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It was a pro-life, pro-family sweep today at the reconvened “Veto” session of the General Assembly tonight. In addition to a dramatic abortion limiting 21-20 vote within the last hour, the Virginia Senate earlier voted by the same margin to concur with Governor McDonnell and the House of Delegates to restore abstinence education funding that former Governor Tim Kaine cut out of the state budget. As with the vote to ban taxpayer dollars from use in elective abortions in the ObamaCare state run health insurance exchanges, all 18 Republicans were joined by pro-life Democrats Phillip Puckett and Chuck Colgan to get to the magic number of 20 votes and a tie in the chamber allowing pro-life Lt. Governor Bill Bolling to break the tie in favor of the amendment.

The funding, match money corresponding to a federal grant, was initially presented in the House budget but, in the final days of session, Senate conferees stripped it out in budget negotiations. But today, the House reiterated its position by a 69-29 vote, which sent it to the Senate. Senator Colgan (D-29, Manassas), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, introduced the amendment and urged its passage. Pro-abortion Senator Mary Margaret Whipple (D-31, Arlington) rebutted the argument, parroting Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights Action League, which claim abstinence education is ineffective (despite an Obama administration study that says otherwise).

The Family Foundation thanks Governor McDonnell, Lt. Governor Bolling, and the members of the House and Senate who ensured the success of these two important pieces of legislation that soon will become law, as well as all committed pro-life, pro-family Virginians who answered our call to contact their state legislators this week. More to come tomorrow about today’s exciting developments.

Within the last few minutes, in a reprise of its stunning vote to regulate abortion centers in the waning days of the General Assembly’s regular session, the Virginia Senate approved by a vote of 21-20 Governor McDonnell’s amendment to HB 2434 that bans taxpayer funding of elective abortion coverage when (or if) the state run health care insurance exchanges begin in 2014 as mandated by the federal health care law. Throughout the day it looked like the amendments would die in the Senate, perhaps by a 21-19 margin. But, in a vote that came up in the latter stages of an all day and night annual “Veto Session,” all 18 Republican senators and pro-life Democrats Chuck Colgan and Phillip Puckett voted to add the amendments. The other 20 Democrats voted to reject them leaving the tie-breaking vote with Lt. Governor Bill Bolling who, as he did in February, voted in the affirmative. Early on in the intense debate, pro-abortion Senator John Edwards tried to have the amendments ruled non-germane, but Lt. Governor Bolling, who presides over the Senate, ruled that they were. His ruling was upheld on a 21-19 vote. Earlier in the day, the House of Delegates concurred with Governor McDonnell with about 60 votes.

Thanks to all who contacted their senators for this incredible win for Life. Because of your dedication and commitment, we have won significant pro-life legislative victories in Virginia during the past three months. More on this story to come.

The pro-abortion forces in Virginia are nothing if not masters at hyperbole. That, or downright Orwellian. Today, they held a news conference at the General Assembly Building to reinforce their message of choice since their stunning defeat on the abortion center regulation bill: That limiting abortions, and thus saving the most innocent among us, is “an attack on women’s health.” Among attendees were a who’s who of the General Assembly pro-abortion crowd: Senators Donald McEachin and Mary Margaret Whipple; and Delegates Patrick Hope, David Englin, Jennier McClellan, Scott Surovell, Adam Ebbin, Onzlee Ware, Vivian Watts and Charniele Herring — the so-called “Reproductive Health Caucus.”

They were joined not only by Planned Parenthood and NARAL, but by the ACLU and the League of Women’s Voters, whose representative enthusiastically gave herself a shout-out when Delegate Herring failed to recognize her. What abortion “rights” has to do with registering women to vote is anyone’s guess, but that moment was the most exciting thing at what had to be the most uneventful news conference in General Assembly history — nothing more than introductions, a statement by Delegate Herring, and a story by a woman whose situation was not relevant to the exchanges. Not even a question by one of the two or three members of the press who attended. Even the distributed prepared press statements were boring. Sorry, but no video, excerpted quotes, nor links worth citing. Even Planned Parenthood’s e-mail alert left a lot to be desired. An indication that the tide is turning? We’ll find out tomorrow when our electeds vote to sustain or reject two pro-life amendments passed down by Governor Bob McDonnell: One, to HB 2434, to prohibit taxpayer funding of abortion in the new state health insurance exchanges mandated by the federal healthcare law; and another, a budget amendment, restoring abstinence education funding that former Governor Tim Kaine eliminated.

These votes promise to be very close in the Senate tomorrow during the “Veto Session.” Please contact your senator Wednesday morning and ask him or her to vote for each.

