We are back online and back at work after a holiday break-in at our office and a disruption with our web site over the weekend. We have replaced the broken door and are looking at additional security options. Thank you for your support and prayers!
We are passing along some updates on stories we have been covering and some other information of interest.
Demo To Start On Former Abortion Mill
Wichita, KS — Demolition is to begin this week on the former Central Women’s Services building that was purchased by Operation Rescue last spring. The interior of the structure, now contaminated with mold and seriously out of code, is to be completely gutted to make way for a beautiful memorial to the pre-born and OR’s new national headquarters. The exterior of the building will also be slightly modified.
“This building will be a much more secure location for our offices and our workers,” said OR President Troy Newman, referring to the Thanksgiving break-in and numerous other incidents of vandalism suffered at their current location. OR plans to be in their new offices sometime next spring.
To contribute to the renovation effort of this former abortion mill please click here.
“Cockroach” Attacker Gets New Lawyer, Delays Hearings
Hutchinson, KS — Kansas State Representative Vaughn Flora, a pro-abortion democrat, has hired a new attorney to represent him on battery charges after he struck Operation Rescue President Troy Newman during a comic protest during a gubernatorial debate at the Kansas State Fair in September. Newman and another man were dressed in cockroach costumes to protest Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ support for unrestricted abortion after Operation Rescue discovered roach infestations and other filthy conditions in a Wichita abortion mill that they purchased earlier this year. Sebelius had vetoed legislation that would have closed the abortion mill a year earlier.
Flora’s new lawyer, Hutchinson attorney Jim Oswalt, will represent him at the pre-trial hearing that has been rescheduled for December 19.
Hearings on Alabama’s Tough New Clinic Regulations
Montgomery, AL — The Alabama Department of Health is holding hearings this morning to discuss new regulations for abortion clinics. The regulations, if implemented, would be the strictest in the nation. Health officials determined that there was a need for tighter regulations after discovering appalling conditions at several Alabama abortion mills earlier this year. The decision has already been made to conduct mandatory yearly inspections.
We pray that these regulations will help close all abortion mills in Alabama.
Another Alabama Abortion Mill Placed On Probation
Birmingham, AL — The State of Alabama has placed another abortion mill on probation after discovering substandard conditions there. New Woman All Women Health Care joins two other mills, Reproductive Health Services, and Beacon Women’s Center, both in Montgomery, on probationary status. The State could force the abortion mills to close if they do not remedy health code violations, or if any other problems are found there. Alabama permanently closed the Summit Medical Center in Birmingham in May.
Please join Operation Rescue in praying that these three killing centers will be permanently closed.
More Reasons Why Roe v. Wade Cannot Survive
In an article that appeared today on HumanEvents.com, Janice Shaw Crouse tells us another reason that abortion on demand cannot survive. It was built on the unsteady foundation of the shattered lives of women who have experienced its tragedy first-hand. That article is reprinted below for your convenience.
In addition, the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute is telling us that forty percent of American abortions are on women who are repeat customers, and who were using some form of birth control at the time they became pregnant. This just goes to show that contraception is not the answer to stopping abortion — not by a long shot.
In any case, there are a lot of broken women out there who wish they had never heard of Roe v. Wade. Please consider joining Operation Rescue in Wichita on January 19-22 to make a statement to the nation that abortion kills babies and hurts women. And where better to make that point than at George Tiller’s infamous late-term abortion mill?
Please click here for event information.
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Abortion Movement’s New Antagonist: The Post-Abortive Woman
by Janice Shaw Crouse
Posted Nov 27, 2006
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=18198
The landscape confronting the abortion movement has changed significantly. The abortion movement has a hidden self-destruct mechanism. Having worked strenuously to sustain itself as “the women’s movement,” they now face a problem that originates with, well, women themselves.
Look at the data: abortion in America is on the decline. After Roe v. Wade, abortions remained consistently high at more than 1.55 million abortions annually throughout the 1980s. But after hitting a high of 1.6 million in 1990, the trend declined throughout the 1990s, reaching a new low of 1.3 million in 2000.
What’s going on?
The answer starts with the cumulative power of the numbers. From 1972 to 2000, the number of abortions in the United States alone totaled more than 40 million, eliminating the equivalent of the entire population of Spain (40.2 million).
The terrible tsunami that struck Southeast Asia offers sobering perspective on the scale of abortion: If the killer wave had engulfed the entire island of Java in Indonesia (where the northern province of Banda Aceh was decimated), with its population of 19.9 million, the victims would still number less than half the total of the American death toll from abortion.
In the wake of the tsunami, authorities have noted that at least one-third of the over 200,000 dead or missing are children. Stories of babies swept from their frantic mothers’ arms broke our hearts. Early stories that speculated on the complete annihilation of some island tribes left us stunned and horrified.
These images carry the tsunami impact one step further: Once the waves claim their victims and recede, the survivors stand on the beach and grieve.
And so it is with abortion.
While we may analyze “trends” and look at abortion in the aggregate, each and every abortion “statistic” is a tragedy for one, lone, individual woman. She experiences the reality of her loss and, for many, haunted dreams. This is one of the animating passions of the pro-life movement: the consequences of abortion, for women themselves, cannot be swept away.
The abortion movement has worked assiduously to present a dispassionate, clinical view of abortion. It has refined a soothing narrative that emphasizes a value-neutral tale of difficult, yet necessary “choices.” Dr. Warren Hern, who performs partial-birth abortions (euphemistically called late-term abortions) describes termination as an “interruption” of a pregnancy and reassures his readers that “psychological studies consistently show that women who are basically healthy can adjust to any outcome of pregnancy.”
Hern and other seemingly benevolent abortion demi-gods offer a woman the opportunity to erase her “mistake” and get on with her life, as though nothing happened.
But something will have happened. As the virulently pro-abortion stand-up comic Margaret Cho said, with callous poignancy, about her own abortion, “The tenant was evacuated.” And that is something a woman does not soon forget.
This is the engine of the self-destruct mechanism. The abortion movement has a new antagonist: the post-abortive woman. Along with the newly-matured “blogosphere,” websites and outreach organizations have sprung up using the power and reach of the Internet to get the message to women — from other women — that the abortion “choice” is more than an interruption in their lives.
In tragic irony, survey data indicate that a sizeable percentage of women seeking abortions believe that they “didn’t have a choice.” On a Web site, Rachel’s Vineyard, devoted to helping women who grieve their abortions, one woman named Patti states in sorrow that abortion is “a choiceless choice.” Patti’s boyfriend drove her to her appointment, and then, when she walked out in tears unable to go through with the abortion, he forced her to return a second time.
Why are abortions declining? It may just be that a post-choice message is spreading. Marguerite writes, “[M]y abortion has left me with a feeling of emptiness. … I just keep picturing my baby.” Lori writes, “My abortion has left me empty, alone and in despair.” Even cynical Cho revealed in a blog that her abortion left her feeling “hollowed out and alone.”
You can’t sustain a movement on hollowed-out emptiness. This is the catch-22 confronting the abortion movement: As women experience abortion for themselves, the truth cannot be contained. Witness the development and growth of the Silent No More campaign of post-abortive women, determined to help others avoid the choice they regret.
Call this the “post-choice” movement. It’s the wave of the 21st Century.
Dr. Crouse is senior fellow of Concerned Women for America’s Beverly LaHaye Institute.