Sixty-nine percent of adoption credit claims were audited and credits were delayed.

As David French writes in The Corner on National Review, “IRS Morality: Defend Planned Parenthood, Deluge Adoptive Families with Audits.”  French draws some stats and information from the Taxpayer Advocate Service.

This travesty of justice is brought to you by an IRA under a White House that proclaims:

President Obama and Vice President Biden are committed advocates for children. They will make sure that every child has health insurance, expand educational opportunities for low-income children, extend resources for low-income families, support and supplement our struggling foster care system, and protect children from violence and neglect.

Except if that child is adopted or unborn.

Marybeth T. Hagan is the author of Abortion: A Mother’s Plea for Maternity and the Unborn, a Liguori/Triumph publication. Her commentaries and stories have been published by: The National Catholic Register, The Christian Science Monitor, The American Feminist, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, The [Philadelphia] Bulletin, The Philadelphia Tribune, The [Philadelphia] Catholic Standard & Times, The Delaware County Daily Times, Seven Mile Times [Avalon, N.J.], Sea Isle Times [Sea Isle City, N.J.].

For it’s bittersweet.

Even as we honor U.S. veterans who lost their lives in the line of duty, we lament their deaths.

Memorial Day was not a picnic, a sunny day at the beach or a Memorial Day sale bargain for these patriots.  They paid the ultimate price so that the rest of us could live freely.  (Here, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, are estimates of  wartime death tolls for U.S. service members — both in and out of combat — from the American Revolution in 1775 through the Global War on Terror through 2012.)

May these heroic soldiers, sailors and aviators rest in peace.

Marybeth T. Hagan is the author of Abortion: A Mother’s Plea for Maternity and the Unborn, a Liguori/Triumph publication. Her commentaries and stories have been published by: The National Catholic Register, The Christian Science Monitor, The American Feminist, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, The [Philadelphia] Bulletin, The Philadelphia Tribune, The [Philadelphia] Catholic Standard & Times, The Delaware County Daily Times, Seven Mile Times [Avalon, N.J.], Sea Isle Times [Sea Isle City, N.J.].

The Thomas More Society is speaking out about blatant bias by the supposedly apolitical tax-collection agency. Cases handled by the Chicago-based public interest law firm support mounting accusations that demonstrate the agency’s abuse of pro-life organizations, in addition to those identified as ‘tea party’, ‘patriot’, or ‘government spending’ groups.

Thomas More Society lawyers handled cases involving the Coalition for Life of Iowa and Christian Voices for Life.  These groups were questioned extensively by the IRS about their activities, among other things.  And, how’s this for outrageous in a free country?  The IRS demanded that the Coalition for Life of Iowa state in writing that its members do not protest outside of Planned Parenthood facilities!

How many other pro-life groups did the IRS target for intimidation?

Marybeth T. Hagan is the author of Abortion: A Mother’s Plea for Maternity and the Unborn, a Liguori/Triumph publication. Her commentaries and stories have been published by: The National Catholic Register, The Christian Science Monitor, The American Feminist, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, The [Philadelphia] Bulletin, The Philadelphia Tribune, The [Philadelphia] Catholic Standard & Times, The Delaware County Daily Times, Seven Mile Times [Avalon, N.J.], Sea Isle Times [Sea Isle City, N.J.].

Gallup

Poll charts detail how U.S. subgroups (based upon race, sex, age, religion, U.S. region, political leanings) perceive views on abortion and how members of these same subgroups identify themselves on the issue.

Not surprisingly, perception does not meet reality.

In “Americans Misjudge U.S. Abortion Views,” Gallup reports:

When asked how they think most Americans feel about the abortion issue, 51% of U.S. adults say the public is mostly “pro-choice,” while 35% say “pro-life.” This general perception that the pro-choice viewpoint prevails contrasts with the nearly even division of Americans’ actual views. The same poll finds that 48% of Americans call themselves pro-life and 45% pro-choice.

