Two college-age members of the Survivors Campus Life Tour were arrested on a public sidewalk outside of Murrah High School in Jackson, Mississippi, while distributing literature to students in front of the campus Tuesday afternoon.

The group of pro-life youth activists first attempted to hold signs, distribute literature, and peacefully dialogue with students on the public sidewalk on Monday, March 5, 2012. Jackson School Police Officers immediately confronted the group and moved their signs across the street, sequestered students back inside the school grounds and ordered students not to take the literature being handed out or speak with the demonstrators. The police claimed that the sidewalk belonged to the school and that they had a right to remove the pro-life activists. At the same time, the Survivors observed that the very same sidewalk to which they were being denied access was being used by passersby and joggers.

The Campus Life Team conferred with Life Legal Attorney Allison Aranda and returned to the public sidewalk in front of Murrah High School on Tuesday, March 6, to educate the students who were denied access to the life-saving information that the Survivors hand out each day at campuses across the country. This time the police gave the activists an ultimatum, leave the sidewalk or go to jail. Kristina Garza and Brianna Baxter refused to be intimidated by the unlawful police order. They continued their peaceful free speech activity and were arrested at once.

Officers at the Raymond Detention Center delayed the booking process for over eight hours while Garza and Baxter sat in jail not knowing when they would be set free. The remaining activists who were not arrested continued to call through the night to find out when the jailed pro-lifers would be released, but the police just gave them the run around. LLDF attorneys learned early this morning that Garza and Baxter had been transferred to the Jackson Detention Center until they could be taken to Justice Court, but the gamesmanship continued. The clerk at the Justice Court told LLDF that the court hearings were scheduled for 3:00 p.m. but that the Garza and Baxter case was not on the docket for today.

At 10:00 a.m. local time, Garza and Baxter were brought in to court without an attorney present and told that their case was on calendar and was being heard that morning. The Survivors quickly contacted LLDF and aided their jailed teammates in representing themselves. It does not go unnoticed that the Jackson Police Department and Justice Courts have done nothing but give false information to the Survivors and their attorneys through the entire process. Law enforcement officers and officers of the court are charged with protecting our civil liberties, but in this case they are intentionally conspiring to subvert the legal process and deny these pro-life advocates their right to due process of law. Rest assured, everyone involved in the miscarriage of justice will be held accountable for their misdeeds.

“I am in shock and disbelief that a person can be arrested for simply standing on a public sidewalk and handing out literature. If there is any principle that is so deeply rooted in this nation’s history it is the right of free speech, and it is shameful that those charged with upholding the law are in fact the ones that violated the Highest Law of the land today. We will fight to defend these brave young people. We will not give in to the tyranny of men, in this case officers, who have placed themselves above the law. We look forward to our day in court,” states Allison K. Aranda, Staff Counsel for Life Legal Defense Foundation

“The Jackson Public School and Police Department have demonstrated a total disregard for both local laws and the Constitution. These are some great young people and I am proud of them as they stand against today’s civil rights abuses, unwilling to be silenced as a voice for the pre-born. Throughout the entire ordeal, their first and foremost concern was to draw attention to the ultimate civil rights abuse—the murder of pre-born children,” said Jeff White, Founder of Survivors.

Please also see video reports of the incident by Jackson, Miss. television news stations WAPT and
WLBT. Both show the Survivors and the police interacting.

Updates will follow as the case progresses.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012: Today, Life Legal Defense Foundation and four other pro-life law firms filed a friend of the court brief in the United States Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACT) on Free Exercise and First Amendment grounds. The brief, written by attorneys with the Bioethics Defense Fund, was filed on behalf of several religious and pro-life medical associations, such as the Christian Medical and Dental Association and Physicians for Life.

Some of the primary arguments in today’s filing with the Supreme Court are as follow:

• The ACT contains a hidden “Abortion Premium Mandate” that compels enrollees in certain health plans to pay a separate abortion premium from their own pocket, while denying enrollees the ability to decline abortion coverage based on moral objection.
• The ACT and its individual mandate violate the Free Exercise Clause by imposing this “Abortion Premium Mandate” without regard to religious objection.
• Our nation has a long and deeply-rooted history of respecting and protecting the conscience rights of individuals to not be forced into the practice or funding of elective abortions.
  Our founders’ protection of individual liberty, including religious liberty, is directly undermined by the ACT’s transgression of the constitutional limits on congressional power.

“This ACT and President Obama want citizens to have their choices impermissibly limited by being forced to choose between their conscience and a health insurance plan that requires an abortion premium,” said Cody. “How could Congress allow for this ACT to make pro-life individuals pay for a pro-abortion agenda?”

Arguments on the constitutionality of the Act will be heard at the Supreme Court in March.

Read the Amicus Curiae Brief.

LLDF Weighs in on “the Rest of the Story” on IVF

What do a filmmaker, a board member of NOW, a reproductive endocrinologist, two bloggers, and a pro-life legal group have in common? They all teamed up on a filing Monday in the U.S. Supreme Court in a case involving children conceived by in vitro fertilization (IVF). The friend-of-the-court brief the Life Legal Defense Foundation (LLDF) filed is designed to educate the Court about the “array of serious dangers” IVF poses to women, children, and society at large. Read more here.

The Supreme Court is hearing a case, Astrue v. Capato, No. 11-159, in which a widow seeks Social Security survivor benefits for the twins conceived by IVF and born after her husband’s death. Lower federal courts are divided on the question whether such posthumously conceived children are entitled to benefits under the Social Security Act, and the Supreme Court is expected to settle the question in a ruling this spring. And while the case presents fairly dry and complicated legal questions of statutory interpretation, the context of the case – children conceived and born through IVF technology after their father had passed away from cancer – makes this the first case in which the Supreme Court will confront this new reproductive technology.

