Source: http://rlmblog.blogspot.com/2017/04/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 04:03:10+00:00

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The Michigan Senate voted 25 -11 to approve SB 163 on Thursday to create a Choose Life license plate in the state of Michigan. The bill now heads to the House of Representatives.
Sponsored by Senator Patrick Colbeck, the plate would act as a fundraiser to support women in crisis pregnancies and encourage adoption throughout the state. The plates would cost $35 with $25 going to a Choose Life Fund that would be set up, and $10 to the state for the cost of producing the plate.
Abortion supporters predictably complained, saying we shouldn't let citizens purchase plates for "political" organizations. Purchasing this plate would be completely voluntary, unlike the $500+ millions of taxpayer dollars Planned Parenthood coerces everyone to give them annually. There are currently 29 states that have a Choose Life license plate.
You can contact your state representative and ask them to vote "yes" on SB 163!
Statistics published by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services show induced abortions in Michigan declined by 2.8 percent from 2015 to 2016.
A total of 26,395 abortions were reported to the state in 2016, compared to 27,151 in 2015. The abortion ratio also declined 1.8 percent and the abortion rate declined 2.8 percent. The numbers show more women chose life for their unborn children.
Abortions in the state are down 46.2 percent from their high of 49,098 in 1987.
Repeat abortions declined slightly but remain shockingly high. In 2016 48.9 of women having an abortion were having their second abortion or more; 23 percent were having their third abortion or more.
One abortion death was recorded in the state report. It’s likely the one reported death was Cree Erwin, who died following a botched abortion at the Planned Parenthood facility in Kalamazoo. In the past Michigan women who were publicly known to have died from abortions were not included in the state report.
The number of Black women having abortions declined in 2016, but not as much as women of other races and ethnicities. Because of those other declines Black women once again have a majority of abortions in Michigan, 50.5 percent of the total.
Medical abortions using the abortion drug RU-486 continue to increase. Nearly a third of all reported abortions in Michigan are medical abortions.
Abortions paid for by health insurance increased slightly, largely unaffected by our state’s Abortion Insurance Opt-Out Act in 2013. Abortion supporters made many dubious claims in their testimony regarding the law, including claiming it would prevent women from receiving insurance coverage for miscarriage treatment.
It's always important to remember that left in the wake of this abortion are Erwin's family, including her very young son.
Individual states can again opt out of sending their Title X funding to Planned Parenthood. President Trump made it official today by signing legislation passed by Congress. States will now be able to choose where to send the federal dollars for family planning services. This law will allow for women’s health clinics that don’t provide abortions to have more access to federal grants and money so that they can better serve their patients.
This rule comes as a reverse to President Obama’s parting gift to the abortion industry. At in the final weeks of his presidency, Obama implemented a last-minute rule change that prevented states from defunding Planned Parenthood by requiring state and local governments to distribute the federal Title X money to family planning services regardless of whether they performed abortion.
Instead of allowing states and voters to decide, Obama's rule forced taxpayer money into the hands of Planned Parenthood, who performs more than one third of abortions in the United States annually.
Congress was able to roll back this rule using a process called the Congressional Review Act. This bill signing is the second win for the prolife movement nationally this week, with the swearing in of Justice Gorsuch on Monday being the first.
Gordon's abortion business is the only current surgical abortion facility in Grand Rapids. Another Grand Rapids abortion business closed several years ago. Planned Parenthood is now the sole abortion business in all of western and northern Michigan.
Last week State Representative Tom Cochran introduced a bill that would legalize doctor-prescribed suicide in Michigan. Rep. Cochran cites years as a professional medic and what he believes are the realities of the terminally ill as reasons for introducing his bill.
RLM's Legislative Director Ed Rivet was asked by FOX 17 to comment on Rep. Cochran's bill.
It is important to note that this bill will not go anywhere. With prolife majorities in Michigan's Legislature and our state's unique history there is no hope for this bill to get a hearing, let alone advance for a floor vote. Often representatives who are in the minority party will introduce controversial bills to create media attention or conversation on a given topic.
