Pro- Life/Family: North Carolina bill: Supreme Court overstepped Constitution and God in legalizing gay ‘marriage’
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North Carolina lawmakers are attempting to nullify the Supreme Court's Obergefell decision on same-sex "marriage."
Four statehouse legislators have proposed House Bill 780, the Uphold Historical Marriage Act, that would restore the state's constitutional ban on homosexual "marriage" and make gay “marriages” illegal.HB-780 explicitly says the U.S. Supreme Court "overstepped its constitutional bounds" in the Obergefell decision and the High Court's ruling is “null and void in the State of North Carolina.”
The bill states that “the State of North Carolina shall henceforth uphold and enforce Section 6 of Article XIV of the North Carolina Constitution." That section was amended in 2012 to explicitly say "Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State."
North Carolina voters approved the 2012 pro-marriage amendment 61 percent to 39 percent.
But Republican House Speaker Tim Moore said the proposed bill won’t receive consideration during the current session.
“There
are strong constitutional concerns with this legislation given that the
U.S. Supreme Court has firmly ruled on the issue, therefore House Bill
780 will be referred to the House Rules Committee and will not be
heard,” Moore said in a statement.
The Uphold Historical Marriage Act was proposed by Republican state
Reps. Larry Pittman, R-Cabarrus Co.; Carl Ford, R-Rowan Co.; Mike
Clampitt, R-Bryson City; and Michael Speciale, R-New Bern.HB-780 also quotes the Bible and accuses the nation's highest court of violating “the decree of Almighty God that 'a man shall leave his father and his mother and is united to his wife, and they shall become one flesh' (Genesis 2:24, ESV).”
Equality North Carolina director of Transgender Policy Ames Simmons told CBS, “There’s no way in modern society that a law (like) this would pass.”
Campbell University law professor Greg Wallace opined, “While people legitimately can disagree with the Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision, a state legislature cannot overrule the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the federal constitution. If this bill were to become law, it would be declared unconstitutional.”
Republicans “Getting Closer Ever Day” to New Bill to Defund Planned Parenthood
Of course, as everyone knows — including Spicer — the tricky part will be “figuring out whether or not those attract additional votes — gain additional support — and don’t detract” by scaring off some Republican moderates. What hasn’t scared off Republicans is the pro-life language. The best thing either piece of legislation had going for it was the portion that takes aim at the forced partnership between taxpayers and the nation’s biggest abortion business. In fact, as Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) told a rowdy town hall this week in Oklahoma, that was the reason he even considered voting for the AHCA last month.
When a group of abortion activists stood up and started booing (while others cheered), Bridenstine repeated himself and then asked, “Did you know it defunded Planned Parenthood?” The Tulsa World reports that later, responding to another question, “Bridenstine said he favored giving the federal money now going to Planned Parenthood to clinics such as Tulsa’s Morton Health Center ‘because they don’t do abortions. They don’t kill babies.'” (Or joke about hitting the gym to have the strength to do it, as Cecile Richards’s group was caught saying.)
Congressman Bridenstine is just one example of how potent the pro-life agenda has become. Even when a bill is as unpopular as the AHCA, defunding Planned Parenthood is a compelling enough concept to win over members. In this case, severing ties with the group is actually sweetening the deal for most conservatives. In all candor, the life issue has helped to keep conservatives at the table on health care when many were tempted to walk away.
As I told Time magazine, Donald Trump won the election by tapping into pro-lifers’ priorities like the Supreme Court and Planned Parenthood. It’s also how we turned a personality-driven election into a policy election. So, if Republicans want to keep the majority and have the ability to lead the country, they have to follow through on those promises. And based on the assurances I’ve gotten about the latest plan, they’re ready to.
LifeNews Note: Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council.
Abortion Activist Caught on Camera Destroying Pro-Life Display Not Once But Twice
On Wednesday, a pro-abortion student tore the crosses out of the ground twice and later admitted to his actions, according to the report.