Differences between perception and reality on abortion views need not trouble anti-abortion activists.  Rational pro-lifers realize that pro-choice perspectives on abortion change to pro-life perspectives one person — one heart and one mind — at a time.

And, sometimes, awakenings to abortion’s cruel realities comes rudely and in unexpected ways.  Surely, anyone who spent time in the courtroom during the recent trial of convicted murderer and abortionist Dr. Kermit Gosnell. or read the “Report of the Grand Jury” on this case, learned that lesson the hard way.

Marybeth T. Hagan is the author of Abortion: A Mother’s Plea for Maternity and the Unborn, a Liguori/Triumph publication. Her commentaries and stories have been published by: The National Catholic Register, The Christian Science Monitor, The American Feminist, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, The [Philadelphia] Bulletin, The Philadelphia Tribune, The [Philadelphia] Catholic Standard & Times, The Delaware County Daily Times, Seven Mile Times [Avalon, N.J.], Sea Isle Times [Sea Isle City, N.J.].

Conscientious journalists, pro-life advocates and others are looking for answers.

Jillian Kay Melchior takes a thorough look at a number of dangerous abortion clinics in Florida in her extensive investigative report ”Abortion’s Underside: Kermit Gosnell is not the only seedy backroom abortionist operating in the age of Roe v. Wade,” published by National Review.

As I mentioned last week, journalist Kirsten Powers recently raised this point in her powerful USA Today column ”Gosnell’s abortion atrocities no ‘aberration.’”  And, antiabortion activist Lila Rose continues to document questionable late-term abortion practices via Live Action‘s undercover film expose operations.  These reports expose questionable abortion practices in places like Washington D.C., New York City, Delaware, Maryland and Illinois.

In his provocative Best of the Web Today  post “‘Stop Being a Baby,’ Infanticide and the infantilization of women” yesterday, The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto provided links to  Powers’ column and Live Action’s latest film.  The current Live Action undercover film stars the notorious late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart in his Nebraska abortion clinic.  Watching Carhart in action, discussing the abortion procedure with a woman who pretends to want one, is numbing.  This creepy abortionist repeatedly and unapologetically uses the word ”baby” in reference to abortion, lies about fetal pain and compares a dead baby inside an aborting women to “meat in a crock pot.”

With such outrageous information going so public, the abortion industry is finally feeling the heat.

Marybeth T. Hagan is the author of Abortion: A Mother’s Plea for Maternity and the Unborn, a Liguori/Triumph publication. Her commentaries and stories have been published by: The National Catholic Register, The Christian Science Monitor, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, The [Philadelphia] Bulletin, The Philadelphia Tribune, The [Philadelphia] Catholic Standard & Times, The Delaware County Daily Times, Seven Mile Times [Avalon, N.J.], Sea Isle Times [Sea Isle City, N.J.].

More than anything written on the subject, the Grand Jury’s report exposes abortion’s immorality and the abortion-friendly politics that permit atrocities, like those witnesses say were committed for decades at Gosnell’s so called  ”Women’s Medical Society” at 38th Street and Lancaster Avenue in West Philadelphia.

According to the report’s Overview:

This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels – and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths. Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it. 

Let us say right up front that we realize this case will be used by those on both sides of the abortion debate. We ourselves cover a spectrum of personal beliefs about the morality of abortion. For us as a criminal grand jury, however, the case is not about that controversy; it is about disregard of the law and disdain for the lives and health of mothers and infants. We find common ground in exposing what happened here, and in recommending measures to prevent anything like this from ever happening again.

The devil is in the details of the “Report of the Grand Jury,” both in witnesses’ testimonies and in photographs.

In addition to a picture of a husband and his late wife Mrs. Karnamaya Mongar  who suffered a fatal drug overdose during an abortion procedure at the Women’s Medical Society, there are photos taken inside Gosnell’s clinic that include: an operating table crusted with blood, frozen fetal remains in bright blue and red bags, boxes and red bags full of biohazardous material in a basement, severed babies’ feet in jars with bright green caps, the back of a baby boy’s head and his bleeding slit neck, plus corpses of a baby girl with a head of hair and sweet features who was aborted close to 30 weeks into a pregnancy and a beautiful baby boy who was aborted at least 32 weeks into a pregnancy.

