Hobby Lobby: Trying to get DemProgs to understand what it means

Support Hobby Lobby With Your Business… And Help Explain the Truth About Them and the Supreme Court Decision to the Low-Informed

Bookworm Room: Impressed by the ill-informed hysterical reaction that my “real me” Facebook friends had to the Hobby Lobby decision, I explained to them that the decision is very narrow and will not (a) ban contraceptives across America and (b) lead to anti-gay lynch mobs. Here’s a slightly revised version of my Facebook post, which still failed to satisfy their paranoia and inability to understand the law.  I’ve also added a little hypothetical that might open their minds.  (No, don’t say it.  It’s improbable, but not impossible, that a DemProg mind can open).

The Hobby Lobby decision addresses one thing only:  whether an administrative rule conflicts with a long-standing law.

In 1993, a Democrat Congress passed, and a Democrat president signed, the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act (“RFRA”). RFRA holds in relevant part that the federal government may act in a way that substantially burdens the exercise of religion only if it can establish that its action is the least restrictive means of advancing a compelling government interest. Nothing in the Act distinguishes between individuals and corporations.

The administrative rule at issue is the edict from Health and Human Services (“HHS”) mandating that all corporations affected by Obamacare must provide their female employees with unlimited access to all contraceptives available on the market.

Hobby Lobby is a closely-held, family-run corporation. The Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, has a strong Christian faith, and is open about the fact that it runs its company in a way that is consistent with the family’s religious beliefs. These beliefs affect every aspect of the way in which Hobby Lobby is run, whether it’s the fact that even the least of Hobby Lobby’s employees gets paid an hourly amount that’s almost twice as much as minimum wage, or the fact that many of the store’s craft products come complete with little crosses attached to them.

Hobby Lobby has long provided comprehensive insurance for its employees. As part of this insurance, it makes available to its employees 16 different types of contraceptives. Moreover, Hobby Lobby has never said (a) that it would stop covering contraceptives entirely or (b) that contraceptives should be outlawed in America. Instead, it made a very narrow protest to the HHS mandate:  It objected to the fact that the mandate would force it to offer, not 16, but 20 contraceptives to its employees.  The additional 4 contraceptives are or can be used as abortion-causing agents.  The Green family’s religious faith means that it is adamantly opposed to abortion, which it considers murder.

The HHS mandate put Hobby Lobby in an impossible position: It could either use its own money to pay directly for abortifacient drugs or it could pay $475 million a year in penalties. It was this dilemma, it argued, that constituted a substantial burden on its exercise of religion under RFRA. Put another way, Hobby Lobby argued that it faced a Hobson’s choice:  directly fund something it opposes on core religious grounds or go bankrupt.  On these facts, the Supreme Court agreed that Hobby Lobby had satisfied the “substantial burden” requirement under RFRA.

There was something else that the Supreme Court accepted as given: For purposes of the ruling, the Supreme Court accepted as true HHS’s claim that forcing corporations to pay for their female employees’ contraceptives (simply because the Obama administration says it’s unfair not to) serves a compelling government interest.

(As an aside, I was thinking about this “unfair” point. According to my DemProg friends, the demand that corporations pay for contraceptives arises because it’s not fair that women have to shoulder these costs, while men don’t. Let’s put aside the fact that the DemProgs can’t explain why it’s fair that corporations must bear contraception costs.  The really important point is that, if the reason to force corporations to shoulder the burden is so that women don’t have to pay more in costs related to their unique biology just because they are women, corporations should also be required to pay for tampons, sanitary pads and, most importantly, chocolate, all of which are costly menstrual necessities that burden women, not men.  Additionally, corporations should be entitled to learn which employees have gone through menopause, so as to scale back on those uniquely feminine costs.  And now back to the Hobby Lobby case…)

With the Supreme Court having accepted that Hobby Lobby had proved that it was being significantly burdened and that HHS had proved a compelling government interest, the sole issue before the Court was whether HHS was using the least restrictive means to advance its compelling interest. Based on this single, limited issue, the Supreme Court concluded that HHS’s birth control mandate did not meet the RFRA test. The Court had a very simple metric for proving this conclusion: HHS itself handed the Court proof that there was a less restrictive way to serve this compelling interest.

HHS created this less restrictive contraception mandate when religious non-profit organizations objected to paying directly for contraceptives and abortifacients. HHS said that religious institutions could avoid the mandate by signing a document stating that their religious beliefs prevented them from complying with the contraception mandate. With this document, the onus shifts to the insurance company to apply the mandate.  (The Little Sisters of the Poor are challenging this workaround on the ground that it cannot apply to self-insured entities.  Likewise, even if the religious entity has a third party insurance company, the insurance company will simply increase its rates, with the result that the money for the contraceptives and abortifacients will still come from the corporation that has religious objections.  The Supreme Court’s eventual decision should be interesting.)

With HHS having already figured out a less intrusive method for getting “free” contraceptives to women, the Supreme Court held that the same workaround that applies to religious non-profits can apply equally well to closely held corporations if the owners have a sincere belief in a core religious issue. And that’s it. That’s the whole Hobby Lobby decision.

My Facebook explanation was clear enough that those who have been brainwashed into being terrified by the Hobby Lobby decision had only two defenses left. The first was that religious fanatics will use the decision to justify myriad things such as banning birth control nationwide, revoking the rule that corporations must pay for women’s contraceptives, and refusing to hire gays (a fear based upon this letter from a religious leader who clearly hadn’t read the Hobby Lobby decision himself).

The second defense, which I’ll address in the remainder of this post, was that the entire decision is wrong because, as a predicate matter, it treats a corporation as a person. “Corporations aren’t people” my DemProg friends cry, as they’ve been programmed to do since the Citizens United decision.  In other words, Hobby Lobby has no conscience and therefore cannot be treated as a conscientious objector.

I came up with a hypothetical scenario — a probable hypothetical scenario — that should have DemProgs insisting that, yes indeedy, corporations can and should be people — or, at least, Leftist corporations can and should be people.

The year is 2026. Since 2020, Republicans have majorities in Congress and a president in the White House. The wars in Syria and Iraq long ago merged, starting a conflagration that constantly threatens to spill over into every region of the world. The result is the Islamist caliphate equivalent of the Cold War, with the U.S. trying to put out small Islamic fires all over the world in order to de-fang the Sunni and Shia monsters without having to engage them directly on American soil.

The military is more central to American life and survival than ever. Defense costs have therefore skyrocketed, so Republicans went looking for new ways to equip the military. To this end, they noted that America’s business class was arguably benefiting most from the military’s efforts, because businesses were able to carry on and profit primarily because the military kept the Islamists far from American shores. It therefore would be logical for corporations to subsidize a significant part of the war effort.

Based upon this reasoning, in 2022, the Republicans successfully passed a new law, known as the Act for an Affordable Military (“AAM”). The Acts’ supporters affectionately call it “Adopt A Marine.” Its detractors refer to it disdainfully as “America’s A Monster.”

AAM goes far beyond traditional military funding, which relied upon tax revenues funneled to the Pentagon. Instead, AAM directly engages corporate America as an essential part of equipping the American military. Immediately upon the Act’s passage, the Pentagon was tasked with creating rules under AAM (a 3,200 portmanteau document written in vague and broad terms) that would shift onto corporations primary responsibility for equipping troops.

The Pentagon immediately issued a rule mandating that henceforth every corporation will be responsible for outfitting Marines with everything a Marine at war could need:  uniform, pack, weapons . . . the whole megillah.  Moreover, the number of Marine Gear Kits (or “MGKs”) that a corporation must assemble will be equal to the number of employees the corporation has. Thus, a corporation with ten employees must put together 10 MGKs, a corporation with 50 employees must put together 50 MGKs, and so on. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2012 Obamacare decision, this kind of . . . ahem . . . “tax” (i.e., forcing taxpayers to purchase a product, even if they don’t want it themselves) is perfectly legitimate.

