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Planned Parenthood and its affiliates have a few less clinics than they did five years ago, but a look at the organization’s recent efforts and activities show it has taken steps to ensure its abortion business stays busy even after Dobbs.  Dobbs is, of course, the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe in June of 2022 and made it possible for states to prohibit abortion and protect innocent unborn children from destruction.

Here’s an overview of what we found.

*In 2020, Planned Parenthood listed 641 clinics on its website, 388 of which performed abortion. While the overall count has dropped to 585, the number of abortion-offering clinics has risen to 398.

*Continuing a trend that goes back several years, many smaller affiliates with only a few clinics continue to be absorbed into larger, richer, more politically powerful affiliates, so that a lot of these larger affiliates now have operations covering multiple states.

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*By our count, there were 57 affiliates in 2020, but just 48 in 2025. (For the record, there were over a hundred as recently as 2010.)  Some were just several affiliates in a given state combining to form a larger state affiliate (e.g., becoming Planned Parenthood of Greater New York) but others joined affiliates on the other side of the country (e.g., Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky joined a large affiliate in the Northwest to become Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawai’i, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky).

Here’s the breakdown on the clinics.

The number of clinics would have been even smaller, but this time around, 45 of those 594 clinics are “virtual.” Virtual clinics are not brick-and-mortar buildings at a fixed address. They are some sort of interactive website where patients can log on or call up and chat with a clinician about their health issues, get prescriptions for contraceptives or even treatment for STDs (sexually transmitted diseases).

Many of these virtual clinics also offer abortion pills which can be prescribed and delivered by mail without a woman ever having to come in for an appointment or exam.

While just 159 of Planned Parenthood’s clinics perform surgical or “in clinic” abortions, nearly all (396) of Planned Parenthood’s abortion performing clinics offer chemical abortions with mifepristone. Notably, at least 70 advertise that they make the pills available to women up to 12 weeks LMP (pregnancy measured from a woman’s last menstrual period), which is two weeks past the government’s official authorized 10 week protocol.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) limited use of these drugs to 10 weeks LMP because complications to women increased and efficacy decreased with increasing gestational age, that is, the older the baby about to be killed.

The last five years reveals a subtle but significant change in how late chemical abortions are offered at Planned Parenthood. There seems to be a unified shift in the extension of how long Planned Parenthood clinics offer chemical abortion by at least a week across the country, despite there being no change from the FDA extending the cut-off.

For example, in 2020, 286 clinics offered chemical abortions at 10 weeks, with no clinics offering chemical abortions after 10 weeks. However, in 2025, 282 clinics now offer abortion at 11 weeks and, as referenced above, more than 70 clinics offering it at 12 weeks.

Most of the Planned Parenthood clinics that do surgical abortions advertise their willingness to do late abortions. In 2025, 113 clinics indicate they are willing to perform abortions at 14 weeks gestation or more; 58 say they’ll perform abortions of at least 19 weeks. A dozen say they’ll do them at 23 weeks plus. Four in California and one in Oregon advertise abortions at 24 weeks, and one in Illinois says they’ll even take women at 26 weeks!

We do not yet know how many abortions Planned Parenthood performed in 2025. But the number it reported in its 2022-2023 Annual Report would make it responsible for nearly 38% of abortions the Guttmacher Institute says were performed in the U.S. in 2023.

Fluctuations in the States

One might assume that most of the closing clinics were in the states with new protections in place for the unborn after Dobbs. This is not entirely correct.

A lot of “red states” (ones passing pro-life protections after Dobbs) did see the number of abortion performing  Planned Parenthood clinics in their states drop to zero – Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas. (Kentucky and Louisiana each had two Planned Parenthood clinics in both 2020 and 2025, but neither offered abortions in either of our measured years. North Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming either had no clinics previously or had a clinic that didn’t provide abortion in 2020 or 2025).

Planned Parenthood actually kept most of these clinics open after Dobbs, though, often as quasi “travel agencies” arranging for women to travel to affiliated clinics in other states which still legally performed abortions.

There were drops in the number of brick-and-mortar Planned Parenthood clinics in Indiana (-7), Texas (-5), Florida (-4). Idaho, Iowa (-2), Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Alabama (-1). However, the actual numbers of such clinics in other states that passed protections for the unborn – Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia – all stayed the same from 2020 to 2025.

At the same time, though, a few notoriously pro-abortion states also saw decreases in the number of clinics (or have announced shut downs by the summer of this year). Michigan will end up closing six clinics that were open in 2020, New York ten, Minnesota four, Connecticut two, and Alaska and Nevada one.

Some of these, of course, are now supplemented by virtual clinics ready to “pick up the slack” and offer services such as abortion that used to be available from clinics with physical locations. This is a clear sign that at least some affiliates are dealing with other issues such as management, staffing, budget or a dwindling customer base.

