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After one of the shortest conclaves in recent history, Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected the 267th successor to Saint Peter. He took the name Leo XIV.

During his first address, the Holy Father briefly explained his spiritual background, saying,

As we pray for the Holy Father, let us turn to the inspirational wisdom of his friend in heaven, Saint Augustine, Doctor of the Church:

Saint Augustine of Hippo is a magnificent saint in the Catholic Church.

As a theologian and philosopher, he laid the framework for the doctrine of original sin and salvation. He is also known for his miraculous conversion, detailed in one of his most notable works, “Confessions,” among many other writings that largely impacted Western Christianity as we know it today.

You can learn more about Saint Augustine here.

The corporate media is already spilling tons of ink to paint a picture of a pope and a U.S. president with nothing in common. Reports even goad Pope Leo XIV and President Donald Trump against each other. And to the pro-war ruling classes and their agents in the media, there’s an urgent reason to drive a wedge between the two men: They are almost totally aligned on the bedrock moral issue of our…

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I had a clairvoyant experience when I watched that Mass. It was cold outside at St. Peter’s Square and a bit windy. I thought to myself that the pope did not look well. I wondered if he had a death wish being out there in the cold. 

The next day, Pope Francis was admitted to the hospital and thus continued his journey to death and new life. 

On Friday, in a packed courtroom filled with family, supporters, and fellow pro-life sidewalk counselors, justice prevailed.

Zachary Knotts – joined by his wife, Lindsay – stood ready to defend himself against what had clearly become a politically motivated prosecution. After months of preparation and with unwavering resolve, the Knotts and their ACLJ legal team were fully prepared to face and defeat the charges stemming from a peaceful pro-life protest outside an abortion clinic in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

Instead, the government blinked.

As the trial began, prosecutors abruptly tried to change their theory of the case – an 11th-hour maneuver that amounted to rewriting the charges on the spot. We immediately objected to the bait-and-switch. The prosecution then tried to have the trial rescheduled for a later date. We held firm. Enough was enough. Zack had waited too long to have his day in court, and we weren’t going to allow the government to continue delaying this matter, which amounted to little more than a trumped-up noise ordinance violation. Our client had a right to a speedy trial to clear his name, and justice couldn’t wait another day.

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In the end, with a packed courtroom watching, the prosecution folded. They dismissed the charges entirely. But let’s be clear: This prosecution should never have been brought in the first place.

A Pattern of Harassment and Weaponized Law Enforcement

The facts are straightforward. On the morning of December 28, 2024, Zack and Lindsay Knotts stood peacefully on a public sidewalk outside the Northeast Ohio Women’s Center (NEOWC) abortion clinic to express their constitutionally protected, pro-life views. Like many sidewalk counselors across the country, they brought a megaphone, which the Supreme Court has called “indispensable instruments of effective political speech” in the modern era. The Knotts began peacefully speaking out against abortion and advocating for the lives of preborn children.

They were met by abortion clinic escorts using umbrellas, whistles, and kazoos to harass and drown out their message. These same escorts escalated their behavior, yelling threats like “Kiss a shotgun” and worse. After learning that Lindsay’s life was saved after her mother had considered an abortion, and she “should be dead,” an abortion escort snapped back: “We can fix that.”

Despite the vile and dangerous threats directed at the Knotts, the loud instruments, and the shouting, it was the Knotts who were targeted by the authorities. The Cuyahoga Falls Police Department, which had been present and witnessed much of the interaction, later responded to a supposed complaint – after Zack’s megaphone had already run out of batteries. Officers took a statement from only one person: a fellow CFPD officer moonlighting as private security for the abortion clinic. They ignored other witnesses, disregarded the Knotts’ video evidence, and failed to corroborate any claim against Zack.

Even more troubling, Sgt. Dobney – the lead officer – admitted he never personally witnessed Zack use the megaphone and that he’d relied on alleged “recordings” never shown to Zack or his counsel. That’s not right; government officials are prohibited from retaliation because of the exercise of protected speech. The facts made it clear: That’s exactly what happened.

Zack and Lindsay never left the public sidewalk. They never blocked access to the abortion clinic. They never threatened anyone. The same cannot be said for those who tried to silence them. What happened here wasn’t just a mistake – it was a warning shot to pro-lifers everywhere: Speak out, and we’ll come for you. But today’s dismissal shows what can happen when you refuse to back down.

This Isn’t Over: What You Can Do Now

We’re grateful that this bogus prosecution is finally behind the Knotts family. But the injustice they endured – months of uncertainty, possible fines, and stress for simply exercising their First Amendment rights – demands accountability.

