Senate Democrats didn’t look Melissa Ohden in the eye and say they wish she’d never been born. But at yesterday’s Judiciary Committee hearing on the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, they might as well have. For the first time since they voted to make the killing of newborns legal, Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) decided it was time to force the liberals who openly lobbied to destroy lives like Melissa’s to sit and hear her story.

“I wake up every single day,” Melissa has said, “living with the fact that people somehow want to pass this kind of legislation that would have ended my life.” Yesterday, at the “Abortion until Birth” debate, those same people had the opportunity to look into the eyes of a grown woman who wouldn’t exist if they had their way. And not even that seemed to change their minds.

Melissa, who, by a series of profound miracles, survived being burned alive for days by a saline abortion, says she’s known since age 14 that children just like her are “being subjected to similarly horrific, painful abortion procedures that lead to their death.” “I know of 281 others just like me through my work as the founder of The Abortion Survivors Network,” she told the committee, although “statistics say the actual number is much higher.” Had her birth mom been in a Planned Parenthood — not a hospital — she’s convinced her life would never have been saved.

“I was blessed to be born alive accidentally at a hospital and to have that nurse willing to rush me off from that room into the NICU, because I do believe if I had been born accidentally at Planned Parenthood or another abortion clinic, they would not have done what they needed to do to get me to a place where medical care would have been provided… I know too much about other people’s experiences to believe to know that children like me aren’t always provided immediate medical care. I think we try to make ourselves feel good [by believing] that a child must be immediately saved by those professionals at clinics, but that is not the case.”

She told a brutal story from 2007, where a child just like her had survived an abortion. The mom, who was only 18 at the time, called 911 from the clinic absolutely panicked about her baby. But by then, it was too late. The child, who was breathing, had already been shoved into “a biohazard bag, where it suffocated to death. The child was then thrown onto top of the building [like trash] and left on the roof…”

As horrifying as that is, Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) pointed out that there are 44 U.S. senators who wouldn’t do a thing about it. “It’s stunning to consider,” he said, “that one of our nation’s two political parties — a party that once said abortion should be ‘safe, legal, and rare’ — uniformly opposes even minimal protections for babies outside the womb. Babies who, like Miss Ohden, have survived an attempted abortion.” The American people understand it, he said, citing overwhelmingly public polling. Even, at one time, he argued, Democrats did. “The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002 established that children born following a botched abortion are in fact legal persons for the purposes of federal law. It passed the United States Senate by unanimous consent.”

That was then. Now, Democrats like Senator Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) don’t bat an eye telling survivors like Melissa to their face that efforts to protect them are “doomed and divisive.” Worse, they’re a distraction from “issues of health care that really impact children and women.” But what exactly does he think late-term abortion is, if not an issue that impacts women and children?

“We hear all of this talk about women’s rights,” a forceful Melissa said later, “but I beg the question: where were my rights in the womb? Where are the rights of the little girls who are going to lose their lives to abortion every single day? Where are my rights now as a woman who survived an abortion? Where are the rights of my daughters who never would have lived if that abortion had succeeded in ending my life?”

In the eyes of the new Democratic party, the answer is simple: they don’t exist.

At a press conference after the hearing, FRC’s Patrina Mosley joined members of Congress and other pro-life leaders to call for end to the bloodshed. Under the Pain-Capable bill, America would outlaw abortion when science tells us babies can feel pain: 20 weeks. It also includes born-alive protections if a child like Melissa survives.

“Abortion is the greatest human rights violation of our time, and for such a gruesome death to be called ‘healthcare’ is only dubious marketing from the elite and powerful to accomplish their eugenic purposes,” Patrina argued. “The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act will not only protect innocent lives from an excruciating death but remind Americans how evil and violent abortion is. With science affirming what we already know to be the right thing to do, it’s time we put that knowledge to further use and pass the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.”

Join us in sending that message to Democrats by supporting FRC’s End Birth Day Abortion campaign. Send a newborn hat to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and remind her that babies should be welcomed into life with warmth!

Originally published here.

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‘Something Serious Is Happening in That Dark Place’

Imagine being thousands of miles from home and thrown into jail on phony charges. You’re an American, but worse in the eyes of these authorities — you’re a Christian. For U.S. pastor David Lin, who’s been behind bars in China for 10 years, the situation is a dire one. But now, for the first time, his family is speaking out about the man who left for the mission field and his hope — under this administration — of finding freedom.

“I was preaching the gospel — maximum security people started to investigate me, they forged documents. I didn’t do anything wrong.” That was Pastor Lin’s own account to his family back home in the U.S. He’d come to China with the vision to build a church, after being converted to Christ in the U.S. But in 2006, when he formally applied for a license with the hostile communist government, he aroused suspicion. A few months later, Chinese officials came to his home base and put him under house arrest. Within months, he was falsely accused of contract fraud, given a show trial, and sentenced to life in prison.

