March for Life

VIDEO: Why Life is Winning

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VIDEO: Why Life is Winning

 

The upcoming 2018 March for Life will be the 45th annual March for Life, totaling 45 years of Roe v. Wade – and legalized abortion – in America. This corresponds with the loss of nearly 59 million Americans to abortion in our country since 1973.

This is a tragic, heartbreaking statistic to consider. Every abortion is one too many, and our vision at the March for Life is a world in which every human life is valued and protected. We work towards the day when abortion is unthinkable in our country.

While there is still much work to be done, the pro-life movement has made great progress in the past 45 years. March for Life President Jeanne Mancini recently wrote about this in the Heritage Foundation’s 2017 Index of Culture and Opportunity in a piece entitled “Why Life is Winning.”

Among other signs that life is winning, she cites the steep decline in the abortion rate since its height in 1980.

Pro-life scholar Chuck Donovan of the Charlotte Lozier Institute recently joined Jeanne to discuss the abortion rate, as well as other cultural and legislative indicators on the side of life. Chuck also discussed a winning approach: to overwhelm ‘the other side’ with love.

WATCH:

A few key points discussed include:

  • After the legalization of abortion in 1973, the numbers and rate of abortions surged for a period. In 1980, abortion rates began to decrease. The Hyde amendment, barring Medicaid-funded abortions was passed in 1976.
  • The rate continues to decrease under both Republican and Democrat Administrations – we need to look to cultural factors to fully understand.
  • Ultimately, the American people are rejecting the fundamental message of Roe; which is that abortion has minimal legal limits, is medically routine, and that it can happen up to birth.
  • When you look at the numbers, we’re back at the 1973 level today. Will the Americans take the next step and decide that Roe is bad law?
  • We now have a generation that has experienced what abortion does – our youth understand that abortion is violence; and they reject it.
  • With ultrasound technology and what we know about abortion procedures, there is no way an abortion can be classified as anything other than violence. You also cannot deny the humanity of the baby in the womb.
  • Abortion clinics are also declining in number, while Pregnancy Resource Centers (PRCs) have proliferated. These centers date back to the early days of the pro-life movement.
  • There are 3100 PRCs across the country – that’s 4x the number of abortion clinics.
  • There’s still a lot of work to do with 900,000 abortions per year and chemical abortions on the rise.

For more information:

Heritage Foundation Index of Opportunity on Culture: “Why Life is Winning,” by Jeanne Mancini

Heritage Foundation “Index of Culture and Opportunity”: Life Is on the Right Track

 

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5 Facts to Know About the Life-Saving Hyde Amendment

When you fly on a plane, on average 1 or 2 of those lives have been saved by the Hyde Amendment, according to the research of the Charlotte Lozier Institute.

Because of Henry Hyde’s life-saving work, millions of babies can celebrate their birthday. The policy which shares his name has been referred to one of the most important public health initiatives in history, credited with saving literally millions of lives since its enactment. Sadly it is also under attack by pro-abortion forces and lawmakers who want abortion to be free for all women and paid for by taxpayers like yourself.

Here’s what you need to know about the Hyde Amendment:

1. The Hyde Amendment prohibits federal Medicaid dollars from paying for abortion.

2. The Hyde Amendment was first enacted by Congress in 1976 and has been passed each year since then with bipartisan support.

3. Most Americans oppose their tax dollars paying for abortion.

4. Publicly funded abortions were happening in the 1970s at a high rate. Since the passage of the Hyde Amendment, the abortion rate has dropped significantly.

5. Since its enactment, an estimated 2.13 million lives have been saved due to the Hyde Amendment. (Read more on this data from Dr. Michael New in his report for the Lozier Institute, “Hyde @ 40: Analyzing the Impact of the Hyde Amendment.”)

While we still have our work cut out for us to make abortion unthinkable in the United States, the Hyde Amendment has been a policy that has aided in building a culture of life, through education and literally saving over 2 million lives since 1976.

WATCH: March for Life President Jeanne Mancini and Charlotte Lozier Institute President Chuck Donovan discuss the cultural and policy factors contributing to “why life is winning” in America.

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America Has Consensus on Life

 

One year ago today, March for Life Action launched its ground-breaking and award-winning television and digital ad, “Consensus”.

The video draws on Marist polling (the polling company used by Wall Street Journal, McClatchy and NBC News) that shows that there is a strong pro-life consensus in our country. Americans want abortion to have real legal limits.