We’re currently evaluating all available legal remedies, including filing a federal civil rights lawsuit. What happened to the Knotts wasn’t right, and that’s why we’re asking for your support to continue this battle in the federal courts. Government officials and law enforcement must be held accountable when they abuse their authority to punish protected speech.

The ACLJ will never stop fighting for the rights of pro-life Americans to speak the truth about abortion and defend the unborn – on sidewalks, in courts, and across the country.

LifeNews Note: Liam R. Harrell is Associate Counsel at the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) Washington, D.C., office.

The post Bogus Charges Dropped Against Pro-Life Father Who Protested at Abortion Clinic appeared first on LifeNews.com.

House Republicans seeking to end federal funding of abortion businesses received two enormous boosts to their efforts on Monday, as a legislative provision inched closer to adoption and Planned Parenthood released an annual report showing it received more taxpayer funding than any time in history. The report has pro-life experts telling The Washington Stand, “Planned Parenthood must be defunded.”

Planned Parenthood committed 402,230 abortions and received $792.2 million in taxpayer funding in 2024, according to its 2024 annual report, released Monday. Last year, U.S. taxpayers became Planned Parenthood’s largest financial contributor, supplying 39% of the organization’s $2 billion in revenue — up from 34% in the last report.

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“Planned Parenthood carries out over 1,100 abortions per day and receives over $2 million a day in taxpayer funding. This should absolutely disgust Americans. Our hard-earned dollars should not be going towards the slaughter of innocent unborn children. The federal government must end this horrific use of funds,” Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “It’s past time for Congress to say, ‘American taxpayers will not be forced to pad the wallets of Planned Parenthood executives while women receive shoddy treatment in unsanitary conditions and their unborn children are killed.’”

“Planned Parenthood must be defunded,” Szoch remarked.

Planned Parenthood had net revenue of $2 billion and ended the year with total net assets of $2.52 billion. More than a dozen Planned Parenthood executives make more money than Anthony Fauci. Yet financial data remain murky, co-mingling multiple years and not including all affiliates.

The report indicates a massive increase in both abortions and taxation extraction since last year. Planned Parenthood committed 392,712 abortions and received a $699.3 million in 2023. Taxpayers were “forced to give them a 13% increase in funding while most of America received only a 3 to 5% increase,” SFLAction President Kristan Hawkins told TWS via email. The abortion business carried out 374,155 abortions and received $670.4 million in taxpayer funding during its 2021-2022 fiscal year — itself an increase of 9,252 abortions over pre-Dobbs levels.

“Leave it to Planned Parenthood to reveal their billions of dollars in abortion income on the heels of Mother’s Day weekend,” observed American Life League (ALL) Director Katie Brown Xavios. Planned Parenthood’s actions “included 402,230 abortions, sex education for young children, cross sex hormone distribution, and of course, the distribution of the deadly abortion pill.” ALL noted the report did not specify the number of abortions carried out by telehealth medication abortion.

Planned Parenthood increased its promotion of transgender procedures, primarily cross-sex hormone injections, introducing “Virtual Health Centers” at 23 Planned Parenthood affiliates. But as it did last year, Planned Parenthood lumped in the number of “transgender services” with “other procedures,” which fell dramatically to 77,858 from 177,237 in the 2023 report.

At least one Planned Parenthood affiliate has begun advertising transgender surgeries. “Planned Parenthood also offers some gender affirming surgeries to patients in the St. Louis area and refers to other providers when needed,” proclaims Planned Parenthood Great Rivers (PPGR) in Missouri.

“For yet another year, pregnant women seeking help at Planned Parenthood are sold an abortion 97% of the time, while prenatal services, miscarriage care and adoption referrals make up a minuscule minority of the options they offer. Meanwhile their priorities include their assault on parental rights, transgender ‘treatments’ and political spending to defeat Republicans,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America told TWS. “This report heightens the urgency to defund Big Abortion and stop forcing taxpayers to fund an industry that destroys unborn lives and preys on women and girls.”

Planned Parenthood employs 90 “patient navigators” whose actions “potentially break laws in pro-life states,” noted SFLAction.

Yet the “health care provider” reduced its health care services sharply since last year: Cancer screenings decreased 8.1%, pap tests fell 12.3%, and primary care visits declined by 13.7%, according to Michael New, a professor at The Catholic University of America.

Planned Parenthood: Undergoing STI Testing Is a Time of ‘Hope’

The nation’s largest abortion business styled its work as inspiring hope. “Every time a patient walks through the doors of a Planned Parenthood health center, it is an act of hope,” begins Planned Parenthood’s annual report. “Every time someone … goes with their partner for STI testing, they are filled with hope that the future they plan is possible.”