Click here if you know your senator and need his or her phone number.

Click here if you don’t know who your senator is.

Meanwhile, here’s more coverage on the health insurance exchange amendment, from the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot (here) and below, from WTVR-TV/CBS6 in Richmond. Both feature comments from Family Foundation President Victoria Cobb.

As with yesterday’s post about the NEA, where a high ranking official without shame articulated that group’s real objectives (money and power) in contradiction to its stated goals of improving education, today we bring you something similar, though thoroughly crude and disturbing, by Planned Parenthood. It’s a video, by our friends at Catholicvote.org, of a Planned Parenthood march and rally earlier this year. The video simply records pro-abortion radicals saying (often screaming) what they believe, while (to put it kindly) distorting what pro-lifers believe. Of course, the Mainstream Media won’t embarrass its own movement by covering such nonsense (but when there’s a Tea Party rally calling for commonsense spending restraint . . . you know what happens). Neither did the MSM cover this rally of “liberals” last year, where participants gladly called themselves socialists and communists. (But let a conservative call these radicals what they admit to being and the media contrives a firestorm.)

Still, it’s important to hear what the pro-abortion side truly believes (government funding and insurance coverage of abortion on demand), in their own (shrill) words. Nothing close to “safe, legal and rare.” Of course, liberals claim that conservatives distort their positions and it is conservatives who are out of touch. But it’s hard to claim Planned Parenthood is reasonable after watching this. As with the teachers union, what Planned Parenthood says (and how it acts) for public consumption and what it sincerely shrieks when it thinks no one is watching is vastly different.

“Government should fund Planned Parenthood.”

“I want Planned Parenthood to be like Starbucks. I want a Planned Parenthood on every corner.”

It’s a safe assumption that most of you knew that last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday and Sunday morning marked the start of Daylight Savings Time. But are you aware there was another day last week that some consider noteworthy and worth celebrating? Don’t feel bad if you are not. No one here was either until we were appalled to learn, thanks to the NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia blog, that Friday was the National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers. 

We wish this was a joke. Sadly it’s not. The pro-abortion group Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice even produced a video to to promote this “holiday:” 

What? You didn’t know? Friday was thank your abortion provider day! What’s next, abortion gift certificates during Christmas? Wait, Planned Parenthood has that covered, too.

This is a twisted “celebration” — the sacrifice of innocent life — especially during the 40 Day Season of Lent, when people of faith are reminded of our Savior’s sacrifice. Instead, NARAL is urging its supporters to send a note of thanks to those who staff these life-depriving centers and perform abortions. (It’s not the first time a pro-abortion group has mocked a holy season. Remember this from Planned Parenthood?)

This reminder of our culture’s disrespect for Life makes us especially grateful for your stand for Life in the face of such depravity. So, during Lent, we encourage you to consider a more appropriate note of thanks — a note of thanks to those who are on the front lines of protecting innocent life —Virginia’s Pregnancy Resource Centers. Here’s a testimonial from a couple of years ago by U.S. Representative Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) on his local PRC, but it could apply to any PRC in the country. Hensarling is the fourth ranking member of the House Republican majority. 

Rep. Hensarling paints the life affirming contrast between PRCs and pro-abortion groups such as Planned Parenthood.

Or, participate in the 40 Days for Life campaign: 

Stand up for life and the real ideals of the season. 

The General Assembly’s recent passage of a bill requiring the Board of Health to create regulations for Virginia’s abortion centers is a great first step in our attempt to return a respect for Life to Virginia. While others uplift a celebration of abortion in the name of “freedom” and “choice,” we hope you will be encouraged by this recent win and remain committed to the cause of Life.

Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw (D-35, Springfield) is known for his bluntness. Sometimes that’s refreshing in politics. But there’s a fine line between blunt and crude. Today, on Washington station WAMU-FM’s The Politics Hour, he offered this braggadocio when asked about the abortion center regulation amendment to SB 924 that the Senate approved on a 21-20 vote, as reported by Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post’s Virginia Politics blog:

“Let me just say this: Over the last decade, it’s no secret. I happen to be pro-choice. I’ve been pretty much responsible for bottling up or killing 80 bills.”

He noted that most of those anti-abortion bills have died in the Senate’s Education and Health Committee, whose pro-abortion rights membership, he said, he’d helped “engineer.”

“One finally got through through circuitous means,” he said. “Eighty of 81 ain’t a bad batting average.”

