NRLC Endorses Mitt Romney

NRLC Endorses Mitt Romney: Determined to secure a pro-life victory in the November election, which will decide the fate of unborn children for decades to come, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the federation of 50 state right-to-life affiliates and more than 3,000 local chapters, today endorsed Mitt Romney for President of the United States.

“On pro-life issues, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama provide a stark contrast. As the country's most pro-abortion president, Barack Obama has pursued a radical pro-abortion agenda,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life. “It is now time for pro-life Americans to unite behind Mitt Romney. For the sake of unborn children, the disabled, and the elderly, we must win.”

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Baptist group rescinds grant to women’s clinic

RN-T.com - Baptist group rescinds grant to women’s clinic: The Women of Worth clinic’s main goal is to provide Pap smears and cervical cancer screenings for women who cannot afford them — it does not provide abortions, said Executive Director Marilyn Ringstaff. When a representative from the Georgia Baptist Health Care Ministry Foundation called last year during the application process for a $42,000 grant to ask if they were an abortion clinic, a volunteer told them “no,” she said. But they do offer the morning after pill.

And when an unidentified pastor saw that the Baptist group had awarded WOW the grant he called the Georgia Baptist Health Care Ministry, accusing the local clinic of providing abortions, she alleged. On Tuesday, Ringstaff received a letter from Will Bacon, vice president of development for the ministry, officially rescinding the grant offer.

Editor: The question that should have been asked is, "Do you provide abortions or refer women to doctors who will perform them?" I would also like to know how this Baptist group justifies supporting a clinic that facilitates the sexual activity of unmarried women? Were there no pregnancy centers they could support? We could have helped them find several.


Update: Baptist charity pulls grant from clinic that distributes the morning-after pill -- Will Bacon, the ministry’s vice president of development, sent the clinic a letter last Tuesday asking for the funds to be returned. But Women of WORTH executive director Marilyn Ringstaff has said she will not comply. “We have no intention of giving a dime back. They are going to have to file suit to get it.”

. . . Funding abortion would be at odds with the Baptist charity’s history and faith. According to its most recent annual report, GBHCM assigns all grants with “reverence for the dignity of each person,” based on “Christian life and family values.” Many of its expenditures have underwritten alternatives to abortion, such as crisis pregnancy centers.

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Jimmy Carter’s pro-life rhetoric ‘a political decision,’ Baptist leaders say

LifeSiteNews: “I never have believed that Jesus Christ would approve of abortions,” Carter told talk show host Laura Ingraham, while promoting his new study Bible. “I’ve signed a public letter calling for the Democratic Party at the next convention to espouse my position on abortion which is to minimize the need…and limit it only to women whose life are in danger or who are pregnant as a result of rape or incest. I think if the Democratic Party would adopt that policy that would be acceptable to a lot of people who are now estranged from our party because of the abortion issue.”

The political context, and the shift in Carter’s views since leaving the presidency, have made Southern Baptist leaders question his sincerity. “What he’s doing is making a political calculation,” Dr. Richard Land, who has served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission since 1988, said the issue “is killing the Democrats in the South” and that “Jimmy understands this. He understands the reason they lost the South is not the civil rights movement; it’s the abortion movement. It isn’t a moral decision about abortion. This is a political decision.”

Paintings depict loneliness of China's one-child policy

LifeSiteNews: The little boy’s face is that of 38 year-old Chinese painter Li Tianbing, taken from photos of himself as a child; the other little boys are his imaginary playmates, brothers and sisters who were never born, who populated his solitary life. Li’s work focuses consciously on the impact on individual lives of the country’s One Child Policy. He was five when the government issued it in 1979.

An exhibition of Li’s paintings, titled “A Game as Pretense of Being,” is currently in Paris, but could perhaps more appropriately have been titled, “A Childhood of One.” The focus is not on the large statistics whose immense scale can depersonalise, but on the policy’s impact on individual human lives. Children in China now, for the first time in the country’s history, know only the life of solitude. No one is allowed to have brothers and sisters, and there are no large families in a country where for thousands of years family was all.  See more of Li’s paintings here.