The report boasts of its ties to partisan political figures in the Democratic Party, noting Democrat Kamala Harris became the first sitting vice president to visit an abortion business, choosing a Minnesota Planned Parenthood. It vows to continue its activism “to educate people about sexual and reproductive health and rights” — a concept Planned Parenthood believes endows all American minors and illegal immigrants with the right to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand for any reason through all nine months of pregnancy, as well as transgender procedures.

Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson also vowed Planned Parenthood will continue to promote “abortion care” to “communities of color, low-income communities, those without documentation.” Her promise would cheer Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, a eugenicist who once attended a Ku Klux Klan rally. “That’s who Planned Parenthood is and who we’ll continue to be,” promised Johnson.

House Committee Moves to Defund Planned Parenthood

The report came as the House Energy and Commerce (E&C) Committee, chaired by Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), approved language to end federal funding to any entity that carries out abortions. On Monday, 183 legislators from almost every state urged Congress to defund Planned Parenthood.

“We commend our House Republican allies for working hard on a budget reconciliation process that finally gets taxpayers out of the abortion business and we encourage them to persevere,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America told TWS. “Now more than ever, we can hardly wait to see the ‘one big beautiful bill’ advance in Congress.”

Yet defunding efforts are reportedly opposed by Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Penn.), Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), and Jen Kiggans (R-Va.).

“Demanding that Americans prop up an organization that sells wrong-sex hormone treatments, that sterilizes minors, and that ends precious lives in the womb violates the consciences of many Americans,” Hawkins told TWS. “Planned Parenthood is a case study in how access to power equals wealth, and for those in the GOP who are inclined to support them, remember at election time they are coming for you!”

Until the bill passes, pro-life advocates vowed to fight on. “The fight isn’t over,” said an email sent Monday night by FRC Action, urging recipients to take action. “In fact, it’s really just begun.”

“As Congress looks to cut waste, fraud, and abuse, it’s high time that we end taxpayer funding of gender transition procedures and abortion providers,” says the FRC Action letter.

LifeNews Note: Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

The post Planned Parenthood Kills 1,100 Babies Every Day. Defund It Now appeared first on LifeNews.com.

A prominent Jewish restaurant in Berlin chose to celebrate Israel Day with a joke about the slaughter of Palestinians

A single, small, low-quality do-it-yourself poster recently displayed in the center of Germany’s capital Berlin has caused a minor scandal that has gone against the grain of the country’s usually unshakable support for Israel while the latter is committing genocide.

The essence of the incident is simple: in late April, the Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft (DIG) – “German-Israeli Society” – held one of its “Israel Days” in Berlin. In Germany, the DIG is a prominent and powerful organization. Its main source of funding, according to the country’s official lobbying register for 2023, is the German state. The latter’s Federal Agency for Civic Education – in essence, Germany’s office of Centrist ideological orthodoxy and indoctrination – describes it as the country’s “central organization […] where friends of Israel come together in non-partisan cooperation.”   

“Israel Day” in Berlin was a largely informal event, really a street party with speeches. To make things even more fun, there was catering by the restaurant Feinberg’s. In particular, Feinberg’s, specializing in what it calls Israeli cuisine – Palestinians recognize many dishes as plagiarized from their tradition – offered a very special melon smoothie.

The poster advertising the drink showed a lion (used by Israelis as a national symbol) wearing an apron emblazoned with the Israeli flag (just to make sure). The lion held two large glass tumblers, one with pieces of melon (an already traditional and well-known symbol of Palestine and its resistance), the other with the finished smoothie and a small Israeli flag.

The background consisted of a pile of melons, often cut open, many featuring instantly recognizable baby faces. The poster’s text said (partly in English and partly in German): “Watermelon meets Zion. Israeli-style watermelon, shredded, mashed, and hacked to pieces.”

An Israeli restaurant in Berlin offers “Israeli-style blended Watermelon, puréed, and chopped to pieces” at an Israel lobby event with faces on the watermelons. Many are interpreting this as a violent fantasy pic.twitter.com/AEHFPmZbBd

The watermelons evoked what is known as “Kindchenschema” or “cuteness” (in the scientific sense): an almost universally recognized pattern of features that signals babies and children and – with psychologically normal individuals – stirring deep hormonal and neurological responses of sympathy and care or at least restraint.

The message was obvious and not at all funny: The Israeli “lion” was crushing the Palestinian “watermelons” into an enjoyably refreshing ice-cold and blood-red pulp, available with a “shot” of – presumably celebratory – vodka, too. That the faces on the anthropomorphized “melons” were childlike made everything even more repulsive: clearly, whoever felt this picture was a good idea is not normal enough for the Kindchenschema to work on them.