The numbers in a few states are complicated to interpret, perhaps because they initially sought to protect the unborn but saw those protections overturned by court decisions or referendums. For example, while Ohio saw its overall number of clinics drop by one, it added two new virtual clinics and actually added surgical and chemical abortion services to at least one clinic since 2020.

If one disregards the virtual clinics, only a handful of states actually added physical clinics between 2020 and 2025. They are Arkansas, California, Delaware, and Virginia. Arkansas, Delaware, and Virginia all added just one new brick-and-mortar site, though only the new clinics in Delaware and Virginia offered abortion.

Three of the four clinics California officially added were virtual, but the number of clinics in that state offering abortions rose by 14, a clear sign of abortion expansion. Most were clinics simply adding chemical abortion to their offerings, but there were two new surgical facilities added to California’s clinic list in 2025.

Several others similarly kept their clinic numbers largely the same, but increased their number of abortion-performing clinics, usually by the addition of chemical abortions.

Maryland and Maine both added chemical abortions to four clinics. Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington added three. Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Virginia added two. Kansas, New York, and Vermont added one. (Some of these involved the addition of a virtual clinic offering abortion pills.)

What these changes mean

All these changes together point not to an organization shutting down after Roe’s fall, but one adjusting to the new post-Dobbs reality.

The data appear to show Planned Parenthood keeping its abortion business going in two ways: (1) by keeping most old clinics in pro-life states open as travel agencies to send women to clinics in other states; and (2) by emphasizing chemical abortions, which require minimal staffing and facilities.

Planned Parenthood affiliates have expanded operations in states where abortion is still legal to handle more cases, especially at large centers near the border. Others have added customers by adding virtual clinics, prescribing abortion pills by webcam or phone and shipping pills to women’s homes so they never have to come to the clinic.

Though they continue to pursue legal challenges, Planned Parenthood does not appear to be performing abortions in states with the new protections. They will instead try and do what the law allows: send women to clinics in other states like California, Colorado, and Illinois, where there are no practical limits.

The rise of telemedicine that came with COVID and the ascendancy of abortion pills presented Planned Parenthood with both a challenge and an opportunity.

Women did not want to come into an old, dirty storefront clinic if they didn’t have to, and some of Planned Parenthood’s older clinics shuttered during the pandemic. But others adjusted and shifted some of their clients to virtual clinics, aided enormously by Biden-era deregulation of chemical abortion.

These new watered-down “safeguards” from Biden’s FDA authorized screening and prescription to be done online or by phone and allow pills to be mailed to women’s homes or made available for pickup from their local drugstore.

Many of the clinics that remain are large, modern mega-clinics, capable of handling large numbers of patients and hosting a busy virtual hub. So there may be fewer clinics overall and fewer low-level clinicians. This leaves a limited number of surgically trained abortionists to handle the later (more profitable) surgical cases at the bigger clinics and a handful of tech-savvy certified chemical abortionists to manage a lot of the virtual contacts.

There are overworked, underpaid staffers at the other clinics not happy with this top-heavy arrangement, but the organization considers it essential to Planned Parenthood’s ability to operate (NY Times 2/15/25).

Not to be missed is how this new financial arrangement and organizational model just happens to leave lots of money and staff for abortion advertising and advocacy.

Clearly, the abortion cause is still primary at Planned Parenthood. The organization’s motto is officially “Care. No Matter What,” but the data show it is more accurately “Abortion. No Matter What.”

LifeNews.com Note: Randall O’Bannon, Ph.D., is the director of education and research for the National Right to Life Committee.

The post Planned Parenthood Has Even More Centers Killing Babies in Abortions Than Ever Before appeared first on LifeNews.com.

This conversation took place on August 10, 2013 at the Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire, England

Ghislaine Maxwell and Carney's wife Diana were close friends.

See below- Mark Carney is a tax cheat.

by Jane Santos

(henrymakow.com)

Newly discovered photos show that Mark Carney spoke with notorious child trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, a recruiter for Jeffrey Epstein's depraved and notorious network of underaged victims and extremely wealthy and powerful men. 

Their conversation took place on August 10, 2013 at the Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire, England. 

Maxwell was later arrested in 2020, convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison. A set of photographs from the event was published by a British photography company at the time, and at least one of that set has been attributed to photographer Adrian Sherratt of Shutterstock, and was published by a major newspaper.

 It is likely that the same photographer shot all the photos from the set. None of the photos were created by A.I. technology, as they were all uploaded to the internet in 2013, long before such technology was invented, and none were altered. 

