Nurses testify about conditions at Planned Parenthood of Delaware

Former Planned Parenthood employees testifying (WBOC)

Two nurses who worked at Planned Parenthood of Delaware testified recently at a Delaware Senate Committee meeting about the dangerous conditions they worked under at Planned Parenthood.  They also testified about their attempts to get Planned Parenthood and the state of Delaware to correct the problems. 

Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich and Joyce Vasikonis, who both resigned from Planned Parenthood of Delaware after working there as nurses, testified at a Senate Committee hearing held in Dover on Wednesday. In their testimonies, Mitchell-Webrich and Vasikonis say that patient care was nonexistent, with inadequately trained staff, and contaminated medical equipment.

"I had a doctor that was abusive to patients," said Mitchell-Werbrich. "He would bring in patients on bloody examination tables, bloodied by other patients."

Mitchell-Webrich and Vasikonis provided state politicians with dozens of emails showing their attempts to notify Planned Parenthood executives and state agencies of the negligent medical practices.

"There was no real response to fix it," said Vasikonis. "Planned Parenthood is a very powerful organization."

FULL STORY

LEARN MORE ABOUT PLANNED PARENTHOOD'S ABORTION AGENDA

Help prevent tax dollars from paying for abortion insurance in Michigan

Use your signature to initiate life-saving legislation in Michigan. The NO Taxes for Abortion Insurance petition drive is a straight-forward legislative initiative to keep our tax dollars and health insurance premiums from paying for abortions. Abortion is not healthcare. 

Visit the Michigan's Voice website for more details and to sign-up to circulate petitions.

MICHIGAN'S VOICE

Saving children with a drop box

After being discouraged by the number of babies abandoned in his city, Lee Jong-rak, a pastor from Seoul, South Korea set up a drop box where parents could drop off their children instead of leaving them to die.  Filmmaker Brian Ivie has created a full-length documentary about and his family.  In February, "The Drop Box" won the "Best of Festival" Jubilee Award at the 8th annual San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival

You can watch a promo of the movie below.

Former employees of Kermit Gosnell sentenced for their crimes

Yesterday and today, former employees of abortionist Kermit Gosnell were sentenced for the crimes they committed while working at his abortion clinic.  One of the employees is Gosnell's wife.  Gosnell was sentenced to three life sentences for his crimes which included being convicted of killing 3 children who survived abortion and the involuntary manslaughter of a woman who died of complications from her abortion. 

Fifty-one-year-old Pearl Gosnell says she's sorry for trusting her husband, who was convicted of murder this month in the deaths of three babies born alive at his clinic. Pearl Gosnell had pleaded guilty to racketeering and performing an illegal abortion.......

Pearl Gosnell has 30 days to surrender to authorities. She will be eligible for parole in late October, after which she will have to serve 2 years probation.

A judge rescheduled the sentencing dates Wednesday for three other former clinic workers, 43-year-old Lynda Williams, 53-year-old Sherry West and 47-year-old Tina Baldwin, because the women still have unresolved federal drug charges.

A fourth employee, who pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and other charges, is going home after being jailed for 28 months.

FULL STORY

Chinese firefighters save newborn infant found in sewage pipe

A newborn child was saved in China over the weekend after residents of a building heard his cries from the inside of sewage pipe. 

In the latest case the infant was found in the sewage pipe in a residential building in Jinhua in the wealthy coastal province of Zhejiang on Saturday afternoon after residents reported the sound of a baby crying, state television said late on Monday.

Firefighters had to remove the pipe and take it to a nearby hospital, where doctors carefully cut around it to rescue the baby boy inside, the report said.

The child is in a stable condition and the police are looking for his parents, state television added.

FULL STORY

Video of the rescue is below.

Maryland temporarily shuts down three abortion clinics

State officials in Maryland found problems requiring three of their 16 licensed abortion clinics to be temporarily shut down. The problems included malfunctioning defibrillator equipment and improperly trained staff. LeRoy Carhart's late-term abortion business was not one of the three. A woman died in February after having a late-term abortion at his clinic.

