Breaking news:  Planned Parenthood has been expelled from Knox County Schools.  At least for now.  News coverage:

• Knoxville News Sentinel
• WBIR-TV
• WATE-TV
• WVLT-TV

I believe this should be considered a victory, but not a final one.  The struggle against evil is a timeless one.

From Walter Hoye:

Cerebral Palsy and Preterm Birth

Cerebral Palsy (CP) is a condition where the brain does not properly control muscles and movement. According to Brent Rooney, M.Sc. Byron C. Calhoun, M.D., M.B.A. and Lisa E. Roche, J.D., extremely preterm birth (XPB) infants (i.e., infants delivered at less than 28.0 weeks gestation) have a 129 times higher risk of Cerebral Palsy when compared to full-term infants. So what causes such disparity? Induced Abortion (IA). Rooney, Calhoun and Roche found numerous studies have shown a statistically significant increase in risk of EBP or XPB in women with a history of induced abortion compared with women with no prior IA. About 43% of pregnancies in Black American women end in IA. [1]

Induced Abortion and Racial Disparity in Preterm Births

Between 1980 and 2005, the United States preterm birth (PTB) rate increased by 43% (from 8.9% to 12.7%). Black American women have triple the risk of early preterm birth (EPB), defined as delivery at less than 32.0 weeks gestation, and quadruple the risk of extremely preterm birth (XPB), defined as delivery at less than 28.0 weeks gestation, compared with non-black American women (1.39% in blacks vs. 0.35% in whites). Again, according to the Rooney, Calhoun and Roche study, published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Volume 13, Number 4 in the Winter of 2008, in 1987, Harvard researchers led by Ellice Lieberman reported that black women in the Boston area with more than one prior IA had 1.9 times the odds of a PTB compared to black women with no prior IA. In 2006 and 2007, the Institute of Medicine confirmed that “prior first trimester induced abortion” is an “immutable medical risk factor associated with preterm birth.” [2]

References:

1. Does Induced Abortion Account for Racial Disparity in Preterm Births, and Violate the Nuremberg Code?, Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Volume 13, Number 4, Winter 2008 (http://bit.ly/aLzL4h).
2. Ibid.

Left-wing rhetoric vs. reality: It’s too funny.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71gsnLfsbbM

More Knoxville News Sentinel coverage of our Celebrate Life event.

Winning hearts, changing minds, and saving lives at Florida State University

CBR’s Florida GAP tour continues.  Wednesday and Thursday, GAP made it’s 3rd appearance at Florida State University.

Media:  FSU Student Newspaper

Pro Life on Campus at University of West Florida

Monday and Tuesday of this week, we had our Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) at the University of West Florida.  This is part of a tour of 4 Florida universities being sponsored by CBR Southeast, CBR Midwest, and CBR Florida.

Media:

1. The Voyager (story)
2. The Voyager (editorial)

Gov. Mike Huckabee at Knoxville Convention Center

Great event Monday night at the Knoxville Convention Center with Gov. Mike Huckabee.  We had more than 700 in attendance, and we’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback about the event.  More about Gov. Huckabee’s remarks later.

Media coverage:

• WATE TV
• WBIR TV
• WVLT TV
• Knoxville News Sentinel
• Knoxville News Sentinel – Greg Johnson column
• UTK Daily Beacon
• Tennessee Journalist
• Politico
• WSMV TV
• Metro Pulse
• The Weekly Standard
• LifeNews.com
• CNN Political Ticker

A good crowd of 40 or so protested outside.  The importance of this should not be underestimated.  First, how fortunate we are to live in America, where the right of every person speak his or her mind is protected. The public debate and dialogue is a healthy process that shouldn’t be taken for granted.

Second, the presence of protesters is another affirmation that our strategy is working. If the abortion photos had no effect, the pro-abortion folks would just ignore us as irrelevant. In fact, showing abortion pictures is the one thing that pro-aborts fear most, because the pictures make it impossible for people to ignore or trivialize abortion. The images raise awareness and force the other side to defend an obviously horrifying act of violence against a defenseless human being.

BTW, our new video was very well received:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8Rk44gn824

CBR is following the model of social reform demonstrated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Lewis Hine, the American abolitionists of the 1800s, and William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, who helped end the slave trade in England.

Dr. King found ways to show people what racism really looked like. Pictures of racist attacks on TV and in magazines opened people’s eyes and helped end segregation in less than 10 years.

CBR uses this same model of social reform to open people’s eyes to the truth about abortion.

