For families like Karnamaya Mongar’s, [Monday’s] Supreme Court decision was nothing to celebrate. While some young women cheered a ruling that lets monsters like Kermit Gosnell exploit them, Mongar’s parents know all too well what the five justices’ opinion means for daughters like theirs. Karnamaya couldn’t tell these misled girls her story, because she was left to die in Gosnell’s filthy clinic recliner after an overdose of Demerol — most likely administered by one of his 15-year-old anesthetists. Like them, she probably never believed that ending her baby’s life would cost her her own. But that will be an even greater risk now that our highest court has given abortionists the freedom to treat women — not as patients, but profits.

By tearing down Texas’s law, the Supreme Court gave women access all right — to shoddy care from cold, calculating opportunists. In Pennsylvania, that “care” was an inner-city torture chamber where “semi-conscious, moaning women sat on bloodstained blankets” in rooms that “reeked of urine.” In Delaware, that “access” looks like unsterile instruments held by abortionists who don’t even wear gloves. These are the third-world conditions the Left fought for — and won — on Monday. This is the “progress” that government-funded groups like Planned Parenthood are high-fiving Hillary Clinton over. These are the back-alley abortions the Court just brought inside facilities across Texas.

As Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) argued, “This should not be a pro-life or pro-choice issue. Women deserve access to safe and sanitary conditions, period.” Now, in toppling H.B. 2, moms may be better off at a Texas veterinary clinic than an abortion center. At least those are regulated! Let’s face it, said a frustrated Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the “Supreme Court has left almost no room for common sense and simple decency in our nation’s approach to abortion.” Already, one Pennsylvania Democrat is using the Court’s decision as an excuse to introduce a repeal of the basic safety standards put in place because of the Gosnell tragedy.

Fortunately for women, that will be a tall order, even in states directly affected by the justices’ activism. The ruling is so muddy, Justice Clarence Thomas railed, that there’s very little consensus on what impact Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt will even have on states’ authority. Of course, that hasn’t stopped the Left from running with the narrative that all of America’s clinics regulations have been overturned. That’s simply not true, since the laws are not only written differently, but many go back to the late 1990s when state legislators like myself first started building some accountability into the abortion industry. While the Court may have cast doubts on laws like Louisiana’s, it doesn’t automatically void them. And most importantly, Monday’s opinion has no effect on Texas’s 20-week abortion ban.

In the meantime, states have a responsibility to protect women’s health. But thanks to the lack of clarity in this opinion, it will be a guessing game as to where elected leaders can draw the boundary lines. If that means more litigation, so be it. Let liberals take this issue to the Supreme Court again and communicate to voters that they believe trained staff, hospital contingency plans, and up-to-date sanitation and fire codes are too excessive for facilities operating on women.

The truth is, nothing about basic safety standards is controversial to anyone except far-Left abortion extremists. According to a survey from the Knights of Columbus this year, an overwhelming majority of Americans — 81 percent — support significant restrictions on abortion. Being “pro-abortion” doesn’t necessarily mean you’re anti-regulation, unless you’re a politician who stands to benefit from the alliance or a clinic hoping to make a fast buck. In their blind obsession with abortion, justices like Steven Breyer even went so far as to claim that even Gosnell’s barbaric acts don’t justify laws like Texas’s.

“Gosnell’s behavior was terribly wrong. But there is no reason to believe that an extra layer of regulation would have affected that behavior. Determined wrongdoers, already ignoring existing statues and safety measures, are unlikely to be convinced to adopt safe practices by a new overlay of regulations.”

How ironic, Carrie Severino points out! That’s the same argument conservatives make about gun control. Yet the liberal justices are so desperate to further their own policy agendas that they’ll not only ignore the court’s precedent but their own.

“Does anyone think that the liberal justices would buy that argument in the context of gun control? ‘The Orlando/Sandy hook/Fort Hood/etc. shooter’s behavior was terribly wrong. But there is no reason to believe that an extra layer of regulation would have affected that behavior. Determined wrongdoers, already ignoring existing statutes and safety measures, are unlikely to be convinced to adopt safe practices by a new overlay of regulations.’ And (as Thomas’s dissent notes), the Second Amendment is actually in the Constitution, rather than emanating from some penumbra.”

