Commentary

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a brief order today, denying an appeal of a 9th Circuit edict in a case dealing with Arizona’s Fetal Pain Law. The liberals managing the 9th Circuit had ruled in May of last year that Arizona’s law violated the U.S. Constitution and its hidden provision granting women the “right” to destroy their babies via abortion. Arizona appealed the 9th Circuit injunction to the Supreme Court, asking that it be allowed to enforce the state law which banned abortions after approximately 20 weeks’ gestation.

The Supreme Court’s inaction effectively allows the injunction to remain in place.

Today’s development means that Idaho’s Fetal Pain statute also remains unenforceable because Idaho is under the jurisdiction of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Proponents of the law had hoped that the Supreme Court would be more receptive to the law because of scientific research surrounding the baby’s development, as well as evidence showing that late-term abortions are more dangerous to a woman’s health. While the Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the Fetal Pain Law in Arizona, it does represent a set-back for the pro-Life movement.

Hopes for a reconsideration of the core issues rest with another appeals court circuit reaching a different conclusion than that derived by the 9th Circuit.

As we close the books on 2013, it is valuable to search for news of the blessings which may have missed our attention in an environment dominated by Barack Obama’s evil agenda for preborn children.

Let’s give thanks for the recent rulings by federal judges in New York and Houston rightly declaring Obama’s attempt to strip Americans of their Religious Liberties void. The president’s attempt to force employers to purchase baby-killing drugs for their employees is reeling, and we need to continue pressing the Lord for release from this heavy burden in 2014.

We give thanks also for the 10 Republican Senators, 1 Democrat Senator and 32 House Republicans who voted with us in the 2013 Session to amend Governor Otter’s Insurance Exchange so as to safeguard the religious liberties of Idahoans from the threat of Obama’s abortion mandate. While that effort was unsuccessful, we have hopes that the law can yet be amended or repealed.

Much of the past few weeks were dominated by the comments of the Senior Duck Man, Phil Robertson. He stood unapologetically on the Lord’s side in our culture wars. We celebrate the fact that the Lord stood with Robertson and moved His People to rise up against the cultural terrorists of the Left. They suffered their worst rebuff in many years. Perhaps all that anti-bullying media is beginning to bear fruit.

The Lord is due praise and thanks for bringing Star Parker into Idaho last month. It was one of our best Christmas Dinner celebrations, and she provided a spark of enthusiasm for the work ahead. And speaking of that dinner, it is important to acknowledge God’s grace in holding up this ministry during a tough year; we are still standing because of His loving mercy for preborn children and those who would defend them.

Pro-Lifers should also celebrate news that a record 87 Killing Centers shut their doors in 2013. Operation Rescue reports that the number of Abortuaries operating in America has been cut to 582. Looking back, that is a huge drop-off from the high of 2176 Abortuaries back in 1991.

And we declare a blessing the publication of a major new study exposing the connection between an abortion history and increased risks of contracting breast cancer. While the liberal press and Cancer Industry continues to suppress this information reaching women – we are confident that the Truth will win out.

Among the most encouraging news of 2013 was the decline of public support for both Barack Obama and his scheme to impose federal control of healthcare. It would seem the People have begun to awaken to threats and deceptions of ObamaCare – a trend we fully expect to continue into the new year.

We are hopeful about the year ahead. We look forward to seeing what the Lord will do to liberate His People from the oppression which seems to have spread across the nation. There is good reason to look forward to the ousting of Prince Harry from his Senate perch, and a modicum of sanity being restored to our nation’s capitol.

However that battle turns out, we pray the Lord’s protection and blessing upon you and your household!

And we ask for your prayer support as we prepare to wage battle in the 2014 Session of the Idaho Legislature.

As the nation pauses to celebrate the birth of our Savior, we at Idaho Chooses Life wish to offer our prayers for the Lord’s great blessing on your Christmas Celebration.

Christmas is the quintessential pro-Life event of the year. It is the story of great love, the story of humanity being saved by the littlest among us. The story of Mary’s acceptance of an unplanned pregnancy with open love has too many applications for our modern world and lessons for our selfish culture.

We would also like to take a moment to thank you for your support and encouragement.

May the Lord fill your home with His joy this Christmas Day.

This news update from Dustin Hurst over at Idaho Reporter:

Health centers around Idaho will receive an additional $275,000 to promote Obamacare throughout the state, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced.
The new cash pushes Idaho’s total federal aid for pushing the health care law to just more than $1.6 million. In July, the federal agency announced $1.38 million in grants to 11 Gem State health centers to help Idahoans enroll in the controversial program.
In the latest announcement, HHS said it expects health centers in Idaho to sign up more than 13,000 people for Obamacare.
Across the nation, the July grants cost taxpayer $150 million. This latest round of cash payments will cost $58 million.
“This investment means that health centers can provide expanded assistance for people in communities nationwide looking for resources to help them understand their insurance options and enroll in affordable coverage,” HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius said last week in a prepared statement.
Ben Domenech, a health policy expert with the Heartland Institute, told Watchdog.org earlier this year that the grants are nothing but public relations slush funds. “They’re going to use this money to hire Obamacare promoters, who will push people who come through their doors to sign up for taxpayer-subsidized coverage, whether through Medicaid, the CHIP or the (private insurance) exchanges,” he said.
Health care sign-ups, slowed by tech chaos at the federal level, stand at an anemic level in Idaho. According to report released earlier this month by HHS, just 1,730 Idaho residents have selected health plans through the state’s exchange website.

