President Trump Friday became the first sitting president to address the pro-life March for Life, which was holding its 45th event since the creation by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 of the right to abortion in its Roe v. Wade decision.
He was speaking to a crowd at the Rose Garden at the White House, but his remarks were broadcast to the nearby National Mall, where an estimated 100,000 gathered to mark and mourn the advent of legalized abortion in America. Since 1973, abortion has killed an estimated 60 million unborn children.
Pro-life efforts are gaining momentum in the Trump era, with congressional plans to eliminate the roughly half a billion dollars that American taxpayers give annually to the abortion industry’s leading player, Planned Parenthood.
That move comes as federal authorities probe Planned Parenthood and other abortion interests over a series of undercover videos capturing industry executives arguing for higher prices for the body parts of unborn babies they salvage and then sell for research.
At the rally, the focus by Vice President Mike Pence, as with Trump, was on the positive, however.
“Life is winning in America because loves saves lives,” Pence said, referencing the 2018 March theme in his introduction of the president.
“Know as you march for life your compassion, persistent, your activism and your prayers are saving lives,” he said. “This pro-life generation should never doubt we are with you.”
Trump continued the theme.
“We know that life is the great miracle of all,” he opened. “Because of you tens of thousands of Americans have been born and reached their full God-given potential.”
He pointed out that these days, only 12 percent of Americans “support abortion on demand at any time.”
“We will always defend the very first right in the Declaration of Independence. That is the right to life,” he said.
He noted his decision to reinstate the Mexico City policy, which bans taxpayer funding of overseas abortions, his support for the movement in Congress to ban abortion once the unborn child is capable of pain and other moves to protect religious liberty.
Just this week he created an office on conscience rights to protect doctors and nurses, and reversed an Obama rule that restricted state efforts to direct Medicaid funding away from abortion facilities that violate the law.
“We are protecting the sanctity of life and the family as the foundation of our society,” he said, a movement that “can only succeed with the heart and the soul and the prayer of the people.”
He praised, and brought on stage, Marianne Donadio of Room At the Inn, a North Carolina outreach for unwed mothers-to-be.
She was unwed at 17, had her son and noticed a need for help for those in that situation.
She still works at the organization and has six children.
Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life, said in a statement released by the organization, “Since his first day in office, President Trump has remained steadfast on his campaign promises to the pro-life cause and has actively worked to protect the unborn.
“Over the past year, the Trump administration has significantly advanced pro-life policy, and it is with great confidence that, under his leadership, we expect to see other pro-life achievements in the years to come. We welcome our 45th President, Donald Trump, to the 45th annual March for Life.”
Trump said the most important gift is “the gift of life itself.”
“That is why we march. That is why we pray. That is why we declare America’s future will be filled with goodness, love, peace and life for every child of God.”
Hear Trump:
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While the march was under way, the U.S. House adopted the Born Alive Survivor’s Protection Act, which requires appropriate medical care for any baby that survives an abortion attempt.
The most recent move in the investigation into the abortion industry’s baby body parts trade was reported just days ago.
A deadline set by the U.S. Supreme Court is looming for abortionists to justify their demand that an undercover video of their comments about their business – even their jokes – be censored.
David Dalieden, founder of the Center for Medical Progress, went undercover to Planned Parenthood, National Abortion Federation and other events and caught on camera abortionists negotiating for higher pay for the body parts of unborn children.
One Planned Parenthood executive famously insisted on higher pay because, “I want a Lamborghini.”
The Thomas More Society, one of several groups that has defended Daleiden and his co-worker in the undercover videos, Sandra Merritt, noted this week “the clock is ticking down to January 26, 2018, which is the extended deadline for the National Abortion Federation to file a response to the petition filed by the legal team representing undercover journalist David Daleiden with the United States Supreme Court.”
The report explains Daleiden has petitioned the high court to review and reverse a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision affirming Judge William Orrick’s gag order that prohibits Daleiden from releasing videos he took at National Abortion Federation conferences.