Corporations that fail to comply with the MGK mandate will be assessed an annual tax equal to $10,000 per MGK, with no maximum cap. That means that, if a corporation with 50 employees refuses to put together its designated MGKs, it will pay an annual penalty of $500,000. A corporation with 30,000 employees could find itself on the hook for $300,000,000 annually.  Again, the Supreme Court’s 2012 Obamacare decision legitimized this “penalty” for failure to “pay” the “tax.”

Something else has changed now that the Cold War against the new Caliphate is being carried out by Republicans:  The DemProg peace movement is resurgent. Two of the most active peaceniks, Sol and Luna Giggleweed started out in their home office in 2020 (when Republicans finally re-took Congress and the White House following Elizabeth Warren’s ill-fated four-year presidency), designing, creating, and marketing bumper stickers, window signs, mugs, toilet paper . . . anything that could advance the pacifist cause.

With business booming, the Giggleweeds incorporated, calling their new business “Pacifists United Together Zone” or “PUTZ.” They now have 50 full-time employees working in their green-compliant factory in San Francisco’s SoMa district.

Thanks to the Giggleweed’s business acumen, you can now walk into any trendy store and buy one of PUTZ’s $25 king-size mugs emblazoned with “Live Peacefully or Die.”  If that’s too expensive, for $10 you can get a set of 10 bumper stickers reading “Peace : The New Caliphate Wants It Too.” PUTZ also manufactures the usual complement of sweatshirts with peace signs on them; posters urging people to “Visualize World Peace” or “Pray for Israel’s Destruction”; and the ever-popular Naughty Underwear set, in both multigender and cisgender versions, with “Make Love, Not War” glitter-stamped on the crotch.

For the Giggleweeds, peace isn’t just a gimmick to make a motive; it’s also their core ideology. Both Sol and Luna attended the Bush-era anti-war protests, and they oppose Republican-led wars with every fiber of their DemProg beings.

Significantly, even the Giggleweed’s faith is driven by their pacifism. They are ardent members of the Presbyterian Church (USA) (aka “PCUSA”).  In 2018, PCUSA’s governing board formally voted that “We, the PCUSA, oppose all wars, except for those wars dedicated to Israel’s destruction.”

Nobody quite knows how it did it, but PCUSA asserted that this vote reflected a core religious principle derived from the Books of Samuel, 1 Kings, and 1 Chronicles.  PCUSA’s revised doctrine is immune to challenge thanks to the tattered remnants of the First Amendment (which, in 2018, was amended to state that “Except as to matters of human sexuality and gender identity, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . .”).

PUTZ employees are as devout as the Giggleweeds. Indeed, many of them came to the Giggleweed’s attention during the Bush War protests.  Without exception, all of the employees belong to PCUSA or affiliated faiths. Their strong anti-war beliefs (unless, of course, the war is waged against Israel) infuse every aspect of their lives.  They are grateful to work at PUTZ, a corporation with a business model that puts pacifism on the front line, so to speak.

For these reasons, the Giggleweeds and their PUTZ employees were horrified when AAM became law and, even worse, when the Pentagon explicitly passed to corporations the responsibility for providing MGKs. PUTZ therefore joined with PCUSA and other like-minded churches and mosques, which are also on the hook for MGKs, to object to the mandate that they directly invest in MGKs or pay a substantial penalty to help fund the “Republican Anti-Caliphate War Machine.”

The Republican establishment was unmoved by anti-AAM protesters. Instead, it took great pleasure in reminding the protesters and litigants that, thanks to agitation from this same cadre of people in the wake of the Hobby Lobby decision, Congress in 2016 (Year One of Elizabeth Warren’s disastrous administration) amended RFRA to state explicitly that it does not apply to corporations, regardless of the corporation’s size or whether it’s publicly traded or closely held. There is no way out for the Giggleweeds and PUTZ: they either put together MGKs for the Marines, or they pay $500,000 so that someone else can put the MGKs together for them.

To the Giggleweeds and their ilk, the Republicans have only one thing to say:  It’s always nasty when your own chickens come home to roost.

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Hobby Lobby Wins SCOTUS Decision as Obama Racks Up a String of Judicial Losses at Supreme Court

It has been a tough week for President Obama at the Supreme Court!  As the somewhat surprising ObamaCare loss to Hobby Lobby was added to the tally on Monday, the Obama administration lost 4 out of 5 big decisions and 2 were rare 9 to 0 decisions.

The Roberts Court

By Marion Algier – Ask Marion

Although not unanimous decisions, after months of judicial rulings reining in big government and police on issues like snooping on Americans without a warrant, restrictions on campaign finance and President Obama’s recess appointment powers, the administration’s losses on ObamaCare rules and compulsory union dues served as a final rebuke by the Supreme Court on their last day of this session.

In the five years that President Obama has been in office, the Supreme Court has rejected the government’s argument with a 9-0 decision 20 times.

During the eight years each in the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the government lost on unanimous votes 23 times and 15 times, respectively, putting the Obama administration on course to to be the biggest loser in recent history in terms of judicial losses.  Unfortunately for the American people, Obama won on the big one… the most damaging decision for America: ObamaCare, a decision many people are still baffled by and questioning.

President Obama appointed two of the sitting Supreme Court Judges Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, under an umbrella of considerable scrutiny and dissent by conservatives, the right. So the number of unanimous cases are important in that nobody can say, ‘Well, there are five Republican appointees on the court and only four Democrats.’

“These cases where they haven’t gotten the votes of either of the two Obama nominees means the arguments being presented by the Justice Department to the court are just out of left field,” said Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Monday’s decisions were not unanimous, but congressional Republicans and other critics of President Obama saw the rulings as evidence that the Roberts court is finally acting as something of a final line of defense, a check and balance as they were meant to be, against a president who brags about his use of executive power to bypass Congress and impose his progressive agenda on the American people.

House Speaker John A. Boehner said of Monday’s decision, “It is a victory for religious freedom and another defeat for an administration that has repeatedly crossed constitutional lines in pursuit of its big government objectives.”  Boehner announced last week that he would be suing the president for abuse of executive authority.  And although it is unclear how that lawsuit will play out, the administration’s recent track record in high-profile cases has been poor.

Chief Justice John Roberts managed to corral unanimous votes on both privacy and recess appointments — cases that have dealt stinging defeats to the president, having himself been a lawyer and former lecturer on constitutional law.

US Supreme Court to police: To search a cell phone, 'get a warrant':

Christian Science Monitor: WASHINGTON — In a major affirmation of privacy in the digital age, the US Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that police must obtain a warrant before searching digital information on a cell phone seized from an individual who has been arrested.

The 9-to-0 decision marks a Fourth Amendment landmark of profound importance given the ubiquity of cell phones, tablets, and portable computers in public places throughout society.

“Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court. “With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans the ‘privacies of life,’ " he said.

“The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought,” the chief justice said.

“Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple – get a warrant.” Read More

The Supreme Court delivered a solid blow Thursday to President Obama, ruling that he went too far in making recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board.

SCOTUS Limits Recess Appointments Decision:

Fox News: In a unanimous decision, the high court sided with Senate Republicans and limited the president's power to fill high-level vacancies with temporary appointments. It was the first-ever Supreme Court test involving the long-standing practice of presidents naming appointees when the Senate is on break.

In this case, Obama had argued that the Senate was on an extended holiday break when he filled slots at the NLRB in 2012. He argued the brief sessions it held every three days were a sham that was intended to prevent him from filling the seats.

The justices rejected that argument, though, declaring the Senate was not actually in a formal recess when Obama acted during that three-day window.

Justice Stephen Breyer said in his majority opinion that a congressional break has to last at least 10 days to be considered a recess under the Constitution. Read  More

On recess appointments, justice was delayed but served…

Mandatory Union Fees Curbed by Court in Blow to Labor

BusinessWeek: A divided U.S. Supreme Court handed a setback to organized labor by placing new limits on the ability of unions to demand fees from some public-sector workers.

The high court, voting 5-4, invalidated Illinois rules requiring union payments from people who provide in-home care for disabled Medicaid recipients. The majority said those rules violated the workers’ constitutional right to freedom of speech and association because the home health-care workers weren’t true public employees.

