33 Days of Life: Defending Family in the Real Washington

Alternative title: Washington State – where everyone is a little bit Husky

I just got back from the great state of Washington and thought it would be a good time to do another in the series of profiles of pro-life organizations.  This one, appropriately enough, is the Family Policy Institute of Washington (FPIW.) 

FPIW is part of a partnership (for lack of a better word) of Family Policy Councils (FPCs).  As Family Research Council describes them:

FPCs are independent entities with no corporate or financial relationship to each other or to Family Research Council. However, they share common core beliefs in the sanctity of human life and in the institution of marriage. Beyond that, their emphasis on issues varies from state to state, depending on the unique needs of the citizens living there.

I have had the privilege of working with a number of FPCs throughout my years in Washington, D.C. and have met some pretty incredible people working at many of these organizations.  With any organization you are only as good as your leader, and the President of FPIW, Joseph Backholm, is one of the best.

Despite being an avid Seattle Seahawks fan Joseph has really made the FPIW his own through his hard work and more importantly his unceasing good attitude and Christian approach to things.  While many might view Washington State, with its Democratic majorities, a conservative wasteland, however FPIW has proven time and time again that even in darkness you can find light.  Just in the last year they successfully had a hearing on parental notification in regards to abortion and also stopped a mandate the Governor was pushing that all insurance cover abortions as well as a number of other victories.

Their shining project though (in my view) is Olympia 101.  From their website:

Olympia 101 is the Family Policy Institute of Washington (FPIW) signature citizen orientation training to inform, equip and mobilize ordinary citizens for purposeful, authentic and effective action in support of good public policy in Washington State. Olympia 101 accomplishes this by offering citizens the opportunity to learn about their state government through a unique on-site, real-time dynamic experience that uses the Capitol Campus as its “classroom”. Olympia 101 was introduced during the 2013 Legislative Session, during which FPIW had the privilege of providing approximately 40 trainings sessions, attended by over 200 Washington citizens from across the state.

All Olympia 101 trainings take place onsite at the State Capitol Campus in Olympia (map), and are facilitated FREE of charge by the Family Policy Institute of Washington.  Olympia 101 is offered at least once per week while the Legislature is in Session (January–March), including twice per day on the scheduled date.

Not on their website is just how widely successful the program has been in training churches, activists and other citizens how to interact with their elected officials in a Christ-like fashion.

To learn more about the Family Policy Institute of Washington please visit their website, and if you are able, send your prayers and support to this great organization as they fight for life and family.

It is the end of the year and time for Planned Parenthood’s partial report.  The abortion giant tends to release this report right around Christmas time, usually in hopes that other news around the holidays will distract people from actually finding out what Planned Parenthood is all about – abortion.  This year it is using 2012 data.

Prior to the release of Planned Parenthood’s report two other reports were released that highlighted both bad and good news related to abortion. 

The bad news comes from a Center for Disease Control report that showed how much abortion affects Hispanics and African-Americans (the report is incomplete as many states do not report the number of abortions).  According to the report reported of the 765,651 abortions that were reported to CDC a high percentage of minorities were targeted by abortion:

(N)on-Hispanic white women and non-Hispanic black women accounted for the largest percentages of abortions (36.8% and 35.7%, respectively), whereas Hispanic women and non-Hispanic women in the other races category accounted for smaller percentages (21.0% and 6.5%, respectively). Non-Hispanic white women had the lowest abortion rates (8.6 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years) and ratios (141 abortions per 1,000 live births), whereas non-Hispanic black women had the highest abortion rates (31.8 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years) and ratios (483 abortions per 1,000 live births).

For most races 2010 was an increase in targeting:

Among the 22 areas that reported by race/ethnicity every year during 2007–2010, abortion rates decreased for all racial/ethnic groups, although decreases for non-Hispanic black women were smaller than for other groups. For non-Hispanic white women the abortion rate decreased 11% (from 9.3 abortions per 1,000 women in 2007 to 8.3 in 2010), for Hispanic women it decreased 9% (from 20.7 abortions per 1,000 women in 2007 to 18.9 in 2010), and for non-Hispanic black women it decreased 5% (from 34.8 abortions per 1,000 women in 2007 to 33.2 in 2010)

Further in major cities the report  reveals that the targeting is more intense.  63.7 percent of African-American and Hispanic babies were aborted in Texas, 64.8 percent in the nation’s capital and 73.2 percent in the southern state of Georgia.   New York City continues to be the abortion capital with 81.9 percent of the babies aborted being African American or Hispanic.

