Anglican Mainstream

By John Jalsevac, LifeSite News

President Obama took a combative stance during his speech to Planned Parenthood today, pledging his unconditional support to the abortion giant, and, at more than one point, taking a swipe at pro-life activists who oppose the organization.

“No matter how great the challenge, no matter how fierce the opposition, there’s one thing that the past few years have shown,” said President Obama, “that Planned Parenthood is not going anywhere. It’s not going anywhere today. It’s not going anywhere tomorrow."

He continued: “As long as we’ve got to fight to make sure women have access to quality affordable healthcare, and as long as we’ve got to fight to protect a women’s right to make her own choices about her own health, I want you to know that you’ve also got a president who’s going to be with you fighting with you every step of the way.”

Obama was greeted enthusiastically by the crowd of some 1,000 Planned Parenthood supporters. "You're making me blush," he said in response to the protracted standing ovation.

During his speech he aimed his sights directly at pro-life activists. "The fact is, after decades of progress, there's still those who want to turn back the clock to policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st Century," Obama said. "And they've been involved in an orchestrated and historic effort to roll back basic rights when it comes to women's health."

"When politicians try to turn Planned Parenthood into a punching bag, they're not just talking about you," he said. "They're talking about the millions of women who you serve."

Read here

Sarah Palin responds to President Obama's speech here

From LifeSite News

More than three dozen leaders of national pro-life organizations from across the country have signed an open letter calling on all Americans to pay attention to the trial of Kermit Gosnell, saying that the horrors described daily in the courtroom “represent the precise reality of the state of the abortion industry today in our country.”

By Peter Saunders, CMF

Two Roman Catholic midwives have today won a landmark legal battle to avoid taking any part in abortion procedures.

By John Jalsevac, LifeSite News

President Obama will no longer deliver the keynote address at Planned Parenthood's gala in Washington, D.C., as originally planned.

By John Smeaton, SPUC

SPUC has given the midwives its backing throughout the case. Responding to the judgment, Paul Tully, SPUC's general secretary, told the media earlier today:

“Today’s verdict is very welcome and we congratulate Connie and Mary on their tenacity and deep sense of professionalism. We hope that the Health Board will abide by this verdict and enable life to return to normal for Connie and Mary. The result is a tremendous victory for these devoted and caring professional women. This outcome will be a great relief to all midwives, nurses and doctors who may be under pressure to supervise abortion procedures and who are wondering whether the law protects their right to opt out.

The difference this judgment makes is that hospital managers must recognise that the legal right to opt out of abortion goes beyond those who directly undertake abortions.

Read here

By Tim Stanley, Telegraph

"The Gosnell trial has shifted the focus off the high-quality services we provide … These are criminal, horrendous . . . acts and should be appropriately punished."

 

Steinberg said that when Gosnell was in practice, women would sometimes come to Planned Parenthood for services after first visiting Gosnell's West Philadelphia clinic, and would complain to staff about the conditions there.

 

"We would always encourage them to report it to the Department of Health," Steinberg said.

By Matt Philbin, LifeSite News

that didn’t last long. In fact, it barely happened at all. After a month of ignoring the trial of Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist accused of murdering one woman and seven infants, it looked like the media had been shamed into covering the story.

By George Conger, Get Religion

Last week my colleague at GetReligion Mollie Hemingway broke the American media blockade surrounding the Kermit Gosnell trial. Mollie, and Kirsten Powers writing in USA Today, reported on the absence of national press coverage of the trial of the Philadelphia abortionist — questioning why reporters who never tired of Sandra Flake or Komen Foundation stories shied away from this national news item.

But British readers must know about the case of Dr Kermit Gosnell, which has been played down in the American media – possibly because the allegations of a homicidal abortion doctor don’t fit into their pro-choice narrative.

by Peter Saunders, CMF

The jury in the Savita Halappanavar inquest has returned a unanimous verdict of death by medical misadventure.

From SPUC's Why I am Pro Life Blog

(NB: Ann Furedi is CEO of BPAS, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service)

Kermit Gosnell, the US abortionist, currently stands trial, accused of 43 offences, including the murder of seven babies and one woman at his abortion centre. However, the full extent of Gosnell's wickedness goes way beyond the eight counts of murder he is charged with. The grand jury report on Gosnell was published in January 2011 and documents the full extent of Gosnell's activity. Hundreds, if not thousands, of born-alive babies have been brutally killed by Gosnell and his employees in the most appalling of ways.

From Christian Concern

MPs have called on the Government to compile statistics on the gender of aborted babies in a Parliamentary debate this week.

