Commentary

For the first time in history, the U.S. House has just voted to create a federal law allowing for the killing of preborn children.  The legislation was passed on a vote of 218-211, without a single Republican vote.  One brave Democrat opposed the bill.

This radical legislation would make it legal to abort a baby for any reason up until live birth.  Even more astonishing: it would supersede and supplant any and all state laws restricting abortion at any point in a pregnancy.  Thus, Idaho’s laws regarding informed consent or parental consent for girls would become null and void under the terms of Nancy’s vision for a new America.  Gone would be any understanding of states rights; gone, too, would be any legal duty to care for babies who somehow survive the chemical or surgical tortures of the abortion procedure.  Even the Ban on Partial Birth Abortions would be repealed by Nancy’s dark version of “social justice”.

The legislation is so radical that not even pro-abortion Republican Susan Collins (R-Maine) will support the bill once it gets to the U.S. Senate.  It is unclear how the Democrat Joe Manchin will vote once it gets to the floor.

With the lopsided House vote, there can no longer be any serious argument regarding the Democrat Party’s embrace of child sacrifice as the central tenet of their political faith. They have officially become the party of death.

Planned Parenthood has cashed-in its marker with Democrat politicians, demanding that they use their slim hold on congressional power to codify Roe v. Wade in federal law.  Up until this week, Planned Parenthood has relied upon their extraordinary influence in the federal judiciary to protect their death empire.  But the threat of a reversal of Roe coming in this next term of the U.S. Supreme Court has caused the Abortion Industry to hit the panic button.

That term of the Court will begin early next month, with oral arguments in the Dobbs case scheduled for December.  We must be in earnest prayer for the members of that Court.  We must clang the gates of Paradise, asking the Lord to grant those justices courage and integrity in the face of great spiritual oppression.

The Board of Idaho Chooses Life has adopted a Resolution, calling for the protection of the conscience rights of health care providers and other Idaho employees from being forced into choosing between their livelihood and submitting to a COVID vaccination.

Idaho Chooses Life has brought several pieces of legislation over the years to protect the conscience rights of health care providers.  Defending religious liberty and conscience rights have always been a core part of ICL’s mission.

“The Board is not taking a position on vaccination per se,” Executive Director David Ripley said in a prepared statement.  “Though there are a couple of vaccines out there that use aborted baby tissue and we are adamantly opposed to such heinous methods.  But we feel the need to rise in defense of all Idaho citizens to make an informed decision for themselves as to whether vaccination against COVID makes sense for them.  No one should be coerced into accepting medical treatment they do not want.”

Idaho Chooses Life has also been active in pressing for informed consent legislation over the years.  The key moral principle behind such legislation is that women must be informed of the risks associated with abortion.  And, in fact, ICL got legislation passed several years ago making it a crime to coerce a woman into getting an abortion.

“A person cannot give voluntary, informed consent to any medical procedure if they are being coerced,” Ripley added.  “And it is obvious that threats to lose one’s job constitute serious coercion.  We call on the Legislature to once again take a stand and provide protections for health care workers, as well as other employees, from this violation of our most fundamental rights as citizens and human beings.”

The U.S. House of Representatives, under the evil leadership of Nancy Pelosi, is working to open the floodgates of taxpayer funding for the Abortion Industry.

Yesterday, the House voted on seven different appropriations bills.  They are awash with new revenue streams for Planned Parenthood.  Pro-Life members of the House fought to protect long-standing restrictions, but were turned back by close votes – 219 – 208.

Perhaps the most significant development is the elimination of the Hyde Amendment.  Pelosi and Biden are making good on their promises to provide taxpayer-funded abortions.  That will certainly lead to higher abortion rates in coming years.  It also means that every single American taxpayer will be directly funding the destruction of preborn children.  This has been a bedrock of federal law since 1976.

Democrats also eliminated the Dornan Amendment, which prevents monies to fund the District of Columbia from being used to finance abortions.  That restriction has been in place since 1996.

In addition, the Pelosi’s Democrats voted to increase Title X Funding – one of the largest revenue streams for Planned Parenthood – to a whopping $400 million.  A separate program to “combat teenage pregnancy” will be given another $131 million.

These are difficult times to observe, to be sure.

