QUESTION: What is the most important right in America?
ANSWER: Most would quickly point to the First Amendment. It specifies freedom of expression and religion as foundational freedoms. However, freedom of thought, or conscience, is the ultimate foundation upon which other freedoms rely, and it is under grave assault.
The assault on this freedom comes from a seemingly unlikely source: abortion and so-called women’s reproductive rights. More on that in a moment.
Everyone has a right to freedom of thought
The Supreme Court emphasized that freedom of thought is the very essence of all freedom in a 1937 case, Palko vs Connecticut:
“Freedom of thought… is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom. With rare aberrations a pervasive recognition of this truth can be traced in our history, political and legal.”
Even the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was signed by the United States, emphasizes this right:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”
Abortion threatens foundational rights
Pro life advocates have long opposed human abortion as an obvious violation of each person’s “inalienable right to Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness,” as expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
In their zeal to protect court-imposed abortion rights, abortion advocates have set their sights on freedom of thought. Freedom of thought represents the greatest threat to the long term “health” of Big Abortion, upon which billions of dollars in profits hang in the balance.
Reproductive FACT Act
The most recent assault on freedom of thought comes in the guise of a piece of California legislation called the ‘Reproductive FACT Act.’ The bill compels pro life crisis pregnancy centers to violate their freedom of conscience by posting signage advertising where their clients can obtain “taxpayer-subsidized abortions.” Here is the wording they must display by law:
“California has public programs that provide immediate free or low-cost access to comprehensive family planning services (including all FDA-approved methods of contraception), prenatal care, and abortion for eligible women. To determine whether you qualify, contact the county social services office at [phone number].”
Imagine a law that compels a Ford dealership to promote the Honda dealership down the road who carries taxpayer-subsidized electric cars.
Pro life pregnancy centers face a fine of between $500 and $1000 PER violation if they refuse to comply by promoting human abortion.
Free advertising for the abortion industry
The Alliance Defending Freedom is representing the pro life clinics. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case. Their attorney, Kevin Theriot, said:
“It’s unthinkable for the government to force anyone to provide free advertising for the abortion industry. This is especially true of pregnancy care centers, which exist to care for women who want to have their babies. The state shouldn’t have the power to punish anyone for being pro-life. Instead, it should protect freedom of speech and freedom from coerced speech.”
New York and Maryland passed similar legislation, although circuit courts struck them down. The liberal 9th circuit court upheld the California law. Freedom of thought hangs in the balance depending upon the Supreme Court’s decision.
Freedom of thought is threatened in other ways
In a seemingly unrelated case, the Supreme Court just heard a case that will also affect freedom of thought.
The case is called Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The issue is whether labor unions representing public employees can compel you to pay union dues, whether you want them to represent you or not.
One of the problems with forced union dues is it requires you to fund political causes with which you may not agree, such as abortion. Labor unions consistently donate money to politicians who oppose any regulation on the human abortion industry.
Thomas Jefferson believed that “to compel a man to furnish contributions … for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves … is sinful and tyrannical.”
The Court heard the case a few weeks ago. Look for a decision in June.
The HHS Mandate violated freedom of thought
President Obama’s 2012 HHS Mandate launched the recent assault on freedom of thought. Following the passage of the Affordable Healthcare Act (Obamacare), the president instructed the Department of Health and Human Services to mandate that insurance plans include contraception and abortifacients.
Well, the plan was already popular. But now that new amendments have been made, ACA is likely to garner more attention. This may prompt people to consider signing up for this plan, even when they were skeptical about the same before. Those interested may simply have to look up online with phrases similar to “How to sign up for Obamacare in Utah?” (depending on their place of residence) in order to find detailed information.
The truth, however, is that Obamacare would never have passed had this mandate been included in the original piece of legislation. It compelled groups like Little Sisters of the Poor to violate their conscience. It required that they provide services that they believed were mortal sins, and pointedly did not exempt Catholic charities, schools, universities, or hospitals.
Although the Trump administration carved out broad exemptions to undo these violations of our freedom of thought, the rules are still in place. With the stroke of a pen, the next pro abortion president can quickly undo these exemptions.
The carnage of Roe v Wade is incalculable. Four decades later, we’re seeing that the very lifeblood of the American experience, freedom of thought, hangs in the balance due to abortion.
[If you found this blogpost helpful, keep them coming by donating to the cause of Life.]
