Objections Sustained Over Michigan Attorney Bogren
Michael Bogren’s supporters say he isn’t hostile to faith. But the Christian family he compared to the KKK would sure beg to differ.
Michael Bogren’s supporters say he isn’t hostile to faith. But the Christian family he compared to the KKK would sure beg to differ. The man nominated to a Michigan federal court was just an attorney, some senators have argued, defending his client’s intolerant policy. But did he have to do it with such anti-religious dogma? Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) says no.
Attorneys don’t always have a choice about the cases they represent. But they do have a choice, Senator Hawley points out, in how they frame them. “I’m a lawyer,” the freshman senator explained on “Washington Watch.” “I understand that when you’re a lawyer you want to give your client the most vigorous defense — but you can do that without engaging in hateful comparisons.” Telling a Catholic family that they’re dressing up their beliefs on marriage in “a shimmering gown of First Amendment” and “parad[ing] down the runway of moral superiority” isn’t exactly the stuff of religious tolerance.
Yet, as most people who watched the confirmation hearing know, Bogren had an opportunity to clarify those statements — and didn’t. “I just think that’s incredible,” Senator Hawley told listeners. Bogren compared Steve and Bridget Tennes to radical Muslim imams, racists, and even insincere Catholics during a court battle over whether the city of East Lansing has the right to kick the farm owners out of a marketplace for believing in natural marriage. When he was asked in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee if he stood by that rhetoric, Bogren said yes.
In the week since that hearing, a handful of Republicans have come to Bogren’s defense, arguing that he was an attorney for East Lansing and had to do their bidding. Well, last time I checked, lawyers were not indentured servants. He had a choice as to whether or not he would take the case — and, just as importantly, how he would argue it. “The fact of the matter is that this individual chose repeatedly over a period of time… to engage in an anti-faith, anti-Catholic rhetoric,” Senator Hawley pointed out. “That was his decision. He didn’t have to defend the city by doing that. But that’s what he chose to do.” And any senator who thinks that can be explained away with a lifetime appointment in the balance, is kidding themselves.
Shame on any Republican, who has the power to stop this nomination, for advancing someone who is hostile to the free exercise of religion. As for the president, who’s had a near-perfect track record on judicial appointments, Hawley cautions against throwing the blame his way.
“I don’t think for a minute the president knows about these comments. I suspect that even at the beginning of the vetting process for the judge, the White House didn’t know about these comments because this litigation has been ongoing… So you know it is what it is, but, my job as a United States senator on the Judiciary Committee is to stand up for our values — and stand up for the Constitution and the First Amendment. And if that means asking the tough questions. And when you find a behavior like this and conduct like this and the anti-faith rhetoric like that, I think you’ve got to call it out.”
Help Senator Hawley do exactly that. Contact your senators and urge them to vote NO on Michael Bogren — and any nominee who stands in the way of this president’s defense of religious liberty.
Originally published here.
Fact Checker Orders a Whopper to Go
Planned Parenthood is used to lying. What it’s not used to is being called out by the mainstream media. But that’s exactly what happened earlier this week when the Washington Post gave a rare rebuke to the abortion giant for exaggerating the effects of overturning Roe v. Wade. Turns out, The Fact Checker can actually be one when it tries!
“We face a real situation where Roe could be overturned,” Planned Parenthood President Leana Wen has been tweeting. “And we know what will happen, which is that women will die. Thousands of women died every year pre-Roe.” When a reader contacted the Post asking the paper to respond, Glenn Kesler said it took reporters “through a tour of decades of musty academic literature.” It turned out, he said, to be an interesting inquiry. One that earned the nation’s biggest abortion business a whopping four Pinocchios.
When they contacted Erica Sackin, one of the organization’s spokeswomen, for a citation, she gave the Post a link to a 2014 statement by the Left-wing American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG): “It is estimated that before 1973, 1.2 million U.S. women resorted to illegal abortion each year and that unsafe abortions caused as many as 5,000 annual deaths.” Kesler’s team dug deeper and found there wasn’t a scrap of evidence supporting the 5,000 figure — even though, he points out, “many of the other sentences are carefully documented.”
The Post takes readers down the long and fuzzy trail of numbers until finally they conclude what most pro-lifers have known all along: Planned Parenthood was making it up. In a scathing reproach, Kesler reminds everyone that “Wen is a doctor, and the ACOG is made up of doctors. They should know better than to peddle statistics based on data that predates the advent of antibiotics.”
“Even given the fuzzy nature of the data and estimates, there is no evidence that in the years immediately preceding the Supreme Court’s decision, thousands of women died every year in the United States from illegal abortions. Wen’s repeated use of this number reminds us of the shoddy data used by human trafficking opponents. Unsafe abortion is certainly a serious issue, especially in countries with inadequate medical facilities. But advocates hurt their cause when they use figures that do not withstand scrutiny. These numbers were debunked in 1969 — 50 years ago — by a statistician celebrated by Planned Parenthood. There’s no reason to use them today.”
Of course, there is some irony to Planned Parenthood’s claims, since Wen and company were the first to say that 5,000 lives were hardly worth saving — at least when it came to unborn children. In February, Hillary Clinton dismissed the push to outlaw late-term abortions in America, insisting it was “only” 5,597 children a year. It’s funny how abortion extremists like to play the moral authority on which lives matter and which ones don’t.