We must be vigilant in prayer, beseeching the Lord to deliver us from such evil.  And we must make financial support available to pro-Life candidates across the nation seeking congressional seats next year.  This imperious speaker must be turned out of office.

Idaho Chooses Life announced today that it has given Rep. Vito Barbieri (R-Dalton Gardens) its “Friend for Life Award”.

“This honor is given to Idahoans who have made significant contributions to the protection of our preborn children,” said ICL Executive Director David Ripley in a prepared statement.  “Vito has long been a champion of the defenseless.”

Barbieri has served on the powerful State Affairs Committee in the Idaho House of Representatives for over nine years of his eleven years in the Legislature. This is the committee that deals with pro-Life legislation. Rep. Barbieri also served for more than a decade on the board of Open Arms Pregnancy Care Center in Coeur d’Alene.

“As a senior member of this key committee, Vito has played a critical role in moving big bills forward – like last year’s Trigger Law and this year’s bill to prevent additional tax dollars from going to Planned Parenthood,” Ripley added.

“But we are particularly grateful for the courageous, and often lonely, work that Rep. Barbieri put in this year on the heartbeat bill,” Ripley said.  “He is a person of integrity and this public recognition is long overdue.”

Barbieri said “I want to thank Idaho Chooses Life for all of the work they do on behalf of the innocent in Idaho. It is an honor to be recognized in what’s really a collective effort to save preborn babies.”

Past recipients of the Award include Congressman Helen Chenoweth, Senator Mike Crapo, Frank Vander Sloot and Pastor Tim Remington.

Reports have been circulating for some time that the Chinese government is promoting the macabre business of harvesting organs from living human beings for the purpose of transplanting them into persons for whom the Chinese Communists have higher regard.  Protest marches have been held.  Witnesses have exposed themselves to danger by smuggling information out of the communist nation. 

According to State Senator Angela Paxton (R-Texas), the evidence is more than rumor:

“We know this is true, we know it is wrong, and that it again goes to the very heart of destroying the dignity of every human being.” 

Her moral outrage led her to sponsor a resolution (since adopted by the Texas State Senate) condemning the practice.

An article in the Epoch Times reported that “prisoners of conscience – a majority of whom are adherents of the persecuted spiritual discipline of “Falun Gong”- are being killed on a “significant scale” for their organs”.  Apparently, the Chinese Communists then makes these organs available to desperate people at a huge profit.

The Texas Resolution calls upon the U.S. Government to do more to confront this barbarity.

That would be a great.  But the moral authority of the U.S. Government to challenge such horrendous practices in China has been greatly diminished by Joe Biden’s radical embrace of harvesting organs and tissue from aborted babies to pursue ghoulish medical experiments at taxpayer expense.  Honestly – what is the difference?

In both cases, the strong are destroying the weak in order to benefit the strong with the promise of prolonged life or cures to various maladies.  It is a kind of medical cannibalism.

We have written about this matter before.  Since the last posting, we have discovered that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a public statement condemning the Biden Administration for its new policy of partnering with Planned Parenthood in trafficking aborted baby parts:

“The bodies of children killed by abortion deserve the same respect as that of any other person.  Our government has no right to treat innocent abortion victims as a commodity that can be scavenged for body parts to be used in research.  It is unethical to promote and subsidize research that can lead to legitimizing the violence of abortion.”

That is a fine statement.  We welcome it, and pray for a greater uprising among the nation’s clergy.  But it fails to fully anticipate the great threat posed by Biden’s new policy.  What happens when universities and Big Pharma discover that they need more tissue?  More organs?  What happens when they develop therapies dependent upon a fresh supply of baby tissue?  It seems inevitable that we are on the cusp of going beyond the horror of reaping tissue from the victims of abortion.  Soon we could see these same powerful interests paying women to “grow” babies for the purpose of harvesting organs to meet an insatiable demand for “miracle” cures. 

The people of Texas should be proud of Sen. Angela Paxton for her leadership in exposing the criminal regime controlling China.  But, as they say, love needs to begin at home.

Governor Brad Little has signed HB302 into Idaho law.  This legislation is the first-ever bill considered by the Legislature to address the epidemic of abortions among babies diagnosed with Down Syndrome.  Some studies have projected that as many as 90% of Downs babies are being killed in the womb.