As Lila Rose continues to document via Live Action‘s film exposes, and as journalist Kirsten Powers recently wrote in USA Today, ”Gosnell’s abortion atrocities no ‘aberration.’”  Dangerous abortion practices are turning up in places like Washington D.C., New York City, Delaware, Maryland, Illinois and beyond.

Indeed, abortion is legal.  But not always safe and rare (more than 54 million abortions since 1973), as abortion rights advocacy promised.  So as they sweat the dark shadow that the Women’s Medical Center casts on abortion, hardcore abortion advocates can thank themselves for creating monsters like Gosnell.

Kudos to Philadelphia District Attorney Williams and staff for exposing them.

Marybeth T. Hagan is the author of Abortion: A Mother’s Plea for Maternity and the Unborn, a Liguori/Triumph publication. Her commentaries and stories have been published by: The National Catholic Register, The Christian Science Monitor, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, The [Philadelphia] Bulletin, The Philadelphia Tribune, The [Philadelphia] Catholic Standard & Times, The Delaware County Daily Times, Seven Mile Times [Avalon, N.J.], Sea Isle Times [Sea Isle City, N.J.].

“Never in my life have I seen the presumption of innocence more trampled on, stomped on, than in this case.”

 These words were spoken by Jack McMahon as he gave his closing arguments in the defense of Dr. Kermit Gosnell. He used them, apparently, without a trace of irony.

 Of course our justice system rightly demands the presumption of innocence for the accused. The judge and jury, and we the citizens must assume innocence. The trial must proceed fairly with each side arguing guilt or innocence based on the evidence. The prosecution must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, guilt. The defense must protect the rights of the accused. The jury must deliberate the evidence presented at trial and make a decision. These are all sacred duties that demand integrity and courage. A man’s life hangs in the balance. Each of us deserves a fair trial, no matter the crime, no matter the evidence. This is how we protect the innocent.

 If only a fair trial were given to the babies born in Gosnell’s facility. If only Gosnell had taken his sacred duty as a physician as seriously as the jurors in his trial take theirs. If only Gosnell or one of his workers had fairly looked at the evidence of life  - the breath, the flailing arm, the anguished cry – of the babies delivered and born in the dirty rooms and toilets of his facility. If only the presumption of innocence were not stomped on and trampled on in abortion facilities across the country.                                                                                                             Posted by Mary Finnegan

“We make it clear that we’re a first step to inform and educate,” said Legacy of Life Event & Development Director Siobhan Rooney.  “If women want to keep their babies, or choose adoption for them, we do everything – everything – we can to make it possible case by case.”

Time spent at this local non-profit organization’s Center City pregnancy center is telling.  One client who was scheduled to meet with social worker Andrea Casarow, the director of client services, is a no show.  Still, traffic at the center is increasing.  “We served 63 women in 2012,” Casarow noted as she double-checked figures on her computer screen.  “This year, we’ve already seen 87 women in the first quarter.”  Casarow and Rooney agree that according to their diligent data gathering, 28 percent of their clientele choose to become parents.

Visitors often comment on the Community Women’s Center of Philadelphia’s décor, which is striking and comfortably traditional.  This lovely pastel-shaded space includes a sizeable reception area, two consultation rooms – one cozy living room-like and the other more formally office-like, a restroom, another room that houses the center’s ultrasound equipment and the Family Support Room that is packed with shelves and racks full of baby supplies like disposable diapers, baby clothes and other necessities.  Among its many services, the Community Women’s Center offers free pregnancy testing and ultrasound imagery.

Back at her desk, Casarow catches up on paperwork and makes follow-up telephone calls to clients before assisting a soft-spoken mother who stops by to pick up baby supplies.