“If we accepted Illinois’ argument,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in today’s majority opinion, “we would approve an unprecedented violation of the bedrock principle that, except perhaps in the rarest of circumstances, no person in this country may be compelled to subsidize speech by a third party that he or she does not wish to support.”  Read More

Hobby Lobby Wins SCOTUS Decision

Ask Marion/THITW:  Monday’s decision was very narrow and some pro-life and religious groups question whether it was a win in the long run in their battles.  It certainly was in the short run!! You be the judge…

Attorneys Who Defended Hobby Lobby Celebrating

American Thinker: Hobby Lobby 1, Obamacare 0

The Supreme Court upheld the religious freedom rights of Hobby Lobby, the closely-held corporation owned by believing Christians who objected to being required to supply the abortion pill to their employees.

Steve Ertelt of Life News reports:

…the U.S. Supreme Court today issued a favorable ruling in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., a landmark case addressing the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of business owners to operate their family companies without violating their deeply held religious convictions.

Writing for the 5-4 majority, Justice Samuel Alito handed down the decision for the high court, saying, “The Supreme Court holds government can’t require closely held corporations with religious owners to provide contraception coverage.”

“HHS’s contraception mandate substantially burdens the exercise of religion,” the decision reads, adding that the “decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to mean that all insurance mandates.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion saying that government itself could provide the coverage for contraception and the abortion-causing drugs if a company declines to do so.

The Hobby Lobby decision only applies to companies. Non-profit groups like Priests for Life and Little Sisters are still waiting for a ruling about their right to opt out of the mandate.

Note that this ruling only applies to closely-held corporations, but does not rule out applying the same religious freedom reasoning to publicly-held firms and nonprofits.

Ed Lasky points out:

The fact that both these decisions [Hobby Lobby and the forced union dues case] were 5-4 points out the danger of Obama picking the next SC Justice with Reid in control of the Senate. If the opportunity present itself, he will abolish the filibuster for SC nominees, too.

Memo.com: The Supreme Court Gets It Right

Finally, the U.S. Supreme Court has stepped up to defend Americans’ most basic freedoms from the full-frontal assault by the rampaging band of leftists running America. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby, a Christian business that objected on religious ground to Obamacare’s mandate that they must cover certain contraceptives.

Hobby Lobby is among about 50 businesses that have sued over covering contraceptives. Some, like Hobby Lobby, are willing to cover most methods of contraception, as long as they can exclude abortifacients.

Justice Samuel Alito said the decision is limited to contraceptives. “Our decision should not be understood to hold that an insurance-coverage mandate must necessarily fall if it conflicts with an employer’s religious beliefs,” he said. He suggested two ways the administration could deal with the birth control issue. The government could simply pay for pregnancy prevention, he said. Or it could provide the same kind of accommodation it has made available to religious-oriented, not-for-profit corporations.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was part of the majority, also wrote separately to say the administration can solve its problem easily. “The accommodation works by requiring insurance companies to cover, without cost sharing, contraception coverage for female employees who wish it,” Kennedy said. He said that arrangement “does not impinge on the plaintiffs’ religious beliefs.” Everyone’s rights respected and problem solved. Easy peasy.

Of course, Obamacare was never about health care or health insurance. It was only and always about government power and control. Over you. That’s what the contraceptive mandate was all about: social engineering, abortion made even easier to get, and with the government holding the strings of control over all of it.

Thank goodness the Supremes ruled on the side of religious liberty. It’s about time. But that 5-4 split is too close for comfort. As we head into 2016, don’t forget that the Supreme Court—like all of our courts—hangs by a thread, and with it, our most basic freedoms.

Huffington Post:  If Hobby Lobby Wins, Pro-life Christians Lose

We now know with certainty that the Supreme Court will announce its Hobby Lobby decision on Monday. This weekend, the craft and home décor store, along with numerous evangelical institutions that have filed briefs in its support -including my former employer the National Association of Evangelicals–are hoping and praying God will favor them with a whole new expansion of religious freedom and the protection of human life. I’m praying for the opposite.

Along with nearly 50 other for-profit corporations, Hobby Lobby is demanding the same religious freedoms and protections that each of us has. Hobby Lobby was not endowed by its Creator with certain unalienable rights. It does not have a soul. It cannot have faith. Yet its owners (and their lawyers) insist that it should not have to comply with the contraceptive coverage requirement in the Affordable Care Act on religious grounds. The Obama Administration reasonably granted an opt-out to houses of worship and other religious nonprofits. Hobby Lobby wants similar treatment.

Evangelical intervention on behalf of the multi-billion dollar corporation, which donates generously to their causes, is wrong for many reasons but here are two major ones: If you are pro-religious liberty and pro-life and family, you can’t support allowing a for-profit corporation to use religion to deny contraceptive coverage.

First, supporters of Hobby Lobby think they are helping the Christian faith but are actually harming it. In fact, a ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby weakens religious freedom.

When anyone can use religion to claim an exemption on anything, religion loses meaning. Rather than a personal belief embedded in our souls, faith would become a set of arbitrary rules any corporation could choose from to skirt the law.

Is this what evangelicalism needs? I spent nearly three decades in governmental relations at the National Association of Evangelicals defending the free-exercise of religion and the right to life, among many other traditional values. Coming to the aid of for-profit corporations who want to ride on the backs of religion is not one of these honored principles.

Indeed, it is a kind of corporatism invading the body of Christ — concern not for the “least of these” but the richest of those among us. Is this what Christ would do?

When corporations are allowed the same exemptions that have always been reserved just for churches–whether on health benefits, hiring, or land use–those special protections become less clear and more open for interpretation.

If a for-profit corporation is eligible for legal exemptions on grounds of religious freedom, it puts government in charge of deciding what is or isn’t religion. You can just imagine the lawyers who will find work forever litigating these claims. I know, from experience, that their concern for what should be “legal” is not the same as what is “spiritual” or truly serves the interests of the Church.

What if a corporation owned by Jehovah Witnesses refuses to cover blood transfusions? If Christian corporations are allowed to use faith to refuse contraception coverage to women who work for them, what’s to stop a Christian Scientist business from refusing to cover any health benefits?

Second, the supporters of Hobby Lobby think they are being “pro-life.” They are wrong. A massive study conducted in 2012 showed that contraception coverage without a co-pay could dramatically reduce the abortion rate.

That study, conducted by the Washington University School of Medicine, of 10,000 women at-risk for unintended pregnancy found that when given their choice of birth control methods, counseled about their effectiveness, risks, and benefits, with all methods provided at no cost, about 75 percent of women in the study chose the most effective methods: IUDs or implants. Most importantly, as a result, annual abortion rates among study participants dropped up to 80 percent below the national abortion rate.

Well, you might ask, based upon some of the charges being made, aren’t the contraceptive methods being funded through the Affordable Care Act, abortifacients? Not if you believe medical science.

In the words of Jeffrey F. Peipert, M.D., Ph.D., the Robert J. Terry Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine, “these contraceptive methods work by preventing pregnancy (fertilization) from occurring in the first place. For instance, the intrauterine device works primarily by preventing fertilization. Plan B (or the progestin-containing, morning-after pill), along with Ella (ulipristal acetate), delay the release of a woman’s egg from her ovary. The egg does not get fertilized, which means the woman does not become pregnant.”

In sum, Evangelicals supporting Hobby Lobby at the Supreme Court are not actually being pro-religious freedom or pro-life. If they win at the Supreme Court, these causes will be damaged in the long run.

Although this decision in favor of Hobby Lobby is generally seen as a victory by most on the right, and a win for freedom in general, it has opened the door for a lot of whining by the left, who will certainly take their misinformation and use it as a weapon in the upcoming 2014 Elections.  Therefore, it could not be a better time for Carly Fiorina’s new Pac… the UP Project, to educate women.

A big Supreme Court win on ‘greenhouse gas’ regulations for the EPA

The only win for the White House and the EPA this Supreme Court Session was on greenhouse gas:

Human Events:

The outcome is likely to be welcomed by environmentalists because it confirms the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to restrict greenhouse gases.

The justices handed down two separate rulings in a dispute over permits for new or modified power plants and factories.