More than a dozen other videos already have been released, and the NAF video was online for a brief moment before a Planned Parenthood-linked federal judge, who refused to take himself off the case, issued an order suppressing it.
In the censored video, Susan Robinson of Planned Parenthood of Mar Monte in San Jose, California, said: “The fetus is a tough little object and taking it apart, I mean taking it apart, on day one is very difficult.”
And Talcott Camp, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Reproductive Health Freedom Project remarked: “I’m like, ‘Oh my God!’ I get it! When the skull is broken, that’s really sharp. I get it, I understand why people are talking about getting that skull out, that calvarium.”
Deborah Nucatola, senior director of medical services at Planned Parenthood Federation of America said: “You know, sometimes she’ll tell me she wants brain, and we’ll, you know, leave the calvarium in ’til last, and then try to basically take it, or actually, you know, catch everything, and even keep it separate from the rest of the tissue so it doesn’t get lost.”
Even the federal judge who suppressed the information, William Orrick, admitted “the immense public interest at stake” in the tapes.
“I also recognize that this case impinges on defendants’ rights to speech and the public’s equally important interest in hearing that speech,” he said.
He was linked to Planned Parenthood through a community organization he supported that worked to provide benefits to the abortion-industry giant.
The Thomas More Society filed a petition to the Supreme Court in August, asking the justices to reverse Orrick’s order censoring the video from the NAF event.
NAF at first refused to respond.
Peter Breen, Thomas More Society special counsel, explained: “When a case is deemed significant enough to be filed with the Supreme Court, it is customary and expected that the opposition will file a written response. By not doing so in this case, the National Abortion Federation tried to signal that they didn’t believe the case was worthy of a response. The Supreme Court disagreed, and ordered the National Abortion Federation to file a formal, written response.”
He said the information in the video is important to the public.
“This injunction only serves to conceal from the public important and incriminating information about Planned Parenthood’s trafficking of the body parts and organs of dismembered children, children from whose intentional death they have already profited.”
The arguments before the court include that no federal court has ever upheld a prior restraint order to conceal “speech of overwhelming public interest.”
Not, at least, until Orrick’s personal affiliations were benefited by his decision.
“The layers of injustice here are manifold,” explained Breen. “There is injustice toward Mr. Daleiden – impeding his freedom of speech and his ability to share serious information regarding a matter of public safety and disclosing illegal activity. There is injustice to the public, who has a right to know about the criminal behavior of Planned Parenthood – which receives hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds and is under investigation by the United States Department of Justice. Finally, there is the grave injustice to the unborn children, whose very bodies are being sold as if they were livestock.”
WND reported when the Supreme Court ordered NAF to respond. On the suppressed video, Lisa Harris, medical director for Planned Parenthood of Michigan, said: “Our stories don’t really have a place in a lot of pro-choice discourse and rhetoric, right? The heads that get stuck that we can’t get out. The hemorrhages that we manage.”
She continued: “Given that we actually see the fetus the same, and given that we might actually both agree that there’s violence in here, ask me why I come to work every day. Let’s just give them all the violence, it’s a person, it’s killing, let’s just give them all that.”
Orrick has had a longstanding relationship with the Good Samaritan Family Resource Center in San Francisco, where he helped open and fund a Planned Parenthood clinic inside the center.
The exposure of Planned Parenthood’s fetal-tissue trade through Daleiden’s work has caused considerable furor, with multiple states withdrawing funding. Federal agents also now are investigating at the recommendation of several committees in Congress.
One of the CMP videos shows an official admitting Planned Parenthood sells fully intact aborted babies.
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Another has Nucatola commenting on crushing babies.
“We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact,” she said.
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In the second video, Planned Parenthood’s Mary Gatter discusses how her compensation for organs could rise when she said, “I want a Lamborghini.”
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The fifth video released shows Melissa Farrell of Planned Parenthood’s Houston clinic discussing “intact fetal cadavers”:
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The seventh video has the testimony of a Planned Parenthood worker who tapped an aborted infant’s heart and saw it start beating.
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