Obama’s 5 Most Controversial Statements About Abortion and ‘Women’s Rights’ During His Planned Parenthood Speech

Rush: The President of the United States Asks God to Bless an Abortion Factory

“This makes me ill, by the way. That a president of the United States shows up at an abortion factory, essentially, and praises their work. You know what else he said? He said the opponents of abortion want to return to the 1950s.”  …Rush Limbaugh

Obama’s 5 Most Controversial Statements About Abortion and ‘Women’s Rights’ During His Planned Parenthood Speech

TheBlaze:

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the Planned Parenthood Gala at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel on April 26, 2013 in Washington, DC. Obama defended the organization and told delegates that he would block efforts to cut off funding. Credit: Getty Images

On Friday, President Barack Obama became the the first sitting president to address the Planned Parenthood National Conference. It was a controversial decision, especially considering the ongoing Dr. Kermit Gosnell murder trial and the elevated discussion currently unfolding surrounding late-term abortion. But rather than avoiding abortion, he tackled it head-on, defending a woman’s “right to choose.” Additionally, he heralded Planned Parenthood as an organization that has served Americans in their greatest times of need.

Considering all that, TheBlaze has highlighted five of the speech’s key moments that we deemed the most interesting, controversial and noteworthy.

Without further ado.

Praised Planned Parenthood’s Family Planning Role

Before explicitly addressing the abortion issue, Obama seemingly hinted at it earlier in the speech. While recapping the services that Planned Parenthood offers, he mentioned family planning:

“Somewhere there’s a woman who just received a new lease on life because of a screening that you provided that helped catch her cancer in time. Somewhere there’s a woman who’s breathing easier today because of the support and counseling she got at her local Planned Parenthood health clinic. Somewhere there’s a young woman starting a career who, because of you, is able to decide for herself when she wants to start a family.“

Decried Critics Who Turn the Group Into a “Punching Bag”

Obama also took a firm stance against cutting off funding for Planned Parenthood, decrying politicians who have called for such measures. Similarly, he accused conservative opponents of advocating policies from the 1950s — a familiar claim uttered during his 2012 campaign (i.e. the so-called “War on Women”):

“So when politicians try to turned Planned Parenthood into a punching bag, they’re not just talking about you; they’re talking about the millions of women who you serve. And when they talk about cutting off your funding, let’s be clear: They’re talking about telling many of those women, you’re on your own. They’re talking about shutting those women out at a time when they may need it most — shutting off communities that need more health care options for women, not less.

So the fact is, after decades of progress, there’s still those who want to turn back the clock to policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century. And they’ve been involved in an orchestrated and historic effort to roll back basic rights when it comes to women’s health.”

Photo Credit: Politico

Tackles Pro-Life Abortion Policies Head-On

Rather than dancing around the abortion discussion, Obama decided to dive right in, taking particular aim at pro-life legislative attempts in states across the nation:

“Forty-two states have introduced laws that would ban or severely limit access to a woman’s right to choose — laws that would make it harder for women to get the contraceptive care that they need; laws that would cut off access to cancer screenings and end educational programs that help prevent teen pregnancy.

In North Dakota, they just passed a law that outlaws your right to choose, starting as early as six weeks, even if a woman is raped. A woman may not even know that she’s pregnant at six weeks. In Mississippi, a ballot initiative was put forward that could not only have outlawed your right to choose, but could have had all sorts of other far-reaching consequences like cutting off fertility treatments, making certain forms of contraception a crime.

That’s absurd. It’s wrong. It’s an assault on women’s rights. And that’s why when the people of Mississippi were given a chance to vote on that initiative, they turned it down. Mississippi is a conservative state, but they wanted to make clear there’s nothing conservative about the government injecting itself into decisions best made between a woman and her doctor. And folks are trying to do this all across the country.”

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the Planned Parenthood Gala at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel on April 26, 2013 in Washington, DC. Obama defended the organization and told delegates that he would block efforts to cut off funding. Credit: Getty Images

Driving the Policy Point Home

To be sure the audience understood his point, Obama, again, decried pro-life legislative policies with a pointed quip:

“When you read about some of these laws, you want to check the calendar; you want to make sure you’re still living in 2013.”

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the Planned Parenthood Gala at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel on April 26, 2013 in Washington, DC. Obama defended the organization and told delegates that he would block efforts to cut off funding. Credit: Getty Images

“Planned Parenthood Is Not Going Anywhere”

In a message likely intended for both supporters and detractors, alike, Obama made it clear that Planned Parenthood isn’t going to disappear anytime soon — at least not on his watch. The president pledged to fight alongside the organization:

“So every day, in every state, in ever center that Planned Parenthood operates, there are stories like those — lives you’ve saved, women you’ve empowered, families that you’ve strengthened. That’s why, no matter how great the challenge, no matter how fierce the opposition, if there’s one thing the past few years have shown, it’s that Planned Parenthood is not going anywhere. It’s not going anywhere today. It’s not going anywhere tomorrow.”