Here is the video we’ll be showing tonight at our Celebrating Life event.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8Rk44gn824

Here, I'm explaining how an image of a slave on a medallion helped end the slave trade in England.

I’m in Pensacola today, along with Seth Drayer and Mark Harrington, training students how to defend the pro-life position on campus.  This training is part of a 2-week tour of Florida being conducted by CBR.  We’ll be visiting 4 major universities across the state with our Genocide Awareness Project (GAP).

We have a full house for this training.  Among those in attendance include members of the Pensacola Teens for Life, Spring Hill College (Mobile) Students for Life, and a team of Canadian students who are in Florida to learn how to conduct our world-famous GAP outreach.  (Either that or they’re trying to escape the snow.)

We are making tentative plans to conduct this training and take GAP to Kentucky early in April.

On my way to Pensacola.  Sunday, we are doing our Pro Life Training Academy in preparation for GAP at the University of West Florida Monday and Tuesday.  I’ll won’t be able to stay for the GAP, however, because of our big Celebrating Life event in Knoxville Monday night.

Speaking of Celebrating Life, we’re sold out!  How about that!  Hope to see you there!

Great column in the Knoxville News Sentinel this morning by columnist Greg Johnson.  Be sure to add your comments at the bottom of the column.

By the way, here’s your last chance to order tickets to Celebrate Life with Mike Huckabee on Monday night.

In an online debate on the Richmond (Virginia) Times-Dispatch, the pro-aborts were incredulous.

I referenced a study by Life Dynamics in which a woman, posing as a 13-year-old girl, called more than 800 PP and National Abortion Federation (NAF) abortion clinics and said that she wanted an abortion.  Her reason?  She and her 22-year-old boyfriend did not want her parents to find out about the relationship.  In every state, this is statutory rape.  In every state, health care providers are required by law to report the abuse.

Even though many of the clinic workers openly acknowledged that the relationship was illegal and they were legally required to report, the overwhelming majority readily agreed agreed to conceal this illegal sexual activity.  When PP and other family planning service providers ignore child abuse reporting laws, they help predatory men continue their ongoing sexual abuse of children.

More recenly, PP personnel have been caught on videotape offering to assist pimps running underage prostitution rings.  Each claimed to have girls working for him who were as young as 14 or 15 years old, many of whom couldn’t speak English.  One such tape was the subject of the Times-Dispatch story.

In the online debate, one of the pro-aborts challenged challenged all of this by asking, “Why would PP want to cover up sexual abuse of a 13-year-old minor child?”

Good question.  Here is an edited version of my reply:

Check out these two items from newly-elected Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.

1. Rand Paul’s first speech on Senate floor.
2. Rand Paul interviewed on ABC TV.

Here’s the Senate speech:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vFo3ZieXZ0

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” – Jim Elliot

“Today Christians spend more money on dog food than missions.” – Leonard Ravenhill

“It will not do to say that you have no special call to go to China. With these facts before you and with the command of the Lord Jesus to go and preach the gospel to every creature, you need rather to ascertain whether you have a special call to stay at home.” – J. Hudson Taylor

“We talk of the second coming, half the world has never heard of the first.” – Oswald J. Smith

“And thus I aspire to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named so that I would not build on another man’s foundation.” – Apostle Paul

“Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t.” – John Piper

“Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell, I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of Hell.” – C.T. Studd

“No one has the right to hear the gospel twice, while there remains someone who has not heard it once.” – Oswald J. Smith

When James Calvert went out as a missionary to the cannibals of the Fiji Islands, the ship captain tried to turn him back. “You will lose your life and the lives of those with you if you go among such savages,” he cried. To that, Calvert replied, “We died before we came here.”

“Someone asked ‘Will the heathen who have never heard the Gospel be saved?’ It is more a question with me whether we — who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not — can be saved.” – Charles Spurgeon

“We can reach our world, if we will. The greatest lack today is not people or funds. The greatest need is prayer.” – Wesley Duewel, head of OMS International

“‘Not called!’ did you say? ‘Not heard the call,’ I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin.” – William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army

“The word ‘gospel’ means ‘good news’.” John Willis Zumwalt writes, “The essense of news is that it is new. They have never heard it before. Our neighbors have heard it over and over again.”

“I have but one candle of a life to burn, and I would rather burn it out in a land filled with darkness than in a land flooded with light” – John Keith Falconer

A people free to choose will always choose peace.

Facts are stubborn things.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.

Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. You will have opportunities beyond anything we’ve ever known.

Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the US Congress.