In more positive news a Bloomberg News report from late November finds that at least 73 U.S. abortion clinics have shut down since 2011 with half of that number being attributed to state led efforts to regulate abortion facilities.  Bloomberg also attributes some of the closures to exposure of some of the practices of abortionists like Kermit Gosnell:

New laws are responsible for roughly half of the closures, while declining demand, industry consolidation, and crackdowns on unfit providers have also contributed to the drop.

So how does Planned Parenthood’s annual report reflect some of the above news? Thanks to taxpayer dollars, Planned Parenthood continues to profit off of abortion – while lying about the other “women’s health” issues they supposedly cover.  Luckily Susan B. Anthony List looked at the report and broke down some of the facts for us:

• In 2012, Planned Parenthood performed 327,166 abortions, a 2% drop from 2011.

• In 2002, Planned Parenthood performed 227,385 abortions, meaning they perform 100,000 more abortions than they did 10 years ago.

• In 2012, abortions made up 93.8% of Planned Parenthood’s pregnancy services, while prenatal care and adoption referrals accounted for only 5.6% (19,506) and 0.6% (2,197), respectively.

• For every adoption referral, Planned Parenthood performed 149 abortions. 

• Prenatal care services have dropped 32% in one year, and 52% since 2009. Adoption referrals are also down 4.5% in one year. 

• Planned Parenthood reported a total of three million clients in 2012, meaning that 11% of all Planned Parenthood clients received an abortion.

• Cancer screenings provided by Planned Parenthood continue to drop, dropping 14% in one year and 39% since 2009.

• Planned Parenthood reported $58.2 million in excess revenue, and more than $1.3 billion in net assets.

Pro-abortion groups have given tens of millions to abortion advocates running for office (pro-abortion PAC EMILY’s List has the fifth biggest “super-PAC” in the country) as well as shares a lot of big donors with the President, who has been ardently pro-abortion, and at times anti-life (voting to defend partial birth abortion in the Illinois state senate), since early in his political career.   A couple of years ago the President was even willing to shut down the whole government over the issue of taxpayer dollars going to Planned Parenthood.  Clearly the multi-million dollar investment Ms. Richards and her allies put into the Obama Campaigns are paying off in hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds.

The Obama Administration and their allies would like you to believe that the current fight is not over religious liberty but their definition of women’s health, which includes abortion.  They try to tell you it is a “ban” – as if a private business refusing to pay for abortifacients means a person can’t privately pay for it. 

Really at issue is whether the mandate unconstitutionally violates the religious beliefs of business owners and other groups.  The court challenges stem from a Department of Health and Human Services rule written in connection with the 2010 health care law.  The rule requires that employers provide contraceptive coverage to workers without their having to pay deductibles, co-pays, or other cost-sharing.

At least 84 cases have been filed by people, businesses or groups who say that the requirement violates their religious beliefs, according to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents some of the plaintiffs. Many are for-profit businesses owned by people who say their religious doctrines forbid them from supporting the use of birth control. Some companies such as Hobby Lobby, which has more than 13,000 full-time workers, oppose only certain types of birth control. The store’s owners do not want to cover emergency contraceptives and two types of intrauterine devices that can possibly cause abortions.

Fifty-nine percent of likely voters strongly oppose the administration’s requirement for employers to cover contraception, according to a recent poll commissioned by Family Research Council and Alliance Defending Freedom, the group representing Conestoga’s lawsuit against the mandate (they are also representing Dr. James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, Alliance Defending Freedom and Family Research Council). Those most likely to oppose the mandate were Evangelicals, Catholics, parents of children under 18 and those who are married. Thirty-five percent of respondents said they support it.

As the case goes forward we will continue to profile the very real companies affected by the Obama Administration’s fealty to abortion.  Today we will look at one of the plaintiffs soon to be before the Supreme Court, Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp.

Conestoga is based in the eastern district of Pennsylvania and was founded in 1964, in the garage of the Hahn family.  The company has grown into an industry leader in manufacturing the highest quality doors and doors in the kitchen cabinet industry.  Their mission statement reads:

“We operate in a professional environment founded upon the highest ethical, moral, and Christian principles reflecting respect, support, and trust for our customers, our suppliers, our employees and their families.”

As practicing and believing Mennonite Christians, the Hahn family has sought to follow those Christian principles in everything they do.  They believe all human life is sacred and have always excluded those drugs from their health coverage that they believe could end a life.

Because of their faith, the Hahns believe it is important to provide generous health care benefits for their employees, and with 950 full time employees, they could face as much as $34 million a year in ruinous fines unless they comply with President Obama’s conscience crushing mandate.