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The Heartbeat Bill is at a crossroads in the Iowa Legislature. Your prayers are needed to advance this crucial protection for our unborn brothers and sisters here in Iowa.
State Capitol Building, Iowa
You can help stop human abortion at the point when the baby in the womb has a heartbeat.
The Heartbeat Bill passed the Iowa Senate two weeks in a rare show of unanimity among Iowa Republicans in support of this pro life legislation.
Democrats, too, were united in their opposition to protecting the fetus at the first indication of a heartbeat.
The fate of the bill rests with House Republicans, who are caucasing right now. A similar bill passed in Arkansas was thrown out by the courts in 2013. That bill mandated an invasive ultrasound on a woman to determine if the baby had a heartbeat.
The Iowa bill doesn’t.
It simply requires a standard, non-invasive, ultrasound that an abortion clinic is going to perform anyway, a marked departure from the Arkansas bill.
Contact your Representative in the Iowa House now to indicate your support for the Heartbeat Bill:
And keep praying.
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Teen age girls are four times as likely to be infected with a sexually transmitted disease (STD) than to get pregnant.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) offer sobering statistics that reveal STDs target teenage girls:
There are about 20 million new cases of STDs each year in the United States. About half of these infections are in people between the ages of 15 and 24. Young people are at greater risk of getting an STD for several reasons:
• Young women’s bodies are biologically more prone to STDs.
• Some young people do not get the recommended STD tests.
• Many young people are hesitant to talk openly and honestly with a doctor or nurse about their sex lives.
• Not having insurance or transportation can make it more difficult for young people to access STD testing.
• Some young people have more than one sex partner.
What to do?
Abstinence is the best way to avoid contracting an STD, many of which are incurable. Some can even cause infertility.
However, abstinence alone may not be enough to protect against STDs. You can still be infected with an STD through skin-to-skin contact with an infected area or sore, even if you don’t have sexual intercourse. If you’re sexually active, it’s a good idea to get an HIV test every now and then. There’s no hiv cure yet, so prevention is the best option.
Some teenage girls have the mistaken notion that they cannot contract an STD via oral or anal sex. Not true. STDs can enter your body through tiny cuts or tears in your mouth or anus … as well as genitals.
Even more disconcerting: your partner may not even know he is carrying an STD.
Get tested
STDs pose long-lasting risks to your wellbeing, so the best protection to your health is to preserve intimacy for marriage.
If you are sexually active, get tested immediately for your sake and the sake of your partner. Where? Innervisions Healthcare offers free testing and confidential consultation. As we pointed out in a previous blogpost, “Welcome to the STD epidemic,” some STDs are curable; others aren’t.
Don’t wait. Take care of yourself. Get tested.
[Do you have friend or family who would benefit from this article? Be sure to forward it to them, or post it on social media. You might save her from a lifelong affliction, and you may save her future family.]
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“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I love you very much. I beg you to spare the life of [baby’s name] the unborn baby that I have spiritually adopted who is in danger of abortion.” Bishop Sheen Pro life prayer
Join the pro life cyber warfare movement!
Cyber warfare is being waged on Twitter today, Friday, March 1st.
Iowans for Life needs you to do something about it right now.
Abortion groups are flooding Twitter with the hashtag: #SheDecides. The campaign responds to President Trump’s executive order which reinstated the “Mexico City Policy.”
The Mexico City Policy prevents US tax dollars from going to international groups that perform human abortion. Pro abortionists characterize this pro life policy as the ‘global gag rule.’
The Mexico City Policy prevents the US from exporting human abortion
It’s not. It is a sane, moral, and totally just policy that saves human life. Big Abortion wants to use your tax dollars to pay for abortions in third world countries.
To counter Big Abortion’s cyber warfare, pro life cyber tactician, Bryan Kemper of Priests for Life, has engaged pro life groups throughout the country to hijack the hashtag with messages like these:
#SheDecides to choose life for her unborn child.
When #SheDecides on #abortion a mom puts her own life at risk as well.
#SheDecides to honor her child by choosing adoption.
When #SheDecides to choose life, anything is possible. #abortion is a dead end.
#SheDecides to speak out about the pain caused by her abortion.
