Good Morning!
Charles Spurgeon once said “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
It seems the terrorists who bombed our friends at the Wisconsin Family Action office subscribe to the lie that abortion can somehow be safe:
1. Office of Wisconsin Pro-Family Group Firebombed; Pro-Abortion Perpetrator Leaves Threat
From The Daily Citizen:
The office of Wisconsin Family Action (WFA), a pro-family ally of Focus on the Family headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin, was set on fire during the early hours of Sunday, May 8, after unknown persons broke windows and threw at least two Molotov cocktails inside. The office was damaged by the resulting fire.
There were no injuries.
The perpetrators spray-painted a threatening pro-abortion message on an exterior wall of the building: “If abortions aren’t safe, then you aren’t either.”
A group called Anarchy 1312 claimed responsibility for the attack on WFA by spray-painting its symbol, which also stands for an anti-police slur, on the wall of WFA’s building, according to a Facebook post from Julaine Appling, president of WFA.
“While this attack was directly provoked by the leaked draft opinion from the US Supreme Court in the Dobbs case earlier this week, this has far broader implication,” Appling said. “Apparently, the tolerance that the left demands is truly a one-way street. Violence has become their answer to everything. This is what happens when leadership is missing or when leadership implies that violence is ok.”
Appling is determined not to let this attack deter her group from continuing its pro-family mission, although she has promised to step up security measures.
2. Schumer’s Radical Abortion Bill
From the Wall Street Journal:
A national abortion bill is also constitutionally suspect. If the Supreme Court overturns Roe, the federal government will lack any 14th Amendment justification to override state abortion laws. The WHPA could be left relying on Congress’s power to “regulate Commerce” among the states.
But the Commerce Clause isn’t unlimited, and Congress can’t overrule the constitutional police powers of the 50 states. It can ban some activity that a state allows, such as marijuana cultivation in California (Gonzales v. Raich, 2005) when there is arguably an interstate market in the drug. But abortion is a medical procedure provided and regulated locally or by states.
Some states are likely to ban abortion if Roe falls. If Congress can then compel the legality of abortions that are banned by state law, there is no limiting principle to what traditional sphere of state power it can’t oversee under the Commerce Clause. Why not local zoning or prostitution laws?
By the way, in voting for a national abortion law, Democrats may be creating an open door for Republicans to do the same when they next hold power. This would be as constitutionally dubious as Mr. Schumer’s bill, but Democrats will have made it easier for the GOP to ignore the Constitution too.
Similar logic probably applies to the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed in 2003. The Justices upheld that law against a different set of arguments. Yet as Justice Clarence Thomas noted in a concurrence: “Whether the Act constitutes a permissible exercise of Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause is not before the Court.” If Roe falls, it’s hard to justify under the Commerce Clause.
As for Democratic calls to kill the Senate filibuster, do they really want abortion policy in 50 states to flip-flop depending on who wins the next Senate race in Georgia or Wisconsin? The wise move is to table the WHPA. Then Democrats can fight it out in the states, the constitutional way, for the abortion policy they want.
- Democrats: When Do You Think Life Begins?
Senator Rick Scott writes in the Wall Street Journal:
I have a simple question for Democrats: When do you believe life begins?
The Republican position on abortion is based on a fundamental belief that life begins at conception. It’s a conclusion grounded in faith and values, but also in science.
We know that unborn babies can feel pain very early. We know that after six weeks a baby’s heartbeat can be heard in the womb. Modern sonograms show unborn babies smiling, yawning and sucking their thumbs.
Put simply, science has revealed that an unborn baby is a human being, and voters agree. According to recent polling conducted by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, 73% of voters agree that an unborn baby is a human being.
So that raises the question: When do Democrats believe life begins? At conception? At viability? At birth? After birth? They won’t say. Even more disconcerting, reporters won’t ask them. It’s a dereliction of duty by the mainstream media not to push the question, and it’s an abdication of their responsibility to inform the American people and spur legitimate debate.
Since the leaked draft opinion in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Democrats have come out as the abortion extremists we’ve always known they are. They’ve staked out a position that is simply outside the mainstream of where average American voters are.
4. The battles for our freedom are increasingly occurring at the state level
Kristen Waggoner writes in World Magazine:
In preparation for a decision overturning Roe, several states have preemptively passed pro-abortion policies to codify a right to abortion in state law. With such extreme policies already being enacted, we must be prepared to combat more aggressive attacks on women and the sanctity of life in the wake of Dobbs.
This preparation, though, cannot be limited only to the pro-life arena. The examples I have provided are merely a small selection of an expansive list of legislative battles for the heart of our nation occurring in all 50 states. The growing intensity of the role states play in defending our most cherished and fundamental freedoms should inspire us as Christians to advocate for state-level policies that protect truth and keep the doors open for the gospel.
While that may seem like a daunting charge, the reality is that state legislatures are much more accessible and responsive to constituent influences than Congress. State legislators represent far fewer people than their federal counterparts, and in most states, legislators are part-time. This gives them ample opportunity to be directly engaged in their communities—and for their communities to engage with them. State legislative committees hold regular hearings that are open to public comment, giving concerned citizens a forum for voicing support or opposition to legislation and sharing personal stories about the direct effects of these policies. In this way, state legislatures provide citizens abundant opportunities to have a tangible effect on laws concerning the most pressing issues facing our culture and country.