In a response from the Mark Carney campaign in January 2025 to photos that showed Carney with Maxwell, Carney's campaign stated that Maxwell was someone that Carney simply "bumped into" in "public settings" and that "they they are not friends." 

(Carney enjoys intimate moments with Epstein's arranger)

However, at the time, only a photo of Carney standing side-by-side with Maxwell and others was released by the mainstream media. Another newly discovered photo from the festival shows Carney laying on his hands and knees next to Maxwell, who is laying down on the grass with her back and arms on the ground in close proximity to Carney. 

The photo appeared in a 2013 article about the festival, and was taken by photographer Chris Eades of the BPPA (The British Press Photographers' Association). That is awfully close contact for someone that is simply "bumped into" in public settings. Perhaps it reflects a greater familiarity with Ghislaine Maxwell than Mark Carney wishes to admit to. 

Also of note is that Ghislaine Maxwell wore a tag that said "AAA Escort" at the festival, which according to a source familiar with such tags, allows anyone who wears one to walk anyone else into the backstage area and the green room. It's a VIP pass at the least, and at most, reflects that her role was to escort VIPs into backstage areas and anywhere else on the Festival grounds.

Several mainstream outlets, including The Daily Mail and The Standard, reported that Carney also stayed in the manor house that is located on the Wilderness Festival grounds, which is also where the owner of the festival (Lady Rotherwick) lives. Lady Rotherwick is also the sister of Mark Carney's wife. 

An article about the festival mentions only one special guest in attendance, besides the musicians and other performers, and that was Mark Carney.

A few months prior to this in November 2012, Carney had been appointed the Governor of the Bank of England, a very prestigious and powerful job. Interestingly, Lady Rotherwick said in an interview regarding the festival that "I have got hundreds of people camping on my lawn and the house will be chock-a-block." 

The British term "chock-a-block" is defined as "very full of people or things" according to the Cambridge Dictionary. Was Lady Rotherwick too busy to escort Carney to his room in her very full home?

Since Maxwell was wearing the VIP Escort badge, was she assigned by Lady Rotherwick to escort the VIP Mark Carney around the grounds, making sure he makes the appropriate stops, and bringing him to his bedroom in Lady Rotherwick's large house? 

The Carney campaign has stated that Lady Rotherwick "went to the same high school" with Ghislaine Maxwell but "are not friends," while on the hand, the British celebrity gossip publication The Tatler claims that Maxwell and Rotherwick are in fact old friends, even considering the possibility that Maxwell went into hiding at Rotherwick's home at one point. 

It would therefore only make sense that Lady Rotherwick would only trust a good friend to escort her VIP with full access to her entire grounds including her private home and to escort Mark Carney around the festival and to the house. The Tatler also claims that Jeffrey Epstein himself attended the first Wilderness Festival with Ghislaine Maxwell a couple years prior in 2011 and paid the bills. 

Did Maxwell have a room in the home as well in 2013, since the home was full of people, and did Epstein pay those bills again, and was Maxwell travelling with Carney and his wife, and did Epstein pay those bills as well?

It should be noted that Ghislaine Maxwell's modus operandi was to send underage girls to perform illicit acts for high-profile, powerful people. 

The most famous of which was Prince Andrew, the second-eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II. Prince Andrew's underaged victim filed a lawsuit, which was settled in February 2022 with Prince Andrew paying an undisclosed amount to her. 

According to the underaged victim, Maxwell simply told her to "do for (Prince Andrew) what you do for Epstein" and Jeffrey Epstein paid her $15,000 to do so. Epstein refused to answer questions over whether he attempted to blackmail Prince Andrew, according to court documents. 

But Epstein was not present during the first time that Prince Andrew abused and exploited the underaged victim, according to the victim, and that abuse actually took place in England at Maxwell's home, where the infamous photo of the three was taken. That was Maxwell executing a plan from start to finish, with likely involvement from Epstein.

The pressing questions for Mark Carney therefore ought to be: 1) What did you talk about with Ghislaine Maxwell? 

2) Did she escort you anywhere, and if so, did she escort you to your bedroom?

3) Did she try to compromise you in any way, shape or form, and was she successful?

--

Related- Ezra Levant - BREAKING: I followed the trail of Mark Carney's money-laundering scheme

I thought it was eye-opening to see how casually the man who was "selected" to become our prime minister, engages in unethical tax-dodging for his well-connected friends.

https://www.rebelnews.com/breaking_i_followed_the_trail_of_mark_carney_s_money_laundering_scheme

"That's why I'm here: because two and a half years ago Mark Carney set up a shell company to avoid paying taxes in Canada. The Isle of Man has very few taxes -- no capitals gains tax, no inheritance tax, no wealth tax. Income tax is just 22%. Corporate taxes are 10% or less.