When #SheDecidees to get an #abortion, she takes away the decision of another human person. One person’s decision should never result in the death of another person. #prolife #prolifegeneration
Go to Twitter right now
Post your own #SheDecides hashtags or use one of the examples above. Or repost our graphic that introduces this blogpost. Does this tactic really work? YES! Writing on a website called Dame, here is what a devoted pro abortion writer, Robin Marty, had to say about Bryan Kemper’s cyber tactics:
“Abortion opponents use the social media platform like a weapon, and with absolute precision—and they’re winning as a result. What are pro-choicers doing wrong?”
The headline of the article laments:
“The anti-abortion movement is killing it on Twitter.”
You can help. Join the pro life bandwagon. Hijack the #SheDecides hashtag today.
Thank-you.
[You can help even more in meaningful ways. SHARE this blog. FOLLOW us on Facebook and Twitter. SUBSCRIBE to our blog. Working together, we can hijack Big Abortion and save young women at risk.]
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Pray the FIRST HEARTBEAT PRAYER right now
Let’s face it, you’re a sinner. All of us are. It’s easy for us to succumb to a terrible temptation, that the power of prayer is, well powerless.
It’s easy to think God is busy; that we’re insignificant; or more likely that we’re unworthy of answered prayers. The saints can help. They’ve been in our shoes.
Saint Padre Pio encourages you to pray:
“Prayer is the BEST weapon we possess. It is the key that OPENS the heart of God.”
St. Teresa of Avila encourages you to pray:
“Prayer is terms of friendship with God, frequently conversing in secret with Him who, we know, loves us.”
St. Mother Teresa encourages you to pray:
“Love to pray. Prayer enlarges the heart until is capable of containing God’s gift of Himself.”
Pray the First Heartbeat Prayer
What should you pray? Today, could you pray for someone you don’t know? A preborn baby whose life is on the line as I type. Her life is being debated in the Iowa Senate right now.
Legislators will determine if the law shall protect her life once a heartbeat is detectable, at around the 5th week.
We’ve posted the prayer above. Please, take a minute to pray it. You’ll change the world.
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QUESTION: Why did so many prominent politicians flip flop on the abortion issue?
ANSWER: Politics.
Jesse Jackson is a civil rights activist who certainly believes that black lives matter. He spoke eloquently on behalf of the cause of life, as he did in this this piece in the Right to Life News:
“The question of life is The Question of the 20th century.
Race and poverty are dimensions of the life question, but discussions about abortion have brought the issue into focus in a much sharper way. How we will respect and understand the nature of life itself is the over-riding moral issue, not of the Black race, but of the human race.
The question of abortion confronts me in several different ways. First, although I do not profess to be a biologist, I have studied biology and know something about life from the point of view of the natural sciences.
Second, I am a minister of the Gospel and therefore, feel that abortion has a religious and moral dimension that I must consider.
Third, I was born out of wedlock (and against the advice that my mother received from her doctor) and therefore abortion is a personal issue for me.
From my perspective, human life is the highest good, the summum bonum. Human life itself is the highest human good and God is the supreme good because He is the giver of life. That is my philosophy.
Everything I do proceeds from that religious and philosophical premise.”
“How we respect life is the over-riding moral issue,” By JESSE JACKSON; Right to Life News, January 1977
The tragic negation of his philosophy
In a few short years, Mr. Jackson flip-flopped. Why? He ran for president.
Like Ted Kennedy who also flip flopped when he ran for president in 1980, Jackson reversed his philosophy on what is the “highest good” with this dismissive explanation that ‘it would not be proper for him as president to impose his religious views on the country.’ And yet he called for Medicaid-funded abortions, which imposed a grave evil on people of faith who would be asked to pick up the tab in violation of THEIR religious beliefs.
Bitter fruit
Mr. Jackson’s flip flop has sown bitter fruit within the Black community. As data from the Alan Guttmaucher Institute reveals:
‘For every two African American women that get pregnant, one will choose to abort. A Black baby is 5 times more likely to be killed in the womb than a White Baby.’
The Reverend Clenard H. Childress Jr. goes so far as to claim that…
“the most dangerous place for an African American to be is in the womb of their African American mother.”
The replacement birthrate has dropped below replacement level in the African American community. Some in the Black community characterize this development as nothing less than a Black Genocide.
Planned Parenthood’s role
Planned Parenthood’s role in this holocaust has been profound. They have located 78% of their clinics in predominantly Black neighborhoods. And although Blacks only comprise 12% of the population, they account for 35% of the abortions in the U.S.