In a 7-2 vote, the justices agreed the Environmental Protection Agency could force major polluters to use new and better technology to limit their emissions of carbon dioxide.

“These are major polluting facilities, such as factories and coal-fired power plants,” said Justice Antonin Scalia, and they are already subject to EPA restrictions. Now, those restrictions can include limits on greenhouse gases, he said.

The only disappointment faced by the regulatory State was that a separate 5-4 decision kept it from extending this authority to “millions of other facilities,” as the L.A. Times puts it, although I think that could be more properly rendered as “virtually all other facilities.”  The greenhouse-gas fantasy retains its grip on power plants, but at least they can’t make nearly every construction project pull “greenhouse gas permits,” which is where all of this was headed.  Today’s ruling also won’t do anything to stop the broader War on Energy carried out by the Obama Administration.  Considering what they won at the Supreme Court, their losses are trivial. Read More

Jonathan Turly Weighs In On Supreme Court Ruling & Executive Orders Special Report:

REP. BOB GOODLATTE (R-VA): Professor Turley, the constitution, the system of separated powers is not simply about stopping one branch of government from usurping another. It's about protecting the liberty of Americans from the dangers of concentrated government power. How does the president's unilateral modification of act of Congress affect both the balance of power between the political branches and the liberty interests of the American people?

JONATHAN TURLEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The danger is quite severe. The problem with what the president is doing is that he's not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system. He's becoming the very danger the Constitution was designed to avoid. That is the concentration of power in every single branch.

This Newtonian orbit that the three branches exist in is a delicate one but it is designed to prevent this type of concentration. There is two trends going on which should be of equal concern to all members of Congress. One is that we have had the radical expansion of presidential powers under both President Bush and President Obama. We have what many once called an imperial presidency model of largely unchecked authority. And with that trend we also have the continued rise of this fourth branch. We have agencies that are quite large that issue regulations. The Supreme Court said recently that agencies could actually define their own or interpret their own jurisdiction. (House hearing, December 3, 2013).

Video:  Jonathan Turly Weighs In On Supreme Court Ruling & Executive Orders Special Report

UPDATE: The Kelly File, 2/12/2014: Turley on Expansion of Presidential Powers: "We Have Become a Nation of Enablers"

As for me… All in all, I’d say it was a great week!!  It is just too bad we can’t get decisions on the Constitutionality of important matters a little bit quicker!  It would save us a whole of hurt… money and time!!

Related:

Hobby Lobby Wins SCOTUS Decision

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Two Unanimous Supreme Court Decisions Grant Immunity to Police, Secret Service

Supreme Court ruling dents public sector labor unions

Justices turn away 'conversion' therapy ban cases

Scalia Dissent: Judicial Gay Marriage Decision Is Jaw-Dropping

Supreme Court: Prayer at council meetings Constitutional

Did NSA Blackmail Roberts to OK ObamaCare?

U.S. Supreme Court dumps AZ voter law

Supreme Court Upholds Obamacare…

Scalia vs. Thomas Jefferson on secession

Democrats eye Hobby Lobby defeat as a weapon on the campaign trail

HUMPHRIES: The liberal bully of the week is … Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Critics Question Constitutionality of President’s Executive Actions – Andrew Napolitano – The Kelly File

Technorati Tags: Supreme Court,Obamaland,SCOTUS,Law,Constitution,Chief Justice John Roberts,Scalia,NLRB,ObamaCare,Constitutional Law,Case Law,Overreach,Speaker Boehner,John Roberts,Fourth Amendment,Unons,EPA,Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Hobby Lobby Wins SCOTUS Decision

It has been a tough week for President Obama at the Supreme Court!  The Obama administration lost 4 out of 5 decisions and 2 were rare 9 to 0 decisions, and today ObamaCare’s loss to Hobby Lobby was added to tally.  However, today’s decision was very narrow and some pro-life and religious groups question whether it was a win in the long run in their battles. You be the judge…

By Marion Algier – Ask Marion

Attorneys Who Defended Hobby Lobby Celebrating

American Thinker: Hobby Lobby 1, Obamacare 0

The Supreme Court upheld the religious freedom rights of Hobby Lobby, the closely-held corporation owned by believing Christians who objected to being required to supply the abortion pill to their employees.

Steve Ertelt of Life News reports:

…the U.S. Supreme Court today issued a favorable ruling in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., a landmark case addressing the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of business owners to operate their family companies without violating their deeply held religious convictions.

Writing for the 5-4 majority, Justice Samuel Alito handed down the decision for the high court, saying, “The Supreme Court holds government can’t require closely held corporations with religious owners to provide contraception coverage.”

“HHS’s contraception mandate substantially burdens the exercise of religion,” the decision reads, adding that the “decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to mean that all insurance mandates.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion saying that government itself could provide the coverage for contraception and the abortion-causing drugs if a company declines to do so.

The Hobby Lobby decision only applies to companies. Non-profit groups like Priests for Life and Little Sisters are still waiting for a ruling about their right to opt out of the mandate.

Note that this ruling only applies to closely-held corporations, but does not rule out applying the same religious freedom reasoning to publicly-held firms and nonprofits.

Ed Lasky points out:

The fact that both these decisions [Hobby Lobby and the forced union dues case] were 5-4 points out the danger of Obama picking the next SC Justice with Reid in control of the Senate. If the opportunity present itself, he will abolish the filibuster for SC nominees, too.

Memo.com: The Supreme Court Gets It Right

Finally, the U.S. Supreme Court has stepped up to defend Americans' most basic freedoms from the full-frontal assault by the rampaging band of leftists running America. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby, a Christian business that objected on religious ground to Obamacare's mandate that they must cover certain contraceptives.

Hobby Lobby is among about 50 businesses that have sued over covering contraceptives. Some, like Hobby Lobby, are willing to cover most methods of contraception, as long as they can exclude abortifacients.

Justice Samuel Alito said the decision is limited to contraceptives. "Our decision should not be understood to hold that an insurance-coverage mandate must necessarily fall if it conflicts with an employer's religious beliefs," he said. He suggested two ways the administration could deal with the birth control issue. The government could simply pay for pregnancy prevention, he said. Or it could provide the same kind of accommodation it has made available to religious-oriented, not-for-profit corporations.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was part of the majority, also wrote separately to say the administration can solve its problem easily. "The accommodation works by requiring insurance companies to cover, without cost sharing, contraception coverage for female employees who wish it," Kennedy said. He said that arrangement "does not impinge on the plaintiffs' religious beliefs." Everyone's rights respected and problem solved. Easy peasy.

Of course, Obamacare was never about health care or health insurance. It was only and always about government power and control. Over you. That's what the contraceptive mandate was all about: social engineering, abortion made even easier to get, and with the government holding the strings of control over all of it.

Thank goodness the Supremes ruled on the side of religious liberty. It's about time. But that 5-4 split is too close for comfort. As we head into 2016, don't forget that the Supreme Court---like all of our courts---hangs by a thread, and with it, our most basic freedoms.

Huffington Post:  If Hobby Lobby Wins, Pro-life Christians Lose

We now know with certainty that the Supreme Court will announce its Hobby Lobby decision on Monday. This weekend, the craft and home décor store, along with numerous evangelical institutions that have filed briefs in its support -including my former employer the National Association of Evangelicals--are hoping and praying God will favor them with a whole new expansion of religious freedom and the protection of human life. I'm praying for the opposite.

Along with nearly 50 other for-profit corporations, Hobby Lobby is demanding the same religious freedoms and protections that each of us has. Hobby Lobby was not endowed by its Creator with certain unalienable rights. It does not have a soul. It cannot have faith. Yet its owners (and their lawyers) insist that it should not have to comply with the contraceptive coverage requirement in the Affordable Care Act on religious grounds. The Obama Administration reasonably granted an opt-out to houses of worship and other religious nonprofits. Hobby Lobby wants similar treatment.

Evangelical intervention on behalf of the multi-billion dollar corporation, which donates generously to their causes, is wrong for many reasons but here are two major ones: If you are pro-religious liberty and pro-life and family, you can't support allowing a for-profit corporation to use religion to deny contraceptive coverage.