Those who study genocide have long agreed that the deliberate dehumanizing of the victims by propaganda and indoctrination is one of its elementary methods and signs. Those who pretend to fail to recognize a textbook case of such dehumanization in this poster are deliberately obtuse.

The poster was, of course, an unmistakable allusion to Israel’s ongoing combined genocide-ethnic cleansing operation, with its main (though not sole) target the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. That is the place where the majority of Israel’s victims, many of them babies and children, have literally been “shredded” and “cut to pieces” by air raids and bombing as well as systematically starved and deprived of housing and vital infrastructure, especially medical institutions, and, not to forget, their caretakers: it is Gaza under Israeli assault for which doctors had to invent a new abbreviation: WCNSF – wounded child, no surviving family.

In the words of Jonathan Whittall, head of the UN humanitarian office responsible for Gaza, Israel is practicing “deprivation by design” and the “deliberate dismantling of Palestinian life.”

The latest - de facto minimum - death toll among the Palestinians is approaching 63,000. Almost 112,000 victims have been injured, often severely, leading to lifelong consequences, such as amputated limbs. Horrifying as they are, these figures, generated by Gaza’s health ministry – which, contrary to Israeli and Western propaganda, is conservative in its counting – are only the tip of the iceberg. For one thing, a study in the authoritative medical journal The Lancet has long maintained that the real figures are likely to be substantially higher.

Killing, injuring, and maiming are, of course, only one part of Israeli violence. Mass displacement and the literal razing of the Gaza Strip, much of which has been pounded into toxic dust, and deep and pervasive psychological trauma are others. There is no room here to even sketch all the vicious methods of Israel’s genocide or all its horrendous consequences. And as with genocides before, there is also a limit to language: It is hard to even accommodate in ordinary words both what the Israeli perpetrators have been doing, together with their Western accomplices, and the vicious sadism that not a few but many Israelis, in and out of uniform, are proudly displaying.

Yet this is, after all, what Amnesty International – and many others – have rightly identified as a “live-streamed genocide.” Due to the stunning shamelessness of many Israeli perpetrators and the development of modern media and especially social media, this is a genocide in the global public eye as never before.

That is why it is entirely impossible to believe the silly attempts to obfuscate and backpedal now made by the clearly anything but “leonine” creators of the poster. Obviously stung by protests and afraid of possible legal consequences, Yorai Feinberg, owner of Feinberg’s, has retreated to claiming that the melons were meant to stand for – drum roll – “antisemitism,” and that the whole thing was just satire anyhow.

Both claims are offensively absurd: Everyone knows that watermelons stand for Palestine, Palestinians, and their resistance, not “antisemitism.” It may, of course, be that in the unwell minds of the poster’s creators those two things appear to be the same. That would be a classical Zionist delusion as well as a propaganda trick. And still, obviously, a lie.

Also, it is very, very hard to explain why things now allegedly representing merely “antisemitism” needed to be drawn with cute, childlike faces. No, this is, let’s print it, for-crying-out-loud bullshit, nonsense of the same evil, brazen sort as the Israeli genociders’ endless, daft lies about Hamas here and Hamas there, whenever they feel – which is often – like bombing yet another hospital, tent encampment, or residential building.

Regarding “satire” – a cop-out publicly endorsed by (surprise, surprise) the DIG – where to even start? If the makers of this revolting picture really felt that they were producing something akin to a “witty” or “edgy” statement, a kind of “joke,” then that simply means that they find “joking” about genocide and especially the mass murder of children “normal.” And there can’t be anything less normal and more morally rotten than such a sense of “humor.” Seriously boasting of mass murder or “just kidding”? You know what: It does not matter – either means you are a monster.

But this scandal involves more than the bloody bigotry of one German and Israeli restaurant. Consider that this was an official DIG event, attended by both its president Volker Beck and the Israeli ambassador to Germany Ron Prosor. They cannot have been unaware of the ‘lion-exterminates-melons’ poster: an Instagram picture showed both of them in front of the stand displaying it.

Beck is a major – if past his prime – politician from Germany’s Green Party, a fanatical supporter of Israel, and, as it happens, also a figure with a less than shining past. He has argued for the decriminalization of “pedosexuality,” that is, de facto the unpunished sexual abuse of minors, a fact he later tried to conceal without success; he has also been caught with serious drugs. Prosor is a veteran Israeli diplomat who does what Israeli diplomats do: Past highlights include attacking UNRWA, a signature move of Israeli aggression against Palestinians designed to cut them off from any support that might disturb Israeli siege and starvation operations. Indeed, Israeli assaults on UNRWA are currently the subject of yet another case against it at the International Court of Justice  (ICJ).