The bill is truly about the very least among us.

HB302 seeks to slow this tragedy by requiring the Department of Health & Welfare to include specific information about Down Syndrome in the state’s Informed Consent Booklet.  This literature is provided to women and girls considering abortion as part of the mandatory 24-hour waiting period in Idaho law.

Hopefully churches, pregnancy centers and other ministries will reach out to the Department to get their contact information included in booklet. 

We are betting that this modest legislation will have an outsized impact on the destruction of Downs babies, because most women facing this diagnosis were not previously abortion-minded.  Under pressure, fear and misinformation, women are being led into believing that these special babies are an unbearable burden, with little chance for a meaningful life.

Not only do we wish to thank Governor Little for his support, but there are a few heroes who stepped-up big time this session to ensure that this legislation got done.  Reps. Randy Armstrong and Kevin Andrus were critical supporters as the legislation was being developed.  And Senator Kevin Cook took the lead in ensuring that the legislation passed the Idaho Senate.

There is much more work that needs to be done in this area.  But this is a solid beginning.

There are so many difficult and enraging things being promoted by the Biden Administration that it is difficult to keep up.  And those things we notice likely fill most Americans with anxiety over the nation’s future.  So it would not be surprising if you missed Biden’s most gruesome action yet: He has issued an executive order encouraging the federal government to purchase aborted baby parts and conduct medical experiments using those same baby parts and tissue.  If the corporate media have covered the story at all, they have clouded it into a larger narrative of Biden reversing President Trump’s policies.

Let’s spend a bit of time developing the context and evil meaning of Biden’s action.

Remember the public outrage of just a few years ago, when we learned that Planned Parenthood was harvesting and selling aborted baby parts?  Congress called for hearings.  Politicians and bishops issued press releases.  The public demanded that public funding be cut off for America’s largest death merchant.  Other officials, including Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi, used their public power to shield Planned Parenthood from deadly political scandal.

Years have passed.  The disgrace and story have faded from the public square.  Planned Parenthood escaped unscathed.  In fact, the only penalties being levied are against those – like David Daleiden- who publicized proof that Planned Parenthood was trafficking in aborted baby parts.

But, today, we have the federal government becoming a willing partner with Planned Parenthood in monetizing the destruction of preborn children.  This is a new level of evil.

For a generation, the federal government has forced American taxpayers to subsidize Planned Parenthood under the guise of “birth control” and “reproductive health services”.  It has created programs to pay for certain abortions in limited cases using tax dollars.  But it has largely stood aside, as a rather neutral party, enforcing a woman’s “right” to kill her preborn baby – while not being an actual promoter of abortion.

Biden’s decision to engage in medical experimentation with aborted baby parts changes all that.  He is now actively promoting the notion that it is a public policy “good” for aborted babies to be harvested like a commodity and used in government-funded medical experiments.  The federal government, our government, has become a willing participant in the greatest evil of our time. 

There is so much more to say about this.

Let us briefly mention, however, that it is very difficult to see a distinction between America’s new embrace of human medical experimentation and that of Germany’s under the notorious Hitler regime.  Doctors and political leaders were tried at Nuremberg for their role in using the prisoners of Auschwitz and other camps as tortured guinea pigs.  America led the world in holding those barbarians to account.  Out of the Nuremberg Medical Trials came a new international ethical standard forbidding human experimentation without the express, informed consent of those participating.  Again, it was America who led the world.

Where has that America gone? 

Today, we have a president actively promoting the destruction of innocent human beings to supply the medical industry with the raw materials it cravenly demands to create new drugs and profitable treatments.  We have an America paying for, and promoting, COVID-19 vaccines produced with aborted baby tissue.  We now have an administration paying Planned Parenthood for the body parts of the human beings it destroys.  Friends, this is shameful barbarity.

Where is the outcry from our churches?  Where is the public outrage from leaders of academia or the medical profession?  Where are the press releases from politicians mimicking the moral pain of their constituents? The story is but a passing headline, hardly noted even by pro-Life organizations.

America has sunk to a new level of spiritual and moral darkness. 

Reverend Billy Kosco of Buckeye, Arizona has delivered one of the most powerful sermons we’ve ever heard on the Christian duty to oppose abortion.  He makes no apologies for his righteous anger over our tolerance of abortion and those who promote it.

