Saturday, January 17, 2015

You Want Us To Compromise Our Pro-Life Values MORE?!!! By Rebecca Kiessling

Pro-life leaders, pundits and bloggers are up in arms now because Republican Congresswoman Renee Ellmers -- NC, (along with at least five other female Republicans,) is protesting the terms of the rape exception within the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act – H.R. 36, also known as the 20-week abortion ban.  As written, the late-term abortion in the case of rape or incest is permitted “if the rape is reported any time prior to the abortion to an appropriate law enforcement agency.”  To be clear, given the plain language of the legislation, there’s no time frame as to when the rape must be reported, the bill doesn’t require that the rape victim actually report the rape herself, and there’s no requirement that the reporting must be done in person.  Accordingly, an abortion clinic employee could “report the rape” (wink-wink) by telephone, just seconds before the late-term abortion takes place.

This overly-permissive language certainly opens the door for late-term abortions on demand, for any reason, which is why closet pro-choicers always want a rape exception – to open the door.  Women will be told to lie, just like Jane Roe (Norma McCorvey) of Roe v Wade was told by her lawyers to lie in order to obtain an abortion.  In addition, there is absolutely no sense of due process involved in this death penalty decree for children conceived in rape.  Can you imagine if Congress introduced a bill stating that a rapist could be put to death -- just with the requirement that a rape be “reported”?!  But according to the U.S. Supreme Court, rapists don’t deserve the death penalty, and even for child molesters, it’s “cruel and unusual punishment.”  Yet, the Congressional GOP will summarily issue the death penalty to the innocent child.  Never mind that children conceived in rape feel pain too, we can just go ahead and suffer for all they care.  And such exceptions are also violative of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause.
But Ellmers and the other female lawmakers want the liberal reporting requirement to be completely removed.  She stated that “the bill will cost the party support among millennials” and she said in an interview, “I have urged leadership to reconsider bringing it up next week . . . .   We got into trouble last year, and I think we need to be careful again; we need to be smart about how we’re moving forward. . . .  The first vote we take, or the second vote, or the fifth vote, shouldn’t be on an issue where we know that millennials—social issues just aren’t as important [to them].”  The liberal press is all over this -- saying the bill is so extreme that even pro-life Republicans can't support it.
As a result, some pro-life bloggers have called her a “pro-choice mole,” or “a lying waste of oxygen,” and “sniveling liar,” but has she really broken any campaign promises, and how did she even get elected as a pro-life legislator?  Well, she was pro-life with exceptions when she ran, so this really shouldn’t be a big shocker, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise to the groups who endorsed Ellmers that she’s now advocating according to her prior values. 
On Susan B. Anthony List’s website, their endorsement of rape-exception Ellmers for Congress includes the following statement:  “A new women’s movement which affirms its original pro-life roots is making its way to the House of Representatives, and Ellmers is one of its brightest new stars.”  But original pro-life roots would not have included a rape exception.  I’m very pro-woman, but I’d much rather see a 100% pro-life male endorsed than a rape-exception female!  Other big names in pro-life circles helped get Ellmers elected as well:  Wikipedia gives credit to Erick Erickson’s RedState blog, as well as Sarah Palin’s endorsement for helping to get the “previously obscure” Ellmers elected to Congress in 2010.
In the article in which Erick Erickson calls Ellmers a liar, he says, “Just as the GOP has decided to stand firm on a piece of legislation supported by +60% of the nation, she’s scared people won’t like her.”  Stand firm?  The bill was introduced with a rape exception!  How is that standing firm?  And it was done because Congressional Republican leadership were scared people wouldn’t like them!  But Erickson is the same guy who endorsed rape-exception candidate Karen Handel in a bid for U.S. Senate in the 2014 primary when there were viable 100% pro-life candidates.  If Handel had won, she’d surely be standing with Ellmers, and I guess Erickson would now be calling her a liar too, just for standing by her declared values. 
Erickson is also the guy who accused Georgia Right to Life of “moral vacancy” for refusing to compromise on the rape exception in the last go-round with the 20-week ban, and in fact, Erickson went on to get GRTL kicked out of National Right to Life for refusing to compromise, replacing them with his own newly-formed Georgia Life Alliance.
Right now, the other five Republican women are not being named, but once those names are released, it’ll be very interesting to see which pro-life groups and leaders endorsed them, and what their prior positions were on the rape exception before gaining the honor of those endorsements.  If we want to have better legislators – ones who really are champions for defending human life, then pro-life leaders need to stop lavishing undeserving candidates with pro-life endorsements.  That means no rape exceptions!
One has to wonder -- how can pro-life leaders who endorsed them, and who’ve also compromised on the rape exception themselves, now be so upset?  After all, this bill was introduced with a rape exception already in it, set on a “fast track” with no hearing, no debate, and allegedly no amendments to be allowed, yet there was scarcely any public objection to this rape exception from pro-life leaders and organizations.  Instead of objecting to the exceptions, big pro-life organizations like National Right to Life Conference, Susan B. Anthony List and Priests for Life instantly began promoting the bill as is.  There was no campaign from the pro-life movement at-large to contact Congressmen to get the rape exception out, only no-compromise organizations like Save The 1, Personhood Alliance and its affiliates, and American Life League.  Children conceived in rape were summarily yanked off the 20-week rescue bus and thrown under it, while pro-life leaders tried to hide the bodies – not even informing their supporters that there’s a rape exception in the bill.  Are we that negligible?  And the grass-roots can’t be trusted with the truth?  How could they give in so quickly and how can they now be so upset that a group of rape-exception Republican women want the impotent reporting requirement removed?
 It reminds me of the old story where a guy asks a woman, “Will you get in bed with me for $1 million?” And she says “Yes!”  Then he asks, “Will you get in bed with me for $50?”  Now she’s indignant:  “No way!  What, do you think I’m some kind of whore?!”  The man replies, “We’ve already established that.  Now I’m just negotiating terms.”  When pro-life leaders get in bed with rape-exception candidates by endorsing them and colluding with them, and when they instantly accept, enthusiastically endorse and aggressively promote a fast-tracked rape exception bill, they’ve already compromised their values.  So why should they be upset when these legislators begin negotiating terms?
BIO:  Rebecca Kiessling is an international pro-life speaker, writer and lawyer, having been conceived in rape and nearly aborted at two back-alley abortions, but legally protected by no-exceptions Michigan law.  She’s the founder and president of Save The 1 and co-founder of Hope After Rape Conception
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Wednesday, January 14, 2015