First, supporters of Hobby Lobby think they are helping the Christian faith but are actually harming it. In fact, a ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby weakens religious freedom.

When anyone can use religion to claim an exemption on anything, religion loses meaning. Rather than a personal belief embedded in our souls, faith would become a set of arbitrary rules any corporation could choose from to skirt the law.

Is this what evangelicalism needs? I spent nearly three decades in governmental relations at the National Association of Evangelicals defending the free-exercise of religion and the right to life, among many other traditional values. Coming to the aid of for-profit corporations who want to ride on the backs of religion is not one of these honored principles.

Indeed, it is a kind of corporatism invading the body of Christ -- concern not for the "least of these" but the richest of those among us. Is this what Christ would do?

When corporations are allowed the same exemptions that have always been reserved just for churches--whether on health benefits, hiring, or land use--those special protections become less clear and more open for interpretation.

If a for-profit corporation is eligible for legal exemptions on grounds of religious freedom, it puts government in charge of deciding what is or isn't religion. You can just imagine the lawyers who will find work forever litigating these claims. I know, from experience, that their concern for what should be "legal" is not the same as what is "spiritual" or truly serves the interests of the Church.

What if a corporation owned by Jehovah Witnesses refuses to cover blood transfusions? If Christian corporations are allowed to use faith to refuse contraception coverage to women who work for them, what's to stop a Christian Scientist business from refusing to cover any health benefits?

Second, the supporters of Hobby Lobby think they are being "pro-life." They are wrong. A massive study conducted in 2012 showed that contraception coverage without a co-pay could dramatically reduce the abortion rate.

That study, conducted by the Washington University School of Medicine, of 10,000 women at-risk for unintended pregnancy found that when given their choice of birth control methods, counseled about their effectiveness, risks, and benefits, with all methods provided at no cost, about 75 percent of women in the study chose the most effective methods: IUDs or implants. Most importantly, as a result, annual abortion rates among study participants dropped up to 80 percent below the national abortion rate.

Well, you might ask, based upon some of the charges being made, aren't the contraceptive methods being funded through the Affordable Care Act, abortifacients? Not if you believe medical science.

In the words of Jeffrey F. Peipert, M.D., Ph.D., the Robert J. Terry Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine, "these contraceptive methods work by preventing pregnancy (fertilization) from occurring in the first place. For instance, the intrauterine device works primarily by preventing fertilization. Plan B (or the progestin-containing, morning-after pill), along with Ella (ulipristal acetate), delay the release of a woman's egg from her ovary. The egg does not get fertilized, which means the woman does not become pregnant."

In sum, Evangelicals supporting Hobby Lobby at the Supreme Court are not actually being pro-religious freedom or pro-life. If they win at the Supreme Court, these causes will be damaged in the long run

Technorati Tags: Hobby Lobby,Contraception,Christianity,SCOTUS,Religion,Religious Freedom,ObamaCare,Sebelius,Abortifacients,Pro-Life,Evangelicals,Small Victories,Supreme Court

Good News for Justina Pelletier: She May Finally Get to Go Home

Some very good news…

Life News: In a dramatic reversal, the Massachusetts’ Department of Children and Families (DCF) has filed a motion with the courts agreeing with our petition to have Justina Pelletier returned home to her family.

The motion for review of reconsideration and dismissal in the case of Justina Pelletier follows Liberty Counsel’s motion to return Justina home which was filed less than two weeks ago. The motion indicates that DCF is in agreement with returning custody of Justina to her parents!

DCF’s concession completely undercuts their argument and reasoning for performing a “parent-ectomy” and removing Justina from the care of the Pelletiers in the first place.

She is now getting treatment from Tuft’s medical providers where she was receiving effective treatments before Boston Children’s Hospital intervened.

The entire process is now waiting on the judge. At this point, there is no reason to delay. There’s no reason why he can’t act immediately!

We have filed a motion asking Judge Joseph Johnston to expedite a ruling since all parties are in agreement. A ruling could come any day now.

Every hour she’s not back with her family is an hour she can’t ever get back. Once she does get home, she’ll have a long road to recovery — physically, mentally and spiritually.

Justina has now lost well over a year of her life with her family. The Pelletiers have spent untold hours and an enormous amount of resources fighting “Goliath” to get their daughter back from the misguided actions of an out-of-control state agency.

Justina has recorded a special video plea to Juvenile Court Judge Johnston and Governor Deval Patrick begging them to allow her to go home.

LifeNews Note: Mat Staver is the Chairman of Liberty Counsel Action and Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel.

Technorati Tags: Justina Pelletier,Pelletier,Victory,Parenting,Big Brother Tactics,Obamaland,HealthCare,Parental Rights,Wake-Up

A Stunning New Court Defeat for ObamaCare

CFIF.org: Things just went from awful to worse this week for ObamaCare, and the Obama Administration more generally. 

Nearly a month into its disastrous debut, it’s clear that the ObamaCare website isn’t just “glitching,” it’s completely melting down.  This is quickly becoming a watershed moment, a failure so obvious and deep that it could permanently stain Obama’s presidential legacy among historians long after he’s gone.  Among the familiar litany of failures throughout his tenure, healthcare legislation was the one signature legislative act to which he could point. 

And now it is disintegrating before his very eyes. 

In Florida alone, some 300,000 Florida Blue health insurance customers just received notice that their policies will be canceled due to ObamaCare because their coverage isn’t considered a “qualified health plan” under the new regulations.  Although the Obama Administration continues to refuse to disclose how many people have actually enrolled in ObamaCare since October 1, whatever that number is appears to come far short of the Florida Blue cancelation alone. 

And on that note, so much for the solemn pre-ObamaCare assurance that, “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period.  No one will take it away, no matter what.” 

Now, a new federal court ruling may legally doom ObamaCare before it ultimately collapses under its own unsustainable weight. 

This week, a federal judge gave the green light for a lawsuit challenging ObamaCare’s structure of subsidies to proceed.  Judge Paul Friedman also ruled that the case can proceed on an expedited basis, meaning that a final determination could occur before the March 2014 individual purchase mandate arrives. 

The new lawsuit centers on a provision in the text of ObamaCare that allows subsidies to states participating in the program.  By its terms, the subsidies do not cover those participating in the federal government’s program, but now that 34 states have refused to participate in ObamaCare, the Obama Administration is attempting to ignore the law and offer subsidies regardless of the law. 

When ObamaCare was passed, Congress and the Obama Administration deliberately chose to empower individual states to carry out the law by creating health insurance exchanges, marketplaces in which those states’ citizens could buy insurance from authorized insurers.  But because the Constitution doesn’t allow the federal government to force individual states to carry out its edicts, the law had to come up with another way to induce states to agree to participate.  Consequently, the law offered individuals who chose to purchase insurance from state-run exchanges significant federal subsidies to persuade them to enroll. 

There was one significant problem with that scheme:  In states that chose to avoid participating in the looming catastrophe that is ObamaCare, residents would by law not be eligible for the subsidies offered to participating states. 

As it turned out, some 34 states refused the Obama Administration’s offer.  Consequently, the federal government is now on the hook for establishing exchanges for residents of non-participating states.  But under the explicit provisions of ObamaCare itself, such individuals are not eligible for premium assistance subsidies. 

So what did the Obama Administration decide to do? 

Per habit, it sought to just ignore its own law via IRS fiat, as summarized by plaintiffs: 

“Refusing to accept those consequences, the IRS promulgated the regulations at issue here, which base eligibility for premium assistance subsidies not on enrollment in coverage “through an Exchange established by the State,” as the statute requires, but rather on enrollment in coverage through any exchange, including the federally-established one.  Of course, the federal government is not a “State,” as the ACA in fact expressly reiterates.  Those regulations thus allow for the distribution of billions of dollars of federal funds that Congress never authorized.  The IRS rule contradicts the plain text of the ACA, exceeds the agency’s authority, and is contrary to law.” 

All of this presents a rich irony. 