That’s why it’s hard to see many Christians stand idly by, simply watching policymaking happen instead of taking an active or even supportive role in its creation and enactment. We are blessed to live in a country that allows all its citizens to have a say in what happens in their government—a blessing believers in some parts of the world long for. And if Christians don’t show up, rest assured that those hostile to the gospel and the freedoms that flow from it will. Part of what it means to love our neighbors is to support laws and policies that will benefit our communities and stand against the ones that will truly harm them.
I hope that, as we look to the prospect of legislating in a post-Roe era, we’ll not only actively use the states as a vessel for protecting life, but we’ll have a greater understanding of the significant part states play in protecting all of our most precious freedoms. I implore my fellow Christians to engage and become passionate, vocal advocates for truth on the front lines of these consequential legislative battles, state by state.
- Conservative Parents Sweep Texas School Board Elections on a Theme of Transparency, No Masks, and No CRT in the Classroom
From Red State:
Saturday, school board elections were held for four suburban Fort Worth, Texas, school districts. Candidates backed by a conservative parents’ organization won all 10 seats they contested and unseated at least three incumbents.
Usually, school board elections are low-key affairs that draw scant interest. But ever since COVID, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and mainstreaming of sexual grooming in our classrooms brought the stupidity and cruelty of many school board members to public view, they have become a battleground.
Yesterday’s elections were just a continuation of the revolt over CRT that started last year. Even though we all know it is only taught as an elective in law school and a total non-issue in school board elections, teaching children to observe racial stereotypes and judge classmates based on their skin color is deeply offensive to thinking people.
- Alabama Law Banning Child Gender Transition Surgeries Goes Into Effect
From the Daily Wire:
A law banning transgender surgery and drugs for minors took effect on Sunday after the law was signed in April.
Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed the law that made providing hormone treatments, transition surgery, or puberty blockers to anyone under 19 years old in the state punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Ivey said in a statement when she signed the bill last month that “if the Good Lord made you a boy, you are a boy, and if he made you a girl, you are a girl.”
“We should especially protect our children from these radical, life-altering drugs and surgeries when they are at such a vulnerable stage in life,” she added.
- Internet Blackmail Targeting Young Men is Growing
From NBC News:
Internet blackmailers are increasingly duping young men and boys into sending them sexually explicit content online by posing as young girls on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram and then extorting them in a scheme known as “sextortion” — and dozens of these cases have ended with the victims taking their own lives, police and child advocates told NBC News.
In a sign of how serious the problem is becoming, the FBI’s field office in Los Angeles released a warning last month aimed directly at the parents of young men caught in the crosshairs of these cyber-criminals who often operate in foreign countries.
“The FBI is receiving an increasing number of reports of adults posing as young girls coercing young boys through social media to produce sexual images and videos and then extorting money from them,” the FBI warning said.
Dozens of boys have reported being “victims of sextortion; mostly for money, although others were reportedly sextorted for additional images,” the agency said in a subsequent news release.
8. Parenting a Child with ADHD Can Feel Helpless — But New Research Shows Help
From Yahoo News:
In the triple-blind study — meaning that neither parents, kids, nor clinicians knew who was receiving treatment and who was receiving a placebo — 135 kids with unmedicated ADHD were given either micronutrient or placebo capsules for eight weeks. The micronutrient capsule contained all known vitamins and essential minerals. At the end of the eight-week study, the group being treated with the nutrients showed three times more improvement in their ADHD symptoms (54 percent versus 18 percent in the placebo group). The findings of this study seem to confirm the similar findings of a 2019 study conducted in New Zealand, which is also exciting.
“Supplementing with all known vitamins and essential minerals, at doses between Recommended Daily Allowance and Upper Tolerable Limit, may improve mood and concentration in children with ADHD and emotional dysregulation,” lead author Jeanette Johnstone, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Oregon Health & Science University and Helfgott Research Institute, National University of Natural Medicine, said in a press release. “These findings may offer guidance to doctors and families seeking integrative treatments for their children with ADHD and related emotional dysregulation.”
Not only did the research discover behavioral and emotional benefits for the kids with ADHD, but some surprising physical benefits as well: the micronutrient group grew six millimeters more in height than the placebo group. “The growth finding, also a replication from the previous child micronutrient study, is particularly encouraging, as height suppression is a concern with first-line ADHD medication,” Dr. Johnstone noted.
For parents who are at the end of their rope — and ADHD kids who are frustrated and misunderstood — the thought of being able to manage symptoms with a simple and well-tolerated treatment is very exciting news.
- Baby formula shortage prompts tearful mom to panic: ‘I broke down’
From TheBlaze:
Wynter Balthrop, a Tennessee mother, told Fox News that she fears for her 8-month-old daughter, Blakeley, amid formula shortages.
Balthrop’s young daughter — who consumes specially formulated Enfamil, a hypoallergenic baby formula that is the only one of its kind that the child can tolerate — is months away from being able to drink standard dairy or nut milks, and her mother is struggling to find the formula that her daughter needs.
“We went to six different stores and searched and called multiple others as far as three hours away from us,” she told Fox News Digital for a weekend interview on the shortages. “[W]e were not able to find one can or bottle of her formula.”
Instead, Balthrop said, she was forced to give her daughter a generic version — which reportedly made the child sick.
10. Author’s plagiarism essay pulled after discovery it was plagiarized
From ABC News:
Lit Hub editor Jonny Diamond said Monday that the plagiarized material concerned passages about the history of plagiarism; several commentators on social media had found similarities between Bello’s writing and work from various previous sources. Bello did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