But the Isle of Man does something more important: it allows oligarchs from around the world to pay taxes on their global income to the Isle of Man. So they can operate around the world, but choose to pay a fraction of their real tax obligation in the Isle of Man."

--

James Corbett-- "Meet Mark Carney, Globalist Insider":

https://corbettreport.com/meet-mark-carney-globalist-insider/

As Planned Parenthood faces growing scrutiny over patient safety and service quality, a surge of political advertising seeks to shield the organization while targeting pro-life lawmakers.

The ads, backed by Reproductive Rights for All (formerly NARAL), attempt to portray legislative efforts to defund abortion providers as attacks on women’s health care, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America reported.

“These ads peddle false claims about defunding Big Abortion chains like Planned Parenthood,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “They want the viewer to believe defunding abortion businesses would cut benefits to women. Nothing is further than the truth.”

Dannenfelser emphasized that ongoing pro-life efforts to shift taxpayer funding do not reduce women’s health benefits but instead aim to redirect resources away from abortion providers and toward federally qualified community health centers, which she noted “outnumber Planned Parenthood by 15 to 1.”

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The political spin comes as new revelations spotlight Planned Parenthood’s declining health care services and troubling operational practices. A recent New York Times exposé detailed unsanitary and negligent conditions, including a facility in Nebraska where a sewage leak lasted several days, making women vomit from the stench. Other documented incidents include the implantation of an IUD in a woman who was unknowingly pregnant — resulting in a stillbirth — in Nebraska and the use of moldy medical equipment in Missouri.

“But if the unsanitary conditions revealed by the New York Times aren’t enough, consider this: while Planned Parenthood’s government money has gone up, their contraceptive and cancer screening services have plummeted,” Dannenfelser added. “The services that have gone up are abortion, gender transitions and political campaigns to defeat Donald Trump and Republicans.”

Katie Glenn Danel, director of legal affairs and policy counsel at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, criticized Planned Parenthood’s current trajectory.

“Planned Parenthood is an abortion business, not a health care provider,” she said.

Danel pointed to data showing a 43% increase in taxpayer funding since 2010, while services such as cancer screenings, breast exams, and pap smears have dropped by more than 70%.

“Women deserve quality, comprehensive care,” Danel continued, later adding, “Americans will no longer subsidize the industry that endangers women, kills unborn children and spends millions to elect woke politicians.”

The post Abortion Activists Say You Hate Women if You Don’t Want Your Tax Money to Fund Abortions appeared first on LifeNews.com.

A new report from the Guttmacher Institute, a longtime advocate for legally unlimited abortion, estimates that total U.S. abortions increased in 2024. The report covers the more than two-thirds of states that have not revived or enacted pro-life laws in the wake of the June 2022 Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Altogether, using a combination of survey samples of abortion facilities and historical methods, Guttmacher concluded that some 1,038,100 abortions took place in 2024, a little less than 1% more than occurred in 2023.

Scholar and statistician Michael New has responded to the data and noted that, given its methodology of sampling and historical estimation, it should be greeted with some skepticism. It would be better reported, as the details show, as a range rather than a concrete number in which there is great confidence. Over the decades, Guttmacher has relied on a triennial system of securing data directly from as many of the nation’s abortion facilities as it could reach. These reports are more accurate and detailed than what Guttmacher calls its Monthly Abortion Provision Study (MAPS). There is value in getting data much more rapidly than the triennial scheme allowed, but New’s caution is well taken. The core problem remains with the U.S. system of data collection on abortion, which relies on voluntary reporting at the national level and a patchwork of state policies under which major states with ultra-permissive policies do not collect and report their data in any public forum.

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Still, there is enough information in the Guttmacher report to spur sober reflection. First, it’s clear that the Supreme Court decision to reverse Roe v. Wade did not result in a major reduction in the incidence of abortion in the United States. Only a handful of countries in the world have a collection of regional/provincial/state governments, and likewise only a handful of countries have abortion policies as permissive as the United States.

Second, the changing landscape of abortion provision, which is shifting from an in-clinic experience to at-home measures, has driven increases in reported abortions that began well before the Dobbs ruling. Total abortions have been increasing in the United States ever since its lowest tally in 2017. Perhaps the biggest factor driving change has been the relaxation and non-enforcement of limits with respect to the distribution of abortion drugs, which have migrated from a wide variety of regulations to ensure physician supervision to today’s system of mail-order abortion without significant tracking of physical and emotional impacts on women.