“We felt this was an educable moment for the Court,” said Catherine Short, counsel of record on the brief. “There’s a huge dearth of appreciation for the ugly underbelly of IVF. This case presents a unique opportunity to educate the Court on this issue, lest the Court in ignorance bestow some unqualified praise upon IVF as a practice.”

Continued Short: “The Court benefits greatly from hearing points of view that might not otherwise be expressed. Here, neither the mother of the IVF twins nor the DOJ have any reason to speak ill of IVF. That’s where we provide a key supplemental voice.”

The brief emphasizes that children conceived by IVF are fully human and entitled to love and respect just like any other children. But the brief also cautions the Court that IVF comes with a package of very significant downsides, including physical and emotional risks to both the IVF child and the genetic mother, the routine creation and destruction or freezing of untold numbers of “spare” human embryos, the deconstruction of the family, and the unleashing of an exploitative industry that can prey upon vulnerable women.

The five friends of the court appearing on the brief are:
(1) Jennifer Lahl, documentary filmmaker and producer of Eggsploitation, an exposé of the IVF industry’s exploitation of human egg providers;
(2) Kathleen Sloan, NOW board member and veteran activist for women’s rights;
(3) Kathleen R. LaBounty, conceived by donor sperm, blogger on donor conception;
(4) Stephanie Blessing, also conceived by donor sperm and blogging on her situation; and,
(5) Anthony J. Caruso, M.D., MPH, a former IVF practitioner who oversaw more than 1,000 IVF procedures but has since renounced the practice.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case on March 19, with a decision likely to follow in June.

Read the LLDF brief.

“Mandate is an attack on religious freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights”

Washington, D.C.:  (Feb . 6, 2012) Congressman Steve Scalise (R-La.) today led a bipartisan letter with 154 co-signers calling on the Obama Administration to reverse its unconstitutional mandate forcing religious organizations to include abortifacients, contraceptives, and sterilizations in the health care plans of their employees.

“This radical mandate by the Obama Administration is an attack on the religious freedoms guaranteed to all Americans by the Bill of Rights,” Scalise said. “Religious organizations and hard-working taxpayers should not be forced by the federal government to pay for abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, or sterilizations in their health care plans. This is an offensive example of Obamacare’s violation of the conscience rights of American employers just so this Administration can force their radical agenda on hard working taxpayers. We are calling on the Obama Administration to reverse this offensive mandate in order to allow any employer that opposes mandated coverage of abortion-inducing drugs and other contraceptives to seek an exemption out of respect for their religious rights. I’m proud to stand with the vast majority of Americans who respect religious freedom in demanding that this mandate be reversed, and I will continue working tirelessly with other Members of Congress to prevent this attack on the Bill of Rights.”

Scalise is also a cosponsor of H.R. 1179, a bill by Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) to reverse the contraceptive mandate. Read letter (PDF), see list of signees.

A judge found the Central Family Medicine abortion clinic manager accused of attacking pro-life sidewalk counselor Mary Anne Sause not guilty. Despite the fact that witnesses close by called the police to report the incident, at trial these same witnesses testified that they did not see the initial contact between Mark Pederson and Ms. Sause.  This isn’t the first time someone from Central Family Medicine has tried to bully and intimidate sidewalk counselors in front of their abortion clinic.  In November 2009, a clinic worker rammed into a pro-life counselor who was 6 months pregnant at the time.  Read more here.

http://www.operationrescue.org/archives/pregnant-pro-lifer-attacked-by-abortion-worker-outside-kc-abortion-clinic/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OperationRescue+%28Operation+Rescue%29

http://fox4kc.com/2012/01/25/man-found-not-guilty-of-attack-at-abortion-clinic/

On Friday January 20, 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a one-year reprieve for some insurers to the controversial “contraceptive mandate” issued last August. The mandate requires that all insurance providers cover the full range of FDA-approved contraceptive drugs and devices, including those that can be used post-conception to destroy existing human life.

The reprieve was aimed at a narrow group of insurers: groups that do not already carry contraceptives and who do not already meet the definition of “religious employer.” Those who are allowed to avail themselves of the reprieve will still be forced to tell their employees where to obtain contraceptives.

“Although couched in terms of compromise, this postponement simply adds insult to injury since it protects a mere fraction of those impacted by the mandate, and it does not address the core objections to the mandate: the rule’s evisceration of rights of conscience,” states Dana Cody, Life Legal Defense Foundation’s President and Executive Director. “Waiting a year shifts some of the impact of the mandate down the road, allowing the Obama Administration to appear sympathetic to the American value of freedom of conscience in this election year. The Obama administration shows again that it can play politics well, but has little interest in protecting the sincerely held conscientious beliefs of Americans.”

Numerous groups, including Life Legal Defense Foundation, submitted comments on the contraceptive rule to HHS in September, arguing that the narrow exemption provided for “religious employers” was essentially meaningless. For instance, the exemption would potentially cover places of worship, but would not cover religious groups that provide social services, education or engage outreach to people of different religious faiths, nor would it cover religious health insurance companies, religious health care providers, or individuals.

Legal analysts have suggested that the mandate not only violates existing conscience protections on abortion such as the Hyde/Weldon Amendment (in that drugs that can act as abortifacients are covered, such as Plan B and Ella), but also violates the principles of the Church Amendments which protect the conscience rights of those who object to medical services on moral or religious grounds.