Not bad at all, senator, unless you’re one of the hundreds (even thousands) of unborn babies who’ve died because of your obstruction. On the other hand, he didn’t try to fool anyone — no pretense of “safe, legal and rare,” so many liberals try to effect to appease some voters as a sensible position. He gladly took credit for the out of proportion stacking of the Education and Health Committee, as well. But it was nice to see Ms. Helderman’s equally frank, fair and accurate description of Senator Saslaw as “pro-abortion,” a term we expound upon here as the true motivation of many who call themselves “pro-choice.”

Speaking of stacking committees, he was equally blunt on redistricting, saying he expected to redraw district lines in an effort to elect more liberals. The interview also included a surprise caller that sparked real fireworks. It’s worth a listen (you can find the audio here) or a read (you can read the transcript here).

Disturbing.

That’s the word that came to mind as I reviewed a Web site associated with Planned Parenthood called imnotsorry.net. The site proclaims itself as a place “where women can share their positive experiences with abortion.”

Perhaps the hardest part of the site to read, beyond the graphic descriptions of abortions that were “positive experiences,” is the attitudes expressed on the “answers the pro-lifers” page. This is where the site’s contributors refer to unborn children in the first few weeks of life as an “alien-looking clump roughly the size of a kidney bean.”

It gets far worse. The site states in response to women who want children:

(That not) every woman gets gooey over babies and wants to be a mother. We have no doubt that the moment the human race figured out that babies were the result of sex, someone began coming up with birth control and abortion.

Babies are the problem, of course.

The idea that children are a “gift from God”?

Children are conceived through sexual intercourse between a man and a woman with either no or failed contraception. We’ve slept with men who thought they were God, but the actual Big Guy himself has no hand in it. And there’s quite a few people on the planet who (hang on to your hats) don’t believe in any sort of deity.

The rest of the response is so filled with bitterness toward God, that I’m not going to repeat it. Whoever wrote it has clearly had a painful life. I pray for him or her.

The popular line in the media and those who promote abortion is that no one is “pro-abortion.” How we wish that were true. One review of imnotsorry.net (and I warn you, there is offensive language in many of the stories) tell us that when we use the phrase “pro-abortion” to describe some people in our nation, we are being very accurate (see a story that celebrates abortion).

This Web site ignores the multitude of women who regret the decision they made to have an abortion. Whether they where coerced or unsupported by loved ones, they believed they had no options. That “choice” haunts them. They see it as anything but a “positive experience.”

It is our job to show women who have had abortions the love and compassion that God has showed each of us for the poor decisions we’ve made in our lives. It’s why ministries such as Silent No More exist, to provide support and love for women who have suffered from their decisions. We also must do all we can to make sure that every woman considering abortion has all the most accurate information available about her unborn child — such as an ultrasound — so that their “choice” is an informed one.

The day after last week’s historic pro-life victory in the General Assembly (see Richmond Times-Dispatch), Planned Parenthood and its abortion industry allies rallied in Richmond to decry the government’s “attack on women.” Those senators who voted in favor of abortion center safety regulations, and Lt. Governor Bill Bolling who broke the tie in the Virginia Senate, now are likely targets of their action.

We need to make sure that those who stood for life and safety receive the thanks they deserve. So please contact Lt. Governor Bolling and the senators who voted in favor of improving the health and safety standards at Virginia’s abortion centers (SB 924) and thank them for their vote (see below)! These elected officials deserve our gratitude for their action and political courage for voting to regulate abortion centers after years of stiff resistance and pressure by liberal and pro-abortion groups such as Planned Parenthood and NARAL. 

Before too long, after more than two decades of hiding behind a veil of secrecy, Virginia’s abortion centers will have to meet basic sanitary and safety standards. While the media is framing the legislation as “forcing abortion clinics to become hospitals,” the facts are entirely different. Virginia has several categories of hospitals (inpatient, psychiatric, rehabilitation, outpatient surgical, etc.). These categories of hospitals are subject to different regulations. They are not required to meet the standards of general hospitals. Instead, they are regulated according to their specialty. Likewise, abortion centers now will be categorized as a type of hospital and the Board of Health will create regulations that are appropriate.

We hope that you are savoring last week’s victory. At our weekly General Assembly session devotion Friday, we were reminded that God is sovereign and directs those in power. While we know that a lot of hard work went into this legislative victory, and many legislators and elected officials took a brave stand, we are well aware that our God is deserving of all the praise for this historic vote!

We also acknowledge our good friends at the Virginia Catholic Conference and the Virginia Assembly of Independent Baptists for their help in getting this legislation passed. Both organizations worked tirelessly on this and a host of other issues this session. Their partnership is vital to our, and the pro-life movement’s, success.

To thank your senator who voted for SB 924 and Lt. Governor Bill Bolling for breaking the tie vote, click here!

