U-M Students for Life wins national 2012 group of the year award

As part of the recent Students for Life of America Conference, awards were handed out to various prolife student groups.  University of Michigan Students for Life was awarded the 2012 Group of the Year Award.  From the Students for Life of America website:

This year’s top award goes to a truly remarkable group that has made amazing strides touching hearts, changing minds, saving lives and building a culture of life on their campus and in their community. Students for Life at the University of Michigan has excelled as part of SFLA’s Pregnant on Campus initiative, which they started on their campus this past year. They have raised almost $3,000 for their programs, hosted a week-long pregnancy resource drive, organized a pregnancy resource forum and ran an ad campaign on the school’s bus system which they know saved at least one life.

In addition to all that, the group brought the Genocide Awareness Project to campus, debated the Secular Student Alliance – during which their opponents admitted that a fetus is a baby and no one on their side wants to kill a baby – and set up a Cemetery of the Innocents display. These events have created buzz on a previously apathetic campus, causing some people to think about abortion for the first time and equipping those people with the information they need to choose life.

Teleseminar today at 3:45 p.m.

A Right to Life of Michigan Teleseminar is scheduled for today, Tuesday, January 29, at 3:45 p.m. Please plan to join us!

During the Teleseminar, you will hear from Right to Life of Michigan Board Chairman Paul Miller as he reflects on the March for Life in Washington, D.C. In addition you'll hear from RLM Director of Minority Outreach Kathy Crombie and Committee Chair Diane Brookins. Kathy and Diane will provide a highlight of the exciting events planned for Black History Month.

Participating with the Teleseminar is easy and free!

Title: RLM Prolife Update
Teleseminar Time: Tuesday, January 29, at 3:45 p.m.

You can participate by calling on your phone

Phone number: (206) 402-0100
PIN Code: 662744#

Or, you can participate by using a computer with Internet

To attend via computer: http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventID=37499331

Local Michigan prolife groups get media attention

Right to Life of Michigan affiliates and prolife student groups received some local media coverage for their local marches or for their trips to the March for Life in Washington, D.C.  Below are links to stories involving the various prolife groups. 

Holland Right to Life's March for Life

Wyandotte Right to Life's March for Life

University of Michigan Students for Life trip to D.C.

Prolife people from the diocese of Saginaw traveling to D.C.

March for Life in Kalamazoo

Guest column by Representative Bill Huizenga at MLive

Rep. Bill Huizenga

Over the weekend, MLive.com posted a guest column by U.S. Representative Bill Huizenga in which he discusses abortion, Roe v. Wade and the HHS Mandate. 

Time magazine's January 14 cover story succinctly stated the facts. "40 Years Ago, Abortion-Rights Activists Won an Epic Victory with Roe. V. Wade: They've Been Losing Ever Since." Last Friday, about half a million Americans, mostly young, were expected to trek to Washington for the annual March for Life.

Sadly, this shift in public opinion has not been reflected in federal policies. Planned Parenthood received a record level of government support ($542 million) according to its own report for fiscal year 2011-2012. In 2011, it performed all-time high 333,964 abortions.

FULL EDITORIAL

Record crowd at March for Life

On January 25, 2013, at least 500,000 prolifers from across the United States came to Washington, D.C. to peacefully protest the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision.
 

Photo via Breitbart.com

FULL STORY AND MORE PHOTOS

Video of Michigan middle-schooler with Down Syndrome goes viral

Owen Groesser is a 13-year-old middle school student with Down Syndrome who lives in Rochester Hills.  During a recent school basketball game, he came off the bench and made two three-point shots.  His effort was featured on ESPN's SportsCenter as a Top Ten play.

Watch the video below of Owen playing basketball and the crowd cheering him on.

Unfortunately, far too many children (estimated at around 90%) with Down Syndrome are aborted before they given the chance to succeed. 


FULL STORY

March for Life video: A Nation Rises

The following video uses pro-abortion President Barack Obama's words as a backdrop to images from the March for Life.

Attorney General Bill Schuette has message for prolifers attending the March for Life

Many prolifers are leaving today for the March for Life in Washington, D.C. tomorrow. Our prolife attorney general Bill Schuette has a video message thanking travelers for their efforts and wishing them well.

The promises of legal abortion didn't come true

Before and soon after Roe v. Wade made abortion legal through all nine months of pregnancy, abortion advocates promised that legal abortion would improve.  They believed that legal abortion would reduce out-of-wedlock births and lower child abuse.  Michael New, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and a speaker at Right to Life of Michigan's 2012 Conference, explains how the exact opposite happened.