Recently, Prosor has sought to suppress critical voices in Germany, including  Israeli philosopher Omri Boehm, and, for good measure, police German universities by defaming resistance to Israeli crimes and German complicity as “new antisemitism.” How original.

It’s not hard to imagine that both gentlemen saw nothing wrong with that melon-shredding lion and may even have enjoyed a splash of genocide-’joke’ smoothie. And they won’t face any consequences, of course. For – and this is the widest and saddest context of this vile affair – Germany has chosen to side with Israel with a ‘to-the-bitter-end’ obstinacy reminiscent of that other very disappointing Germany that failed to ever stop being loyal to – and fighting for – Nazism until finally stopped by others, mostly the Soviets.

Berlin, the capital, has been at the forefront of this new, as it were, transferred nationalism-without-restraint and Nibelungentreue for pure, obvious evil. Its mayor Kai Wegner has acquired a reputation for genocide denial; its police for brutality against those showing solidarity with Israel’s Palestinian victims. And it is the city where an anti-genocide protester has just been convicted for “trivializing the Holocaust” simply for peacefully holding up a sign saying “Have we learned nothing from the Holocaust?” Clearly, that judge has not.

Against this background of pervasive, dominant ethical perversion, a poster viciously dehumanizing Palestinians came as no surprise. What is intriguing is that this time there has been some protest even, if all too faintly, in some mainstream media outlets. Maybe Germany is not entirely lost yet. Or is it, as before in German history, only a minority that shows decency but cannot change the deeply indecent course of the country’s morally and intellectually kaput elites and the majority still following them?

This article was published by National Review on May 13, 2025.

New York is close to passing a bill to legalize assisted suicide. Having passed the assembly, it is currently being considered in the senate.

I read the bill, and much of it consists of the usual obfuscating definitions and pretenses seen in all such proposals. But a few of the provisions struck me as particularly mendacious. First, it defines prescribing poison as a “medical practice.” From S. 138:

“Medical aid in dying” means the medical practice of a physician prescribing medication to a qualified individual that the individual may choose to self-administer to bring about death.

Facilitating suicide is not, and never has been, “medical.” I could prescribe sufficient barbiturates to cause death by overdose. You could too. The only difference is the MD has the right to use the pad and lay people don’t.  Indeed, as the Estonian supreme court recently noted while (lamentably) creating a civil right to suicide for any reason, assisted suicide “intentionally causes harm” to the person who dies and “causing death cannot be considered the provision of a healthcare service.”

The bill also engages in blatant language reengineering:

§ 2899-n. Relation to other laws and contracts. 1. (a) A patient who requests medication under this article shall not, because of that request, be considered to be a person who is suicidal, and self-administering medication under this article shall not be deemed to be suicide, for any purpose.

But that is precisely what it is! Death by “medical aid in dying” isn’t natural. It is self killing, intentionally ending one’s own life, i.e. suicide.

And this means that some suicidal people will not be offered suicide prevention — which all suicidal people deserve regardless of the reason for wanting to end it all — even if the actual suicidal ideation is caused by something other than the underlying illness.

More:

Action taken in accordance with this article shall not be construed for any purpose to constitute suicide, assisted suicide, attempted suicide, promoting a suicide attempt, euthanasia, mercy killing, or homicide under the law, including as an accomplice or accessory or otherwise.

The law can redefine a dung beetle into a butterfly, but it still can’t fly and doesn’t consume nectar!

Of course, the legislation requires falsifying vital statistics:

§ 2899-p. Death certificate. 1. If otherwise authorized by law, theattending physician may sign the qualified individual’s death certificate.

Thee cause of death listed on a qualified individual’s death certificate who dies after self-administering medication under this article will be the underlying terminal illness or condition.

But disease will not be the actual cause of death. And remember, sometimes people diagnosed with a terminal illness never die from that condition.

Falsifying death certificates serves two purposes. First, it prevents transparency. Investigators will be unable to access the information they need to conduct independent studies. And second, pretending that some suicides are natural deaths distorts suicide statistics by making it appear as if fewer people killed themselves than actually did.

Dr Lydia Dugdale
I’ll close by recommending an excellent critique of the bill by the physician author of The Lost Art of Dying, published by the New York Times (of all places). From, “There Are Ways to Die With Dignity, but Not Like This,” by L. S. Dugdale:

When it comes to conventional suicide, it’s no secret that people who suffer from depression are at greater risk. There is no reason to think that depression is any less of a factor when it comes to physician-assisted suicide. Yet the New York bill, which is modeled on the Death With Dignity law enacted in Oregon in 1997, does not even require a mental health professional to screen patients for depression unless one of the doctors involved determines that the patient’s judgment may be impaired by a psychiatric or psychological disorder.

