Planned Parenthood loses funding in New Hampshire Hous

5th U. S. Circuit Court says Texas sonogram law can be implemented

An Ohio debate highlights the three-way split in the pro-life movement about how to move forward

New Hampshire House Defunds Planned Parenthood
WNS

The New Hampshire House of Representatives voted 207-147 on Jan. 18 to pass a bill stripping state funding of Planned Parenthood and any other group performing elective abortions.

The 60-vote majority was plenty to pass HB 228 on to the state Senate, but not enough to override a potential veto from Gov. John Lynch.

“The majority of people agree that, regardless of individual beliefs, taxpayers should not be forced to contribute to the largest abortion provider in American when so many are diametrically religiously and morally opposed to the practice of abortions,” House Speaker Bill O’Brien said.

The pro-life Susan B. Anthony List applauded legislators’ decision, as did the Alliance Defense Fund.

“Every innocent life deserves to be protected. Taxpayer dollars should go toward helping and caring for the most vulnerable Americans, not killing them,” said ADF Senior Counsel Mike Norton. “New Hampshire taxpayers should not be forced to fund abortions.”

Last October, the House Health and Human Services Committee — consisting of 13 Republicans and five Democrats — voted 12-5 to kill the bill on the House floor. O’Brien urged legislators to ignore that report and support the bill instead.

@Copyright 2012 WORLD Magazine – used with permission

5th U. S. Circuit Court: Texas Sonogram Law Can be Implemented

WNS

On Jan. 10, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Texas law requiring abortionists to show women sonograms of their preborn babies at least 24 hours before performing abortions is constitutionally sound, and may be implemented.

The law has been blocked since August, with abortion advocacy groups claiming it was “vague” and “compelled speech” from abortionists, violating their First Amendment rights.

The law also requires abortionists to make the baby’s heartbeat audible to the woman and explain what happens to the baby during the abortion. Women are required to sign a form noting they’ve been given all the information.

“Now the woman can hear the sounds of her own baby’s heartbeat and see the picture of her own child — not a picture from a textbook or something else,” said Allan Parker, president of The Justice Foundation, one of several law firms representing 317 post-abortive women who wish they’d had a sonogram law to inform their decisions. “This scientific evidence will refute the lies of abortionists … that the contents of the uterus are ‘just a mass of tissue,’ ‘just a blob,’ or ‘not yet a baby.’ ”

@Copyright 2012 WORLD Magazine – used with permission

Strategic battles – An Ohio debate highlights the three-way split in the pro-life movement about how to move forward

Susan Olasky

The pro-life movement won many victories in 2011 but also had disappointments. A high-profile Personhood amendment lost in Mississippi. Heartbeat legislation stalled in Ohio and split the pro-life movement there.

Those wins and losses demonstrated strategic differences among pro-life advocates. Some propose legislation to protect all unborn children with a heartbeat, detectable normally at six or seven weeks. Others work within existing Roe v. Wade allowances and fight legislatively for parental consent, mandatory ultrasound use, and other incremental measures. A third faction only supports measures that declare human beings to be constitutionally protected persons starting at conception.

The three groupings are particularly evident in Ohio, a presidential swing state. There the pro-life movement is fractured, with local Right to Life chapters, including the original one in Cincinnati, leaving Ohio Right To Life over its failure to support Heartbeat legislation.

Dr. Jack Willke, author of the 1971 Handbook on Abortion, started that original chapter. Now in his late 80s and losing both sight and hearing, he recalls 40-plus years of pro-life labor and says of himself and his wife, Barbara, “We don’t have the push we once had. It’s time to take my armor off and sit on the sidelines.” Yet last year he “put on his fighting armor and went back into the fray” to fight for a Heartbeat bill that passed the Ohio House of Representatives in June.

Willke calls the legislation a dramatic move that invites the Supreme Court to reconsider Roe. He says the court won’t revisit Roe unless pushed, and Heartbeat is the right vehicle: “There’s something magic about the heartbeat. … [People think] if the baby’s heart is beating, then the baby is alive, then we should protect it.” But Ohio Right to Life has not supported the legislation, and the general counsel of the National Right to Life Committee testified against it. Willke is a founder of both organizations.

It’s still unclear whether Heartbeat legislation will make it through the Ohio Senate—but Willke is optimistic. He stresses the emotional and intellectual power of a fetal heartbeat: “For the average citizen, if there’s a heartbeat that baby must be alive.” He knows that enacting a pro-life law is only a first step. He cites the experience of partial-birth abortion legislation—passed by various states, struck down by different courts, including the Supreme Court, before finally being upheld by the Court.

Willke expects a Heartbeat law to be struck down by district and appellate courts before the Supreme Court upholds it, with Anthony Kennedy the deciding vote.

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