Rep. Cochran’s bill isn’t the first time something like this has been introduced. The people of Michigan decided the issue of doctor-prescribed suicide in 1998 when a ballot initiative (Proposal B) that would have legalized it in Michigan was overwhelmingly defeated by 71 percent of voters. Once people saw the many troubling questions doctor-prescribed suicide creates, the initiative was easily defeated. Proposal B was the conclusion of Jack Kevorkian's efforts to turn Michigan into a haven for euthanasia. Kevorkian eventually went to jail for second-degree murder after killing his final patient, Thomas Youk.
Rep. Cochran's bill shares many of the same problems of earlier efforts in Michigan and current efforts in other states. "Safeguards" wouldn't include tracking the deadly drugs after prescription and the bill would make it illegal to use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to detect any abuses. Hospitals and the insurance industry would face the choice of paying for patient's costly medical care or instead offering them cheap lethal drugs. Patients could face pressure from caregivers or family members.
Since Proposal B failed in 1998, Michigan has made (and continues to make) advances in both palliative and hospice care. With these advances, cases of unmitigated suffering are extremely rare. Pain management and hospice care provide appropriate and sufficient means to meet patients' needs for quality end of life care.
The greatest challenge we face as a nation for end-of-life medical care comes not from pain and suffering, but from medical staff not educating patients on these advances in pain management techniques. Looking at statistics from Oregon, an overwhelming 90 percent of patients requesting the lethal drugs cite fears of loss of autonomy or abilities, compared to only about 25 percent who cite improper pain control or (more specifically) concerns about pain control in the future.
There was been a recent nationwide push to embrace suicide. There are now six states that allow doctors to give patients lethal doses of drugs. Even with these states making this practice legal, major medical associations (including the AMA) and disabilities rights groups continue to reject doctor-prescribed suicide as an acceptable medical practice.
Rep. Cochran's bill provides us with an opportunity to educate people about the grave concerns these laws create. The ballot proposal in 1998 was defeated because the public became adequately informed on the issue, and we will continue to inform them as time passes.
Neil Gorsuch is just settling in as the newest U.S. Supreme Court justice, yet questions are already swirling about his future coworkers.
With judicial filibusters no longer U.S. Senate procedure and many incumbent Democratic Senators up for reelection in 2018, President Donald Trump will likely be pushing on an open door for court nominations. Three current justices are 78 or older, and all three are the critical fifth vote in favor of Roe v. Wade.
It’s with several of those facts in mind that U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein grilled Justice Gorsuch during his hearings about his views on what she called the “super-precedent” status of Roe v. Wade. There’s no such thing as a “super-precedent,” and even if there was it certainly doesn’t apply to the most controversial Supreme Court case in history. Roe v. Wade is so controversial it has changed the judicial nomination process and is the direct source of our current rancor, from the “borking” of Robert Bork to the unprecedented filibuster of Neil Gorsuch.
The controversy over Roe v. Wade has overshadowed the case itself, leaving most Americans in the dark about it and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton. Most Americans have a vague understanding that Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the first trimester. Few understand that the two cases legalized abortion for any reason through all nine months of pregnancy, superseding the laws and voters in all 50 states.
Fewer still understand that even Roe v. Wade’s supporters believe the case is pure legal mumbo jumbo. The well-known pro-abortion law professor Laurence Tribe put it more eloquently, "One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found."
A majority of Americans tell pollsters they are afraid to overturn Roe v. Wade. At the same time they say they oppose late-term abortions and oppose abortions done for economic or social reasons (which account for more than 90 percent of abortions performed). That’s a great disconnect. Americans are afraid to overturn a decision they don’t understand whose results they fundamentally reject.
Americans are in dire need of clarity about Roe and Doe given the likelihood of the cases being revisited very soon. What Americans don’t need is more disinformation. Roe and Doe are not “super-precedents” but cases that have disenfranchised voters from their beliefs and our democratic process.

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