a gift bag – they can take it home, figure out what to do with it. It’s their pregnancy, and why is this our problem?"

These remarks are beyond disturbing, especially since she tries to claim that she serves and cares for women.

The abortion industry is ultimately interested in abortion, not the patients' well-being. These woman need help and support from their community. They most certainly do not deserve negligent doctors.

All of this came about because Chelian was complaining about a 2012 law in Michigan that requires abortion providers to be in compliance with basic medical waste disposal regulations. The abortion industry is poorly run, so having to follow a basic safety procedure can often end in a closed abortion facility.

Eventually Chelian hired someone from another abortion clinic to take the dead babies off her hands to dispose of them. What comes out of the back of an abortion clinic isn't medical waste, but literally dead babies.

Northland Family Planning does approximately one quarter of the 25,000 or so annual abortions in Michigan. They do abortions until 24 weeks, past the earliest point of viability. Chelian's business is one of the top abortion providers in the state.

These practices are alarming and help us fully comprehend just what the abortion industry is. These children do not deserve to be frozen in a freezer, burned in a bonfire, or the butt end of cruel mockery—they deserve their chance at life.

The Cost of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton

The next vacancy to the U.S. Supreme Court could happen at any moment. This vacancy could potentially change the course of millions of lives.

It's thought that there is currently a 5 to 4 split on the Court in favor of upholding Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. Given the ages of the justices it's possible the next vacancy could spell the end of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. A reversal would end abortion-on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy and allow states and voters to participate in the democratic process once again on the issue of abortion.

Prolife people are well aware of the poor legal reasoning the Court used in 1973 to dictate a radical abortion policy to all 50 states. It's important that the American people understand that too, but we must never lose sight of the human cost of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton.

Since those two cases were dictated by the Court in 1973 our best estimate is 56 million abortions have taken place since then. 56 million.

How can we quantify such an extreme loss of life?

• It's equivalent to erasing 25 states. 
• Observing a 15-second moment of silence for each child killed by abortion since Roe and Doe would last 26 years. 
• Arlington National Cemetery is 624 acres and contains about 400,000 graves; to bury the unborn lost to abortion would require a cemetery that takes up 136 square miles, more than twice the size of Washington, D.C.
• We lose more children to abortion in a single year than we've lost American soldiers to combat from 1775-2017.
• Abortion takes more lives every year than cancer or heart disease.
• For the Black community abortion has taken more lives than EVERY single cause of death combined since 1973.
• We've erased $3 trillion in annual productivity from our economy.

Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton aren't just legal injustices. They are more than the grave personal injustices to the unborn children whose lives have been taken so brutally. They are an ongoing national disaster of incomparable proportions.


For prolife people, the next U.S. Supreme Court nomination is not just a fight to restore basic fairness to the court and our democratic process. It's a choice between an opportunity to save a countless number of lives or allowing another generation or two to be decimated.

Sen. Stabenow's record on abortion-on-demand

Senator Debbie Stabenow's position on abortion is that it should be legal up to and including the process of birth, and that women should be able to have abortions for any reason.

Stabenow supports partial-birth abortion. Partial-birth process is an illegal abortion method where the child is birthed until only the head remains in the birth canal. The abortionist then stabs the baby in the head and suctions out the baby's brains rather than completing the birth.

Throughout her years in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, Debbie Stabenow voted at least 6 times against a ban on partial-birth abortion and voted a number of times to either strip a bill banning partial-birth abortion of its effectiveness or delay it from becoming law. As recently as 2015 Stabenow voted against the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, instead opting for late-term abortions to be performed on children in utero that can feel pain.

In 2003 Stabenow voted in favor of an amendment to the partial-birth abortion ban explicitly endorsing Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned abortion laws in all 50 states. Together with the "health" exception established in Doe v. Bolton (decided on the same day), Roe v. Wade created abortion-on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy. Only five nations in the world allow abortions for any reason at any time: the United States, Canada, North Korea, Vietnam, and China.

Stabenow's views on the lack of value of unborn children extends into other issues. She voted against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, also known as "Laci and Conner's Law," in the U.S. Senate. This law allows federal and military prosecutors to bring charges on behalf of a "child in utero" as a second victim when he or she is injured or killed during commission of a violent federal or military crime. Stabenow has also voted twice against amendments to include unborn children as part of the State Children's Health Insurance Program which helps provide children in low-income families with health care.

"For sale" sign a reminder of progress on closing abortion clinics

One of Michigan's most notorious abortion clinics has gone up for sale, as reported by long-time sidewalk counselor Dr. Monica Miller in LifeNews.com.

Photo courtesy of LifeNews.com/Citizens for a Pro-Life Society

Womancare of Southfield has not been performing abortions for several months. The latest owner, abortionist Jacob Kalo, has now officially run up the white flag and admitted defeat by posting the property for sale.

The clinic itself has a long and terrible history accompanying the thousands upon thousands of lives ended in the most brutal fashion imaginable there. It was formerly owned by notorious abortionist Alberto Hodari, and at least three women have died following abortions under his care: Chivon Williams, Regina Johnson, and Tamiia Russell. It was behind this clinic that Dr. Monica Miller discovered the bodies of babies being dumped in the trash along with abortion patient records for more than 200 women. Hodari escaped truly serious consequences for anything that went on there.

Details on that and other abortion clinic abuses can be found in our landmark report on the abortion industry published in 2011.

The clinic's future changed in 2012 with passage of the Prolife Omnibus Act, forcing abortion clinics to undergo basic health and safety inspections. Hodari retired and sold the clinic to Kalo. The clinic has had numerous problems recently adhering to the health code. Now Kalo has surrendered, acknowledging the notorious clinic is incapable of being run safely or competently. Good riddance!