According to the transcript, Obama concluded his speech by thanking the organization and by invoking God: “Thank you, Planned Parenthood. God bless you. God bless America. Thank you.”

Watch the entire speech, below:

A portion of the above text comes from the White House’s official transcript of the speech. This story has been updated.

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Obama’s Abortion - HHS Mandate a Full-Fledged War on Religion

(LifeNews.com)The fact that Tyndale House Publishers, based in Carol Stream, has needed to take a stand in court against ObamaCare’s abortion pill mandate should itself shock most Americans. The publisher simply believes that devout Christians in America are exercising religion when they publish the Bible and give the proceeds to religious charity. But even this idea is now disputed.

The president’s agencies have written rules that render evangelistic publishing of the Bible to be, well, not really religious. To the people who drafted the ObamaCare rule, and its defenders, religion is little more than a target of derision and marginalization.

Tyndale House is a Bible publisher, but the administration believes it shouldn’t qualify for an exemption because it initially earns a profit on its published materials…before directing 97 percent of that profit to non-profit religious charities and causes.

Some advocates for the abortion pill mandate erroneously contend that Tyndale House, instead of the Obama administration, wants the government to pick and choose what is and isn’t truly “religious,” and even to interpret what biblical authors really meant.

This is the opposite of the truth. In America, the burden of proof to violate religious freedom is not on citizens, but on the government. The government needs to stay out of religious gerrymandering and respect free exercise of religion, period.

In the First Amendment, the Founders took for granted that religion exists, and far from ridiculing it, they set up a barrier to protect it. President Bill Clinton and a broad bipartisan majority followed suit when they passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993.

The administration and Tyndale House’s critics are the ones asking for government to decide what the Bible means. The Obama administration has drawn a tiny circle around what it calls “religious employers,” and has left most religious Americans out in the cold. But the government shouldn’t be drawing that line in the first place.

Secularists seem to believe that since courts shouldn’t decide what the Bible means, Christians aren’t allowed to decide either. Instead, the administration forces believers to follow the theological decisions of President Obama and Planned Parenthood.

Nothing could be further from America’s tradition of religious freedom. Bible publishers should be free to do business according to the book that they publish.

When defenders of the ObamaCare abortion pill mandate wring their hands about the impossibility of respecting varying religions and biblical interpretations, their rhetoric is actually intended to take away from what’s really at stake—the freedom of Americans to live, do business, and serve the community without the government forcing them to violate their conscience.

This is partly what led a Denver federal court to put the mandate on hold for the Newland family, which runs Hercules Industries. The court declared that ObamaCare’s arbitrary rules about who must comply and who gets exceptions “completely undermine” the government’s alleged interest in forcing Christians to violate the biblical respect for life. The mandate forces a wide range of Christians to violate basic, shared tenets of their faith or denomination.

Supporters of the abortion pill mandate are the ones trampling on the First Amendment and religious freedom. They support a scenario where the state simply “defines” most religious believers out of existence. And when a Bible publisher is no longer religious enough to have convictions the law will respect, then the government’s usurpation of religious freedom is well underway.

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Study: Adult stem cells successful in restoring sight

Posted on Jul 6, 2010 | by Tom Strode

WASHINGTON (BP)--Adult stem cells have restored sight to more than three-fourths of patients blinded by chemical burns to their eyes, according to a new research study.

The results, reported at the International Society for Stem Cell Research meeting in San Francisco, showed success in 77 percent of people in the study after one or two procedures, according to Bloomberg News. It showed partial success in 13 percent of the cases and failure in 10 percent.

Italian researchers tracked participants in the study for an average of three years, some for as many as 10 years.

The procedure involved taking healthy stem cells from a patient's eye and, after growing them, layering the tissue onto the injured eyes, Bloomberg reported. The stem cells were taken from the limbus, which is at the intersection of the cornea and the sclera, the white portion of the eye. The cells produced a healthy cornea in the successful cases, resulting in an eye that is normal in color and appearance.

"The patients, they are happy, even the partial successes," said lead researcher Graziella Pellegrini of the University of Modena's Center for Regenerative Medicine, according to Bloomberg. "We have a couple of patients who were blind in both eyes. Can you imagine for these patients the change in their quality of life?"

The study involved treatment of 112 people.

The method may assist in other therapies, a researcher said.
"This is bigger than just the surface of the eye," said Ivan Schwab, a stem cell researcher at the University of California-Davis, according to Bloomberg. Schwab said it may work on regenerating "livers or other organs."

The study is another success for adult, or non-embryonic, stem cells, which have produced therapies in trials for at least 73 ailments in human beings, according to Do No Harm, a coalition promoting ethics in research. Embryonic stem cell research, which results from the destruction of human embryos, has yet to generate successful treatments in human beings.
--30--

Tom Strode is Washington bureau chief of Baptist Press.

Posted: WallBuilders - Cross-Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

Beginning at 6.22 mins in the GB American Revival Below (Part 3) and into the beginning of Part 4, Glenn Beck talks about having been diagnosed with Macular Dystrophy… and that he could go blind.