It comes after health minister Earl Howe revealed that birth statistics in the UK show that women in some communities could be seeking abortions on the sole basis of their child's gender.

The findings – revealed in response to a Parliamentary question posed by cross-bench peer Lord Alton – were made after Government officials analysed the boy-girl ratios of births between 2007 and 2011.

Ministers have admitted that there is a discrepancy between the number of males and females being born in the UK. But the Department of Health has refused to release figures on the nationalities of women generally giving birth to more boys than girls, stating that it was not in the “public interest” to do so.

An undercover investigation by the Daily Telegraph last year uncovered evidence of doctors sanctioning abortions after women described the gender of their baby as the only reason for seeking a termination, even though abortion on the grounds of a child’s sex are illegal under the 1967 Abortion Act.

A Ten Minute Rule Bill calling for the Government to monitor the sex of aborted babies was presented jointly by Conservative MP Fiona Bruce and Labour MP Jim Dobbin this week, with its aims being supported by more than 50 MPs.

Read here

By David Smyth, Evangelical Alliance

By Ben Johnson, LifeSite News

A left-wing media commentator has said what many pro-life activists long believed: that an overwhelmingly liberal media consciously chose not to cover the trial of Kermit Gosnell, because they feared it would undermine their political stance on abortion.

By John Bingham, Telegraph

MPs will tomorrow urge the Government to introduce monitoring of the sex of aborted babies to establish whether or not British couples are being granted terminations illegally on grounds of gender.

By Peter Saunders, CMF

The Daily Telegraph (see hereand here) has this week run the story of a US abortionist who is facing a potential death sentence after being charged with the gruesome murders of seven babies and a mother.

by Peter Wehner, Commentary Magazine

By Elise Hilton, LifeSite News

Obama’s new budget is in. The usual political wrangling is taking place, but there are some undeniable facts about the budget. Taxes are going up (is anyone surprised?), but some of those taxes are “sneaky” ones on senior citizens designed to fund things other than their health. In all, the president’s budget will raise taxes by $1.1 trillion dollars. (That number shouldn’t shock you: President Obama is the first president to ever spend $4 trillion in one year.)

From NBC News

A doctor whose abortion clinic was a filthy, foul-smelling "house of horrors" that was overlooked by regulators for years was charged Wednesday with murder, accused of delivering seven babies alive and then using scissors to kill them.

Hundreds of other babies likely died in the squalid clinic that Dr. Kermit Gosnell ran from 1979 to 2010, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams said at a news conference.

"My comprehension of the English language can't adequately describe the barbaric nature of Dr. Gosnell," he added.

Williams said he might seek the death penalty for Gosnell, who with nine of his associates, including his wife, was arrested on Wednesday.

Gosnell was charged with murder, infanticide, conspiracy, abortion at 24 or more weeks and other charges.

Pennsylvania law prohibits abortion after 24 weeks except to save the life of the mother or avoid serious health risk to her.

In a nearly 300-page grand jury report filled with ghastly, stomach-turning detail, prosecutors said Pennsylvania regulators ignored complaints of barbaric conditions at Gosnell's clinic, which catered to poor, immigrant and minority women in the city's impoverished West Philadelphia section.

Read here

Read also: On Kermit Gosnell by Bill Muehlenberg

by John Jalsevac, LifeSite News

It’s gruesome. It’s dramatic. It’s arguably the abortion-related story of the decade.

It's the murder trial of "House of Horrors" abortionist Kermit Gosnell. And the mainstream media is almost completely ignoring it.

But cracks are beginning to show in what pro-life activists argue can only plausibly be explained as a deliberate blackout by a largely pro-abortion media of one of the biggest stories of 2013.

Recently 21 leaders in the pro-life and conservative movements signed a statement denouncing national broadcast networks ABC, CBS, and NBC for failing to give so much as a nod to the Gosnell trial.

Now they have been joined by a U.S. Congressman and a leading feminist columnist.

In a statement on the House floor today, Rep. Scott Perry, R-PA, slammed President Obama and the media for turning a blind eye to Gosnell’s alleged misdeeds.

"Mr. President, your silence is deafening," Rep. Perry said today, according to The Hill. "Are you so blind, are you so intractable, are you so extreme that you yourself can't even call this out for what it is, something that is reprehensible? Pro-life or pro-choice, this is reprehensible.

"It is worthy of your attention," he said. "It is worthy of your leadership. It is worthy of your direction."

"The media doesn't want to talk about it," Perry added. "Not NBC, CBS, ABC, CNBC, not Fox, and not the leaders of our nation, not the president."

Read here