The Idaho Insurance Exchange, a creature of ObamaCare, reports that it has enrolled just 1730 as of the start of this month. That figure represents just 4.3% of the total expected.

What is not clear from the data released is how many new Medicaid applicants have been processed through the exchange apparatus created by Gov. Butch Otter. Look for substantial budget issues to emerge in the next legislative session as more welfare recipients swell state costs.

If the start-up costs of the Idaho Exchange are $20 million, we have a real bargain at work: Taxpayers have only spent $11,560 per Idaho ObamaCare recipient. Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to simply buy them an old insurance plan? At least those people would have received actual benefits. As it stands now, all that tax money has simply gone into building a new bureaucracy designed to “serve” the uninsured by imposing ObamaCare on the citizens of Idaho.

Ya gotta love government.

As we experience more of the unpleasant realities of the Affordable Care Act, Americans are questioning, finally, the forthrightness and honesty of their president in his selling of this law.
As millions of individual health insurance policies are cancelled, it is transparent that the president distorted the truth when he told Americans, “if you like your plan you can keep it.”

But misrepresentation goes beyond how a particular feature of the law was sold. It also applies to the selling of what this whole law was supposed to be about.

In a recent appearance at a synagogue in Dallas, President Obama summed up the supposed motivation in putting so much of the energy of his new administration behind passing this health care law. The bottom line, according to the president, was about making sure “that everybody had affordable, quality health care.”

Who, of any political stripe, would question the merits of this goal?

The problem is that the president is being as honest in stating that this was the goal of this health care law as he was in saying “if you like your plan you can keep it.”
The Supreme Court indicated this week that it would hear two cases of Christian-operated firms — Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Inc. — who claim their religious freedom is violated by provisions of Obamacare forcing businesses to provide employees, free of charge, contraceptives, sterilization and abortion-inducing pills.

How exactly does forcing businesses to pick up 100 percent of the costs of abortion-inducing pills for women employees reconcile with the alleged goal that all Americans get affordable, quality health care?
A White House blog about the cases written by Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett states, “Ensuring the full freedom of women as health care consumers to access preventative health services is a vital component of the Affordable Care Act.” And nothing is more “essential”, Jarrett goes on, than decisions regarding “reproductive health.”

In other words, to reconcile the words of Jarrett with those of her boss, the president, a “vital” and “essential” part of making sure that everybody gets “affordable, quality health care,” is giving women the “right” to do whatever they feel like regarding their sexual behavior, bearing zero personal responsibility for the costs associated with their behavior, and dumping those costs on someone else.
I hope you are scratching your head.

My experience with insurance plans is they lower premiums when customers demonstrate more responsible, cautious behavior — certainly not when they claim the right to act as they please and then have other people pick up the tab.

If you go onto the now-infamous healthcare.gov website, you can click on a section that says, “What are my preventive care benefits?” There appears a special section on “Preventive health services for women.”
Why is there no special section “Preventive health services for men?”

A 2010 newsletter from Harvard Medical School talks about the “gender gap” in health, saying that when it comes to health, “men are the weaker sex.”
Life expectancy for women is five years longer than for men. Of the top 10 leading causes of death in the U.S., the incidence among men is markedly higher than among women in nine of the 10.
You would think if the health care law was going to focus on gender, it would focus on men.

The answer to all of this is that Obamacare was never primarily about getting the best, most affordable health care to Americans. If it was, there would have been open discussion from the beginning about how best to achieve this. That open discussion never took place. This was and is about bringing the left-wing agenda of the Obama White House to America. The result is displacement of religious freedom with left-wing tyranny and the beginning of more expensive, lower-quality healthcare.

We pray that you and your loved ones enjoy a wonderful Thanksgiving Day.

This most American of holidays reminds us at once of our national heritage as well as the spiritual blessings we have inherited. Courageous souls launched upon a perilous journey in search of religious and economic liberty. The Pilgrims were heroic souls pursuing a dream of freedom. God richly blessed those efforts and our founders were wise and humble enough to recognize His provision.

America today faces many critical challenges, almost all of them related to our “forgetfulness” of those founding experiences. We fail to acknowledge God’s gifts, taking Him for granted. Our successes and creature comforts all too easily become our accomplishments, our right, our demand.

Let’s resolve today to work at remembering His provision and great kindness, as well as our profound national inheritance.

And may He continue to greatly bless your families on this day of Celebration!