Indeed, Donohue has observed that after Roe v. Wade, conceptions increased by 30 percent. Of course, a higher percentage of these conceptions were aborted. However, the increase in the incidence of abortion failed to offset this increase in conceptions. As such, the out-of-wedlock birthrate continued to climb.....

Legal abortion did not reduce child abuse. In fact, the exact opposite happened. The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect has reported that child abuse has increased more than 1,000 percent since the legalization of abortion in 1973. According to data from the US Statistical Abstract, deaths due to child abuse continued to rise after the Roe v. Wade decision and increased by 400 percent between 1972 and 1990.

FULL STORY

Reclaim the human center of the abortion debate

The Susan B. Anthony List has produced the following video which features numerous leaders of the prolife movement discussing abortion at a Capitol Hill briefing. 

President Obama issues statement which praises Roe v. Wade

Today, the White House released the following statement by President Obama on Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.  President Obama has a long history of supporting abortion on demand, including favoring the use of tax dollars to pay for abortion. 

On the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we reaffirm its historic commitment to protect the health and reproductive freedom of women across this country and stand by its guiding principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters, and women should be able to make their own choices about their bodies and their health care. Today and every day, my Administration continues our efforts to reduce unintended pregnancies, support maternal and child health, and minimize the need for abortion. On this anniversary, we recommit ourselves to supporting women and families in the choices they make and redouble our efforts to promote safe and healthy communities.

STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT OBAMA

Local prolife groups march for life in their communities

Across Michigan, local prolife groups memorialized 55 unborn children and 40 years of Roe v. Wade by speaking up for life in their communities. 

PICTURES FROM LOCAL PROLIFE EVENTS

Roe v. Wade: 40 Years Too Long, 55 Million Too Many

On the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, make sure you check out our informative page on Roe v. Wade which discusses the decision, its effects and what the future holds. 

Roe v. Wade's reasoning hasn't gotten better with age

Francis Beckwith explains Roe v. Wade faulty reasoning and Justice Blackmun's unwillingness to address the moral status of the unborn child. 

Although prolifers reject this opinion because of its exclusion of the unborn from the class of protectable human beings, most prolifers, like most Americans, rarely understand why many scholars, including abortion-choice supporters, consider Roe to be a badly reasoned opinion......

Blackmun’s second reason is just flat out wrong. His analysis of state abortion laws was based almost exclusively on two law review articles written by Cyril Means, an attorney for the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL). These articles, along with Blackmun’s use of them, have come under trenchant and withering criticisms in an astonishingly large number of academic periodicals in the past four decades. 

James S. Witherspoon wrote what is perhaps the most thorough scholarly article that addresses Blackmun’s account of these state laws. After an extensive analysis of the nineteenth-century passage of these statutes, their legislative histories, and the political climate in which they were passed, he concludes: “[T]hat the primary purpose of the nineteenth-century antiabortion statutes was to protect the lives of unborn children is clearly shown by the terms of the statutes themselves.”
 

FULL STORY

MLive.com features editorial from Muskegon Right to Life president

MLive.com and the Muskegon Chronicle have posted opposing editorials from Pat Vendal, President of Muskegon Right to Life and state representative Marcia Hovey-Wright, which discuss the impact of Roe v. Wade. 

Pat notes how the vast majority of abortions are elective, discusses prolife laws passed since Roe and mentions the closure of a Muskegon abortion clinic. 

FULL EDITORIALS

The prolife movement shall not weary, we shall not rest

Tomorrow is the 40th memorial of Roe vs. Wade, the decision which legalized abortion throughout the United States.  Below is a link to a speech the late Father Richard John Neuhaus gave to National Right to Life Committee's annual convention.  Princeton professor Robert George has called this speech " the greatest pro-life speech ever given."

Perhaps you, too, can specify such a moment when you knew you were recruited. At that moment you could have said, “Yes, it’s terrible that in this country alone 4,000 innocent children are killed every day, but then so many terrible things are happening in the world. Am I my infant brother’s keeper? Am I my infant sister’s keeper?” You could have said that, but you didn’t. You could have said, “Yes, the nation that I love is betraying its founding principles—that every human being is endowed by God with inalienable rights, including, and most foundationally, the right to life. But,” you could have said, “the Supreme Court has spoken and its word is the law of the land. What can I do about it?” You could have said that, but you didn’t. That horror, that betrayal, would not let you go. You knew, you knew there and then, that you were recruited to contend for the culture of life, and that you were recruited for the duration.