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who has been very visible on national media outlets in his 10 months in office, will participate in an interview tonight in an interesting venue — the new Parker Spitzer show on CNN (8:00 with re-airs throughout the night). You may remember Mr. Spitzer (aka Client No.9), the governor of New York for a few months until it was revealed he had a proclivity for prostitutes. The interview most likely will center on Virginia’s lawsuits against the EPA and health care law/Obamacare (Christian Daily News).

Before his short reign as governor, Mr. Spitzer served several years as New York’s self-styled crusading attorney general, suing any and every company he could find under any pretense so as to make them conform to his control and mandates. Do business in New York? You’ll do it the Spitzer way. We saw what the Spitzer way is, of course. Worse than that, he also was, perhaps, the most pro-unlimited-abortion, pro-Planned Parenthood attorney general in the country. 

I’ve seen the show once. Mr. Sptizer, who CNN has shamelessly tried to rehabilitate — the road to television stardom for liberals seems to be get in trouble with the law — teams with the mushy Kathleen Parker to “hold people accountable” (but apparently not the viewers, as its ratings already are tanking, per the Wall Street Journal). Who held self-righteous Mr. Spitzer accountable when he was ruining American businesses? In the show I saw, Mr. Spitzer, documents in hand, emphatically whipping off his glasses for dramatic, courtroom-style effect, grilled Senator-elect Rand Paul (R-Ky.) as if he was a prosecutor and Dr. Paul was a defendant. Dr. Paul was patient, but firm, when refuting Mr. Spitzer’s ludicrously lame attempts to portray him as a hypocritical bumpkin, getting in a well-timed deflating shot as well.

Which brings us to tonight. If the interview is anything like the Rand Paul interview, and Mr. Spitzer attempts to don the super-liberal-hero-sophisticate cape again, trying to relive his attorney general glory vs. a true hero, we suspect the arrogant Mr. Spitzer will learn something Virginia liberals learned long ago — try to trip up Mr. Cuccinelli and you’ll end up falling over the cliff yourself.

Senator-elect Rand Paul would have nothing of Eliot Spitzer’s bloviating. 

Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration approved the controversial drug “ella” as “emergency contraception” to be used up to five days after sex to “prevent pregnancy”  (see the First Things blog First Thoughts). In another example of Orwellian redefinition, pro-abortion factions would have the public believe that “contraception” can occur after fertilization, when the word itself means to prevent fertilization. In fact, the FDA did not disclose that ella acts as an abortifacient, resulting in the destruction of the smallest of human life.

Those marketing ella have tried to closely associate it with Plan B (also known as the “Morning After Pill”) in an effort to quell some of the controversy and break into the EC market, as opposed to the abortion market. While ethically there is no difference between EC and abortion as both cause the destruction of life, legally and legislatively, there is a difference.

Classification as an abortifacient creates significant hurdles for the producers, marketers and distributors of ella. If labeled an abortifacient, it most likely loses eligibility for federal tax subsidies and of ever becoming an over-the-counter drug (as is Plan B). It’s also possible that if President Obama’s federal health care takeover stands in court, ella, as EC, may be covered by health insurance plans. Additionally, future distributors of ella (such as predictably supportive Planned Parenthood) have a financial incentive to refer to ella as EC, not an abortion pill, since “contraception” is less objectionable than “abortion,” thus  increasing the distributors’ client base and profitability.

Ella marketers would like you to believe that it is merely an improved version of Plan B. Plan B can also prevent an embryo from implanting in the uterine wall and causes the destruction of the embryo. If taken after the embryo has implanted, Plan B is not able to destroy the embryo. Conversely, ella can. It is crucial that the public understand Ella’s destructive nature.

The drug that has a similar chemical makeup to ella is not Plan B, but rather RU-486, the pill used for chemical abortions. Ella’s misclassification as EC is a clandestine method to provide funding for abortion. In its research trials, ella was not tested for its abortive potential and therefore the unknown consequences and dangers are potentially expansive. (At least six deaths as a result of RU-486 have been reported to the FDA over the past six years.) Since ella’s chemical makeup is similar to RU-486, it’s likely its complication rate will be just as tragic.

Watson Pharmaceuticals, the U.S. company marketing ella, says it will likely be available with a prescription by the end of this year. Disguised as emergency contraception — it is more appropriately called “The Five Day After Pill” and “The Stealth Abortion Pill” — ella is a drug with greater destructive value than previously available. For more facts about ella, Michael Fragoso composes a detailed examination into its truly destructive capability, as well as what its proponents don’t want you to know, at The Public Discourse.