Changes in state policy continue to play a key role as well. The Guttmacher MAPS report notes that six states led the way with significant increases in abortion incidence in 2024: Wisconsin, Arizona, California, Kansas, Ohio, and Virginia. California has gone out of its way to make itself an abortion destination, while other states have seen liberalizing trends through legislative enactment, ballot initiative, or judicial decree. Abortions in Wisconsin, for example, increased from 1,300 in 2023 when a pro-life law was in effect to 6,100 in 2024 after a Dane County Circuit Court held that an 1849 Wisconsin law prohibiting abortion was limited to assaults by third parties and did not apply to a woman consenting to the procedure. Rhode Island offers another example. Abortions increased in the Ocean State by 20% in 2024 after the state decided to publicly fund them.

Meanwhile, several states that have revived or enacted protections for the unborn saw their in-state abortion rates and numbers decline. Guttmacher focuses on South Carolina and Florida, each of which has enacted a law limiting abortion early in pregnancy. For 2024, abortions declined by 12,100 in Florida where a six-week “heartbeat” bill was passed and then ratified by popular vote under the leadership of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis. In South Carolina, abortions declined by 3,500 after the state’s six-week heartbeat law was upheld by the state supreme court in August 2023, again spearheaded by a governor, Henry McMaster (R). How many abortions these laws ultimately averted is difficult to assess given the number of abortions taking place in liberal jurisdictions on out-of-state residents and the willingness of abortion suppliers to ship drugs across state lines in defiance of the receiving states’ pro-life laws.

The number of abortions carried out on women and girls from out of state is substantial — an estimated 155,000 in 2024, which would constitute roughly 15% of total U.S. abortions. This number is down slightly from 2023. To give a sense of its scope, a full 71% of abortions in Kansas are carried out on non-residents. The percentage is 69% in New Mexico, 39% in Illinois, and 36% in North Carolina. In terms of abortions arranged online and carried out in pro-life states using state laws in an attempt to conceal or protect the supplier, a separate study by the Society for Family Planning (SFP) tallied 34,500 abortions carried out this way in the first half of 2024 alone.

Clearly, understanding and assessing changes like these, which are rapid and historically unprecedented, is a matter of vital public interest. Abortion policy has been plagued for decades by misreporting and underreporting. Innate problems like the disjunction between where abortions occur and where injured mothers are treated, often not the same medical site, have always been present and are now aggravated by the advent of abortion drugs taken at home and often at great distance from medical aid. National abortion reporting, as noted above, misses hundreds of thousands of abortions per year and collects limited data. Some states’ reporting practices are deteriorating even as others are not collected in the first place (e.g., California, Maryland, New Hampshire). In New Jersey, only hospitals and certified ambulatory surgical centers are required to report abortions to state health officials, leaving researchers to rely on estimates rather than hard data.

Proposals to strengthen abortion reporting via making data collection mandatory have not made much headway, but in their absence, the best source of data will remain estimates created by groups that advocate for legal abortion. Abortion is a practice that, like many other issues fraught with public policy and social concerns, tends to draw the interest of analysts who are motivated by ethical considerations. Researchers from the Guttmacher Institute to ANSIRH to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, and more besides, take a view on their subject matter and debate among themselves about their methods and findings. This is as it should be. This is also why on such a critical issue, public bodies without institutional stances should be tasked with and fully funded to identify and gather information from the appropriate sources. This is especially vital in our federal system, where state health bodies are charged with gathering data and no national health system exists to provide a single source of basic information. International studies illuminate many questions better than U.S. bodies, but the American way of handling large datasets can be dramatically improved.

The Norman-Ernst Ensuring Accurate and Complete Abortion Data Reporting Act, introduced in January, would serve this goal by making certain federal family planning funding for the states contingent on their timely filing of abortion data with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). As a press release accompanying the introduction of the bill stated, “The American taxpayer continues to fund family planning programs despite having little understanding of how effective those programs are at reducing the number of abortions throughout the country. If all states were to submit accurate abortion data to the CDC, lawmakers would be better informed on family planning policy decisions and Medicaid funding for those programs could be more suitably allocated.” The bill (S.178/H.R. 627) identifies 10 areas where data should be supplied to the CDC, a list that should continue to be refined and developed as new issues emerge in this area of public policy.

In the meantime, the well-being of children in the womb and the health of mothers are being compromised daily by the decreasing quality and comprehensiveness of data collection and by politically motivated attacks on science and statistical research. Ironically, the more controversial a subject is intrinsically, the more likely it is to spur advocates of one stripe or another to scorn and even censor studies and findings with which they take issue.

Whether the topic is COVID, climate change, nutrition, or abortion, issues on which the data and the debates should be free flowing, the more some partisans strain to suppress alternative views. Receiving the Robert Zimmer Medal from the American Academy of Science & Letters last October, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya summed up the situation well, saying, “During pandemics, the public depends on experts to share their expertise openly without fear or favor and to speak their minds openly about their scientific and policy evaluations.” The same should hold true for what is, on a worldwide scale, a pandemic of disrespect for the most vulnerable human lives.