Bill links abortion, homicide

Bill links abortion, homicide | The Clarion-Ledger | clarionledger.com: An amended bill passed in the Mississippi House Tuesday equates abortion of a fetus with a detectable heartbeat to child homicide.

House Judiciary B Chairman Andy Gipson, R-Braxton, successfully resurrected his "heartbeat" bill by amending a Senate bill to broaden its definition of child homicide to include some abortions. "It would be disingenuous to say if you kill a 1-year-old child, it's a crime, but it's not a crime to kill a child that's in the womb," Gipson said. "I think there is a logical disconnect there."

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Planned Parenthood bypassing parents and school boards by texting kids

STOPP - Stop Planned Parenthood - Planned Parenthood bypassing parents and school boards by texting kids: Cecile Richards says teens are looking for information that they don’t want to seek from their parents. To that end, she claims that Planned Parenthood employees have communicated via texting with over 65,000 young people over the past year. PP is exploiting the opportunity to reach children under their parents’ radar by using social media like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Via advertising and media outlets such as MTV, teens are made aware of the availability of texting Planned Parenthood. In fact, in answer to a question about what area she would like the most to expand, Richards very quickly pegged text and chat areas.

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Should Ministers Officiate at the Weddings of Unbelievers?

Should Ministers Officiate at the Weddings of Unbelievers? No – The Gospel Coalition Blog: Even though they may have little connection to a church, many couples today still want a traditional wedding ceremony with a pastor officiating. If you were the pastor, how would you respond?

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Stem-Cell Rules Go Unheeded

Stem-Cell Rules Go Unheeded: Scientific American: Three months after the Chinese health ministry ramped up its efforts to enforce a ban on the clinical use of unapproved stem-cell treatments, a Nature investigation reveals that businesses around the country are still charging patients thousands of dollars for these unproven therapies.

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Doughnut-shaped religion

WORLDmag.com | Doughnut-shaped religion | Marvin Olasky: NY Times writer Nicholas Kristof likes te “latest wave of respectful atheist writing” and calls it “a healthy step toward nuance.” He concludes “this new attitude can eventually be the basis for a truce in our religious wars.”

That’s the view from 35,000 feet. It doesn’t work at street level. America tried this in the 1950s, when mainline religions were at their attendance peak and many leaders spoke about the useful social effects of “Judeo-Christianity.” They suggested we not bother with truth claims. That didn’t work. The 1950s led to the 1960s because many people, including many teenagers, including myself, were not impressed with doughnut-shaped religion. We needed reality in the middle.

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Children are America’s Greatest Resource, Part II

Children are America’s Greatest Resource, Part II: "The numbers of Americans who are not here today due to human choice are staggering. Since abortion was legalized in 1973, more than 50 million children have been discarded through that procedure as unwanted. Add to that the estimated 100 million more children that would have been born to American women if they had the continued having children at the same rate that existed during the 1950s. We’re talking about a much younger, more vibrant American population of close to 450 million creators, consumers, builders, dreamers."

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Postmodernism and Disability?

Joni & Friends: Everyone seems to be talking about the dangers of postmodern thought and its influence on our world, but how is it impacting special-needs families? What difference does it make to a person with a disability? Your elderly parent with Alzheimer's? Or your granddaughter born with multiple disabilities? Listen in on Joni Eareckson Tada's perspective on this special interview recently aired on Chuck Colson's Breakpoint.

When we think of the pro life movement, abortion is usually the first topic that comes to mind. But people with disabilities are also targets of an increasingly utilitarian society that's turned its back on biblical truth. During this half-hour interview, BreakPoint welcomes a tireless and brilliant defender of disability dignity, Joni Eareckson Tada, the recipient of this year's William Wilberforce Award

The Difference Between Medical Ethics and Bioethics

The Difference Between Medical Ethics and Bioethics » Secondhand Smoke | A First Things Blog: "Traditional medical ethics focuses on the physician’s duty to the individual patient, whose life and welfare are always sacrosanct. The focus of bioethics is fundamentally utilitarian, centered, like other utilitarian disciplines, around maximizing total human happiness."

