REPORT: 66 ABORTION BUSINESSES HAVE HALTED ABORTIONS SINCE REVERSAL OF ROE V. WADE
from: LiveAction News

(16 Oct.) October 2 marked an important milestone for the pro-life movement: the 100-day mark since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that had legalized abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. And in the 100 days since the end of Roe, at least 66 clinics across 15 states have stopped providing abortions, according to a new report from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute.

The report indicates that 40 of the 66 clinics are still offering services other than abortion, while 26 have completely closed. The closed clinics are located in states that enacted total abortion bans post-Roe, with the exception of Georgia, which prohibits abortion after a heartbeat is detected, though the law contains exceptions for cases of rape, incest, and medical emergencies. Currently, there are no providers offering abortions in 14 of the 15 states.

“Prior to Roe being overturned, these 15 states had 79 clinics that provided abortion care,” said Rachel Jones, a principal research scientist at Guttmacher. “We found that 100 days later, this was down to 13.” The states include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. The 14 states with total abortion bans accounted for 125,780 abortions in 2020 and 41,620 abortions were obtained in Georgia in 2020.

According to the report, anecdotal evidence reveals that the closure of the facilities has resulted in women traveling to other states to obtain abortions, increasing caseload and clinic capacity. More closures are expected in the months ahead as states continue to enact abortion restrictions. “Guttmacher expects that as many as 26 states are ultimately going to ban abortion. So I can say with confidence, it’s going to get worse, unfortunately,” Jones said.

As Live Action News has reported, the overturning of Roe v. Wade was not the end – it is just the beginning. While the closure of the 26 abortion facilities and end of abortion at 66 marks a major step forward in the defense of the lives of our nation’s preborn children, more needs to be done, even as online abortion pill businesses expand. [read more...]

COMMENTARY: Thank the Lord that the the highest court has finally overturned the horrific Roe v. Wade decision of 50 years ago, and pray that no new legislation would codify Roe into law. In the past 50 years, sixty-two million unborn human beings have been murdered: consider it the same as each and every year a city with million-plus population being obliterated from the map of the U.S. In another LiveAction article, "City of Greensboro in North Carolina admits pro-lifers’ arrest violated First Amendment rights," a court ruled that police had falsely used Covid-19 restrictions to violate pro-lifers’ First Amendment rights of religious expression and free speech.

QUEBEC DOCTORS BACK EUTHANASIA FOR NEWBORNS
from: BioEdge.org

(12 Oct.) Euthanasia in Canada is racing ahead. A law authorising doctors and nurses to give patients lethal injections was passed in 2016. A law to extend the right to die to patients without a terminal illness was passed in 2021. A sunset clause permits people with mental illness to request euthanasia from 2023.

Now the Quebec College of Physicians has started to lobby for euthanasia for new-borns. Dr Louis Roy told a parliamentary committee last week that that Medical Aid in Dying can be appropriate for infants up to age one who are born with "severe malformations" and "grave and severe syndromes" for which their "prospective of survival is null, so to speak."

This does not mark a sudden change in the position of the Quebec College of Physicians. In a press release last December it argued that MAiD should be available for children aged 0-1 and 14-17. "Suffering does not take age into account and for minors it can be as intolerable as for adults," it said. With respect to euthanasia for newborns, the College offered as a model the Groningen Protocol which Dutch doctors use to decide whether to euthanise infants.

Alex Schadenberg, of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, suggested that the recommendations of the College make no sense. "Why would you then have to give the child a lethal dose? If the child is not going to survive, the child can be kept comfortable and die naturally. There’s no reason for us to kill the child. There’s no reason for us to do this at all," he told the National Post. [read more...]

COMMENTARY: This last point by Alex Schadenberg reveals a likely reason why this is happening: not because the baby will die due to a "severe malformation" but due to the doctor's and/or the parents' decision to euthanize a baby with any abnormality. Or the old saying "follow the money" would suggest that it would be too costly for the state to provide medical care for this child, so kill her.