LifeNews Note: Chuck Donovan is a 50-year veteran of the national debate over the right to life and served from 1981-89 as a writer in the Reagan White House.He is the former Executive Vice President of Family Research Council.

The post Over 1 Million Babies are Killed in Abortions a Year. When Will This End? appeared first on LifeNews.com.

We recently reported on our unsettling discovery that Biden’s Army had been instructing Fort Bragg (formerly Fort Liberty under the Biden Administration) trainees that pro-life Americans were domestic terrorists as far back as 2011. We also learned that the Biden Army’s investigator had essentially covered up the shocking actions with a report containing demonstrably inaccurate claims and even contradicted itself.

As promised, we’ve just sent a letter to President Trump’s new military leadership, specifically Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll, bringing our critical findings to their attention – and respectfully urging them to take action to weed out this nonsense from our military training doctrine. This is the only way to make things right for our client and all pro-life Americans.

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Last year, we sent a demand letter to Biden’s Army Secretary, and the response we received, along with what the Army’s then-leadership told Congress, would have been enough of a win – if it had been true and complete. We have now confirmed that it was not.

Our legal instincts told us to look deeper. Sure enough, the need for our letter to Secretary Hegseth became evident after we reviewed the records acquired through our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. This trove of documents clearly showed that the Biden Army’s “PR” talking point, that an unvetted PowerPoint slide slipped into the presentation, was knowingly false.

They had claimed that it was simply a matter of a wrong “title” (“Terrorist Groups”) being placed on the slide displaying the “Choose Life” license plate image and pro-life organizations’ logos, including that of our client Operation Rescue.

But now, we know that their own investigation revealed that the training, which soldiers described in sworn statements, came across like “teaching doctrine” and had targeted pro-life Americans for almost 15 years. Our client’s (Operation Rescue) logo has been included since at least 2017, and slides targeting pro-lifers generally as terrorists have been included since at least 2011. But amazingly, the investigator assessed that it was simply a “mistake.” A 15-year mistake? As we summarized:

The investigation report concluded that “Labelling the slide ‘Terrorist Groups’ was a mistake” instead of recognizing that pro-lifers should not have been included in the entire “Terrorism Awareness” presentation in the first place. This is far more egregious than simply stating that the title of one slide was a “mistake,” as the entire training was about terrorism. Further, the conclusion that the labeling of that slide was a “mistake” is unsupported by a shred of evidence in the investigation file. The attempt to brush this under the rug is glaring.

It was no mistake. True to its typical swamp-like bureaucratic form, “woke” and Leftist ideologues intentionally used Army resources and a captive audience to indoctrinate soldiers to hold the view that pro-lifers are terrorists and that millions of pro-life Americans are a threat to security. And even that “Choose Life” license plates issued by 33 states (including North Carolina, where Fort Bragg sits) are evidence of terrorist threats. Planned Parenthood must be pleased.

This insanity must end. While Biden’s Army assured everyone that the problem had been corrected, we simply don’t believe them. What we discovered through our FOIA request confirmed our suspicion. And that’s why we just wrote to Secretary Hegseth and Secretary Driscoll. They are now in a position to bring this to a resolution and make this right. We are hopeful because they’ve demonstrated the desire to free America’s fighting forces from this Leftist nonsense.

As we said in our letter, “Given your clear stand and demonstrated record of calling out and opposing all ‘woke’ Leftist/Marxist ideology and propaganda from our Nation’s great fighting forces, we are hopeful you will see this matter as worthy of your attention and action.” We specifically made these requests:

• To direct the Army to issue a meaningful direct apology to our client, Operation Rescue, and its Director, Troy Newman, for the wrongful actions committed by the Army under the prior Biden Administration.
• To make a public statement, or at least one addressed to all trainees, that the United States military considers pro-life Americans and organizations neither terrorists nor extremists, that all prior training to the contrary is false, along with a direction that any such training or propaganda be removed and reported to appropriate Army personnel.
• To direct, forthwith, the immediate production of all remaining Army records concerning this subject, including, but not limited to, the Exhibits in the investigation file we have obtained.
• To address Congress’ concerns by issuing a new statement that rectifies and replaces the prior misleading representations.

We look forward to working with our military’s new leadership, one that is reimplementing dominant warfighting as its institutional goal, not woke indoctrination and social science experiments on soldiers at the Constitution’s expense. We’ll keep you updated on our progress.

LifeNews Note: Jordan Sekulow is the Executive Director of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).

The post Hegseth Asked to Ensure Army Training Program Never Calls Pro-Life Americans “Terrorists” Again appeared first on LifeNews.com.

