Commentary

The U.S. Supreme Court should release its very consequential ruling in the Hobby Lobby lawsuit very soon. We ask that you commit yourself to serious prayer on behalf of the Court and this nation as we sit at the crossroads.

Will the Constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom be protected by the highest court in the land? Or will we be compelled to painfully set-aside our religious values and God’s teaching in order to accommodate the political agenda of the latest occupant of the White House? Most people probably don’t understand the huge stakes in this legal fight; in part that is the result of a liberal press committed to protecting Obama and the Left’s sexualized social agenda.

The simple fact is that America’s liberals have virtually declared war on a citizen’s right to “opt-out” of their social agenda. We have even seen Idaho Democrats consistently attack the notion of religious liberty and rights of conscience over the past six years or so – whether that be the right of small businessmen to refuse to participate in the homosexual political agenda , or pharmacists’ right not to dispense abortion-causing drugs.

Liberals have “progressed” well beyond any notion of tolerance. Now they are boldly prepared to use the power of government to squelch dissension and ensure conformity to their social agendas.

One of the important developments in this case – ignored by the media – is that a number of states have taken up the cause of Hobby Lobby. An amicus brief was filed in January by 20 states’ Attorneys General arguing that the Obama Mandate was not simply an attack on religious liberty, but an assault on states’ rights as well.

Since the founding of this nation, corporations have been a matter regulated by the various states. They are the entities which issue articles of corporations, manage tax policy and other areas vital to the nation’s economic vitality. Suddenly the Obama Regime seeks to dictate the terms of their operation and create a federal “common law” which supersedes the powers of the various states.

We are encouraged that Idaho’s Lawerence Wasden was one of those attorneys general going to bat for us before the Supreme Court.

Fervent prayer is in order as this battle is fundamentally spiritual in nature. It will be hard to return to First Principles if the Supreme Court holds that the First Amendment no longer safeguards our right to follow God rather than Caesar.

With all of these Planned Parenthood facilities closing, pro-lifers are being accused of “shutting down places that provide healthcare to women.”  But, are we?  Are pro-lifers closing these facilities?  Last time I checked, it is Planned Parenthood who is making the decision to close down their centers. Let’s take a look at why that is happening. 

Several Planned Parenthood clinics in Oregon and Iowa recently closed, citing that they simply didn’t have the clients needed to keep their clinics open. Why the lack of clients?  Probably because of the lack of basic services.

The general population seems to think that Planned Parenthood does a whole lot more than they actually do. Does Planned Parenthood provide actual prenatal care?  No. They actually phased out their prenatal care program a few years back, stating that the pregnant patients were “too cumbersome.” Some clinics do continue to tout that they provide this service just so they can continue to include it in their annual report. These centers provide prenatal vitamins and then log that under “prenatal care.” Planned Parenthood actually doesn’t provide any service to pregnant women except for abortion, of course. Maybe if they actually started to provide for their advertised services, they would make enough money to stay open. 

Planned Parenthood states they provide care for “breast health.”  But that is also a stretch. Planned Parenthood is a level-one breast cancer service center. That means they are not allowed to provide any breast health service past a manual breast exam. You know, the same type of breast exam that you do in the shower every month. It’s the same breast exam that you can receive from any nurse or doctor anywhere in the country. Planned Parenthood does not provide breast ultrasounds, breast biopsies, mammograms or anything other than manual breast exams. Maybe if they started providing women with real breast health care, they could keep their doors open. 

The general population seems to think that Planned Parenthood does a whole lot more than they actually do. Does Planned Parenthood provide actual prenatal care?  No. They actually phased out their prenatal care program a few years back, stating that the pregnant patients were “too cumbersome.” 

Planned Parenthood provides no primary care. You can’t visit a Planned Parenthood if you have strep throat, a sinus infection, or the flu. They can’t treat your high blood pressure, your elevated cholesterol or to help regulate your diabetes. They have no national protocol that allows them to provide any of those primary care services. You can be seen at Planned Parenthood for limited STD screening and treatment, birth control, a limited woman’s exam or an abortion. Other than that, you are pretty much out of luck. Maybe if they started to provide these primary care services, they wouldn’t be so hard pressed to find clients. 