There's a Person in There by Darlene Pawlik

In my experience as a nurse, there have been so many times that others in the medical field ignore the dignity of the person to whom care is delivered. For a supervisor, walking in on a bed bath or other personal procedure is no deterrent to getting their job done. “It’s just a body, I’ve seen plenty of them.” they reason. In truth, it is not just a body. There is a person in that body; a person deserving of recognition and respect.
In the ProLife arena, the same holds true. Too many see only a body count. They see mere bodies being brutally murdered. They are people, endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these the Right to Life. If we are to be truly ProLife, we need to recognize and respect the fact that these are people we are trying to protect. There’s a person in that body.

To suggest that some of those people are worthy of protection and some are not, is completely illogical, unless you are forgetting that they are people and not just bodies. It is astonishing to me that so many in the House of Representatives are so disconnected to their own innate knowledge, so as to determine that only some babies are eligible for the right to life. They undermine their own credibility, becoming elitist for the sake of expediency.
If babies have been determined to feel pain at a particular stage of development and the goal is to protect them from being horrifically brutalized to their dismemberment and death, then how could it be that not all of the babies at that stage of development deserve protection? How could the mode of their conception be relevant? Why not their ethnicity or their economic status? The arbitrary conditions in the new Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act are illogical, immoral and should be rejected.
There is either a baby worth protecting, or there is not.
Why is it that legislators believe they can maintain credibility as a Pro-Life person when they are clearly elitists, deciding who deserves to be protected and who does not?  How do they rationalize the fact that a similarly developed baby should be torn limb from limb?  Is it that it is just a vote to them?
And what of the fact that a desperate woman, seeking abortion at 5 months is probably aware that she will kill her child. If she is so desperate, will she not lie and say she was raped?  Lila Rose and Live Action have produced numerous undercover videos exposing the lies of the abortion vendors.  Will they not encourage more lies to keep their business of killing babies profitable?  Can you really believe that?
The PCUCPA is terrible as it is written. Shameful.
I oppose the Government-sanctioned, government funded killing of our neighbors and I hope others who do will see the folly of this kind of legislation.
Respectfully submitted,
Darlene Pawlik,  Savethe1 Speaker and blogger, www.theDarlingPrincess.com, and Chair of NH Right to Life Educational Trust and NHRTL PAC a woman conceived by rape, abused, trafficked and restored by God to a life of purpose and grace. She has been married for almost 25 years, has five grown children and two grandchildren.
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Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Speaking of Pro-Life Exceptions, My Son is Exceptionally Amazing!! by Robyn McLean

