Pennsylvania | June 10, 2021
Pennsylvania House Passes Bill Banning Abortions on Babies With Down Syndrome
Pennsylvania | June 10, 2021
Pennsylvania House lawmakers approved a pro-life bill Tuesday to protect unborn babies with Down syndrome from being targeted for abortions.
The AP reports the Down Syndrome Protection Act, state House Bill 1500, passed in a 120-83 vote and now moves to the state Senate for consideration.
Sponsored by state Rep. Kate Klunk, R-Hanover, the bill would add Down syndrome to a state law that bans discriminatory abortions for sex-selection purposes. The bill would prohibit an abortion if the sole reason is because the unborn baby has a Down syndrome diagnosis and create felony charges for abortionists who violate the ban.
“I believe we truly have a responsibility to stand up for those who do not have a voice,” Klunk said.
The pro-life bill has a strong chance of passing the state legislature. However, Gov. Tom Wolf, a pro-abortion Democrat who used to volunteer at Planned Parenthood, recently vowed to veto the legislation.
Some Democrat state lawmakers complained that the bill would make “it a crime to think and consider options” and unfairly punish doctors who do abortions, according to the AP…
(Excerpts from LIFENEWS)
Pennsylvania | May 4, 2021
His mom chose life, now he heads to the NFL Draft
Pennsylvania | May 4, 2021
Penn State All-American linebacker Micah Parsons believes God has big plans for his life. He recently shared with Pennlive.com that his mom almost had an abortion when she got pregnant with him. She had two kids, was struggling to pay the bills, and his father was in and out of the house. She didn’t tell anyone else, but was planning on going to the abortion clinic.
Here’s the story as told to Pennlive:
One day the phone rang, Sherese [Micah’s mom] said, and on the other end was Sister Hall from the church. When Sherese told her that she was “doing fine,” Hall said she was hiding something and eventually surfaced the truth.
“She talked my mom out of it,” Micah said. “I think that is why (my mom) was always like, ‘God looks over you, son, and you should continue to keep doing good things in your life and give back to God.’ That was one of the first lessons she taught me.”
And now, he’s about to become a first-round NFL draft pick in Cleveland on April 29th.
What a beautiful pro-life story…
(Excerpts from Pennsylvania Family Institute)
Pennsylvania | April 10, 2021
Pennsylvania Court Rules Taxpayers Don’t Have to Fund Abortions
Pennsylvania | April 10, 2021
According to local station WTAJ, a seven-judge panel of a Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court has ruled that state taxpayers do not have to fund abortions for low-income women through the state Medicaid program. Currently, the state’s Medicaid program pays for abortions in cases of rape or incest, or when the mother’s life is at risk (though deliberately killing a preborn child is never medically necessary).
Abortion businesses, including Planned Parenthood, sued in 2019 to reverse a decades-old court ruling that upheld limits on how PA state Medicaid dollars can be used, including that the funds cannot be used to pay for abortions. Their goal was to force the state Medicaid program to begin to fund abortions, claiming that the 1982 Pennsylvania law that prohibited this violates the constitutional equal protection rights of low-income women.
The court panel ruled that the abortion businesses do not have standing to argue on the constitutional rights of low-income women who seek abortions. Essentially, the court ruled that the pregnant women themselves must be the ones to go to court to fight the law.
The issue of “third-party standing” is not new and was brought to the surface regarding abortion specifically in the Supreme Court case regarding Louisiana’s Act 620, dubbed “The Unsafe Abortion Protection Act.” While the Supreme Court ruled that the law was unconstitutional, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in his dissenting opinion:
[…] the abortion providers before us seek only to assert the constitutional rights of an undefined, unnamed, indeed unknown, group of women who they hope will be their patients in the future. In narrow circumstances, to be sure, this Court has allowed cases to proceed based on “third-party standing.” But to qualify, the plaintiff must demonstrate both that he has a “‘close’ relationship” with the person whose rights he wishes to assert and that some “‘hindrance’” hampers the right-holder’s “ability to protect his own interests.”…
Think of parents and children, guardians and wards. In these special cases, the logic goes, the plaintiff ’s interests are so aligned with those of a particular right-holder that the litigation will proceed in much the same way as if the right-holder herself were present. Nothing like that exists here.
The Commonwealth Court has ruled along these lines and House Republican leaders have praised the court “for making the right decision and not taking an action to rewrite existing law.”….
(Excerpts from LIVEACTION)