Student Keaton Aspell told the newspaper that he felt disgusted when he walked out of class on Wednesday and saw the pro-life display. He said he pulled out the crosses and threw away the display signs, and then posted about it on social media.
Pro-life students set up the display again, but Aspell later came back, according to the report. When Aspell began tearing down the display again, the pro-life students called the campus police, the report states.
One of the pro-life students took a video of the incident. Watch it here:
Nicole Manzione, a pro-life club member, told the newspaper that she tried talking with Aspell, but he would not stop.
“We tried to have a good conversation with him, calm and civil, and he just kept taking them down no matter what we said,” Manzione said.
Aspell said the display was disgusting and divisive, and a lot of people supported his actions on social media.
“… they are just pushing their religious agenda and it really made me angry,” he said of the pro-life students.
Trisha Mallett, the WSU Students for Life club president, said the display was not religious and their club is not either. The crosses were chosen to look like a cemetery, she told the newspaper.
The report does not indicate if the police or college are investigating the matter. College administrators said the pro-life club had their permission to set up the display.
Katie Lodjic, Northwest Regional Coordinator for Students for Life of America, said the goal of the display was to help educate students with the hope of sparing some from the pain of abortion.
“Hosting displays like a cemetery of the innocents is used as a tool to create dialogue on campus and bring awareness to the thousands of innocent human lives that are lost every day due to abortion,” Lodjic told LifeNews. “We need more displays like this on campuses so that women can learn about the reality of abortion, before making the abortion decision.”
Lodjic said the WSU pro-life club has been doing a lot to support pregnant and parenting students on campus, too, by hosting diaper drives and collecting baby items for local families.
College campuses seem to be becoming increasingly hostile toward pro-life individuals. Pro-life displays frequently are vandalized, and pro-life student clubs sometimes are denied official status or funding. In some cases, liberals and abortion activists have praised the violence.
Last week, a similar incident occurred at Texas State University when a student was caught on video vandalizing a pro-life display. Student Ian Ramos later admitted that he punched and kicked down the pro-life signs and yelled profanities at an older pro-lifer who was standing there.
Ramos defended his actions in an interview with The Tab: “So yeah, I hope I was able to inspire a few of you all out there. I don’t know – speak up, wake up. Engage the opposition. … I am a tolerant person and I believe in tolerance, but I don’t have to be tolerant to bigots.”
Texas State officials said they are investigating the incident as a matter of criminal mischief.
In March, a pro-life student display at the University of Colorado at Boulder also was vandalized.
Also in March, a pro-life student club sought legal help after Kutztown University officials in Pennsylvania scrubbed their chalked pro-life messages from the campus sidewalks. The college permitted other groups to write chalk messages on the sidewalk.
Last October, pro-abortion feminists vandalized another student pro-life display at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, LifeNews reported. The university’s student Democrats club later praised the feminists’ actions.
And in January, pro-life students filed a lawsuit against Queens College in New York after it denied their Students for Life club official recognition.
Two Lies the Planned Parenthood Abortion Business Wants You to Believe
Despite impassioned pleadings that Planned Parenthood wants nothing more than to “set the record straight,” an examination of the seven myths PPFA peddles quickly tells us that at some serious factchecking and mythbusting is in order.
MYTH #1: Abortion represents only 3% of Planned Parenthood’s business.
It’s a statistic so often repeated and so often challenged that even some of Planned Parenthood’s erstwhile defenders are beginning to question it (e.g., Washington Post, 8/12/15). Anytime people start talking about PPFA as the largest abortion provider in the world, some Planned Parenthood spokesperson or political or media defender tries to minimize its significance, saying it represents only “3% of its services.”
Planned Parenthood is only able to generate this counterfactual statistic by some rather bizarre accounting acrobatics, e.g., counting every packet of birth control pills given out, every STD test, every pregnancy test as a separate “service.” A woman coming in for an abortion is likely to get all those things.
