<br/ > “Greater love hath no man than this,” says John 15:13, “that a man lay down his life for his friends.” As with the parable of the Good Samaritan, so often that great love is lain down for those who are strangers – one’s “not yet” friends. So it was with the Sister Paula Vandegaer, […]
The drama now playing out on the Missouri-Illinois border has some resonance with previous questions in American history. The drama involves a bold plan by the national abortion giant, Planned Parenthood, to open a mammoth abortion facility in southwest Illinois, just 13 miles from downtown St. Louis where is found the last abortion center remaining […]
The entire text of this publication may be found as a pdf at Anti-Discrimination Laws in the Womb: New Momentum for Protection. Something interesting is afoot in recent disappointments for advocates of the right to life. In a series of cases that may test the appeal of a new jurisprudence on abortion, two federal […]
On July 20, 2017, The Heritage Foundation published the fourth installment of its annual Index of Culture and Opportunity (“Index”). The Index is an exercise in civil society that tracks and analyzes data that affects freedom and opportunity. Heritage writers explore three indicators: (1) cultural indicators, (2) poverty and dependence indicators, and (3) general opportunity indicators. Among the cultural indicators, Heritage analyzes America’s abortion rate.
People of all backgrounds and political perspectives, including on the underlying question of legal abortion, appreciate what pregnancy help centers accomplish. Giving these entities room to work should be a given as our nation continues its long debate over what is best for women and the unborn.
Ana Carolina Caceres is a journalist in Brazil. In a photograph in a recent story about her, she wears a garland of flowers, a simple necklace and a pleasant if somewhat nonplussed expression on her face. Caceres’ writing is clear and straightforward, as befits the blogger she is, but the story is not about her chosen profession – about what she does – but about who she is. Or rather a condition she has that some think should define her – or even have prevented her coming to birth.
Ms. Caceres was diagnosed at birth with microcephaly, the condition so much in the news as a result of a spike in cases associated with the spread of the Zika virus across Latin America.
The Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) and Americans United for Life (AUL) recently filed an amicus brief in a major lawsuit over the late-term abortion videotapes collected by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP). This lawsuit involves a vital public policy question: Can an association of abortion providers like the National Abortion Federation (NAF) successfully block the release of videos that show members of their organization potentially engaged in encouraging, supporting or facilitating the acquisition and/or sale of body parts from the unborn during the abortion process?
Yesterday 75 members of Congress, led by Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey and Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, sent a letter to the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration demanding answers to questions about the FDA’s surprise approval of relaxed protocols for the distribution of the abortion-inducing drug regimen known as Mifeprex. The changes, announced on March 30, significantly increase the duration of pregnancy at which the drug regimen may be administered, raising it from 49 days (7 weeks) from the last menstrual period (LMP) to 70 days (10 weeks) post-LMP.
The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) has issued a helpful statement on the Zika virus and the effort by the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights to exploit its spread to promote abortion and repeal of national laws against the practice. The statement contains a number of useful links regarding what is known about the virus and the recommendations of responsible agencies. Footnotes are supplied by Charlotte Lozier Institute. The AAPLOG website can be accessed at www.aaplog.org.
On November 9, 2015, the Charlotte Lozier Institute, at CBO’s invitation, submitted a detailed letter to CBO describing six ways in which its analysis leads to misleading conclusions about the federal budget impact of the Planned Parenthood cutoff. In fact, among other points CLI argues that rechanneling funds from Planned Parenthood to primary care providers will lead to budget savings in Medicaid, that CBO underestimates Planned Parenthood’s private sector fundraising resilience, that CBO uses an incorrect (too high by 20%) figure for Planned Parenthood’s contraceptive client base, and that the 10-year budget window analysis artificially shows new costs for Medicaid enrollees but neglects the contributions human beings make to sustain government programs in the second decade of their lives and beyond.
A great champion of the unborn, Carolyn Gerster, M.D., a founder of both Arizona Right to Life and the National Right to Life Committee, has passed away. Dr. Gerster truly was a woman of valor. She was trained as a cardiac electrophysiologist and she understood with a passion the medical truths about the beginning of human life and its transcendent value. I first met her when I was hired as a legislative assistant by NRLC in 1978. Tall, graceful, brilliant and blessed with the ability to move audiences, everyone from laypeople to legal experts to legislators, Dr. Gerster was a natural choice to lead NRLC during years when it grew dramatically in size and influence. She ultimately served as NRLC’s international vice president, traveling the globe and reaching audiences on six continents. And she did so with a modesty of approach that ultimately could not disguise her knowledge and accomplishment.