RUSSIA: FIRST CRIMINAL CONVICTION FOR OPPOSING WAR IN UKRAINE ON RELIGIOUS GROUNDS
from: Forum 18 News Service

(18 Oct.) Russian Orthodox (ROCOR) priest Nikandr Pinchuk became the first person to receive a criminal conviction for opposing Russia's war in Ukraine on religious grounds. A court in the Urals' Sverdlovsk Region fined him two months' average local wage for a social media post condemning the "horde of the Antichrist" attacking Ukraine. Neither Verkhoturye District Court nor Prosecutor's Office replied to Forum 18's questions on why expressing religious views on the war in Ukraine should be considered "discreditation" of the Armed Forces and incur such a large fine.

Fr Nikandr is a hieromonk (a monk who is also a priest) and a member of a branch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) which did not join the Moscow Patriarchate with other parts of ROCOR in 2007. Sverdlovsk Region Investigative Committee opened a case against him under Criminal Code Article 280.3 ("Public actions aimed at discrediting the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in order to protect the interests of the Russian Federation and its citizens, [and] maintain international peace and security") on 29 June. Fr Nikandr had already been fined under the lesser administrative version of this offence in March.

Investigators promised Fr Nikandr that they would lodge a request to have the criminal charge against him dropped upon payment of a compensatory judicial fine, he told Forum 18 on 17 October. This did not happen, however, leaving Fr Nikandr with a criminal record and a fine ten times larger to pay.

Forum 18 asked Verkhoturye District Court and Verkhoturye District Prosecutor's Office:
- why Fr Nikandr had not been released from criminal liability, given that he had pleaded guilty to a first-time minor offence;
- and why the expression of religious views on the war in Ukraine should be considered "discreditation" of the Russian Armed Forces and incur such a large fine.

Forum 18 had received no reply by the end of the working day in Sverdlovsk Region of 18 October. Sverdlovsk Region Investigative Committee has repeatedly refused to answer Forum 18's questions about the case.

The trial of another ROCOR priest – Fr Ioann Kurmoyarov – is due to resume in St Petersburg on 14 November. Baptist and Communist municipal deputy Nina Belyayeva fled abroad after a criminal case was opened against her.

Among the thousands of Russians detained and taken to court for protesting against the war, a small number have done so from a religious perspective or using explicitly religious imagery. They have included a Russian Orthodox (Moscow Patriarchate) priest, who was fined one month's average local wage in March under Administrative Code Article 20.3.3 for speaking out against Russia's war against Ukraine on a religious basis. A Moscow Patriarchate deacon was fined a similar amount in April. Other cases under the Administrative Code have followed. [read more...]

COMMENTARY: Speaking truth to power in Russia gets you fined or thrown into prison. It is nearly as harsh as the treatment that U.S. parents receive when they speak out about Critical Race Theory or mutilating childrens' bodies due to Sudden Onset Gender Dysphoria in local school board meetings.

RESEARCHERS: MAJORITY OF KIDS WITH ASD MISS OUT ON EARLY INTERVENTION
from: Disability Scoop

(14 Oct.) All children with disabilities should have access to early intervention under federal law, but new research suggests that less than half of kids with autism are actually receiving such services. In a study of four New Jersey counties, researchers found that only 47% of children with autism accessed early intervention before age 3.

"New Jersey is known as an epicenter of autism, but it also has many resources for autism detection and treatment,” said Josephine Shenouda, an adjunct professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health who led the study published recently in JAMA Pediatrics. "If only half of the children with autism in our study area are getting early interventions, chances are the disparities are even more pronounced in other communities and regions with fewer services."

Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, early intervention services are available nationwide to children with disabilities from birth through age 2 at no cost. Those behind the new study said it is the first effort to examine which children with autism participate in the program.

By using data collected between 2006 and 2016 through an autism monitoring system at the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, researchers analyzed medical and special education records for 23,441 8-year-olds in Essex, Hudson, Ocean and Union counties. They found that 4,050 of the children qualified for an autism diagnosis, yet only 1,887 had received early intervention before turning 3 years old.

Moreover, the study found that certain factors appeared to influence the odds that children received services as toddlers, with those from wealthier areas 80% more likely to have participated in early intervention and Black and Hispanic children less likely to have accessed the program.