State health officials have suspended surgical abortion procedures at three clinics, including one in Baltimore where a patient suffered cardiac arrest and later died at a hospital.

The physician who performed the abortion at Associates in OB/GYN Care LLC on North Calvert Street wasn't certified in CPR and a defibrillator at the facility did not work, state officials said in a letter Friday to the General Assembly.

Although the cardiac arrest was caused by underlying health conditions and not the abortion, investigators found that it raised questions whether doctors at the clinic can handle an abortion that goes wrong.

FULL STORY

Gosnell's attorney interviewed on Fox News

Below you can watch the first TV show interview with Kermit Gosnell's defense attorney. Gosnell was convicted of three counts of first degree murder in the slaying of infants born alive after abortions. Pro-abortion officials stopped enforcing abortion clinic regulations in Pennsylvania, allowing him to operate with impunity for years. The attorney describes the filthy conditions at his clinic as "a bit awry."

Editorial describes forced abortion in China

An editorial in the New York Times by Ma Jian describes China's brutal one-child policy and how women are frequently forced into mandatory abortions.

Village family-planning officers vigilantly chart the menstrual cycle and pelvic-exam results of every woman of childbearing age in their area. If a woman gets pregnant without permission and is unable to pay the often exorbitant fine for violating the policy, she risks being subjected to a forced abortion......

Almost every one of the pregnant women I spoke to had suffered a mandatory abortion. One woman told me how, when she was eight months pregnant with an illegal second child and was unable to pay the 20,000 yuan fine (about $3,200), family planning officers dragged her to the local clinic, bound her to a surgical table and injected a lethal drug into her abdomen.

For two days she writhed on the table, her hands and feet still bound with rope, waiting for her body to eject the murdered baby. In the final stage of labor, a male doctor yanked the dead fetus out by the foot, then dropped it into a garbage can. She had no money for a cab. She had to hobble home, blood dripping down her legs and staining her white sandals red.

FULL EDITORIAL

Free Press columnist Nancy Kaffer struggles to make argument on abortion insurance

In a recent column for the Detroit Free Press, columnist Nancy Kaffer claims a petition drive to prevent tax dollars from subsidizing abortion coverage and requiring private plans to pay for abortion coverage with an optional rider "is wrong on so many levels."

She then completely fails to make an argument for how or why this is so wrong.

She writes,

"Despite the group's misleading name, the law would apply not just to publicly funded insurance plans, but also to privately purchased policies. Yes, that's right — Michigan Right to Life wants to dictate the way private companies conduct business, as it relates to the sale of a legal product. There's nothing at all problematic about that."

Well, what is problematic about it?  What's so wrong with requiring employers purchase an optional rider for abortion coverage and then requiring them to notify their employees that they are covering abortion?  Instead of making an actual argument, Kaffer uses sarcasm and assumes it's obvious that abortion should be covered in private health care plans. 

Kaffer then goes on to insinuate there is something wrong with Right to Life of Michigan and grassroots citizens creating and passing citizen-initiated legislation in a process created by Michigan's constitution.  She again fails to provide any argument for why citizen-initiated legislation is wrong.  It's hard to imagine Kaffer being opposed to citizen-initiated legislation if Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocates were behind it. 

Apparently to abortion advocates like Kaffer, Michigan's constitution is filled with "whackier democratic dynamics" and prolife people in Michigan are "gaming electoral loopholes" because she thinks abortion should be covered by standard health insurance plans.  It's too bad she couldn't provide any reasoning to back up her position. 

Prolife legislators push 20-week abortion ban in U.S. House

Prolife legislators in the U.S. House of Representatives are working to promote legislation which would ban abortion after 20 weeks of gestation throughout the country. 

Arizona Rep. Trent Franks, joined by 10 other Republicans and anti-abortion advocates at a news conference, said there was a "good chance" that his bill would see action in the full House this year.

Franks and others said the legislation would gain momentum from the recent conviction of a Philadelphia abortion provider, Dr. Kermit Gosnell, for killing three babies born alive at his clinic.

In the four decades that abortion has been legal in the United States "many, until Gosnell, somehow construed abortion as victimless. That has changed," said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J.