The final closure is a reminder of how horrible the abortion industry is and how incapable they are of following even basic rules that real medical clinics are required to follow.

Today Michigan is down to 16 facilities that advertise they perform induced surgical and medical abortions (using the abortion pill), plus five Planned Parenthood clinics that only perform medical abortions. That's a total of 21 dedicated abortion facilities in the state.

In 2010 Michigan had 34 facilities that performed surgical and medical abortions. Now we have 16. We’ve closed more than just half of the large-scale facilities in six years; many closed because our Prolife Omnibus Act forced them to adhere to basic standards. The worst of the worst have been driven out.

Despite these closures Planned Parenthood has been making an aggressive move to corner the abortion market in Michigan. For them, dealing in death is a big business. In 2007 Planned Parenthood operated 34 offices in Michigan, three of which performed abortions. Today they operate 19 offices in Michigan, yet eight perform abortions. Planned Parenthood provides more than a third of the nearly 1 million abortions done annually in the United States, and their abortion numbers have been growing even as abortions have been decreasing. In Michigan they now operate eight of the 21 total facilities, matching their "market share" nationally.

The next priority of the prolife movement is defunding them. Planned Parenthood can leverage more than half a billion dollars in taxpayer funding every year to expand their abortion services (while cutting women's health services) and muscle out the smaller competition. It's time to put a stop to millions of prolife taxpayers being forced to help advance Planned Parenthood's mission of abortion at any cost.

The Charlie Gard case is not that unique

The ongoing Charlie Gard case in Britain has garnered great attention and even drawn President Donald Trump and Pope Francis into the fray. Charlie’s parents are currently in court fighting to take their son to America for a last-ditch experimental treatment.

Despite this attention the issue at the center of Charlie’s case—futile care theory—has not been sufficiently explored.

There are legitimate end-of-life situations when medical care is truly futile and could actually harm a patient. Futile care theory goes beyond medical judgements, however. It subverts the definition of “futile” by using “quality of life” as the important standard. It doesn’t just mean a patient’s personal desires, but allows others to determine a patient’s quality of life for them. A medical treatment can be wanted and working yet deemed “futile” if doctors or insurance companies decide the patient isn’t worth their effort.

Let’s explore futile care theory in action through the example of one of our own staff members.

Genevieve Marnon works in our Lansing office on legislative issues. Genevieve’s father, Bob Tank, suffered from a terminal chronic condition. Bob wasn’t ready to die and was enjoying the twilight of his life with his family.

One day severe pains brought him to the hospital with a dangerous blood clot. Genevieve said once the hospital staff learned of his chronic condition their zeal to treat him disappeared. Bob was conscious and expressing a will to live while in the hospital, but that didn’t prevent a secret do-not-resuscitate order being placed in his file and other serious problems.

The only thing Bob wanted was treatment for his acute condition so he could go home and prepare for his death at some point in the future. The hospital decided for him that his life was “futile” and not worth it.

Genevieve and her family fought for simple care for her father, but they lost. The hospital threatened to take them to court, forcing them to surrender to the hospital’s wishes so they could at least be present when Bob passed.

Bob’s story is not that unique to Michigan. We’ve heard many similar stories.

People have a right to refuse unwanted treatments, but futile care theory has created the idea of unwanted people who can be refused wanted medical care. The follow-up to futile care theory is doctor-prescribed suicide, which offers a cheaper and more immediate solution to patients whose lives are deemed futile.

Sen. Stabenow's record on free speech

In 2014 Senator Debbie Stabenow was a co-sponsor of U.S. Senate Joint Resolution 19, a resolution to amend the U.S. Constitution to overturn the freedom of speech portion of the First Amendment.

Stabenow's constitutional amendment was filibustered when the U.S. Senate failed to obtain the 60 votes necessary to end debate. The vote was 54 to 42 on September 11, 2014.

The amendment would abridge the freedom of speech specifically regarding elections, allowing Congress to pass laws forbidding groups like Right to Life of Michigan from educating voters. Stabenow's amendment would give Congress specific authority to criminalize all election communications from any groups or organizations. The amendment expressly mentions not abridging the freedom of the press, however, presumably allowing news corporations to be the only groups allowed to influence elections. The amendment is unclear as to what constitutes the "press," potentially requiring news corporations to seek licenses from the government to print election articles or candidate endorsements.

The First Amendment reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Right to Life of Michigan is an organization made up of many people who peacefully organize together to petition government and educate the public about our grievances regarding issues like abortion, euthanasia, etc., both inside and outside of election season.

The context of Sen. Stabenow's resolution is the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. F.E.C. The federal government was attempting to ban a film critical of Hillary Clinton from being shown on television. In the majority opinion Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech."

Right to Life of Michigan is disappointed Governor Snyder vetoed the Choose Life plate bill

Right to Life of Michigan is disappointed that Governor Rick Snyder vetoed legislation to create a Choose Life specialty license plate in Michigan.

Right to Life of Michigan President Barbara Listing said, "We hoped he would recognize this wonderful opportunity to provide care to pregnant women in need and help suicide prevention efforts."

Right to Life of Michigan remains committed to creating the license plate.

Listing said, "The support for the Choose Life plate is still there and it will happen in Michigan, it's just a matter of time. We look forward to taking the issue up with our next governor."

A record number of prolife bills have been introduced in Lansing this term addressing everything from defunding Planned Parenthood to protecting vulnerable patients from medical discrimination. Right to Life of Michigan applauds the commitment of prolife members in the Legislature who are making prolife issues a priority in Lansing.

Listing said, "We're working on several important bills that advance protection for human life, including some bills we expect to receive bipartisan support. We'll continue working with legislators to give Governor Snyder more opportunities to sign good bills."