And the legal contortionists didn’t stop there. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg had the audacity to claim — in open defiance of medical fact — that “complications from abortion are both rare and rarely dangerous.” Tell that to the 26,500 women who experienced abortion-related complications in 2011 alone (3,200 of whom required post-abortion hospitalization). Or meet with Karnamaya Mongar’s parents, who are living proof of the grief that awaits any family whose daughter or mother or sister is subjected to the deadly conditions endorsed by our highest court.

Abortion may be debatable, but safety isn’t. This decision is yet another reminder of just what is at stake in the November election.

Originally published here.

Lord of the Fliers

When career airmen are being kicked off base for even uttering the word “God,” it’s no wonder military chaplains and faith leaders are worried about the state of their freedoms. Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the head of the Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services, is the latest to voice his concerns — not so coincidentally, on the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage, which he believes triggered a lot of the hostility we’re seeing in the ranks today.

Twelve months into this twisted social experiment that lacks any moral, historical, or anthropological foundation, Americans — particularly service members — are finding out exactly how the side effects from same-sex marriage will affect them. “I think some of the detrimental effects include people not being able to act according to their fundamental religious beliefs,” Broglio told CNSNews. “I think there’s a certain pressure on those who uphold marriage as being between a man and a woman, they’re being pressured to change that belief,” said the archbishop. “Certainly people who work in areas, in service industries, are being also forced to compromise their religious beliefs, all of which at least, in my humble estimation, go against the First Amendment.” There’s a tendency now, he went on, to “label anything that people disagree with as untenable or unacceptable and therefore hate speech…”

Oscar Rodriguez certainly feels the squeeze of this president’s anti-faith crusade. The retired senior master sergeant who was hauled out of a ceremony for reciting the traditional flag-folding speech finally got some positive news. Two days after First Liberty Institute sent a letter on his behalf demanding an apology, the Air Force has launched an investigation into the incident. Even better, the branch used the moment to reiterate that “Air Force personnel may use a flag-folding ceremony script that is religious for retirement ceremonies… The Air Force placed the highest value of the rights of its personnel in matters of religion and facilitates the free exercise of religion by its members.” Thanks to all of you who signed FRC’s petition calling on the base to uphold Rodriguez’s — and every airman’s — First Amendment rights. To add your name to the 43,000 others, click here!

Originally published here.

Been Had on Benghazi?

Editor’s Note: By FRC Executive Vice President Lt. General Jerry Boykin (U.S. Army-Ret.)

The House Select Committee on Benghazi issued its long-awaited final report [yesterday] morning after two years of investigation. Simply stated, it both angers and saddens me as an American and as a 36-year veteran of the U.S. Army. The report is very clear that no effort was made to rescue or assist the beleaguered American diplomats and contractors on the ground in Benghazi on September 12, 2012, during a sophisticated attack on both the U.S. Embassy “Mission” and the CIA Annex.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta testified that he ordered three military units to deploy to Benghazi to assist in the rescue of the U.S. personnel who were under attack, yet nothing deployed. Panetta claims that he ordered the Fleet Antiterrorism Support Team (FAST) from Rota, Spain as well as an “In-extremist” Special Forces team in Europe to deploy and provide assistance. Furthermore Panetta allegedly ordered the Delta Force to deploy from their base at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina.

Nothing moved. Not even combat aircraft or armed drones.

So the big question is why. Why was there no effort to come to the aid of these heroic U.S. Government personnel who fought a 13-hour battle against Islamic terrorists? The report gives only a partial answer to the question revealing that the bureaucrats in Washington decided that any operation would have to be approved by the Libyan government. That is an incredible revelation — when Americans were dying, politics was the first consideration. This is a total failure in leadership at the highest levels of our government. The only priority should have been to save the lives of our fellow citizens.

The forces that Panetta says he ordered to the scene, those which never even moved from their bases, were created to deal with situations like Benghazi. They were capable, ready, and eager, but never used due to concerns about Libyan sensitivities. I know that any of these units could have made a difference because I served in two of them. We let four Americans die because of the incompetence of the leadership of this country and that is a disgrace and travesty.

Originally published here.