Throughout the government shutdown over ObamaCare earlier this month, the law’s supporters cried, “It’s the law!”  Of course, the employer mandate was also “the law,” but the Obama Administration had no problem postponing it for a year.  Similarly, the text of the law also mandated that members of Congress and their staffers were subject to its requirements.  Yet the Obama Administration also had no problem granting an extralegal waiver, allowing subsidies that no other employees suddenly subject to ObamaCare’s provisions should receive. 

The Obama Administration showed no greater deference for “the law” when it unilaterally announced that it would refuse to enforce settled immigration laws last year.  Moreover, the very nature of a democratic republic is that settled laws can be revisited and often overturned, including by this administration.  Think the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) signed by Bill Clinton, as just one example. 

The court, however, wasn’t sufficiently impressed by the Obama Administration’s rationalization.  Which raises the question of what will bring this unworkable law to an end first – it’s economic and logistical unsustainability, or judicial order.  The latter would spare millions of Americans a great deal of unnecessary pain. 

Betsy McCaughey: Obamacare designed to vastly expand single payer Medicaid by eviscerating Medicare

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,ObamaCare Rollout,ObamaCare Glitches,ObamaCare Rulings,DOMA,ACA,Individual Mandate,ObamaCare Mandates

Rand Paul on ObamaCare Battle

Video: Paul: ObamaCare’s Free… and They Still Can’t Sell It

NewsMax:  Sen. Rand Paul: Delaying ObamaCare Would Be a 'Victory'

Delaying the Affordable Care Act for a year would be a "victory" for Congress and the nation, Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul said Thursday.

Paul told "The Steve Malzberg Show" lawmakers have to "do anything we can to stop the monster."

"I’d just as soon get rid of the whole thing but if we can't get rid of the whole thing (at least not now), we ought to do everything we can to make it less bad," he said. ". . . If we can slow down or derail ObamaCare for a year, that would be a victory."

Rand chided President Barack Obama "with his kingly powers" for amending the new healthcare law "after the fact," including subsidies for congressional staffers.

"He isn't asking us about any of these things," Rand said. "This is legislation that he's amending after the fact. It's blatantly unconstitutional, it's illegal, but he just goes right on doing it."

And he praised Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for his historic 21-hour speech on the Senate floor, saying "it was a great feat of stamina" that "brought a lot of attention to an important problem."

Even some Democrats see "real problems" with the new law, he said.

"The Teamsters Union came out and said, 'look, we're not happy to pay a tax on our good healthcare benefits we have now,'" he noted. "Ex-President Bill Clinton [is] also saying, 'you know what, a lot of people are going to be required to buy this insurance but aren't going to be able to afford it because we're driving the prices up.'" (But as usual, Ex-President Bill Clinton is talking out of both sides of his mouth.  He was also simultaneously attacking Fox News for presenting all sides of the argument as promoting division, rather than educating the voters and presenting a fair and balanced presentation of the facts.)

Rand said whether the Senate passes a continuing resolution with "some modification to ObamaCare" or passes a CR "in the short term and it does nothing . . . I can't, in good conscience, vote to fund ObamaCare."

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,Rand Paul,Affordable Care Act,Defund ObamaCare,Delay ObamaCare,solutions,educate yourself,small victories

VERDICT: Jury decides fate of Gosnell

Newborns killed after surviving 'late-term' abortions

WND Editor’s Note: The graphic descriptions and images here may be upsetting to some readers.

PHILADELPHIA – Kermit Gosnell, the notorious Philadelphia abortionist who reportedly took millions of dollars from his business, was found guilty today of three counts of first-degree murder for delivering live babies and then killing them by snipping their spinal cords with a scissors.

The verdict means the jury will reconvene shortly in order to recommend a penalty – either life in prison or death – to the judge in the case.

He was acquitted on one count of first-degree murder for the death of a fourth baby, and was found guilty of a lesser charge than third-degree murder for the death of a woman who came in for an abortion.

The case, which included 258 total counts against Gosnell, also listed counts of infanticide, racketeering, performing third-trimester abortions and failing to follow the state’s mandatory 24-hour waiting period before an abortion. It revealed insider details of the abortion industry in the U.S. few wanted to hear.

LifeNews.com described from testimony the three cases for which Gosnell will be sentenced:

• Baby A: He was delivered to 17-year old Shaquana Abrams at 29.4 weeks gestation, according to an ultrasound record. He did not fit into the plastic shoe box that Gosnell tossed him in. A worker said she saw the baby pull in his arms and legs while Gosnell explained the movements as “reflexes,” telling her the baby really didn’t move. Then he cut the baby’s neck.
• Baby C. Intact baby of 25 weeks gestation. Worker testified that she saw Baby C breathing for 20 minutes. She told the court she saw Lynda Williams lift the baby’s arm and watched as the newborn drew it back on its own power. Then the baby’s neck was “snipped.”
• Baby D. Described by witnesses as 12-15 inches long with the head the size of a “big pancake.” He was delivered into a toilet and a worker said she saw the baby struggling, using swimming motions in an attempt to get out of the toilet bowl. Then the baby’s neck was “snipped.”

Philly.com reported the state’s prescribed punishment for first-degree murder is either life in prison without parole or death by lethal injection.

The jury also found Eileen O’Neill, 56, Gosnell’s codefendant, guilty of two counts of theft by deception and two of conspiracy.

The newspaper reported he was arrested in 2010 by agents investigating drug dealing. The newspaper said, “As they searched for evidence in the drug investigation, agents found other more shocking evidence: unsanitary conditions including blood and body fluids on the floor and furniture, the odor of a pet store permeated the building from Gosnell’s cat, fish and turtles, and the remains of aborted fetuses and fetal parts stored around the clinic.”

Within days, Gosnell’s medical license was suspended and with weeks, authorities moved to close the business permanently.

No criminal charges resulted against state officials, but a handful of lawyers and supervisors for the health department were fired for failing to make sure inspections were done at the business.

Theoretically, Gosnell still faces trial on the charges that emanated from the drug raid. Other business workers mostly had pleaded guilty to charges.

The jury rejected the defense arguments that Gosnell was being prosecuted for racist reasons.

Witnesses in the courtroom told reporters Gosnell appeared shocked when the guilty verdicts were read.

Gosnell’s defense attorney, Jack McMahon, speaking to reporters after the announcement of the verdict, said Gosnell was “disappointed and upset” at being found guilty.

“As we started the case there were eight homicide cases, seven infants and one adult woman, the jury should be commended for their efforts, even if I don’t always agree. I have confidence in the jury and how they proceeded, but we did feel a lot like salmon swimming upstream.”

Gosnell, who has been held behind bars during the trial, was led back to a sheriff’s van for return to jail.

Found in Gosnell’s background was the “Mother’s Day Massacre.” The event was given the name because Gosnell and his partner, Harvey Karman, bused 15 poor women from Chicago to Gosnell’s Philadelphia clinic to do the abortions on Mother’s Day in 1972.

Operation Rescue Senior Policy Adviser Cheryl Sullenger told WND in an interview that Gosnell and his partner not only did the abortions before Roe v. Wade, they were using an experimental method.

“It was called the super coil, a plastic ball with razor blades on it. They would insert the coil into the woman’s uterus to induce an abortion,” Sullenger said. “I don’t think any of the women knew they were guinea pigs, that they were being used as an experiment.”

The blades were gel-coated and laid down. The device was designed so that when the woman’s body temperature melted the gel, the blades sprang up to cut the baby, thus inducing the abortion.

“Most of the women experienced complications and needed additional medical treatment,” Sullenger said. “One women ended up needing a radical hysterectomy.

“That’s why they call it the Mother’s Day Massacre,” Sullenger said.

That, she said, was the beginning of Gosnell’s long career in the abortion industry.

Most of the attention in the Gosnell trial has focused on the four babies that were the subject of the four first-degree murder charges, Babies “A,” “C,” “D” and “E.” Convictions came for the first three.

However, Gosnell’s “House of Horrors” apparently was the location of other gruesome activity. Among the more macabre discoveries was Gosnell’s collection of baby body parts and how they were kept.

Philadelphia Medical Examiner Dr. Sam Gulino told a Washington Post reporter that he had to deal with frozen baby body parts.