The contention between the culture of life and the culture of death is not a battle of our own choosing. We are not the ones who imposed upon the nation the lethal logic that human beings have no rights we are bound to respect if they are too small, too weak, too dependent, too burdensome. That lethal logic, backed by the force of law, was imposed by an arrogant elite that for almost forty years has been telling us to get over it, to get used to it.

But “We the People,” who are the political sovereign in this constitutional democracy, have not gotten over it, we have not gotten used to it, and we will never, we will never ever, agree that the culture of death is the unchangeable law of the land. 

FULL SPEECH

Abortion organization gives Michigan "F" for prolife laws

NARAL, a leading abortion advocacy organization, has published it's annual grades on state governments and their laws regarding abortion.  The more prolife laws a state has, the worse their grade is.  Right to Life of Michigan is proud to once again earn a "F" grade from NARAL.

MICHIGAN'S REPORT CARD FROM NARAL

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT MICHIGAN'S PROLIFE LAWS

Prolife TV ads emphasize hope, beauty of life

Right to Life of Michigan Educational Fund is airing two state-wide television ads to emphasize the hope and beauty of life. The ad Accusations reminds viewers that to be prolife requires supporting women who are facing an untimely pregnancy. The ad Seed shows the growth and excitement of life. Take part in bringing hope to others by being involved with Right to Life of Michigan.

VIEW ADS

Life After 40: Week 40

During the 40th week of pregnancy, the big day arrives and the baby experiences a whole new world on a day forever remembered. It’s an experience more than a million of her fellow babies are deprived of every year in America.

LEARN MORE AT LIFE AFTER 40

New documentary film about Kermit Gosnell's abortion clinic in Philadelphia

3801 Lancaster is a 20-minute documentary film which focuses on Kermit Gosnell's Women's Medical Society abortion clinic.  Gosnell was arrested in January of 2011 and charged with 8 counts of murder after authorities discovered the horrific conditions inside his clinic and that he was killing infants who were born alive.  The film includes numerous interviews with neighbors, former patients, and testimony from the district attorney's office. 

WATCH THE FILM

Abortion clinic in Niles, Michigan closed in late 2012

The Michiana Abortion Clinic PC located in Niles, Michigan is no longer in business. 

According to local prolife people, the clinic has been closed since approximately November 2012 and currently has a for sale sign on it. 

The Michigan Department of Community Health reports that 368 abortions took place in Berrien County (where the abortion clinic was located) in 2011. 

Listen to Right to Life of Michigan Legislative Update

If you missed the live teleseminar featuring an update on prolife legislation in Michigan, you can still listen to it.  Right to Life of Michigan President Barbara Listing and Legislative Director Ed Rivet provided an update on prolife legislation during a recent Teleseminar. Get the scoop on what was accomplished in the 2011-2012 legislative session and what to expect in 2013.

LISTEN IN 

SIGN UP FOR PROLIFE E-MAIL UPDATES FROM RLM

Closed Muskegon abortion clinic wasn't routinely inspected, shows need for H.B. 5711

MLive.com has an article noting how the recently closed abortion clinic in Muskegon was never routinely inspected by the state of Michigan. 

No state or local health agency routinely inspected the Muskegon abortion clinic that city officials closed Dec. 26 because of alleged unsanitary conditions.

No regulations allowed for such inspections, because Women’s Medical Services, 863 E. Apple Ave., did not meet state criteria for being licensed and inspected, according to a spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs.

In March 2012, Right to Life of Michigan released a report explaining this problem and the need for all abortion clinics to be licensed and regulated.  H.B. 5711 will now require abortion clinics in Michigan to be regularly inspected.

FULL STORY

Life After 40: Week 39

During the 39th week of pregnancy, while she continues growing in the womb, the baby’s family is anxiously waiting and preparing for the moment they can see her with their own eyes for the first time.

LEARN MORE AT LIFE AFTER 40

Legislative Update Teleseminar Today at 1 p.m.

Please join Right to Life of Michigan President Barbara Listing and Legislative Director Ed Rivet for a Teleseminar today, Wednesday, January 9, at 1 p.m. Barb and Ed will provide an update on prolife legislation.

Learn what was accomplished in the 2011-2012 legislative session and what to expect in 2013.

Many of you participated in Life Lobby Day to promote life-saving legislation. Your efforts were successful! Learn all the details by listening to the Teleseminar today.

Teleseminar Information: 

Title: RLM Legislative Update
Time: Wednesday, January 9, at 1 p.m.
Call to listen: (206) 402-0100 PIN Code: 662744#

Or, listen using your computer: http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventID=36740118