This is a major oversight that fails to protect depressed people from making flawed decisions. Depression is not just a mood; it distorts perception, often convincing people that their lives are worthless, their loved ones are better off without them and death is their only option.

Indeed. And I know of several cases of terminally ill people backing away from the ledge when they received proper social interventions and were very glad to still be alive.

Here is Dr. Dugdale’s powerful conclusion:

This is not a compassionate policy — not in Canada, not in Oregon and not, should the bill become law, in New York. Instead of investing in the infrastructure of support for the lonely, the depressed, the disabled and the poor, we offer them a prescription for death. We call it autonomy, but it’s abandonment.

The art of dying well cannot be severed from the art of living well, and that includes caring for one another, especially when it is hard, inconvenient or costly. It is not enough to offer the dying control. We must offer them dignity — not by affirming their despair but by affirming their worth. Even when they are suffering. Even when they are vulnerable. Even when they are, in worldly terms, a burden. [Emphasis added.]

I urge you to read the whole piece. And I urge the New York State Senate to vote no on abandonment and yes on greater care. Assisted suicide is bad “medicine” and worse public policy.

Planned Parenthood’s affiliates spent $3.4 million helping women travel for abortion last year, according to a new report from the organization.

Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider. Nationwide, its facilities aborted more than 400,000 unborn children last year. Planned Parenthood’s annual report for 2024 brags that its affiliates spent $3.4 million helping more than 12,500 women travel for abortion under its “patient navigation program.”

Planned Parenthood’s regional affiliate owns facilities in Little Rock and Rogers. However, Arkansas’ good, pro-life laws generally prevent those facilities from performing abortions.

But last summer, Family Council learned Planned Parenthood had secretly acquired a facility in Pittsburg, Kansas — a small town within driving distance of Northwest Arkansas.

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The new location in Southeast Kansas opened in August. At the time, Family Council and others expressed concerns that the facility would make it easier for Planned Parenthood to promote abortions regionally to women in states that all have very strong, pro-life laws.

Since then, news outlets have confirmed this new Planned Parenthood facility primarily performs abortions on women from Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.

Abortion hurts women, and it ends the lives of unborn children. Its risks and its consequences are deathly serious.

Women and families deserve better than abortion. It’s important to prohibit abortion through legislation, but we need to work to eliminate the demand for abortion as well.

One way Arkansans can do that is by supporting pro-life organizations that empower women with real options besides abortion.

Arkansas is home to more than 60 organizations that assist pregnant women — including some 45 pregnancy resource centers that help women with unplanned pregnancies.

The State of Arkansas recently voted to award $2 million in grants to pregnancy-help organizations for the 2025-2026 budget cycle.

That money is going to help a lot of women and children in the coming months — and hopefully it will encourage women not to travel to Planned Parenthood facilities in other states for abortions.

LifeNews Note: Jerry Cox is the president of the Arkansas Family Council.

The post Planned Parenthood Spent Millions Taking Women and Teens to Other States to Kill Their Babies in Abortions appeared first on LifeNews.com.

A teenager just celebrated her first Mother’s Day during her third trimester of pregnancy, and thanked a local pregnancy resource center for encouraging her and her boyfriend to keep the baby.

Emily was 17, a senior in high school, when she and her boyfriend Brian found out they were expecting a baby. They found Heartbeat of Miami online and decided to go in for an appointment.

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“When me and my boyfriend first came in, we were very scared, very nervous, didn’t know what to expect, and all I could think about was how I was going to tell my mom,” she said.

Emily took another pregnancy test at the appointment which confirmed she was pregnant, and she was distressed.

“Then after they brought me and my boyfriend to a room and I saw my baby on that ultrasound, and it was very emotional. Because, you know, it’s my baby. Me and my boyfriend made that baby,” she said, and she felt elated.

She was nervous to tell her parents, but she said the staff at Heartbeat encouraged her and helped boost her confidence.

Emily’s mother drove to the clinic herself after she found out about the pregnancy, and Emily said that the staff comforted her, her mother, and her boyfriend, who also arrived for the appointment.

“They gave us a bunch of advice and support and made me feel great about having this baby,” she said.

After that appointment, Emily said her mother became much more excited about the new baby.

Emily recorded the video last week, when she was 39 weeks pregnant. She is planning on naming her son Jaden.

“And I’m very thankful and grateful for Heartbeat of Miami and the staff here because they made this happen,” Emily said. “I would never have thought I would be here today if it weren’t for them, and I thank them so much for everything.”

LifeNews Note: Grace Porto writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.

The post Teen Mom Rejects Abortion as Pro-Life Pregnancy Center Helps Save Her Baby appeared first on LifeNews.com.