For his daughter, Alice, the thought of never seeing her father again was unfathomable. Monday, on “Washington Watch,” she told me that her family found some peace knowing that David felt this was part of God’s plan. “His last message to us [was]… "Don’t worry. God knows what he’s doing. It is God’s wish that I am here. There are many people inside who need to hear God’s word, please don’t worry but only pray for me. I will be back in the U.S. soon.”

“Soon” never came. Now, despite his powerful ministry inside the prison, Alice thinks something has changed. In December, she talks about a scare the family got when her dad reached out to her family to contact the Embassy and have his Bible translations removed. They obliged, sending home a box with not only the translations but “his Bible and all the cards and pictures and letters that we have ever sent him over the years… It is like a man in the desert sending home his only bottle of water. When my mom opened that box, she was hysterical. She knew that there was something wrong. We don’t know what’s happening exactly, but we know that something serious is happening in that dark place.” For the last several years, the Lin family hasn’t spoken out for fear that things would be worse for him. But now, the hostility is so intense they have no choice.

And the last several months have only added to the anxiety. “He’s been reaching out to us at an increased frequency which is very unusual. And he has had this this… urgency in his voice. It’s the first time he’s ever asked us to reach out for help.” There’s a growing concern that things are getting worse. “My father has missed a lot,” she said wistfully. “You know 10 years is a long time. My father has missed my brother’s graduation. He missed my wedding. I couldn’t have a ceremony actually because my father wasn’t here to walk me down the aisle. I am still waiting for him to come home. He missed the birth of his grandson. His only grandson. He celebrated his 60th birthday alone. My mother has been operating as if she is a widow for the last 12 years.” It’s time, as Alice said, to bring him home.

At the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, my fellow commissioners and I are trying to do exactly that. To raise more awareness on his case, USCIRF’s Kristina Arriaga and I have formally adopted Pastor Lin as part of our Religious Prisoners of Conscience Project. Together, we hope to work with the Trump administration to bring the necessary pressure on China for his release. “We call on Chinese authorities to provide Pastor David Lin with any medical attention that he needs and allow him to return home to the United States. The Chinese government has committed a grave injustice against this man who now faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison. We are especially concerned about the possibility that Pastor Lin is being targeted in prison because of his faith.”

Until he’s free, the most important thing any of us can do is pray. “Pray for his safety,” Alice told our listeners. “Pray that the Lord continues to keep him under His mighty wings. Pray that he can come home soon.” As you do, sign our prayer petition on Pastor Lin’s behalf. I know from visiting with Pastor Andrew Brunson — and ultimately escorting him back to the U.S. — how encouraging it is for these men and women of God to see the names of thousands of you pleading their case before the Lord.

Originally published here.

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ACOG in the Abortion Wheel?

Most OB-Gyns became doctors to deliver life — not destroy it. But try telling that to the organization that supposedly represents them. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has never claimed to be conservative, but in the fight over Title X rules, most doctors at least assumed they had common sense.

Abortion isn’t health care. And if you ask the majority of doctors in the baby-delivering profession, they’d probably agree. So why is ACOG fighting to let abortion clinics compete for family planning dollars? Good question. When the OB-Gyn group joined the lawsuit against Donald Trump’s co-location policy, it surprised a lot of people. Apparently, they think that having an abortion business in the same office as a women’s health clinic is the kind of one-stop shopping every mom needs.

Fortunately, this administration disagrees. For years, taxpayers have seen millions of their dollars shipped off to “family planning” projects that happen to be under the same roof as Planned Parenthood abortion clinics. That’s coming to an end now that HHS is finalizing a rule that insists abortion business can only keep their family planning dollars if they move their deadly services offsite.

ACOG, which ought to be on board with a decision that makes sure no lines are blurred in women’s health, could not be more upset. Organization president Lisa Hollier argues that the policy “severely undermines the patient-physician relationship… by forcing them to withhold their professional medical judgment.” Translation: doctors can’t pressure these moms into abortions, where the real money is made. Instead, they have to focus on the actual patient care that most abortion clinics try to avoid.

Yesterday, in the Senate Judiciary hearing, Dr. Donna Harrison had plenty to say about the organization’s motivations. “ACOG has [openly said] that they are a pro-abortion activist organization. They do not represent OB-Gyns on this issue. They’ve never polled their membership. And 85 percent of OB-Gyns do not do abortions. ACOG is out of step [with the medical community] with their radical pro-abortion activism. I just want to make that point because they’re being quoted in this committee as if they’re an independent unbiased scientific opinion, and they are not — by their own admission.”

The bottom line is this: it’s the government’s money, not the abortion industry’s. If liberals don’t like that, tell them to win an election and change it. Until then, this is why we vote — so that the American people can decide whose values will guide budget decisions like this one. It’s President Trump’s prerogative, as head of the executive branch, to dictate how and where our dollars are spent. I don’t remember ACOG complaining when Barack Obama used his power to flood Planned Parenthood’s bank account. Reality alert for the Left! The rules don’t change when the president does.

Originally published here.

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This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.