From the heart of a mother, who grieves every time she hears of another rape exception in a piece of legislation: 
I was extremely disappointed once again to hear that my son and others like him were targeted for termination in the newly-introduced Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.  Let me tell you why.
We live in a society which offers us so many choices, anywhere from food, to cable, to what we’d like to become.   We also live in a time where we battle on the choice of human life vs. human death, and these decisions are often driven by excuses.  I certainly knew some of the selfish “reasons” which would have “excused” a decision on my part to abort:  I had a reputation I wanted to preserve as a pastor’s daughter and as a Christian. I had been Class President, Class Treasurer, Spiritual Development Chairman, and on the traveling worship team, and I was afraid of losing the chance to be involved like that again as the person I was known for being.  I had no support in my relationship “yet,” he was abusing me and I was trying to “fix” my relationship first.  I didn’t have the finances, I wasn’t ready for a baby, I didn’t want people judging me, I didn’t want to be less desirable, I was afraid of the possibly becoming a single mom, I wanted to hide everything that was wrong and get on track without people knowing, I didn’t want to be viewed differently and to lose the ones who loved me, and . . . , I was pregnant by RAPE – a violent rape.
There's that word, right there:  RAPE.  The one excuse we hear the most.
Excuses, shame, and hurt should not alter our ethical, moral, and discernable consciousness of the life of another human being -- especially an innocent baby.
Having an abortion as a way of “dealing” with a rape is not healthy.  It destroys a woman’s conscience, increases a form of denial, and heightens guilt – whether suppressed or acknowledged.  An abortion acts as a cover-up to the true problem.
When I look at my son, and I see his very essence, how he interacts with people, how he makes them smile/laugh/feel, how he loves, and the joy I experience in his presence --  all those excuses and reasons are wiped away like a rainbow wipes away a storm.
Two years ago, when the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (20-week abortion ban) was introduced in Congress, it included all babies – there was no discrimination, no one targeted as less worthy of protection at the time it was introduced, and it was voted out of committee unanimously by every Republican, though a rape exception was later added on the House Floor by Eric Cantor, who since lost his Primary.  This year, the same bill was introduced to protect all babies -- except those conceived in rape.  This makes no sense to me, as my son is capable of feeling pain -- and love -- just as much as any other child.  Is there any scientific reasoning behind excluding a child like him from a Pain-Capable bill?  Are there studies which these Congressmen can point to which suggest that my son and other children conceived in rape are incapable of feeling any pain?  Or, does it just not matter to them that children like my son are actually capable of feeling pain?  What ever happened to Equal Protection?
We live in a society fighting hard to take down discriminatory statuses and labels, but when it comes to “convenience” – whether making an abortion decision or making a legislative decision – many will slap on a label which lessens an entire group of persons’ value in order to justify their own decision-making process – a life or death decision.  In the pro-life movement, some fight for babies’ lives conceived in various circumstances, anywhere from gender to race to health, but exclude innocent babies conceived in rape.  As a mother of one of these children, this breaks my heart!  They are basing my baby’s worth on a circumstance which had nothing to do with anything he did, but on who his biological father was and what he did.

The Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act says to me that only babies conceived in a time of no hurt, no problems, are to be protected and can therefore live, but other innocent babies can be put to death for someone else’s crime. Even people who lose limbs in a collision can’t legally go and take away the limbs of the responsible party, but a pregnant mother can end the life of an innocent child who did her no harm. In the United States, there’s no death penalty for rapists – only for the innocent child. Any baby, and any child, is precious and worth something no matter what the parents’ thoughts are of them and no matter of the circumstance of their conception.

Does my precious son’s life become less human and of less value than all of those other babies who the Congressmen are defending if my mood, thought, pain, or choice of how I dealt with my awful circumstance changed?  No one can put a price or value on my son, not even me -- because he is INVALUABLE.  He is who God made him to be, and he is not comprised as a human by what other people have done.  Even God doesn’t base our value on our actions. So why should we base any human’s value on other people’s actions?

I think many of us can recall how we felt during times when we were devalued or seen as less of a person for whatever background or reason.  So, I hope you know that you are of value no matter the reason of your conception, the labels put upon you, the family you were raised in, being told you were “bad seed”, having a “disability”, having been abused, etc..  You, my son, and I have value and a reason to be protected just as much as those who society deems exclusively worthy.
My son is capable of feeling deeply.  In fact, many would say he specializes in his feelings and insights of others.  He loves SO much and so intently, that he makes those whom society would ignore, feel pretty special and important.  When he was in my womb, he was very sensitive to my touch.  I would just barely touch my pregnant belly, and he would respond with quite a bit of movement.  Thank goodness all he knew was love and not pain when he was in my womb.  But he deserved protection, without compromise.
I take joy in any progress we make in defending life, but it doesn’t mean I will sit back and not say when something’s wrong.  To stay silent is like not speaking up when a building is perfectly formed, all but the leaking roof.  Eventually, the one imperfection is going to affect the rest of the building.  Why give up fighting for all babies’ lives?  Not only that, but it seems odd to me that pro-life Congressmen would put a price (or lack thereof) on my son’s life and who he is.  
Even people in the pro-choice movement have said that they couldn’t imagine me without my son and how much of a blessing he is in my life, especially having seen how his love pours out and into others. I don’t exaggerate when I say my son has insight into people, feelings, and situations more than many human adults do, and I am not the only one to see and say that.  I don’t think this world could afford to just dispose (physically or thought-wise) of a wonderful, little human like him, and disregard the value of all he’s contributed to life already before the age of four, just because of how he was conceived.   You see, when you target unborn children like him – when you refuse to protect them – our world loses children like my son.
BIO:  Robyn McLean is an inspirational speaker and writer on a wide spectrum, builds websites, and enjoys sharing coffee-time with people.  She is a wife and mother and resides in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  Learn more about her, and her personal story of having become pregnant by rape at www.RobynMcLean.net, and stay connected on Facebook:  www.facebook.com/CoffeeWithRobynMcLean.  Robyn is a blogger and national pro-life speaker for SaveThe 1.
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