"With autism prevalence estimates approaching 7% in some areas, we need universal autism screening between 18 and 36 months and enhanced support for the early intervention system," she said. "These actions will reduce economic and race-based disparities in autism identification and care." [read more...]

COMMENTARY: With modern testing methods, tendencies toward autism can be detected as early as six months old. "Early Intervention" means that parents and pediatricians should examine and test these babies before autism begins to appear.

THE HEAD OF THE UGCC CALLS FOR A LEGAL ASSESSMENT OF THE MODERN NEO-IMPERIAL GEOPOLITICS OF RUSSIA
from: Religious Information Service of Ukraine

(20 Oct.) "I urge you not to be silent," His Beatitude Sviatoslav, head of the UGCC, said online on October 19 in his report on the occasion of the start of the new academic year at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. Patriarch Sviatoslav spoke about the ideology of the Russian World and called on the academia of the Roman Catholic Church to study in-depth and scientifically evaluate the modern neo-imperial geopolitics of Russia. He said – "Today, it is obvious to all of us that the evil that has come to our land has a clear ideological component and a specific name – the Russian World."

The Head of the UGCC cited statistics from international organizations on the current humanitarian situation in Ukraine. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, 422 children have been killed, and 805 children have been injured. According to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission, 6,221 civilians were killed, and 9,371 civilians were injured. According to UNICEF in Ukraine, out of 3.2 million children who have been displaced by the war, about 1.6 million children are at risk of living on the brink of hunger and face the risk of food insecurity. Attacks on water infrastructure and power outages have left about 1.4 million people in Ukraine without access to water. Another 4.6 million only have limited access.

"These data, but first of all the personal experience of the war that we are experiencing, show that we are not talking about an ordinary war of one country against another, much less a military operation, but about the real genocide of the Ukrainian people and the terrible crimes against humanity committed by Russian soldiers."

His Beatitude Sviatoslav drew the audience's attention to the manual on the genocide of Ukrainians, which the Russian authorities published on the page of the RIA Novosti Press Agency at the beginning of their invasion of Ukraine.

"This is a blatant program of the complete elimination of the Ukrainian nation as such, which the famous historian Timothy Snyder described as one of the most open genocidal documents. This document clearly calls for the elimination of the Ukrainian state and the Ukrainian people." [read more...]

COMMENTARY:In case you don't know, the "Russian World" ethnic superiority ideology propounded by both the Moscow Patriarchate and the Kremlin claims that all Russian-speaking people, no matter where they live – in Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, or anywhere on earth – make up the "Russian World" and thus come under the protective umbrella of Russia whether they like it or not, and if they resist, they will be assimilated or eliminated.

LITTLE YELLOW HOUSE: "Becoming rentABLE" GOES BEYOND WHEELCHAIR ACCESS
from: Disabled World

(19 Oct.) This comfortably furnished rental includes accessible features such as a hard surface driveway, wheelchair van accessible parking, gently ramped entry (not shown), path from the parking area to door, keyless locks.

Creating a Gold Standard Accessible Short-Term Rental: a sweet 1950's charmer might be small at 1,200 square feet but is exceptional for accessibility for individuals and families with disabilities. More than just wheelchair accessible, the property, located at 1615 Tyler Street in Conway, AR, showcases well-designed accessible features beautifully incorporated into every room and packs a lot of punch in accommodating a wide variety of disabilities, including those related to vision, hearing, Autism, and intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The "Little Yellow House," as it is affectionately known, is part of the work of "Becoming rentABLE" – a company dedicated to advocating for accessible short-term vacation rentals and changing the way we think of accessibility to be more fully inclusive. The company, created in 2021, is the brainstorm of founder Lorraine Berry Woodward, a Conway native whose own story includes years of frustration trying to find accessible short-term vacation rentals for her family of four, three of whom have mobility issues due to Muscular Dystrophy.

"If you are one of the more than 63 million Americans with some form of disability, you likely know how difficult it is to find an accessible short-term rental to meet your needs as they are in great demand but in short supply," said Woodward. "That's why my team and I took action to start Becoming rentABLE."

Becoming rentABLE strives to bring visibility to the need for accessible, short-term rentals through education about accessible design, construction, and renovation.