“It was really an unprecedented situation. It was the first time I had to deal with fetal remains that had been frozen. All I could do was allow the remains to thaw so that I could examine them,” Gulino told the paper.

Altogether, Gulino told the Post, he had received all or part of 47 fetuses, most of them aborted well into the second trimester. At least a couple, he determined, likely would have been viable outside the mother’s womb.

Kermit Gosnell

That’s just the beginning of the list of bizarre discoveries.

The Blaze compiled a list of abuses Gosnell and his staff are alleged to have committed:

1. Gosnell allegedly treated his minority clients with much less respect than his white patients. Considering that he was named, according to the AP, in more than 40 malpractice suits, the clinic head would purportedly perform abortions for Caucasian women in cleaner locations (he assumed whites were more likely to complain about him).
2. In addition to the murderous allegations against Gosnell, eight former employees of the clinic have pleaded guilty (some to third-degree murder) and have spoken in great lengths about the terrifying conditions at the clinic.
3. A 15-year-old girl allegedly helped facilitate abortions – including on potentially live babies – at the clinic. Ashley Baldwin, now 22, claims she worked nearly 50 hours per week. Even more shocking, she allegedly helped give women the drugs needed for the procedure – and apparently assisted throughout. Baldwin said that she saw aborted babies move on at least two occasions following abortions (in one instance, she said “the chest was moving”).
4. Gosnell purportedly used untrained and low-paid staff to conduct nearly 1,000 abortions each year. The charge for a procedure in the horrific conditions mentioned? Between $350 and several thousand, depending on how far along the pregnancy was. Prosecutors believe he made millions from the practice. Authorities claim the clinic brought in about $15,000 per day.
5. Speaking of “untrained,” prosecutors claim, according to the Gospel Coalition, that Gosnell is not certified to work in either gynecology or obstetrics.
6. In the grand jury report, the clinic was said to smell of animal urine and blood stains were on blankets and furniture inside of the office. Not surprisingly, sterilized instruments were unheard of inside the establishment. And somehow the state had failed to inspect – or even visit – the clinic since 1993.
7. In March, Adrienne Moton, a medical assistant at the clinic, provided sickening details about her alleged actions at the clinic, claiming that she snipped the spines of at least 10 babies; she said that another worker – and Gosnell himself – did the same. But that’s not the worst part. Moton also claimed that she once killed a baby after it was delivered in a toilet by cutting its neck with scissors. Moton plead guilty and has been in prison since 2011.
8. Another former employee, Sherry West, shared yet another horrifying story. She claims that she was once called to the back room at the clinic, where aborted babies’ bodies were apparently kept on a shelf. Once there, West heard a live baby among the bodies cry out. The screaming child “really freaked” her out, she told the court. “I can’t describe it. It sounded like a little alien,” she said, noting that she previously referred to the babies as “specimens,” because it was easier to mentally handle what was going on at the clinic.
9. Then theres Robyn Reid’s story. She was only an 87-pound teen when she went to the clinic in 1998. Accompanied by her grandmother, she was looking for an abortion. But once she made it to the office, Reid changed her mind. But Salem-News.com writes that the doctor allegedly forced an abortion on her. “Gosnell ripped off her clothes and restrained the girl. When she regained consciousness 12 hours later at her aunt’s home, she discovered that an abortion had been performed against her will,” the website reports.

Sketch of courtroom drama by Operation Rescue.

The jury also considered a third-degree murder charge for the death of 41-year-old Bhutanese immigrant Karnamaya Mongar.

In his closing arguments, Prosecutor Ed Cameron reminded the jury of the woman’s past.

“She survived 20-years in a refugee camp after fleeing her country (Bhutan). She was privileged to come to the land of the free. She found a new life here, but that came to an end when she met Dr. Gosnell,” Cameron said.

“The defense says she died of a respiratory infection, but we have testimony that says she was very healthy. She died because she kept getting more drugs,” Cameron said. “We had a toxicologist testify that the levels of the drug meperidine (Demarol) exceeded safe levels. In his view the drugs killed her.”

Crime Library reported that University of Pittsburgh Medical School Anesthesiology Department Chairman Dr. Andrew Herlich testified that in Mongar’s case, drug doses were “outrageous.”

“Mr. Herlich opined that if average-sized adults, with no particular sensitivities to the drugs, were given two custom doses within four hours, most would stop breathing,” Crime Library reported.

Further evidence of Mongar’s death came from an autopsy, LifeNews.com reported in March.

“Assistant Medical Examiner Gary Collins confirmed that the woman, 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar … died from the abortion due to Gosnell and his staff’s medical incompetence in terms of administering a proper amount of anesthesia rather than her dying of some other cause.”

However, Mongar wasn’t the only Gosnell patients to die as the result of a botched abortion.

LifeNews.com reported in April the death of Semika Shirelle Shaw.

Filthy Gosnell waiting room, recorded by LifeNews.com.

“Semika Shirelle Shaw was killed in March, 2000; two days after Gosnell perforated her uterus during an abortion. She developed sepsis and died, leaving two children motherless. A lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount two years later.

“Marie Smith is lucky to be alive after having had a botched abortion by Gosnell in 1999. She developed a high fever and slipped into unconsciousness a week after her abortion. She was rushed to the hospital where the source of her condition was confirmed,” the report said.

Said Smith: “They showed me X-rays and said he [Gosnell] left an arm and a leg inside me. I almost died. I thought he knew what he was doing, but I guess I was wrong.”

Gosnell has been named in over 40 lawsuits in the past 20 years.

One was filed by Dana Haynes, who had an abortion by Gosnell in November 2006. Haynes alleges that Gosnell lacerated her uterus, cervix and her small bowel during the abortion, LifeNews.com reported.

Trial testimony also focused on clinic staff and their lack of qualifications to perform the duties Gosnell assigned. Prosecution witness Kareema Cross, who worked at the clinic from 2005 through 2009, said she went to school to become a medical assistant and that she was not certified to give medication.

Cross testified: “No, I didn’t learn how to give medication. I was never certified to give medication.”

The lack of training and certification is reported to have been one of the major causes of problems at Gosnell’s clinic. As a result of the lack of training and experience, Cross testified that patients were frequently overmedicated.

“Most of the staff gave medication, but we weren’t certified. We would give the medication and frequently the patients complained about their arms swelling from too much medication,” Cross testified.

Some of the clinic staff left their jobs because of fears caused by medication errors. LifeNews.com reported that clinic worker Latosha Lewis said that she left the clinic because she overdosed a patient.

“She stopped doing so in 2007 because she overdosed a woman and was worried about whether she would ever come out of anesthesia. She also said she stopped administering Cytotec, a drug that caused powerful and often unpredictable contractions around the same time,” LifeNews said.

It said Lewis also testified that the equipment was outdated and that Gosnell often reused disposable medical instruments.

“Lewis indicated that Gosnell’s equipment was outdated and never inspected, and that he often reused disposable curettes, which is the sharp-ended tube that enters the womb in abortion procedures and applies suction for the removal of the pre-born baby and other tissues and fluids,” LifeNews said.

Cross testified she was also not certified to do ultrasounds. However, Cross said her lack of experience and training didn’t stop Gosnell from giving her that job as well.

“I wasn’t trained on how to do ultrasounds. At the clinic, Dr. Gosnell trained me on how to use the ultrasound device, for about ten minutes. Then he turned me loose to do them,” Cross testified.

Cross testified that she couldn’t give the exact number of ultrasounds she performed.

WND reported that trial testimony frequently revealed how often Gosnell was absent from the clinic, especially during the late-term abortions.

“We did a lot of second trimester abortions. I can’t say exactly how many. He was almost never there during a second trimester abortion,” Cross testified.

The issue of medication was again raised during the portion of the testimony on second trimester abortions.

Cross said workers would simply give medications based on a chart hanging on the wall.

“There was no monitoring equipment to know how much medication [was] giving intravenously. The medication we would give was Lorazepam,” Cross said.

Lorazepam is classified by the National Institutes of Health as an anti-anxiety drug.