In a joyful turn of events during National Nurses Week and just ahead of Mother’s Day, 14 registered nurses at HSHS St. Vincent Hospital’s Women and Infants Center have shared that they’re expecting babies of their own.

These caregivers, who help bring new life into the world every day, are now preparing to welcome little ones into their own families, a press release from HSHS states.

“This is an incredible full-circle moment for many of our nurses, some of which are about to become first time moms themselves,” said Amy Bardon, director of the Women and Infants Center. “Each of these women were already baby experts in their own rights, but for many of them their firsthand experience offering care to an infant, and moms for that matter, is about to further deepen.”

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The announcement has brought a wave of excitement to the hospital community. Eleven of the 14 expecting nurses recently gathered for photos, marking the unique bond they share not only as colleagues but also as mothers-to-be.

“When our expecting nurses are ready to welcome their little ones into the world, they’ll be cared for by their friends and colleagues here at HSHS St. Vincent Hospital, and they find comfort in that,” Bardon added. “But even before labor, these women have already built some really unique bonds with their colleagues, and I love that each of them has the chance to go through this special moment with each other.”

HSHS St. Vincent Hospital, rooted in a mission of faith and healing, is recognized for its excellence in maternal and neonatal care, according to the press release. The hospital holds Advanced Certification in Perinatal Care from The Joint Commission, and its Women and Infants Center also benefits from close proximity to the region’s only children’s hospital and NICU specialists.

LifeNews Note: Grace Porto writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.

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The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has launched a compliance review to investigate allegations that technicians employed by a hospital faced possible termination due to their objections to performing ultrasounds used in abortion procedures.

“This matter is the second investigation of an entity’s compliance with laws protecting the exercise of conscience that OCR has initiated during President Trump’s second term,” HHS observed Monday in a press release. “Today’s announcement is part of a larger effort to strengthen enforcement of laws protecting conscience and religious exercise.”

“The Department is committed to enforcement of our nation’s laws that safeguard the fundamental rights of conscience and religious exercise,” said Acting OCR Director Anthony Archeval in a statement. “Health care professionals should not be coerced into, fired for, or driven out of the profession for declining to perform procedures that Federal law says they do not have to perform based on their religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

OCR enforces federal conscience and religious freedom protections “in specific programs funded by HHS federal financial assistance,” HHS explains. An individual can file a complaint online or by mail, fax, or e-mail via the website for instructions.

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Recipients of certain federal funds are prohibited from requiring certain individual providers to participate in procedures that violate their faith beliefs or moral convictions, HHS notes, giving an example of “providing or referring for abortions or assisted suicide.”

Other provisions, pertaining to patients, clarify that “certain programs related to mental health treatment, hearing screening programs, occupational illness testing, and compulsory health care services generally are not to be construed to require patients to receive certain health care services to which they object based on religious or moral beliefs.”

“If you believe that your or another person’s conscience, civil rights, or health information privacy rights have been violated, you can file a complaint with OCR,” the federal health agency’s tip portal states.

In April, the Trump HHS initiated its first investigation into allegations that a major pediatric teaching hospital fired a whistleblower nurse who objected to administering puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children due to her faith beliefs.

While the department does not identify the facilities involved while investigations are underway, that hospital was later revealed to be Texas Children’s Hospital. Nurse whistleblower Vanessa Sivadge came forward with her allegations in June 2024 and was then terminated the following August.

“I witnessed firsthand how doctors emotionally blackmailed parents by telling them that if they did not affirm their child’s false identity, their child would harm themselves,” Sivadge testified to lawmakers. “In particular, I was saddened to see young girls suffering from profound mental health struggles like depression and anxiety, many of whom had also suffered sexual abuse or trauma, persuaded by doctors at Texas Children’s that a hormone would resolve their gender confusion.”

Archeval said at the time: “The Department will robustly enforce Federal laws protecting these courageous whistleblowers, including laws that protect health care professionals from being forced to violate their religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

LifeNews Note: Susan Berry writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.

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House Republicans unveiled sweeping legislation late Sunday that would defund Planned Parenthood for the next decade and prohibit taxpayer funding of so-called “gender transition procedures” for minors under Medicaid.

The bill, part of a broader GOP fiscal package aligned with President Donald Trump’s agenda, includes multiple provisions long sought by the pro-life movement.

Section 44126 bars any federal funds from going to “prohibited entities” that perform abortions outside Hyde Amendment exceptions, which only allow for abortions in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is at risk.

The ban would remain in place for ten years from enactment.