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Planned Parenthood Sets Up 40 Days of Prayer for Abortion

LifeNews: A Planned Parenthood in California is copycatting the 40 Days for Lifecampaign, which recently resulted in saving the lives of more than 700 unborn children from abortion. The abortion business has set up its own 40 Days of Prayer for the local abortion center.

“We trust you to decide about your sexuality, having your children, and planning your family,” says a flier promoting the Humbolt County Clergy for Choice event. “We are religious leaders who value all human life. We accept that religions differ about when life begins. We are here to help.”

“We believe that human life is holy. That’s why we believe in your right to choose to be a parent or not,” the pro-abortion religious leaders continue. “It can be helpful to talk with friends you trust, with licensed counselors, and with whatever religious person you choose. Humboldt County Clergy are available to talk with you about the spiritual aspects of choice. Find out more by calling Six Rivers Planned Parenthood.”

“Humboldt County Clergy for Choice invite you to set aside time with your family and community to support women and reproductive justice for 40 days from March 18th through April 27th,” they say. The flyer promotes specific prayers for abortion for each day.

Editor: Wonder what they mean by saying "human life is holy." Certainly not the same as when we say human life is sacred. "Reproductive justice" is a new one.

I'm reminded of Isaiah 1:15, which says, "When you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood."

Related: Dancing Sufis for abortion

Scientists rewrite rules of human reproduction

Scientists rewrite rules of human reproduction - Health News - Health & Families - The Independent: The first human egg cells that have been grown entirely in the laboratory from stem cells could be fertilised later this year in a development that will revolutionise fertility treatment and might even lead to a reversal of the menopause in older women.

Scientists are about to request a licence from the UK fertility watchdog to fertilise the eggs as part of a series of tests to generate an unlimited supply of human eggs, a breakthrough that could help infertile women to have babies as well as making women as fertile in later life as men. Producing human eggs from stem cells would also open up the possibility of replenishing the ovaries of older women so that they do not suffer the age-related health problems associated with the menopause, from osteoporosis to heart disease.

Some scientists are even suggesting the possibility of producing an “elixir of youth” for women, where the menopause is eradicated and older women will retain the health they enjoyed when younger.

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Pursue Mature Manhood and Womanhood

CBMW » Pursue Mature Manhood and Womanhood: "I encourage you to be like a dolphin in the sea of our egalitarian, gender-leveling culture. Don't be like a jellyfish. The ocean of secularism that we swim in (including much of the church) drifts toward minimizing serious differences between manhood and womanhood. The culture swings back and forth as to whether women are mainly sex objects or senior vice presidents. But rarely does it ponder the biblical vision that men are called to humbly lead and protect and provide, and women are called to come in alongside with their unique gifts and strengths and help the men carry through the vision."

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Mothers protest against abortion ads

Mothers protest against abortion ads|Hot Issues|chinadaily.com.cn: "What is painless abortion?" a two-year-old girl asked her mother after seeing some advertisements. Embarrassed by questions like this, a group of mothers have organized an exhibition to show tens of thousands of brochures advertising abortion, accusing them of "misleading children," in Shijiazhuang, North China's Hebei province. The mothers, from successful entrepreneurs to ordinary wage earners, protested in a public letter that hospitals aggressively advocated abortions in buses, newspapers and outdoor posters "without any moral sense," China Youth Daily reported.

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The anthropic principle

WORLDmag.com | The anthropic principle | John Erickson: The anthropic principle isn’t exactly an admission that the Bible had it right all along, but it does make it awkward for thoughtful people to believe that the universe is the result of Dumb Luck. If science is becoming aware of design, that is cause for celebration. It validates the intuition of common folk and children who, over the centuries, have gazed up into a diamond sky and thought, “Surely this must be the work of God.”