SIGN THE PETITION! Congress Must De-Fund Planned Parenthood Immediately
If all services are counted separately and equally, regardless of price or medical value or necessity, abortion looks like one service among many – 323,999 against a backdrop of 9,455,582 “services.” This is about 3.4%.
But change that denominator to “patients” (individual women or men) instead of “services,” that 3.4% figure jumps to nearly 13% — more than one in every eight. Planned Parenthood says that is sees “approximately two and a half million patients.”
Even that misrepresents abortion’s importance to Planned Parenthood. At going rates for the most basic surgical abortion, Planned Parenthood’s revenues from 323,999 abortions would run at least $150 million. Because they also advertise and perform chemical abortions and later surgical abortions, which cost considerably more, that figure is probably a significant underestimate.
Even so, at $150 million, that would represent more revenue in 2014 than all that Planned Parenthood brought in (if current market rates prevail there) from reversible contraceptives , breast exams, and cervical “cancer screenings” or pap tests, and pregnancy tests combined.
Try to be kind and call it misleading, call it deceptive, but the “3% figure” in no way reflects the actual figure, let alone the importance of abortion to Planned Parenthood’s bottom line.
And should’t someone point out, that whether it’s 48%, 13%, or 3%, taxpayer dollars shouldn’t go to anyone who makes killing innocent babies any part of their business?
MYTH #2: Planned Parenthood is all about women getting mammograms and “cancer screenings.
Over and over, when faced with the prospect that their extensive abortion performance may threaten their government funding, Planned Parenthood and its defenders start talking about all the mammograms and “cancer screenings” they perform that they say would never be performed if they disappeared. Often a woman will be brought out to claim that a cancer screening at Planned Parenthood saved her life.
There are serious problems with this defense, however.
First, as we, along with many of nation’s best fact-checkers have pointed out, Planned Parenthood doesn’t do mammograms (e.g., Washington Post, 3/9/17). Never has, has not announced any plans to add them anywhere. If a woman’s life was saved by a mammogram detecting early signs of cancer, it didn’t happen at a Planned Parenthood.
Second, for someone so concerned about women’s cancer screenings, there’s a lot of explaining Planned Parenthood needs to do about its own recent service patterns.
In its most recent annual report, Planned Parenthood reported performing 682,208 “cancer screenings” for 2014. For 2009, they reported nearly three times that many. The number of cancer screenings, breast exams, pap tests, colonoscopies has also fallen every year in between.
Why, if those are so critical? Has demand just dropped? Thankfully, new cervical cancer cases are down in the U.S. in recent years, and breast cancer rates are slightly down from what they were in the 1990s (see data from the National Cancer Institute). But they have not fallen at anywhere near the rate that cervical and breast cancer patients have at Planned Parenthood, not by two-thirds!
It doesn’t seem like it could be that money is tight at Planned Parenthood. Revenues went up during that time from just over $1 billion dollars a year to right at $1.3 billion. Other services like contraception and prenatal care saw some decline, but one offering stayed fairly steady – abortion.
Note: even while Planned Parenthood clinics were closing and abortions were dropping everywhere else across the U.S., the number of abortions at Planned Parenthood clinics held fairly steady, generally between 320,000 and 330,000 a year,
If cancer screenings fell because of the 179 clinics Planned Parenthood closed between 2010 and 2015, then why didn’t the number of abortions? The obvious answer would be that Planned Parenthood kept the clinics performing abortions open, but not those performing just the cancer screenings and other less profitable services.
Planned Parenthood maintained the abortion services, improved its revenues, but lost about 2/3 of its vaunted “cancer screenings.”
So what exactly are “non-profit” Planned Parenthood’s priorities? How dedicated are they to “cancer screenings” if they chose not to maintain the levels of five years ago, even with increased government funding? (FY 2010 $487.4 million vs. FY 2015 $553.7 million)
You’d think they’d at least be able to buy a few mammogram machines with all that extra money.
Susan Thayer "Exposing Planned Parenthood: Profit Centers of Death"