“Defunding abortion-giant Planned Parenthood, and other abortion facilities, has been a goal of the pro-life movement for decades,” said CatholicVote Director of Government Affairs Tom McClusky. “We have exposed their compliance with fraud, statutory rape, baby body part trafficking, and numerous other abuses, yet never seemed to move Congress to defund. This Congress, and President Trump, deserve high praise for delivering on an overdue promise from the Republican Party.”

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Planned Parenthood reported over 400,000 abortions between 2023 and 2024—an increase of 9,515 aborted babies from the previous year. At the same time, the group’s taxpayer funding surged by over 13%, reaching $792.2 million.

According to Live Action, Planned Parenthood has aborted an estimated 7.1 million babies since 2000 and now commits roughly 40% of all US abortions.

Pro-life legislators have rallied behind the measure. As Daily Caller first reported, a coalition of 183 state lawmakers signed a letter to Congress urging Republicans to use the budget reconciliation process to defund Planned Parenthood.

“[W]e are deeply concerned with the way that big abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood prey on unborn children and hurt women, all while receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from American taxpayers,” the letter reads. “With a Republican trifecta in Washington, it is time to use the budget reconciliation process to defund big abortion providers like Planned Parenthood.”

The legislation also seeks to block federal financial participation in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for “gender transition procedures” performed on minors. The bill would prohibit taxpayer dollars from covering such interventions, including cross-sex hormones and surgeries.

A 2025 American Principles Project report found that $24.6 billion in taxpayer dollars is eligible to cover such procedures, with another $11.1 billion potentially at risk under expanded coverage rules.

Public opinion appears to support the measure. An April 2025 poll found that 65% of likely voters oppose using federal tax dollars to fund gender transitions for minors.

The moves come amid mounting scrutiny over Planned Parenthood’s practices.

Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services released a report identifying Planned Parenthood as a “leading provider” of cross-sex hormones to children. Similarly, Live Action’s latest undercover investigation exposed Planned Parenthood facilities in multiple states for offering these drugs to minors with no therapy, no in-person evaluation, and no parental consent.

The bill originated in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which was tasked with identifying at least $880 billion in spending cuts to offset new federal priorities. The committee has jurisdiction over key programs, including Medicaid.

House GOP leaders reportedly plan to bring the bill to a floor vote on May 26, with markup sessions scheduled Tuesday.

Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-KY, chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, defended the legislation in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

“Undoubtedly, Democrats will use this as an opportunity to engage in fear-mongering and misrepresent our bill as an attack on Medicaid,” Guthrie wrote. “In reality, it preserves and strengthens Medicaid for children, mothers, people with disabilities and the elderly—for whom the program was designed.

LifeNews Note: Elise DeGeeter writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.

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Edan Alexander has been reunited with his family after the Palestinian group let him go as a “goodwill gesture” to Trump

The last US citizen held hostage by Hamas, Edan Alexander, has been reunited with his family after the Palestinian group released him on Monday. 

Hamas said the release was a “goodwill gesture” to US President Donald Trump, who is touring Gulf Arab states this week, as Washington continues efforts to broker a ceasefire between the militants and Israel.

The 21-year-old Israeli-American had been serving in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) when he was captured on the border of Gaza during the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel. During the assault, approximately 1,200 Israelis were killed and around 250 hostages taken, making it the deadliest day in the nation’s history. In response, Israel launched a sustained military campaign in Gaza aimed at destroying Hamas.

Following negotiations with the US on Sunday – mediated by Egypt and Qatar – the Palestinian group announced that it would release Alexander as part of efforts to reach a ceasefire and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

On Monday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) paused military operations in the Palestinian enclave for several hours to allow Alexander’s transfer. He has since been reunited with his family at an Israeli military base.

US President Donald Trump was the first to announce that Alexander would be released, writing on his Truth Social account on Sunday that it was a “step taken in good faith” by Hamas towards ending the “very brutal war” and returning all living hostages and remains to their loved ones.

The next day, Trump confirmed that Alexander was being let go and congratulated his parents, family and friends. He also shared a video showing his special envoy Steve Witkoff, who personally traveled to Israel to oversee the transfer, giving Alexander’s mom a phone to talk to her son shortly after his release.

Alexander’s family later shared a statement thanking Trump and urging the Israeli government and negotiators to continue efforts to release the remaining 58 hostages.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Alexander’s release came thanks to Israel’s military pressure in Gaza and political pressure by the US president.

IDF fire resumed after the release with authorities in Gaza saying an air strike killed three people and wounded several others at a shelter housing displaced families in Khan Younis in the southern part of the enclave.

Netanyahu emphasized that the temporary pause in military operations was solely to facilitate Alexander’s safe transfer and did not signify a broader truce. He further stated that Israel plans to intensify its military operations in Gaza.