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'When God Talks Back' To The Evangelical Community

'When God Talks Back' To The Evangelical Community : NPR: Poll numbers show that more Americans are experiencing God through personal relationships. The Pew Foundation found that nearly a quarter of Americans are what they call "renewalist" Christians, which means they have an interactive sense of God's presence. Another study found that 26 percent of all Americans say they have been given a direct revelation from God.

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Pro-life senators say prenatal care for illegals good fiscally, ethically

Pro-life Hub-area senators say prenatal care for illegals good fiscally, ethically - KearneyHub.com - Kearney, NE: Nebraska soon could restore state-funded prenatal care for pregnant illegal aliens, and three Hub Territory lawmakers are backing the legislative push. All three lawmakers — state Sens. John Wightman of Lexington, Galen Hadley of Kearney and Tom Carlson of Holdrege — said today they support the controversial prenatal care measure, LB599, because they view it as pro-life legislation. “I’m not supporting illegal aliens, but I cannot turn my back on these innocent, helpless babies,” Carlson said today.

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Justice Department Agrees: “The power of the courts to review the constitutionality of legislation is beyond dispute”

Justice Department Agrees: “The power of the courts to review the constitutionality of legislation is beyond dispute” | NRL News Today: Faced with no alternative, the Obama Justice Department dutifully submitted (as ordered by U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jerry Smith) a three-page, single-spaced letter affirming that “The power of the courts to review the constitutionality of legislation is beyond dispute.” The letter was signed by Attorney General Eric Holder.

Judge Smith ordered the response in the midst of oral arguments in Houston on Tuesday in a separate challenge to another aspect of ObamaCare. Alluding back to President Obama’s controversial remarks made Monday, Judge  Smith said Obama’s comments troubled a number of people who have read them as a challenge to the authority of federal courts.

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Scientists warn of dangers in delaying motherhood

Scientists warn of dangers in delaying motherhood: More women are coming to the fertility clinic at age 43 or older expecting that pregnancy can be instantly achieved, and they're disappointed to learn that it can't be done easily, the journal Fertility and Sterility reported.

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America: Heading Towards Zero Population Growth?

America: Heading Towards Zero Population Growth? - Seeking Alpha: Many, or possibly most, commentators mistakenly believe that US demographic growth will be robust for decades to come. This misconception is due in part to the fact that Europe and Japan have very poor demographics in comparison to the US. The number of Europeans and Japanese is indeed expected to decline while the American population continues to grow. But the rate of US population growth will also be declining for the next several decades.

It is widely known that immigration has been and will continue to be a key component of growth for the US population, but immigration is seen by many as an addition to the organic growth of the existing population, when in reality it will be the only source of growth in the 2030s and 2040s when organic growth will be flat or negative.

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The virtue of questioning ‘science’

WORLDmag.com | The virtue of questioning ‘science’ | James A. Wanliss: It is not that Christians reject science, but that they, who are lovers of truth, increasingly recognize that what is sold as “science”—a search for truth—really isn’t any longer; it’s bogus post-normal science. That is what conservatives and Christians distrust, and what anyone who cares about science should also distrust.

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Churches step up environmental activism

Washington Times: Stewardship of the Earth is hardly a new concept in Christian thought — it’s mentioned in Genesis — but a growing school of theological thought leaders are getting out of the pew, marching on the picket line, and becoming specific-issue activists. The movement has also led to a rift among Christians, as some high-profile leaders fear that churchgoers are letting themselves be used by secular activists.

European Court to consider ‘unprecedented’ number of abortion cases in coming months

European Court to consider ‘unprecedented’ number of abortion cases in coming months | LifeSiteNews.com: Among the cases that the European Court must now judge on, there is the case of a Polish mother who complained of difficulties in obtaining permission for her minor daughter to have an abortion. There is also the case of a woman who died during pregnancy, (allegedly) due to conscientious objection exercised by doctors. In another case, a woman who became sterile following an abortion complained of not having been properly informed of the risks. In two other cases before the Court, the women who gave birth to children with disabilities complain of not being able to have abortions. Finally, on a related topic, the Court also has before it a case involving a ban by the Italian legislature of pre-implantation diagnosis.

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