Planned Parenthood Sues Federal Government Over Public Funding

Last summer the Trump Administration announced it no longer would fund the Office of Adolescent Health’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program. According to recent news reports, Planned Parenthood has joined with eight other entities to sue the federal government, claiming roughly $220 million in federal grant money was wrongfully terminated.

The Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program began under President Obama in 2010 as a way to provide federal grant money for evidence-based programs designed to prevent teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Under the program, organizations — including Planned Parenthood — were able to apply for federal funds to facilitate these teen pregnancy prevention programs.

While a few of the programs promoted abstinence, most generally focused on contraceptives, and they turned out to be ineffective at best.

For example, Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest received $4 million in grant money to conduct a teen pregnancy prevention program. An official evaluation concluded,

After offering the program over nine months to middle and high school students during or after school, [youth who went through the program] were as likely as youth offered a four-hour alternative program, to report causing a pregnancy or becoming pregnant, having sexual intercourse, or having recent sexual intercourse without an effective method of birth control both immediately following the conclusion of the program, as well as in an assessment occurring 12 months later. . . . Immediately after the program, . . . females reported becoming pregnant at a higher rate than females receiving the alternative program.

In other words, not only was Planned Parenthood’s multi-million-dollar program ineffective; in some cases students who went through the program actually had higher pregnancy rates than students who did not.

Official reports show similar results elsewhere around the country. In 2016, researchers evaluating the different Teen Pregnancy Prevention programs determined most showed ineffective or inconclusive results, writing,

Many of the TPP evaluations saw positive impacts on measures such as knowledge and attitudes; however, these findings did not translate into positive behavioral changes.

We need to address teen pregnancy in America, but handing out federal tax dollars to abortion providers like Planned Parenthood simply is not the way to do it.

Photo Credit: By jordanuhl7 [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

New “Gerber Baby” Has Downs Syndrome

A few years ago baby food company Gerber began an annual campaign to find real-life “Gerber babies.”

Gerber selects a different baby each year who will act as the company’s “spokesbaby.”

This year’s Gerber baby is a one-year-old boy named Lucas. Lucas is unique in that he is the first Gerber baby to have Downs Syndrome.

Writing at Breakpoint.org, John Stonestreet says,

In most Western countries, including Iceland, France, and even the U.S., the vast majority of precious children with Down syndrome are targeted for extinction through selective abortion. Even more, this is considered a good thing by many in the press, and even more in the academy. Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer has infamously argued that parents be allowed to kill children with disabilities like Down syndrome even after they’re born.

Gerber’s choice sends a crucial message, that children with disabilities are just as valuable as any other child, and they often bring love into their homes, communities, and churches that’s second-to-none. So may Lucas be an ambassador, not just for Gerber, but for the joy that comes from welcoming all lives.

Unfortunately, as Stonestreet notes, unborn babies with Downs Syndrome and other genetic anomalies are targeted all-too-often for abortion.

However, there is good news. Last month Arkansas Senator Trent Garner (R — El Dorado) tweeted that he is drafting a bill to prohibit abortion in cases of Down Syndrome. Sen. Garner said he hopes the final version of the bill will include additional protections for unborn children with other genetic defects as well.

As John Stonestreet points out, human life is sacred, and every child has intrinsic worth and dignity. You can read his entire commentary here.

Ministers Blessing Murder

In January the Washington Post ran a story in its Acts of Faith section titled, “Clergy gather to bless one of the only U.S. clinics performing late-term abortions.”

The story highlights three ordained ministers and one retired rabbi who gathered at an infamous abortion clinic in Bethesda, Maryland to pray for the clinic and its staff.

Rev. Carlton Veazey prayed for the facility’s abortionists, saying, “may they always know that all that they do is for Thy glory.”

If that makes you sick, you aren’t alone. Nobody should say that taking the life of an unborn child glorifies God.

John Stonestreet at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview recently called these minister out, writing,

They’re not ministers of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. They’ve chosen to become priests and priestesses of Molech. They have rejected the Lord of Life who commands “let the little children come to me,” and instead offer the blood of slaughtered babies to the Father of Lies. Their ritual is child sacrifice, communion with death.

The Washington Post article tries to paint abortion as something morally ambiguous over which Christians are divided. But as we have written before, Christians have opposed abortion since the first century A.D.

Right now thousands of ministers and pro-life Christians are preparing to pray at abortion clinics all across the country, but they’re going to pray a very different kind of prayer from the one offered in Maryland last January.

They won’t be praying God’s blessings over abortion. They are going to pray that God would end abortion in America. They are going to pray that abortionists would turn to Christ and stop performing abortions. They are going to pray that abortion clinics would shut down and that pregnant mothers would choose life.

These prayer meetings are part of the upcoming 40 Days for Life effort. If you would like to know more about how you can pray against abortion, go to www.40DaysForLife.com.