In fact, did you know that 8 in 10 Americans believe that abortion should be limited – at most – to the first three months of pregnancy?

Even six out of 10 pro-choice Americans agree that abortion should happen only during the first three months of pregnancy, at most. Yet most pro-choice politicians support the extreme position that abortion should be legal right up until birth – and they want you, as a taxpayer, to pay for it!

However, the tide has turned and pro-life politicians now hold the majority in the United States House of Representatives and Senate, and President Donald Trump campaigned on pro-life policies, including defunding Planned Parenthood.

Almost 2/3rds of Americans oppose tax dollars paying for abortion. Now is the time to end abortion extremism and redirect Planned Parenthood’s government funds to federally qualified health care centers that outnumber the country’s largest abortion providers by 20 to 1.

In addition to the polling data, there are many factors across our culture that indicate that life is winning in America.

Yesterday, pro-life scholar, Chuck Donovan of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, and I sat down for a discussion of these cultural indicators. You can watch the full video here:

As Congress is set to take up the Graham-Cassidy healthcare legislation next week which would defund Planned Parenthood while defending pro-life principles, your voice is needed to contact your lawmakers for the cause of life and urge them to vote in favor of redirecting Planned Parenthood’s funding to life-affirming healthcare.

Planned Parenthood, our nation’s largest abortion provider, commits over 328,000 abortions each year. The Congressional Select Investigative Panel that looked into Planned Parenthood’s trafficking of baby body parts ultimately made 15 criminal and regulatory referrals of tissue procurement, and the Senate Judiciary Committee made 7 criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.

Furthermore, Planned Parenthood receives hundreds of millions in private donations. The truth is that they can fund themselves.

Now more than ever, the unified voice of America’s pro-life consensus must be heard.

It’s time for Congress to fulfill their promise by redirecting federal funding from abortion providers towards life-affirming, federally-qualified health centers. It’s long past time to end the extremism of funding abortion-giant Planned Parenthood with our federal tax dollars.

>>>> Send a message to your representatives today that any delay in defunding Planned Parenthood is unacceptable.

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Stephanie Gray to Keynote March for Life Conference in Washington, D.C. on January 18th, 2018

 

MEDIA ADVISORY

Gray will share her story of sacrifice and life-affirming love that went viral earlier this year after her presentation at Google

WASHINGTON, D.C. – March for Life is excited to announce that Stephanie Gray, pro-life activist and co-founder of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, will be the keynote speaker at the March for Life Conference, held the day before the March for Life, on Thursday January 18th, 2018 in Washington D.C. Best known for her viral “Talks at Google” presentation on abortion that outperformed Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards’s talk within its first 24 hours, Stephanie Gray will be the perfect fit for the March for Life Conference – which is designed to provide marchers with in-depth education, information and training tools to take back to their communities and make a difference for life.

“Stephanie Gray is an incredibly gifted thinker and presenter; she is eloquent, engaging, persuasive, and gracious on the most sensitive of topics. Her recent talk at Google Headquarters ‘Abortion: From Controversy to Civility’ clearly resonated with people, going viral quickly as it amassed over 110,000 views. By comparison a Google Talk speech by Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, one month prior received just over 1,000 views,” noted Jeanne Mancini, President of the March for Life. “Stephanie will inspire march for life conference attendees with the message that choosing life is not always easy, but it is the loving, empowering, and self-sacrificial option.”

WHAT: March for Life Conference

WHEN: January 18th, 2018

9AM ET – 12PM ET

WHERE: Renaissance Washington D.C. Downtown Hotel

999 Ninth Street NW

Washington, D.C. 20001

SPEAKERS:

  • Stephanie Gray, pro-life activist and co-founder of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform

*More Speakers TBA

For more information please visit: https://marchforlife.org/mfl-2018/conference/ or contact Kate Bryan at kbryan@crcpublicrelations.com

###

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A Jewish Pro-Life Perspective

 

Guest Blog Post by Cecily Routman, Founder of the Jewish Pro-Life Foundation

In 2006, NPR broadcast a program on the Supreme Court review of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. The broadcast featured a pro-abortion Jewish woman defending her right to a partial birth abortion. She based her right to practice infanticide on her religious beliefs and her civil liberties. For many years I remained neutral and uninformed about the abortion issue. I was bewildered that this Jewish woman believed that our religion and our country allowed such an action – and I wondered if she was right!