In Texas, we have seen many Planned Parenthood facilities close shop. The reasoning here is different. Planned Parenthood is choosing to close rather than bring their current centers up to legal safety standards. In San Antonio, an annual inspection report showed that the Planned Parenthood facility had serious sterilization issues. They weren’t separating clean and dirty instruments. They weren’t testing their autoclave machine to ensure that it was still working. Lots of problems. We see this in many facilities. There was an abortion clinic in Beaumont with the same issues. They have also been cited for untrained staff, dirty equipment, expired medications given to patients…the list goes on and on. So, instead of fixing these problems, Planned Parenthood has chosen to close these facilities. They chose to close their filthy centers. Pro-lifers didn’t force them to close. They chose to close them all on their own. 

You see, if Planned Parenthood was really concerned about the health and safety of women, they would be bending over backwards to implement these changes. They would be reinventing themselves as true healthcare centers that can treat primary care issues, provide prenatal care, etc. And, my goodness, they would definitely take the money and time needed to clean up their centers!  But instead, Planned Parenthood has exercised their right to choose. By doing this, it is them who have let down the women in their community. They have chosen to abandon these poor women. 

So, while Planned Parenthood is making their choices, we pro-lifers will step in and actually help women find the services they so desperately need. Don’t worry, Planned Parenthood, we’ll gladly pick up the slack that you have put down

The legendary radio and TV personality made national news several weeks ago as his daughters waged a nation-wide hunt for him, alleging that their step-mother had some sinister plan to harm or even kill him. Media outlets carried their hearty pleas for help in finding their beloved father.

But developments this week sketch an entirely different picture.

Once she obtained legal custody over her father, Kerri Kasem quickly went back to court to obtain a court order allowing her to withhold medical treatment, as well as food and water from her father in a bid to expedite his death.

Standing in the way of her quest was the here-to-fore “evil” step-mother, and Kasem’s wife, Jean. Turns out that it is his wife who has been fighting to sustain his life. And she is worried that the daughters are not interested in what is best for Casey Kasem but in getting their hands on his $2 million life insurance policy.

“Only God knows when to take someone,” Jean Kasem declared.

Tragically, the court in Washington state has granted the daughter’s request to kill her father under the guise of fulfilling Casey Kasem’s last wishes. But the simple facts involved in killing a person by withholding food and water make this claim dubious at best.

Dr. David Stevens, a prominent physician with whom we have been privileged to work on various pro-Life issues, told LifeNews that people simply don’t understand how painful death is when caused by denying human beings food and water.

“Most so-called experts have never seen someone die in this manner,” said Dr. Stevens, who is also president of the Christian Medical Association. Stevens has plenty of experience with this tortuous method from his many years of work in Africa, where the leading cause of death is dehydration produced by gastroenteritis.

“There is extreme thirst, the patient becomes dizy faint and unable to sit or stand,” Stevens said. “People develop severe cramping as the sodium and potassium concentrations in the body goes as fluids go down. The patient tries to cry, but cannot produce tears. They experience severe abdominal cramps, nausea and dry-heaving as the stomach and intestines dry out. Many experience excruciating headaches, hallucinations and seizures.”

“Contrary to those that try to paint a picture of a gentle process, death by dehydration is a cruel, inhumane and often agonizing death,” Stevens said.

How many people really understand what they are signing when giving end-of-life directives? And how can a court deny the right of a spouse to defend her husband against relatives with clear conflicts of interest? And why has the media been so spectacularly silent about this latest struggle over the American icon?  Could it be they are afraid of the public’s reaction to Kasem’s forced execution by denying him food and water?  It is one thing for the Culture of Death to destroy a “nobody” like Terri Schiavo … but perhaps the golden voice of Rock n Roll may be another matter.

America had a birth rate of 63 per 1,000 women of child-bearing age in 2013, a new record low. This continues a trend building since the Clinton Administration, in which the U.S. is following the lead of other western nations in failing to produce enough children to replace aging citizens.