What is so disturbing about these numbers is the philosophical premise of Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, which animates the organization in spirit even today. Said Ms. Sanger:
“We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population…”
“… these two words [birth control] sum up our whole philosophy… It means the release and cultivation of the better elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extinction, of defective stocks — those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.”
To clarify: at one point, Margaret Sanger and Jesse Jackson held adversarial philosophical premises:
SANGER’S PHILOSOPHY: “Suppress human weeds.”
JACKSON’S PHILOSOPHY: “Human life is the highest good.”
Jackson sold out to the human abortion crowd. He could have made a difference had he honored the religious convictions he was so willing to share with anyone and everyone, that is, until the day he ran for president.
Black lives matter, even if Planned Parenthood doesn’t think so.
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You’re pregnant. It’s unexpected. And you’re not so sure you want this child. What do you do? Know this: you have healthy options because there are a wealth of unplanned pregnancy resources at your disposal. You are not alone!
Even more, know that you are not alone. You’ll see why in a minute.
Yesterday’s blogpost exposed a tragic statistic most at-risk women don’t know.
Even more, abortion leaves lifelong scars, both emotional and physical.
Iowans for Life has compiled a broad list of unplanned pregnancy resources. If you or someone you know is in crisis because of an unplanned pregnancy, these free resources can help you immediately, as well as after the birth of your child.
Free unplanned pregnancy resources
InnerVisions HealthCare:
1355 50th Street, Suite 400, W. Des Moines, IA 50266.
InnerVisions is a great resource, with services like these:
•Early Detection Pregnancy Test (medical verification needed prior to abortion)
•Ultrasound
•Confidential Counseling
•Post Abortion Support
•Adoption Info
•Comprehensive Referrals
•STD Testing (medically recommended before an abortion)
•PAP Testing
•Sexual Health Education & Information
Everything is confidential and free.
Birthright International:
5806 Hickman Road, Des Moines, IA 50266.
They offer:
•Love, hope, and encouragement
•Friendship and emotional support
•Non-judgmental, confidential help
•Pregnancy tests
•Maternity and baby clothes
•Referrals to: Medical supports, Financial and/or employment resources, Housing, Legal referrals, Education assistance, Social assistance, Professional counseling.
•Information on: Pregnancy and childbirth; Prenatal development and care; Parenting skills; child care and child safety; Career development and/or continuing education; Community programs and/or social assistance; Adoption.
Agape Pregnancy Center:
2550 Martin Luther King Parkway, Des Moines, IA 50310.
Free services:
• Pregnancy Testing
• STD Testing
• Ultrasounds
• Consultations
Alpha Women’s Center:
3605 Southeast 14th Street, Des Moines, IA 50320.
Services:
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Pregnancy tests
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Maternity clothing
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Baby closet
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Classes, videos, and DVDs
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Bible Studies
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Friendship and Support
Ruth Harbor House:
534-42nd Street, Des Moines, IA 50312.
Ruth Harbor provides a Christ-centered home, programs, and comprehensive services resulting in positive life change for young women who have experienced unplanned pregnancies, and their babies.
House of Mercy:
[The address is kept confidential.]
House of Mercy offers vital housing, human service, substance-related/addictive disorders treatment, and mental health programs to individuals and families that have experienced difficulty in accessing these critical services and supports. Specific services provided by the House of Mercy include:
- permanent housing;
- transportation;
- childcare;
- Behavioral Health Intervention Services (BHIS);
- outpatient mental health counseling (e.g., individual, group, relationship, trauma, and family therapy);
- addiction counseling services (e.g., substance abuse assessments, primary treatment,
- relapse prevention education, individual/group counseling, aftercare support, twelve-step meetings, etc.);
- homeless outreach addiction assessment, education, treatment, and case management services;
- student assistance assessment and treatment programming;
- education and employment assistance;
- and skill development training in such areas as communication, parenting, anger management, and nutrition.
Restored by Grace Ministries:
130 East 3rd Street, Suite 101, Des Moines, IA 50309.
Post-abortive resources: Restored by Grace was birthed from hearts desiring to bring hope, healing and restoration to men, women and families as we journey with them from brokeness to wholeness by confronting the lies of guilt, shame and condemnation with God’s word and love.
The list above provides resources in Des Moines. You can find more help around the state. Visit Iowans for Life’s Resource Center for more unplanned pregnancy resources.
Are you in crisis? Helping hands await you with access to free, healthy options.
You’re not alone.
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