It concerned me that anyone, Jew or Gentile, listening to the broadcast would be led to think that she represented the voice of the entire Jewish community. Classically observant, religious Jews, who hold pro-life convictions, weren’t available for comment.  I searched and found not one Jewish pro-life organization that could counteract the strident pro-abortion voices coming out of the Jewish community. This disturbing incident compelled me to learn the history, reality, and current views on the social, legal, medical, spiritual, and Jewish attitudes on abortion.

Traditional Judaism is a pro-life religion. It emphasizes the sanctity of human life from conception to unequivocal death. Human life is intrinsically valuable; preserving life is a moral imperative; all lives are equal; all life belongs to God. Essentially, abortion is judged to be the unwarranted taking of a life within a life. It is prohibited, just as murder is prohibited.

Traditional Judaism requires that unborn life be protected, but it also requires that it be sacrificed to save the mother from imminent physical death, originally relating only to cases of breech birth in a time before cesarean delivery.

The Holy Temple, the center of Jewish biblical law, was destroyed in 70 CE. Before this catastrophic event, Jewish legal opinion on abortion reflected this almost universal prohibition and sole exception. Afterward, the dispersion of Jewish populations into surrounding pagan cultures led to an upheaval of Jewish social and legal norms. Over centuries, rabbinical legal opinions on abortion reflected more secular attitudes. The requirement to use abortion in one rare situation became the misguided and tragic basis for the absolutely false declaration that abortion is legal in Judaism without restriction.

According to a May 2016 Gallop Poll entitled “US Religious Groups Disagree on Five Key Moral Issues,” 76% of Jews in America today believe that abortion is morally acceptable. Many of these Jews actively promote pro-abortion legislation and the use of abortion in their communities and families. They support Planned Parenthood and consider fetal organ sales a tool of moral medical research. They have been thoroughly conditioned to believe that elective abortion throughout the entire pregnancy is good for women. Many rabbis who feel justified religiously and socially, support abortion rights and deliver pro-abortion messages to their congregants.

I started the Jewish Pro-Life Foundation as a way to insert a Jewish pro-life voice into the public conversation, to provide pro-life information specifically to Jews, to build a Jewish pro-life community, and to offer a Jewish healing program for our silent suffering post abortive men and women.

The Foundation is a 501(c)3 family funded educational organization. We are not affiliated with any Jewish denomination, political organization, or the messianic movement. Established Jewish religious and social organizations, fearing a loss of financial support from pro-abortion donors, react to us with hostility, indifference, or skepticism. We circumvent these obstacles by relying on social media, advertising, letter writing, speaking opportunities, and public participation in pro-life activities to share our message. Our Facebook page has 1804 likes and 4.4 stars! The website draws many thousands of visitors. Our pro-life community is growing!

Each year that we attend The March for Life we are enthusiastically welcomed by many in the crowd. Our participation began in 2008. Completely overwhelmed, I cried the entire time. In 2009, we brought our large banner with us. A young Jewish woman appeared out of the crowd, excited and relieved to connect with us. A Jewish man also appeared, glad of the support.

We’ve met a group of pro-life Orthodox Jews from New York who carry signs declaring, “ Abortion is Bloodshed “ and “ The Almighty Forbids Abortion”. In 2014, Gus Lloyd of Catholic Radio interviewed us. After the March this past year we connected with a pro-life Jewish woman who published an article in The Forward online newspaper entitled, “What Does It Mean To Be Jewish And Pro-Life?“  We look forward to participating again next year, grateful that we are welcome among other pro-life Americans.

In Deuteronomy 30:19, our Heavenly Father clearly declares, “ I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore, choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed. “

We embrace the challenge of sharing this often forgotten message within the Jewish community and beyond. In the past decade, we have made special and abiding friendships with pro-life soldiers of all faiths. You have mentored us, encouraged us, and prayed for our success and moral conviction. It is with great gratitude and appreciation that we are invited to share our story with the March for Life audience. We close with a statement written by Rabbi J. David Bleich, a most respected Jewish legal authority:

“A Jew is governed by such reverence for life that he trembles lest he tamper unmindfully with the greatest of all divine gifts, the bestowal or withholding of which is the prerogative of God alone. Although he be master over all within the world, there remain areas where man must fear to tread, acknowledging the limits of his sovereignty and the limitations of his understanding. In the unborn child lies the mystery and enigma of existence. Confronted by the miracle of life itself, man can only draw back in silence before the wonder of the Lord.”

To learn more about the Jewish Pro-Life Foundation, please visit our website at jewishprolifefoundation.org.