FULL STORY

Board of Canvassers approves No Taxes for Abortion Insurance petition

At a meeting this morning, Michigan's Board of State Canvassers approved the No Taxes for Abortion Insurance petition form.  More than 258,000 valid signatures from registered voters will now need to be collected in order to prevent Michigan from subsidizing abortion coverage in insurance plans. 

The Board of State Canvassers on Wednesday approved the group's petitions for a statewide ballot initiative. If they can get the required 258,088 valid voter signatures, the proposed law could be adopted by the Legislature or put before voters in 2014.

Right to Life is pursuing the legislation after Gov. Rick Snyder vetoed a bill last year that changed the legal structure of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and included requirements from the Republican-controlled Legislature that residents cover additional insurance to cover aborting pregnancies.

"People that are in favor of abortion would have to purchase that insurance," said Barbara Listing, president of Right to Life of Michigan......

No Taxes for Abortion, the ballot committee, has 180 days to collect signatures and can start that process anytime during the next year. If the Board of State Canvassers determined the group collected enough valid signatures for the proposed statute, the Legislature would have 40 days to either adopt the law or allow it to go on the ballot, said Fred Woodhams, spokesman for Secretary of State Ruth Johnson.

 
FULL STORY

Vermont legalizes assisted suicide

On May 20, Governor Peter Shumlin of Vermont signed legislation to legalize assisted suicide.  Vermont is now the fourth state to legalize assisted suicide after Oregon, Washington and Montana.  Michigan voters rejected a proposal in 1998 to legalize assisted suicide here by a margin of 71% to 29%.

Vermont is the first state to pass such a law through the legislative process. Oregon and Washington enacted their laws by referendum; in Montana, it was legalized by the courts.

The law, which went into effect Monday, allows for an end-of-life procedure with the consent of a patient’s doctor after the patient has made more than one request for help in ending life. The bill also stipulates that the patient has a chance to retract the request.

FULL STORY

2013 Oratory Contest Results

Local contest winners who competed at the 24th Annual High School Oratory Contest

On May 18, Right to Life of Michigan held its 24th annual statewide Oratory Contest in which local contest winners competed by giving their 5-7 minute speeches on a life issue.

First place went to Lauren Boos of Warren-Centerline Right to Life. Lauren is a home-schooled sophomore. Her speech was an overview of the unethical nature of human embryonic stem cell research.

Second place went to Alyssa LaPointe of Saginaw County Right to Life. Alyssa is a junior at Bridgeport Baptist Academy. Her speech was on abortion, and included her personal story of being diagnosed with disabilities in the womb and her mother facing pressure from doctors to abort her. Alyssa will be representing us at the national oratory contest in Dallas, TX on June 29.

Third place went to Gabriella Byers of Right to Life of Delta County. Gabriella is a home-schooled senior. Her speech defined abortion as genocide and looked at its eugenic history.

Congratulations to all of our 18 contestants who spoke Saturday! If you would like to read Lauren's speech and see contest pictures, you can go Right to Life of Michigan's Oratory page.

New prolife petition drive to keep tax dollars from paying for abortions in healthcare

Our latest efforts to make sure prolife people do not have to pay for abortions through health insurance made the news. Regardless of their views regarding the legality of abortion, most of Michigan's citizens do not want to pay for abortions with their tax dollars in public plans via Obamacare, or subsidize abortion through their premium dollars in private plans.

The committee set up to push for the legal change is called No Taxes for Abortion Insurance. The group plans to circulate petitions for its effort to create a new state law.

It’s possible the committee will take a preliminary step related to the form of its petitions at a May 22 meeting of the Board of State Canvassers. After that, the committee would have to collect at least 258,088 valid voter signatures to possibly spark a vote on its proposal in the Legislature. If the Legislature failed to act within 40 days, the measure could wind up before Michigan voters in November 2014.

Right to Life spokeswoman Pam Sherstad said efforts first will be made to get the proposal passed in the Legislature.