“There was no monitoring equipment in the room. There were no monitors, no blood pressure monitors,” Cross said. “We had a defibrillator but I don’t know that we ever used it.”

Throughout the trial, questions were raised concerning how many people and organizations knew about Gosnell’s operation.

In February 2010, Pennsylvania’s Planned Parenthood CEO Dayle Steinberg told Philadelphia’s WHYY that she wasn’t aware of the clinic’s conditions.

“We do anticipate that women who might have scheduled appointments for abortion procedures at the Women’s Medical Society will be calling Planned Parenthood,” Steinberg said during the WHYY interview.

WHYY reported Steinberg confirmed knowing Gosnell had provided abortions in Philadelphia for many years, that she hadn’t heard of problems.

Baby Boy B, image at Operation Rescue.

However, after Gosnell’s clinic was raided, Steinberg’s story changed. Phllly.com, the Philadelphia Inquirer and WHYY website reported Steinberg saying, “The Gosnell trial has shifted the focus off the high-quality services we provide. These are criminal, horrendous . . . acts and should be appropriately punished.”

Revelations about the clinic condition also prompted Steinberg to admit that staff at her clinics were frequently treated to Gosnell clinic horror stories. Steinberg told Philly.com, “We would always encourage them to report it to the Department of Health.”

WND also reported that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece, Alveda King, believes that the prosecution did its duty.

King believed that Gosnell should be found guilty because of his recklessness in dealing with the patients.

“The prosecution has demonstrated that there was always consciously a disregard for the women and the babies,” King said. “The prosecution has shown that there are at least seven babies who died as a result.

“I believe there were many more who were injured, harmed, and killed by Dr. Gosnell and his staff’s conscious disregard of all the women and those babies.”

Prosecutor Ed Cameron clearly believes the case against Gosnell has been proven, and that reckless disregard for the patients has been shown.

WND reported that Cameron illustrated his point by contrasting how his dog was treated when he was put down, Gosnell’s treatment of his patients – mothers and babies.

“My dog got better treatment than these babies and these women,” Cameron said. “First they gave him a shot to help him sleep. Then they took him to a room, and once he was asleep, they gave him the shot so that he would not wake up.

“They treated my dog with dignity,” Cameron said. “My dog was cremated. [Gosnell] took these babies and put their parts in Lime-Aid jars.

“Those babies didn’t stand a chance,” Cameron told the jury.

In his closing statement, Cameron also said the ultimate issue is human dignity.

“Pennsylvania law requires that once a baby leaves the mother, he be treated with dignity and respect like a human being,” Cameron said. “But the question we need to ask that man sitting over at the table: Are you human? To med these women up and to cut these babies’ necks is not human.”

Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, is calling the case a “watershed moment.”

“The discovery of his horrific practices helped shed light on an abortion industry that has run amok without oversight or accountability for decades, and has prompted significant changes in abortion laws and attitudes toward enforcement in several states,” he told LifeNews.

Clinic worker Ashley Baldwin testified about watching Massof slit the necks of babies that moved or breathed “five or 10″ times. Massof, repeating what he had been taught by Gosnell, told her that that it was standard procedure to cut the spine in all cases.

Baldwin’s testimony:

Q: These larger babies, when Dr. Steve was there, did he ever – was he ever there when any of the larger babies precipitated?

A: Yes.

Q: Babies that would move?

A: Yes.

Q: So, Dr. Steve – what would Dr. Steve do with babies that moved?

A: The same thing.

Q. The same thing. And how many time did you see Dr. Steve?

A: A lot. He told me that – don’t worry about it. They are not living. It is just a reaction.

At one point, Cross testified, staff member Lynda Williams placed a baby on the counter, and it was breathing and moving its arms when Williams pulled on them.

After playing with the baby, Williams slit its neck, Cross said.

Gosnell’s clinic isn’t the exception, Priests for Life National Director Father Frank Pavone told WND in an interview that Gosnell’s clinic is the “rule.”

“This trial simply exposes the abortion industry for what it is. Gosnell’s clinic isn’t unique. I’m afraid it’s the norm,” Pavone said.

King would agree.

“So because Dr. Gosnell is the most visible tip of the iceberg today – he’s the rule not the exception to the rule. He’s visible evidence of the rule – that abortion kills babies, sometimes kills women, it hurts human beings,” King said.

Pavone believes that there’s more at stake than the fate of Gosnell. Abortion itself is on trial.

“When we hear the things that are coming out of the testimony, nothing is shocking us because we’ve heard it all before,” Pavone said. “The fact that Roe v. Wade made abortion legal did not make it safe. We see all sorts of corruption in unregulated facilities. Sadly this is only more of the same.”

Newsbusters noted that the local tax-funded National Public Radio station WHYY described Gosnell as “a physician who had worked in our community for 30 years, cared for women in all of that time.”

But the NPR station also noted that the jury “didn’t hear from one character witness or one person who was put on the stand to say that he was a competent physician.”

Actress Patricia Heaton took to Twitter to give her opinion: “Gosnell is just the less sanitary version of what goes on every day … the cheapening of human life. Lord have mercy.”

WND also reported earlier that the discoveries at Gosnell’s clinic were startling. A partial list reported by WND includes:

• Rusty and filthy abortion equipment has been brought into the courtroom to document unsanitary conditions.
• Medical records appear to have blood and other stains on them.
• Gosnell’s staff acted as though they were doctors, even though some had little or no medical training.
• Medications, including anesthetics, found in the office had expired years earlier.
• A defense attorney blamed a woman, Bhutan immigrant Karnamaya Mongar, for her own death, since she left several blanks on her medical form. Prosecutors said she spoke little English and likely was unaware she needed to provide information.
• Patients appeared to repeatedly get overdoses of drugs for their abortion procedures, including Mongar.
• Photographs of the bodies of babies, revealed gaping wounds in the back of their necks. According to testimony, Gosnell or staff members routinely snipped their spinal cords to make sure they were dead. Operation Rescue said: “The babies were all intact and had the appearance of being partially mummified or dried. The brownish-black skin had shrunk as it dried, revealing the upper spinal column that authorities say was pierced with scissors in order to snip the spinal cords of newborn babies born alive during abortions by Gosnell.”
• Photographs were introduced of babies’ feet, or even whole legs, Gosnell had preserved in jars.

Prolife activist Lila Rose, whose LiveAction.org has released undercover videos revealing how abortion businesses say they would not help an infant born alive during an abortion, said the government needs to investigate the procedures.

“We believe in human rights for everyone – human rights for the child in the womb, the child outside the womb, and true protection and medical care for women. Not the brutality that goes on during these procedures,” she said during a rally Wednesday in Washington.

Congress also is beginning to consider further restrictions on abortions in the District of Columbia as a result of the controversy over the born-alive babies.

And Pavone wrote in the Washington Times that the procedure of abortion not only kills the unborn, but also the abortionist.

Pavone wrote:

“David Brewer, a former abortionist, tells his story: ‘I can remember that day watching the first abortion . I saw a little tiny head, and I saw a piece of a leg, and I saw a tiny hand, and I saw an arm. You know, it was like somebody put a hot poker into me . I had a conscience and that hurt. That was a very hard experience for me to go through, emotionally. So I did what a lot of us do throughout our life, we don’t do anything. I didn’t talk with anybody about it. and do you know what happened? I got to see another abortion. You know what? That one hurt, too. But I kept seeing abortions, and it hurt a little bit less every time I saw one. Do you know what happened next? I got to sit down and do one . The first one that I did was kind of hard. It was like hurting again like a hot poker. But after a while, it got to where it didn’t hurt’ (Testimony at ‘Meet the Abortion Providers’ conference in Chicago).

“So yes, I am not at all surprised that Dr. Gosnell is cool, calm and collected, smiling even as he listens to those accusing him of murder. Abortion destroys the abortionists themselves.”

Related:

Gosnell Found Guilty of First Degree Murder in ‘House of Horrors’ Abortion, Murder Trial

Philly Abortion Doctor Guilty in 3 Babies' Deaths

Gosnell Jury Is Hung on Two Counts in Abortion Doctor’s Murder Trial — Here Are the Details

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