The fertility rate now stands at 1.87 children for each American woman over her lifetime, well below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per female.

Certainly the explanation for America’s collective decision to demographically destroy itself isn’t for lack of the necessary sexual activity. The nation has never been more obsessed with that particular recreational activity. The enormous rate of abortion offers a ready explanation for the dwindling number of new Americans. One sixth of the population has been killed by abortion since 1973. One-in-four African Americans are killed in the womb. As Law Professor Michael Paulsen of St. Thomas notes in a recent article, abortion is the leading cause of unnatural death in America.

The economic and political implications of this demographic implosion are difficult to gauge in their totality; however, we can assume a weakened economic productivity going forward. An aging population will mean fewer resources available to care for aged and a fierce battle over the allocation of capital for production over consumption.

One wonders where to look for the political and social leadership necessary to help our society confront the practical dangers of our present moral confusion surrounding the value of human life.

The new insurance/health care bureaucracy burrowing its way into the Idaho soil celebrated its claim to signing-up some 76,000 Idahoans to an ObamaCare policy. This is a strange thing to be celebrating.  The fact that the State of Idaho is engaged in such self-congratulatory behavior demonstrates one of the most pernicious dynamics at play in the Legislature’s decision to partner with Barack Obama in remaking America’s health care system.

Sen. Russ Fulcher correctly blasted the claimed achievement, pointing out that Idaho is going backwards in the feigned attempt to “cover the uninsured”: While there may be 76,000 Idahoans now bound to an ObamaCare policy – some 105,000 Idahoans have lost their insurance. Only people in government could celebrate the apparent net loss of some 30,000 Idahoans’ access to affordable health care as a “good” thing, particularly when the ostensible goal of the whole enterprise is to help people get insurance.

Fulcher also points out that premiums are beginning to rise, and businesses are facing more perilous operating costs at a time of economic stagnation.

But Fulcher missed one of the darkest aspects of the Idaho ObamaCare Exchange: abortion access is easier and likely expanding because of the Obama Mandate now being peddled by Idahoans for Idahoans.

The policies being sold the “Idaho” Exchange require the purchase of insurance coverage for abortion causing drugs like “Plan B” and Ella.

As we warned during the legislature’s consideration of Governor Otter’s proposal to partner with President Obama, Idaho has become complicit in the evil spewing forth from the Obama Regime. Employers must now provide these drugs, and the state of Idaho is intimately involved.

To make matters worse: We learned late in the last session that you and I – as taxpayers – are being forced to pay for these drugs as part of the group insurance plan covering public employees.

This is the direct result of the Legislature’s failure in 2013 to adopt our Religious Liberty Amendment, which would have protected employers from being forced to pay for abortion-causing drugs.

Granted, Otter is correct when he says that this would be happening anyway through a pure federal insurance exchange. The difference is that Idaho would not be morally compromised by this situation. And sometimes the only choice available to us is to refuse to cooperate with evil.

Which brings us back to the celebrations surrounding the apparent success of the Idaho ObamaCare Exchange: These people are now deeply invested in making this work, in imposing the new federal rules on Idaho families and employers. It is impossible to imagine that they could ever be persuaded to blow the thing up if we ever succeed at freeing ourselves from ObamaCare.

State Treasurer Ron Crane does not have a contested primary this spring, but a word about his fine public service is in order.

Crane has served Idaho for decades, going back to his many days in the Idaho House of Representatives.  He was a leader of conservative forces then, and continues so today.  Crane was one of the very first legislators to receive our “Friend for Life” Award in 1998 for his leadership in securing a Ban on Partial Abortions in Idaho.

Over the past several years, Crane has endured some rather unseemly sniping from anonymous Republican legislators pursuing an agenda yet to be revealed.  They have tried to insinuate that Crane is somehow incompetent or even unethical.  After the headlines appear in liberal media outlets, the facts regarding various allegations never seem to garner the same attention.

Be sure of one thing: Crane is a hardworking, highly ethical public official who has done well by the citizens who have seen fit to re-hire several times as State Treasurer.  We have no doubt they will do so again this year, as he will face one Democrat or another this fall.