A corps of volunteers who donate their time and talents, sponsors and other financial supporters make it feasible for this mother and others, mothers and fathers, to give their children a Legacy of Life.

More help is needed.

The Community Women’s Center of Philadelphia would welcome volunteers to serve as counselors (training provided) and/or assist with clerical needs.  For information, telephone 267-239-0753 or email andrea@cwcphiladelphia.org.  For information on making financial donations or sponsorships, telephone 215-788-4051 or visit the Legacy of Life Foundation’s website here.

As for current sponsors and supporters, Rooney remains genuinely grateful to them for their overwhelming generosity and looks forward to receiving their responses to the invitation-only Legacy of Life Foundation’s Inaugural Fundraising Dinner on May 5^th at the elegant Walnut Street Supper Club in Philadelphia.

Marybeth T. Hagan is the author of Abortion: A Mother’s Plea for Maternity and the Unborn, a Liguori/Triumph publication. Her commentaries and stories have been published by: The National Catholic Register, The Christian Science Monitor, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, The [Philadelphia] Bulletin, The Philadelphia Tribune, The [Philadelphia] Catholic Standard & Times, The Delaware County Daily Times, Seven Mile Times [Avalon, N.J.], Sea Isle Times [Sea Isle City, N.J.].

Early on, the columnist notes that he has long been in ”the mushy middle” on the abortion issue.  Then Taranto digs into the Philadelphia grand jury report on Gosnell and applies his U.S. Constitutional law expertise to make point after point about ”the current regime of abortion on demand” and it destructiveness.

Taranto writes:

The reductio ad absurdum of the pro-abortion side is Kermit Gosnell. That is why the Gosnell case has crystallized our view that the current regime of abortion on demand in America is a grave evil that ought to be abolished. It is murderous, if not categorically then at least in its extreme manifestations. Maintaining it requires an assault on language and logic that has taken on a totalitarian character. And it is politically poisonous.

While drawing conclusions later in the column, Taranto explains further:

What do we mean when we call for the abolition of the Roe regime? Simply this: a reversal of Supreme Court precedent, an acknowledgment by the court that it erred when it decided Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. That would turn the question of abortion back to the states and the people, where the 10th Amendment makes clear it belongs.

Closer to home, local pro-lifers who pray outside of the Planned Parenthood in Center City Philadelphia, the ones whom NARAL’s Kate Michelman blamed for Gosnell’s existence in a Philadelphia Inquirer commentary, might enjoy reading this except from Taranto’s column:

A variant of the if-only-the-other-side-would-disappear argument appeared in Michelman’s Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed. One Gosnell patient, she wrote, “told the Associated Press that she had intended to go to a Planned Parenthood clinic but was scared away by antiabortion protesters.”

Well, why were the protesters there? Again, the answer comes back to the Roe regime. Normally if you think a law is unjust, you take your case to lawmakers. But a march on Harrisburg would be futile. Even if Pennsylvania legislators agree with the protesters that abortion is murder, they can’t do anything about it. The Supreme Court has tied their hands. So the protesters, driven by a sincere belief that innocent children are in jeopardy of being murdered, go to the scene of the “crime” to try to stop it before it happens, through the power of persuasion.

Those are not the only truths that this journalist tells.  Taranto’s “From Roe to Gosnell” is worth reading.

Marybeth T. Hagan is the author of Abortion: A Mother’s Plea for Maternity and the Unborn, a Liguori/Triumph publication. Her commentaries and stories have been published by: The National Catholic Register, The Christian Science Monitor, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, The [Philadelphia] Bulletin, The Philadelphia Tribune, The [Philadelphia] Catholic Standard & Times, The Delaware County Daily Times, Seven Mile Times [Avalon, N.J.], Sea Isle Times [Sea Isle City, N.J.].

The story of Kermit Gosnell and his Women’s Medical Society has horrified this city. With little help from the MSM, new media bloggers and pundits have followed the trial and highlighted the awful conditions at the Gosnell facility – the racism and murders, the medical malpractice and evil, and the negligence of those who knew what was happening – the National Abortion Federation, the Pennsylvania Department of Health, and the Philadelphia medical community, just to name a few.