Kosco is a Catholic priest at St. Henry’s Parish, outside Phoenix.  As he talks about his passion for the sanctity of life, he zeroes in on the great shame of a Catholic president promoting abortion and the desecration of young people.  Biden is only the second Catholic in American history to be president.  Yet the leadership of the Catholic Church is largely silent as Biden wages an unprecedented assault on the core teachings of the Church.

We urge you to watch this compelling testimony.  Here is a link:

Reverend Kosco’s message is not just for Catholics, but for every Christian in America. Please take a few minutes to watch this powerful affirmation of Biblical truth.

My wife, a retired school teacher, recently handed me a book from her treasury.  She wanted me to see a poem she spotted in the book.  The poem is actually an expansion of the Lord’s Prayer.  It was found by a Union soldier, hanging upon a wall during the battle of Corinth.

It is, indeed, a powerful poem and expression of faith.

But what really caught my attention was the book itself:  “Studies in Reading – Seventh Grade”.  Published in 1915, it still carries the penciled names of the students who were given charge of this treasure over the years.  Christie Edwards.  Charles Garvin, Jan. 1, 1918.  Archie Gilbert.  Wilma Markson, 1930.  It was used and re-read in the Pilchuck, Washington Public Schools for over twenty five years to train the minds and characters of America’s emerging generation.  The first students to use this textbook would have been in their mid-thirties when America faced the great threat of World War II.  But the latter students – Archie Gilbert – would have been of prime age to face a bonsai charge on Iwo Jima.

Thus we can see the books and curriculum used to prepare the Greatest Generation for the direst challenge in American history up to that point.

The book is about 400 pages long, and includes a wide variety of reading assignments.  There are great poems like “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” and “The Raven”.  We find that Lord’s Prayer, as well as “Antony’s Oration” from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.  There is Daniel Webster’s essay “Supposed Speech of John Adams”, and Alexander’s “The Burial of Moses”.  Dozens of short stories, essays, speeches and poems which introduce a fresh mind to the great traditions and values of Western Civilization.

Such a work would not, of course, be tolerated in the modern Washington state public school system.  For one thing, it offers several positive stories about George Washington.  For another, it boldly presents Christianity through poems like Phillips Brooks’ “Constant Christmas”.  And then there is the simple fact that professional educators would regard its wide range of reading material “too advanced” for today’s seventh grade student.

Perusing this old textbook, looking at the signatures of the once-tender students who were formed by it, I can’t help wondering where we might be headed as a society when we have given up so much.  This text helped prepare a generation for greatness – leading not just to victory over Nazism, but to the “American Century”. 

What will happen for a generation given nothing more inspiring than Wikipedia?

As most of America mourns over the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, with its loss of well over 60 million children, the new president announced plans for an more vigorous campaign to destroy preborn children. 

The Biden-Harris Administration has begun to make good on its many promises to the Abortion Industry by declaring that they will work to “codify” Roe v. Wade into federal statute.  What does that mean?  Well Ms. Harris told us during the campaign that she would push legislation to make it virtually illegal for states to even consider pro-Life legislation going forward.  What once seemed like an absurd attack on the Constitution suddenly seems like a viable threat.

Mr. Biden declared in his statement that “the right to choose [to kill babies in the womb] has been under relentless and extreme attack” over the past four years. 

That must now end.  And if abortion advocates have failed to win the debate over the past 48 years, they intend to use the police powers of government to silence the opposition.  That includes an effective repeal of the 10^th Amendment through legislative fiat.

Mr. Biden also made clear in his statement, released on the Roe Anniversary, that he will seek to destroy the Hyde Amendment and guarantee that taxpayers will finance abortions on-demand through the Medicaid program.  Those benefits will be guaranteed to illegal immigrants as well as low-income women and girls.

By one count, there have been 62,502,904 babies murdered in the womb since Roe was decided in 1973.  But even that atrocious number is a very low estimate.  What is really striking in Mr. Biden’s Friday statement is what is not there: Not a single suggestion of mourning or grief for all of that wanton destruction.  He no longer even pretends to seek fewer abortions; Biden has now become brazen in his embrace of evil.