Meanwhile, the drama in Missouri ought to show everyone: women aren’t exactly safe having legal abortions either. Turns out, mothers are just as at risk of dying in today’s Planned Parenthood as they are in a pre-Roe chop shop. Governor Mike Parson (R-Mo.) couldn’t believe what his investigators uncovered at a St. Louis location that’s in danger of closing its doors Friday — all because Wen’s group doesn’t care enough about women to protect them. In a press conference covered by the Washington Times, he went through horror story after horror story. He cited records where at least “three pregnant people underwent abortions but returned later ‘after realizing they were still pregnant.’ In another case, the facility rushed a patient to the hospital for emergency surgery.”
“Since 2009,” Times reporter Valerie Richardson points out, “Coalition for Life volunteers… outside the clinic have recorded 74 ambulance trips to emergency rooms. The lion’s share was for hemorrhaging, according to documents obtained by Operation Rescue, which has dubbed the clinic ‘the most dangerous abortion facility in America.’” In just the last 22 days, ambulances have been called three times.
If the clinic closes down, it’s no one fault but Planned Parenthood’s. “There are a number of serious health concerns that still exist at the Planned Parenthood St. Louis facility,” Parson told reporters, explaining there were “multiple violations” and “several incidents of botched abortions.” “We should all agree that regardless of the number of abortion facilities, every step should be taken to ensure that all laws are followed for the safety and well-being of women’s health care.”
Incredibly, Dr. Colleen McNicholas of the Planned Parenthood in question accused Missouri officials of “moving the goal post on abortion providers.” But since when has basic safety been “moving the goal posts?” Putting women’s well-being first should be standard operating procedure for anyone in the health or medical industry. Tell that to Leana Wen’s group, who, behind the convenient soundbites, has always cared more about profits than patients. The Missouri investigation is an important reminder: when organizations like Planned Parenthood insist that women have a “right” to abortion, they don’t mean a safe one.
Originally published here.
A Total Eclipse of the Heartbeat
At first, they don’t seem all that alike. He’s the 22-year-old contestant who wowed the world on Wednesday’s “America’s Got Talent.” She’s the tiniest baby ever to survive. One was blind and autistic, barely able to introduce the song that shocked people to tears. The other was the size of a juice box, fitting snuggly in the doctor’s hands. By the Left’s standards, neither life was worth saving. But this morning, their miracle stories are front-page news, reminding all of us: don’t count anyone out.
Most people tuning in to NBC Wednesday night probably had no idea what the Supreme Court had done the day before. Their eyes were on Kodi Lee, stunned that a sightless, disabled singer was capable of so much. But then, isn’t that the problem with our society? Not everyone sees the potential lives like Kodi’s — including, in a surreal backdrop to Wednesday’s show — the U.S. Supreme Court. No one will ever know which justices declined to review a lower court ruling that struck down disability-based abortions. What we do know, after Wednesday, is that we live in a nation that can target babies for death because they don’t see the beauty in a person as unique as Kodi.
At 8.6 ounces, a lot of people didn’t see a future for a life like Saybie’s either. “We weren’t expecting anyone this small,” the neonatologist said with wonder. “I was stunned, frankly.” Born at 23 weeks, Saybie wouldn’t have even been considered a baby by most liberals. (Or her mom a “mother.”) “When a woman gets pregnant,” Christine Quinn argued on CNN, “that is not a human being inside of her.” Good luck persuading the country of that now that they’ve seen the pictures of this perfectly-formed, perfectly human infant, who entered the world just shy of her third trimester. Of course, Saybie’s value doesn’t come from her size — just like Kodi’s doesn’t come from his talent. Their worth doesn’t even come from being wanted or loved, which they are. It comes from being a person of dignity, made in the image of God.
What a huge relief that leaders across America understand that, even if the Democrats on Capitol Hill do not. In Louisiana, the headache for national liberals got even bigger when the local party didn’t just sign on to the state’s pro-life push — but led it. For the first time in the 2019 sweep of abortion bans in the South and Midwest, a Democrat, State Senator John Milkovich, sponsored the bill to outlaw abortion after a baby’s heartbeat is detected. Eighteen more voted for its passage. The media wants you to believe that these are outliers. But in a four-month span that’s seen more than 130 Democrats siding with life or against radical abortion expansions, the reality is anything but.
Extremists in party headquarters are also scrambling to spin Governor John Bel Edwards’s (D) support, since he’s poised — not just to sign one of the earliest abortion bans into law, but a ban that recognizes the value of all life, regardless of how it was conceived. Like Alabama, Louisiana lawmakers rejected the idea that an innocent child of rape or incest should be punished for the crimes of her father.
“I know there are many who feel just as strongly as I do on abortion and disagree with me — and I respect their opinions,” Governor Edwards said in a statement. “As I prepare to sign this bill, I call on the overwhelming bipartisan majority of legislators who voted for it to join me in continuing to build a better Louisiana that cares for the least among us and provides more opportunity for everyone.”
Back in October, long before the tragedy of the New York law, Edwards hinted at the trouble in store for a Democratic party determined to banish pro-lifers. “I know that for many in the national party, on the national scene, [it’s] not a good fit. But I will tell you, here in Louisiana, I speak and meet with Democrats who are pro-life every single day.” And based on polling, it’s not just Louisiana. Most Americans — including Democrats — are completely on board with reining in abortion. By a huge margin — 71 to 18 percent — this country thinks killing innocent unborn children after 20 weeks should be illegal. Fifty-nine percent of those are Democrats!
The abortion industry can say what it wants. And in places like Alabama, it can spend what it wants. But even $100-to-$1 odds won’t buy the Left what it needs: acceptance for a radical agenda the country is rejecting more every day. Because with every Saybie and every Kodi, they’ve seen the truth: that every life counts.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