FULL STORY 

LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS LEGISLATION

Brad and Jesi Smith's Real Prolife Story

The Smiths with former presidential candidate Rick Santorum

"Slow code" for many is a term in abstract debates on medical ethics, but for Brad and Jesi Smith, it became a well-defined fixture in their lives and the life of their daughter, Faith. Faith has the disease Trisomy 18. The Smiths believed doctors always looked out for the best interests of their patients, but they were wrong. A "slow code" is the practice of doctors giving the appearance of providing life-saving treatment to patients, but in reality withholding effective care to ensure the patient dies.

FULL STORY

IRS targeted prolife groups too

Two prolife groups are complaining their applications for tax-exempt status were rejected by the IRS for political reasons. One group claimed the IRS demanded their entire board sign an oath that they would never picket or protest outside of a Planned Parenthood.

“In one case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for tax exempt status for Coalition for Life of Iowa. In a phone call to Coalition for Life of Iowa leaders on June 6, 2009, the IRS agent ‘Ms. Richards’ told the group to send a letter to the IRS with the entire board’s signatures stating that, under perjury of the law, they do not picket/protest or organize groups to picket or protest outside of Planned Parenthood,” the Thomas More Society announced today. “Once the IRS received this letter, their application would be approved.”

FULL STORY

"They were big babies. They had color. They looked like they had life."

Robin Griggs via FOX 29 News

Robin Griggs, Juror No. 9 in the murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell, shared her thoughts with a local FOX News station. 

"I just thought about the pain that baby might have felt and I just couldn't believe a mother would lay their and let him do that to her baby," said Griggs. She is now venting her experience sitting months listening to horrific testimony and looking at gruesome pictures.

"How he performed his late term abortions wasn't right. I think somewhere down the line he kind of got lost," Griggs said. She described Gosnell as arrogant.

"When some of his employees would come up and testify against him and say things, he would kind of look at them like I don't believe she or he is saying this," recalls Griggs. "I think he's an intelligent man and that money and greed took over. I think he kind of preyed on people with low self esteem and who had problems," she said.......

She said, "I don't know if I could ever get it out of my head. Being up close and personal is totally different from what you see on the television or what they write about in newspapers."

FULL STORY

Gosnell sentenced to three life sentences, jurors discuss case

Members of the Gosnell jury talk to media via abclocal.go.com

Today, abortionist Kermit Gosnell received a third life for his various crimes including killing babies who survived abortions, killing a woman who died after receiving an overdose of medicine and more than 200 other crimes.  Three members of the Gosnell jury made themselves available to comment on the case. 

David Misko, juror No. 5 and the foreman, described the case as emotional, but said the jury did their best.

"It wasn’t easy, but we did the best with all of the information we got," he said. “Once we figured out what happened it was easy to determine between first and third-degree murder."

Juror No. 6, Sarah Glinski, says the fact that she is not a mother, helped her decide the case.

"It was almost easier for me to detach myself emotionally and look strictly at the evidence because of that," she said.

The 23-year-old Department of Defense employee admitted the reality of the graphic imagery and descriptions shared in court were difficult to handle.

“Seeing those photos and having to say to myself ‘This happened to those kids. There were children that died at the hands of this man.’ That was hard for me to admit that this kind of evil exists in this world,” Glinski said.

FULL STORY

National Right to Life condemns human cloning experiment

Below is a statement from National Right to Life's Douglas Johnson on the creation and killing of cloned human embryos for their stem cells.

“These researchers created many human embryos, male and female, and allowed them to grow for up to seven days, for the sole purpose of killing them and harvesting their stem cells,” said NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson.  “We will certainly continue to oppose attempts in Congress to provide federal funds to create human embryos for the purpose of harvesting their cells — which is a step towards human embryo farms.”

FULL STORY

Embryonic stem cells removed from cloned human embryos

Researchers, led by a scientist at Oregon Health & Science University, created cloned human embryos and then killed them by removing their embryonic stem cells. In their paper, the researchers deceptively claim they reprogrammed skin cells using somatic cell nuclear transfer.  Somatic cell nuclear transfer is the scientific name for cloning and is the technique which was used to create Dolly the sheep.  In this experiment, the skin cells weren't reprogrammed into embryonic stem cells.  They were used, along with human eggs, to create cloned human embryos.  These embryos were then killed for their cells. 