National Right to Life deeply mourns the passing of David N. O’Steen, Ph. D., who led the organization from 1984 to 2022.

“There are likely millions alive today because of Dr. David O’Steen’s influence and guidance,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life. “He was a humble man known for his quiet and devoted leadership, but he is a giant among those who have dedicated their lives to protecting the right to life. He will be grievously missed.”

Under Dr. O’Steen’s leadership, National Right to Life developed model legislation and spearheaded the passage of protective legislative measures such as the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, the Unborn Victims of Vilence Act, and the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act.

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“Dr. O’Steen dedicated his life to protecting the unborn, the medically vulnerable, and the elderly,” said Tobias. “He will be remembered for his unwavering commitment.

Dr. David N. O’Steen was born in Greensboro, North Carolina and received his bachelor’s degree from Guilford College. He earned a master’s degree from the University of Georgia and received his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Houston.

Dr. O’Steen was a professor of mathematics and later became department chairman at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minnesota. While in Duluth, he led the Duluth chapter of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL). A brilliant mathematician, in 1975, David made the personal sacrifice of leaving academics to become the executive director of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life.

In 1984, Dr. O’Steen became executive director of National Right to Life, a position he held until December 2022. Dr. O’Steen retired from his role as National Right to Life’s Senior Advisor in January 2024.

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Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a self-professed “Catholic” whose vocal support for abortion has long drawn criticism from pro-life advocates,  has been selected to attend the funeral of Pope Francis. Pelosi appears to have been selected by Congressional Democrat leaders.

Pelosi’s selection will undoubtedly spark renewed debate over her standing within the Catholic Church. The decision comes despite her own bishop, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, barring her from receiving Holy Communion in 2022 due to her unwavering advocacy for abortion on demand.

The Vatican, which typically defers to governments on such delegations, has not commented on the decision.

Pelosi, 85, has been a polarizing figure in Catholic circles for decades.

While she frequently cites her faith as a guiding force in her political career, her consistent defense of abortion and infanticide has put her at odds with Catholic teaching, which holds that life begins at conception and that abortion is a grave moral evil.

In May 2022, Archbishop Cordileone issued a public letter declaring that Pelosi was not to be admitted to Communion unless she publicly repudiated her pro-abortion stance. The decision followed years of dialogue between the archbishop and Pelosi, during which Cordileone urged her to align her public positions with Church doctrine.

Archbishop Cordileone reminded Pelosi in the letter: “The Church’s ancient and consistent teaching that ‘from the first moment of conception life must be guarded with the greatest care while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable crimes.’”

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He continued, “A Catholic legislator who supports procured abortion, after knowing the teaching of the Church, commits a manifestly grave sin which is a cause of most serious scandal to others.”

He then cited Canon 915 from the Catholic Code of Canon Law, writing: “Therefore, universal Church law provides that such persons ‘are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.’”

Pelosi eventually bragged about receiving communion elsewhere despite her pro-abortion record.

Pelosi told NCR, “I received Communion anyway. That’s his problem, not mine. My Catholic faith is, Christ is my savior. It has nothing to do with the bishops.”

Her remarks were met with outrage from pro-life groups, who accused her of flouting Church authority while claiming a Catholic identity.

When in Washington D.C., Pelosi regularly attends Holy Trinity Parish in Georgetown and she and other pro-abortion Catholic politicians frequently receive communion there because that church has a liberal position on communion and abortion.

In 2019, Pelosi met with Pope Francis during a congressional trip to Italy, where she received a papal blessing and attended Mass at the Vatican. The meeting drew criticism from pro-life Catholics, who noted that the Vatican did not address her abortion advocacy.

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Melinda French Gates said she experienced “almost a crisis of faith” before embracing a pro-contraception stance, citing a “very liberal” priest as a key influence in her decision to diverge from Catholic teaching.

In an April 17 interview on The Jamie Kern Lima Show, the philanthropist and co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation described how her travels to underserved areas exposed her to families living without contraceptives, People reported. Gates recounted hearing from women who experienced pregnancies in rapid succession — some of which led to the loss of a child or even the mother’s death.

“[T]hey would talk about children,” she said, according to People. “And both the men and the women knew that when they could space the births of those children, they were better off.”

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Gates said those stories prompted a personal spiritual conflict.

“I started to realize, I believe in life. I believe in these children’s lives. The worthiness of them, the inherent beauty on the day they’re born,” she said. “But because of a man-made rule in the church that I am in — the Catholic church — we’re not allowing women to have access to contraceptives. And so talk about an incongruency, right? And I had to really then reckon with my faith.”

She described her struggle as “almost a crisis of faith” and turned to scholars at Notre Dame to better understand Church teaching.