While we certainly endorse Crane’s re-election, this posting is not so much an endorsement as it is a public “thank you” for his many years of conservative leadership.

Our friends at Operation Rescue have been digging into the documents filed by Planned Parenthood in its lawsuit to block the new Texas law requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.  Apparently the huge Abortion Chain revealed that it was aware of some 210 Texas women and girls admitted annually to hospitals because of complications arising from abortions performed at their own clinics. 

This tidbit is highly significant.  It is, of course, very difficult to come by data relating to the medical histories and complications of women undergoing abortion.  In addition to the standard protections surrounding patient privacy, there is a huge wall of secrecy erected by federal courts to safeguard the so-called “right to abortion” and to shield women from any possible social stigma related to their decision to end their babies’ lives.

Operation Rescue extrapolated the data to find that perhaps 1000 Texas women are hospitalized across the state because of problems associated with botched abortions.  Each year.

That is a rather staggering piece of data, and would seem to put the lie to the notion that legalized, mechanized destruction of preborn children is somehow “safe” and free from physical and emotional consequence.

The rate of complications for chemical abortions – using RU-486 – is many times higher than that of surgical abortion.

Operation Rescue goes on to project that if the Texas experience is applied to all 50 states, American women could be suffering terrible health consequences as a result of legalized abortions.  They believe it is likely that tens of thousands of women and girls – each year – could be rushing to emergency rooms and hospitals as a result of submitting to the deceptions of Planned Parenthood.

As a friend of our used to say, abortion is no favor to women.

To read the complete report, check out LifeNews .

A woman died in an Italian hospital last from cardiac arrest after taking RU-486 to terminate her baby’s life.  According to LifeNews, doctors were unable to revive her.

What makes this story particularly important is the fact that Italian law requires such abortions to be conducted under direct doctoral supervision.  And, at least in this case, the woman was given the two-pill regimen at the hospital.  One of the physicians involved claimed that the woman underwent two separate ultrasounds on each of her visits for the drugs. 

Planned Parenthood has been advocating for the right to dispense RU-486 over the internet without any direct medical examination or supervision.

Four hours after receiving the second drug – designed to cause labor so the dead baby will be ejected from the womb –  the Italian womb complained that she was having a hard time breathing.  Then her heart began to beat irregularly.  Just moments later, her heart stopped.  The woman was only 37.

LifeNews also reports that some 2 million American babies have been destroyed via RU-486 since Bill Clinton approved the drug for use in the United States in 2000.

The number of babies being chemically aborted continues to increase across the nation, as well as in Idaho.

We have been working for nearly twenty years in Idaho to end the horrific scourge of abortion.  That battle requires a ton of research and study to keep up with the complex evil of abortion and the innumerable ways it is corrupting our very civilization.

 But once in awhile, we are plain shocked by how far things have gone.

 The latest outrage comes from that once-upon-a-time bastion of Western Civilization and Christian values, Great Britain.  Not only has that nation helped lead the way toward a broad acceptance of abortion as an “ordinary” part of social interaction – we now learn that some in the medical industry have actually turned to burning the destroyed babies as a fuel source to heart their hospitals.

Numerous media outlets have reported that at least two hospitals in that nation use incinerated babies as a fuel for their “waste to energy” heating systems.

Once the Nazi-like practice became public, the Department of Health issued an order to ban the practice in clinics which are part of the National Health Service.  Health Minister Dr. Dan Poulter pronounced the practice “totally unacceptable”.

A British television station reports that they have documented more than 15,000 babies have been burned for their heat.  You can be sure that is but a small portion of the actual number.

This story is so far past outrageous that words become difficult.  Maybe words are the wrong response anyway.  Maybe we all need to pause and simply feel this closing darkness. 

Can there be any doubt, from a rational, objective perspective, that we are paying a horrific price to maintain the practice of legalized slaughter?  The long-ago predictions regarding the collateral damage to our souls and sensibilities is plainly evidenced by practices like the one uncovered in Great Britain.  Our devaluing of Life costs us all.