In a radio interview on the Diane Rehm Show on July 30, Terry O’Neill of the National Organization for Women (NOW) made a series of claims regarding Planned Parenthood that deserve a much closer look. O’Neill asserted that, “The claim that we can somehow replace Planned Parenthood overnight – you shut down all the Planned Parenthood’s [sic] clinics and that they could be replaced overnight, is silly and specious.”
It is indeed silly and specious because none of the proposals pending in Congress would shut down Planned Parenthood clinics and replace them, overnight or anytime. Instead, the discussion is about shifting the $528.4 million of total government funds away from Planned Parenthood and to the thousands of existing community health centers and other providers.
The issue of late-term abortion is among the most agonizing and controversial areas within the larger, contentious debate on the morality and legality of abortion. To begin with, by the 20th week or fifth month of pregnancy, the fetus is clearly recognizable as a neonate and she is routinely described on professional medical websites in terms that stress her individuality and humanity; in addition, the methods used to terminate fetal life after five months are particularly grim and are often cited by abortion practitioners themselves in ways that indicate their ethical or aesthetic revulsion.
On Monday, December 22, Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) joined with Family Research Council (FRC) as cosignatories on comments filed by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) regarding new federal rules from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Personnel Management on transparency in health insurance coverage of abortion. The comment covers two separate rulemakings, one of which concerns the general use of federal tax subsidies to purchase health insurance plans on the federal and state insurance exchanges, and another which addresses transparency with respect to certain multi-state plans (MSPs) managed by OPM under the Affordable Care Act.
Government agencies have a distressing habit of releasing information they don’t care to highlight on the eve of holidays, or late on a Friday – or, whenever possible, both. That is why it comes as relatively little surprise that the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) used last Friday evening to issue an important rule on abortion under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The rule, moreover, was parceled in a 350-page document that, like other issuances, invited only the most active readers.
Later this week the federal and state exchanges created under Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, will open for their second year of operation. After last year’s rugged rollout, with extremely expensive web sites that functioned poorly, the Obama Administration has invested millions more in fixing the federal site, healthcare.gov, and is promising better performance. It is far from clear that this improvement will happen, and in the area of abortion coverage nothing is clear at all.
Liberty can be explained in a handful of words; deprivations of liberty usually require thousands. That is the case with the latest iteration of the accommodations permitted under the Obama Administration’s preventive services mandate, which was published on Friday, August 22. The Obama Health and Human Services (HHS) Department issued its latest rulemakings designed to […]
On Tuesday of this week the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument in two cases to decide whether private companies can refuse to comply with a federal mandate to supply health insurance coverage for abortifacient drugs and contraceptives. The cases, Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius, will test the strength of […]
Today the U.S. Supreme Court announced it will review two cases where the government is trying to force Christian-owned businesses to provide health care coverage that includes abortion-inducing drugs.
Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued an order that allows a recently enacted Texas abortion regulation to take effect. The case is called Planned Parenthood v. Abbott and it was filed by several Planned Parenthood entities and similar organizations. Here are three things you need to know about the case.
In a new video released by commentator William Saletan at Slate magazine, the author critiques videos released by the activist group Live Action regarding clinics that perform late-term abortions. In those videos, Live Action shows interactions between women whose pregnancies are in the range of 23 completed weeks of gestation. Saletan critiques the editing of […]
1/21/2013: Charlotte Lozier Institute President Chuck Donovan discusses the importance of accurate and reliable abortion reporting in the states at the New York Times.
This paper surveys the current state of federal and state adoption tax credits, which provide relief to families who choose to adopt a child. The paper makes several recommendations including making the adoption tax credit refundable so that adoption is an option for more families as it is such a positive force for children, families, and the country as a whole.
The tragic news of the death of an expectant mother in Ireland has drawn worldwide attention in a way, it is safe to say, deaths of other expectant mothers (like Tonya Reaves, who died as a result of a botched abortion at Planned Parenthood last July) have not. The death of Savita Halappanavar is worthy of the closest scrutiny, […]
On March 21,2012 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published the final version of its advanced notice of proposed rule making (ANPRM) for mandatory preventive services coverage under the Affordable Care Act (77 Fed.Reg.16501); however, only a narrow set of religious organizations, mainly houses of worship, are exempted from the rule.
Four decades ago a presidential advisory body, the Rockefeller Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, weighed in on the abortion issue and urged legalization. It also made a bold and ultimately false prediction. After recommending that U.S. states adopt liberal abortion laws like the one that had been recently passed in New York state, the […]
Efforts to repel the Obama Administration’s attack on liberty of conscience suffered a setback today on the floor of the U.S. Senate, but in the process kept alive an issue on which an extraordinary variety of Americans are willing to continue fighting – and with good reason.