Since cloning requires a large number of human eggs, the researchers paid 10 women to go through the process of ovarian hyperstimulation to release more eggs. 

In Michigan, creating human embryos by cloning is illegal. 

Researchers say they have finally managed to use cloning technology to make human embryos and grow stem cells from them in the hopes of making perfectly matched grow-your-own tissue transplants.

They used a human egg cell and parts of a human skin cell to grow a very early human embryo, then transformed cells from this ball of cells into beating heart cells and skin cells.

FULL STORY

Infanticide is unfortunately not uncommon

The trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell has awoken many of us to the reality of infanticide.  In a column for USA Today, Mark Rienzi, an associate professor of constitutional law at Catholic University of America, discusses how the killing of babies less than a year old has become more common and argues that a culture which embraces abortion can quickly forget the value of human life. 

While murder rates for almost every group in society have plummeted in recent decades, there's one group where murder rates have doubled, according to CDC and National Center for Health Statistics data — babies less than a year old.

That's why a much less comfortable answer is probably closer to the truth: Gosnell's actions are readily explainable by a culture that embraces, and in some quarters celebrates, abortion as a constitutional right. Gosnell made his living by performing legal abortions, many of them late in the pregnancy. Is it really all that surprising that he might not have seen a significant moral difference in performing the abortion a few inches inside the birth canal rather than somewhere outside? .......

It could be that the teaching power of abortion law is eroding more than the moral sense of doctors. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, infant homicide is shockingly common. Its most recent 2002 report suggests that the day a person is born is, by far, the most likely day for them to be killed.

FULL EDITORIAL

THE INFANTICIDE REALITY

Abortionist Kermit Gosnell to spend life in prison

Earlier today, abortionist Kermit Gosnell agreed to give up his ability to appeal his murder convictions in exchange for prosecutors taking the death penalty off the table.  Gosnell will spend the rest of his life in prison for killing three children who survived abortion attempts. 

Prosecutors agreed to two life sentences without parole for two of the three first-degree murder convictions, and Gosnell was to be sentenced Wednesday in the death of the third baby, an involuntary manslaughter conviction in the death of a patient and hundreds of lesser counts.

Prosecutors had sought the death penalty because Gosnell killed more than one person, and his victims were especially vulnerable given their age. But Gosnell's own advanced age had made it unlikely he would ever be executed before his appeals ran out.

FULL STORY

Kermit Gosnell, the face of the abortion movement

Philadelphia Daily News columnist Christine M. Flowers reflects on the impact of the Gosnell trial. 

Gosnell is the face of the movement, or at least the face of what it can become when we look away.

When Harry Blackmun divided life into tidy trimesters and placed relatively little value on the first two, we took that first step into the moral abyss.

Gosnell is just the natural evolution of what started in 1973.

FULL EDITORIAL

Gosnell also found guilty of illegal late-term abortions, other crimes

In addition to being found guilty of killing three babies who survived abortion attempts and killing a women during a botched abortion, abortionist Kermit Gosnell was also found guilty of performing 21 illegal late-term abortions.

Gosnell was also found guilty of several other crimes including one count of infanticide, two counts of conspiracy, 21 of 24 counts of abortion of an unborn child of 24 weeks or more and 208 of 227 counts of violation of informed consent of an abortion.....

Gosnell won't be done with court once this trial is adjourned. He still faces federal charges for allegedly running an illegal narcotics operation out of the clinic.

As he was led from the courthouse in shackles and a gray prison outfit, Gosnell smirked to the waiting media, before being loaded by sheriff deputies into a van and returned to jail.

FULL STORY

Abortionist Kermit Gosnell found guilty of killing 3 babies, one woman

According to initial reports from courtroom reporters, abortionist Kermit Gosnell has been found guilty of 1st degree murder of 3 infants who survived abortions at his clinic. He has also reportedly been found guilty of 3rd degree murder for the death of Karnamaya Mongar, a woman who died after having an abortion.

UPDATE: Gosnell was found not guilty of the third degree murder charge but instead was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Karnamaya Mongar.

FULL STORY