Her perspective shifted, she said, after reading the writings of Father Richard Rohr — whom she inaccurately described as a Jesuit. Fr. Rohr is a Franciscan friar and author widely known for promoting progressive theology and spirituality, including positions that diverge from the Magisterium.

“I need to actually unlearn some of these things,” Gates said, “because I can’t square the circle.”

Gates said she ultimately concluded that she believes “in the dignity of life” but felt compelled to speak publicly in support of contraception, believing she had a responsibility to use her platform to advocate for what she called “a tool” for women.

LifeNews Note: Rachel Quackenbush writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.

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As part of its border strategy, the administration deported Venezuelan migrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador, claiming the deportees were Tren de Aragua gang members. Because of the nature of gang documentation, the claim that they are all violent gang members is dubious. The policy is more than a legal civil liberties nightmare; it is strategically ill-advised. Deporting suspected gang members will not stop gangs. Transnational gangs are a serious problem, but there is a better way to deal with them.

Many have heard of the MS-13 gang because of its penchant for violence. Few, however, know that MS-13 was a small crew for much of its early history before becoming one of the largest criminal enterprises in the world. How did this happen?

Researchers have argued that immigration reforms in the mid-1990s had the unintended consequence of spreading criminal networks. University of California, San Diego, anthropology professor Elana Zilberg made the observation in her book “Space of Detention” that America’s policy of deporting Salvadoran youth contributed to the spread of MS-13. The gang was born in Los Angeles, but it flourished in Central America only after the United States shipped its members back to unstable countries with policies that exacerbated gangs. Rather than eliminating MS-13, the problem was exported, and then it boomeranged back even stronger to the United States.

President Trump is poised to repeat the same mistake. In his first term, Trump “pointed the finger” at President Barack Obama, suggesting that Obama’s “open-door immigration” was responsible for MS-13 prominence. However, the gang’s size and strength were established before Obama, and the argument does not explain MS-13’s success in other countries.

A key flaw in Trump’s approach and America’s handling of gangs is the belief that harsher punishments prevent gang activity. While deterrents are needed, gangs are fundamentally different from typical petty criminals.

In 2019, Erin Yoshino of the University of Southern California studied why harsher penalties for gang members are ineffective, finding that longer sentences do not deter crime and that people join gangs knowing full well that death is a possibility. Instead, incarceration can enhance respect and loyalty among gang members as they maintain control from jail. If threats of mortal danger or prison do not dissuade gang membership, a one-way flight to a Salvadoran prison is unlikely to do better.

People join gangs for various social reasons, such as feelings of belonging or a sense of protection, but they thrive and grow violent as money-making enterprises, primarily through the sale of illicit drugs. Steven Levitt, known for “Freakonomics,” researched how the allure of reaching the top is a strong motivator for drug dealers despite the perils and terrible working conditions. The potential rewards outweigh the risks of imprisonment or death for those who accept the job.

To dismantle transnational gangs, our policies must hit them where it truly stings: their wallets. Researchers know how to do this, but it has not been politically correct to talk about it because it is unpopular to acknowledge defeat, and cognitive bias keeps us from exploring research-backed but counterintuitive policies. 

To fight gangs, the strongest weapon is legalizing drugs to undercut their primary source of revenue. The decriminalization of cannabis in the United States has dealt a blow to Mexican cartels, resulting in lower crime rates and gang activity.

Scholars have understood this for decades. Several Nobel laureates have made it a point to publicly express that the war on drugs has failed, all while leading to corruption and violence.

People who advocate for drug prohibition often claim the moral high ground. This is understandable, but they are propping up what they claim to oppose in practice. It is the classic “Baptists and bootleggers” story: the moralists and the criminal profiteers are on the same team as they both want drugs to be illegal. The former claims moral victory, while the latter benefits from governments inadvertently creating lucrative black markets.

Social norms against iniquitous drug use should remain, but it is time to recognize the ineffectiveness of banging our heads against the wall regarding past “get tough” policies toward international drug gangs. The strategy of mass deportations will not stop gang violence. Strip the gangs of their profits. That’s how you defeat them.

Reprinted with permission from Independent Institute.

Is Trump’s plan to end the Ukraine conflict a dead letter on arrival? A ceasefire is not peace. Freezing the conflict does not address security issues. Washington provoked this conflict. This is why Trump’s attempt to mediate is doomed to fail.

CrossTalking with Daniel McAdams, Hall Gardner, and Alexandre Guerreiro.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est. This Latin phrase means “Of the dead nothing but good should be said.” Its origins, however, are not Latin, but Greek. It is attributed to Chilon of Sparta, whose Greek original is τὸν τεθνηκóτα μὴ κακολογεῖν. This is slightly different than the Latin translation, as the Greek says “let evil words not be spoken against the dead man.” The verb here is…

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