"We know the demand is there as there are tens of thousands of searches a month on booking platforms for accessible rentals," said Woodward. "We want to increase the supply and make it easy for accessible rentals to be found."

The Little Yellow House leads by example. Originally a 900-square-foot mid-century American-style cottage home built in the 1950s, it was purchased with the sole purpose of transforming the space into a fully accessible short-term rental. More than just having an entry ramp and wheelchair-accessible bathroom, the property was expanded to 1,200 square feet and has multiple accessibility features to accommodate all tasks of daily living, allowing it to serve as an educational tool to showcase accessible renovation.

"We not only wanted to create a comfortable place for travelers who need more than standard hotel room accommodations but also a place where medical professionals and students could get hands-on practical learning experience about accessibility in daily living," said Woodward, adding "There's a lot this place can teach occupational therapy and physical therapy students. And we want to show property owners and property managers what is achievable with a little planning." [read more...]

COMMENTARY: This article goes on to provide photos of the inside and describe all of the many features, much more than a ramp entrance, that make this a truly accessible place to live: check it out!

(← Click on the photo to watch the whole slide show!) The first slide narrates – "Olga Lopatkina embraces her adopted children in a park in Loue, western France, Saturday, July 2, 2022. After two months of negotiation and an initial objection from a senior Russian official, DPR authorities finally agreed to allow a volunteer with power of attorney from Lopatkina to collect her children who were evacuated from Mariupol. An Associated Press investigation has found that Russia’s strategy to take Ukrainian orphans and bring them up as Russian is well underway."

Another slide from the above slide show states – "Children from an orphanage in the Donetsk region, eat a meal at a camp in Zolotaya Kosa, the settlement on the Sea of Azov, Rostov region, southwestern Russia, Friday, July 8, 2022. Russia's open effort to adopt Ukrainian children and bring them up as Russian is emerging as one of the most explosive issues of the war." The accompaying photo shows sad-faced little children eating a skimpy meal in their new "homeland" in Russia. Once, when we visited Latvia to get new visas to return to Russia, we saw a memorial statue to the thousands of Latvian children who had been kidnapped by the Russians during WW2 and taken to Russia to become Russians. These instances are much like when Nebuchadnezzar conquered Israel and took Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednigo to Babylon, along with thousands of other Hebrew children, to be raised as Babylonians. Pray that God will raise up prophets like Daniel among these children.

Why are up to 60,000 Ukrainians being forced to "evacuate" Kherson? See "Ethnic Cleansing? Fear? Damage Control? Why Russia Really Wants To Get Ukrainians Out Of Kherson" ... and why are Russian soldiers looting everything ("televisions, refrigerators, furniture, kettles and other household items") in sight: see "Russian Soldiers Looting as They Flee Zaporizhzhia, Kherson – Report." They are behaving just like the ancient barbarians.

The recent article "PATRIARCH KIRILL’S CRUSADE" in the "Orthodox Christian Laity" newsletter tells how Kirill has followed the tactic of Pope Urban II who, in 1095, "told a large gathering of knights in Southern France that it was their responsibility to avenge the Islamic conquest of the Holy Land. ...Urban introduced an entirely novel – some might say heretical – way of thinking about the relationship between Christian piety and violence. Near the end of his sermon, Urban declared, 'Set out on this journey and you will obtain the remission of your sins and be sure of the incorruptible glory of the kingdom of heaven.i"

In the same way, "Kirill declared in a recent sermon that Russian soldiers who die in Ukraine will have their sins forgiven. The only difference between Kirill’s declaration and Urban’s is that Kirill is directing Russian soldiers to make war against fellow Orthodox Christians. It is a sad irony that Kirill believes Ukrainian Christians belong to his own super-jurisdiction." So Kirill's jihad promises that if Russian soldiers are killed while raping, murdering, plundering Ukrainian civilians and kidnapping their children, they get an immediate ticket to paradise.

But Metropolitan Evgeny of Tallinn and All Estonia, the Estonian Orthodox hierarch under the Moscow Patriarch, chooses to disagree: "METROPOLITAN OF ESTONIA DISTANCES HIMSELF FROM PATRIARCH’S HOMILY ABOUT FORGIVENESS OF SINS FOR SOLDIERS." He issued this statement –

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