Gosnell is a monster. His facility was a “house of horrors”, a “charnel house”. The disgusting conditions, the casual cruelty, the wickedness of the acts committed there are sensational and shocking. Yet they are only a less sterile version of the horror that occurs with every abortion.

Abortion first requires us to deny the humanity of the unborn child. Then the actual violence required to perform an abortion must also be denied. If abortions were performed on television we would all turn our heads away, gasping in horror. People are shocked that Gosnell delivered nearly full-term babies and then essentially beheaded them. “How could he?” they ask. “What was wrong with him?” All totally reasonable reactions to the utter depravity occurring in that clinic. But the violence and thoughtless disregard for life at the Women’s Medical Society are the same violence and disregard for life that are the hallmarks of abortion. Abortions may be performed in more sterile settings, but they are violent acts nonetheless.

There are two types of abortion – surgical and medical. Medical abortions are performed by the administration of medications – mifepristone and misoprostol. Mifepristone stops progesterone, which is necessary to maintain a pregnancy. Misoprostol causes the uterus to empty. It also causes cramps and heavy bleeding. Women often chose medical abortion because they believe it to be less invasive, easier. But a child’s life must still end, thus even the National Abortion Federation warns practitioners to remind the aborting woman that she may see her baby after the “uterus empties.” If this drug combination fails to kill the baby then a surgical abortion must be performed.

Surgical abortions include suction curettage (vacuum aspiration), dilation and evacuation (D&E), and dilation and extraction (D&X or partial birth abortion). D&X is a gruesome procedure that is different from infanticide only by inches and is tolerated in this country because of the sick manipulation of the laws of nature and man. But really what is the difference between the violence required to perform a partial birth abortion and that required to perform a vacuum aspiration or a D&E? Both of those procedures literally pull the baby apart limb for limb. Turn on your vacuum cleaner and then imagine the force of the suction turned up almost 30 times. That is the level of suction used to perform a vacuum aspiration abortion. The shredding of the dirt on your carpet is the same shredding that a living, feeling baby experiences during a suction abortion.

Dilation and evacuation is generally performed on women in the 16-20th week of pregnancy. There are numerous steps involved, but the surgical portion requires the manual dismemberment and removal of the baby. The abortionist must insert instruments into the uterus to remove the baby limb by limb. Each leg and arm, each hand and foot, each bone, each organ, the eyes, the head, the heart, each and every one of these must be pulled out. Then they must be put back together to make sure that no part is left behind to cause an infection in the aborting woman. We call this reproductive freedom, but how is it any different, any less gruesome than what Gosnell did?

The abortion industry has thrived on two things – despair and denial. Only a woman in despair allows someone to kill her unborn child. The women sitting in the waiting rooms of abortion facilities are in despair – despair that they are not old enough, young enough, rich enough, secure enough, educated enough, and most especially, loved enough – to bring a child into this world. The natural hope that a woman feels when she realizes that she is pregnant is destroyed and replaced with fear, anger and hopelessness. The natural pride and protectiveness that a man should feel when he finds out that he is to be a father is replaced by an emasculated, cocky strut. Society as a whole now looks on children as a punishment – there is less talk of the blessings children bring and more on the burdens.

A society that destroys its most vulnerable will soon find vulnerability everywhere – in the old, the infirm, the imperfect, in you and in me – until no one is safe. Once that feeling of safety is removed, hope withers and with it the desire to build the future. When you kill the future, you soon stop bothering with the present until that too dies.

Drive down Lancaster Ave, past the Women’s Medical Society building. Look around. Witness the destruction of that once vibrant neighborhood. Souls, innocent souls, were slaughtered on that street, it “rained blood and fetuses” there while so many stood by and did nothing. And so it goes in every city and every town where abortions are performed. Souls are slaughtered. And, with over a million abortions performed every year in this country, it does indeed, rain blood and fetuses.

Mar