Pennsylvania's Democratic governor set to cut off state funds to non-profit that cares for women who choose not to kill their babies: 'Shapiro is choosing extremism'



Democrats appear keen to defund those pro-life initiatives that leftist militants could not otherwise destroy or intimidate into closure.

Real Alternatives is a non-profit charitable organization that has for decades provided mothers with support and counseling in Pennsylvania and Indiana. It offers pregnant women temporary shelter; childbirth and parenting classes; referrals; abstinence education; adoption information; free pregnancy self-test kits; mentoring; and various other services.

Since Real Alternatives focuses on discussing and providing women with options other than the extermination of innocent life, it has drawn the ire of Democrats in Pennsylvania.

Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who prioritized meeting with Planned Parenthood when taking office, made clear last month upon signing the 2023-2024 budget that the Commonwealth would be terminating its contract with Real Alternatives, intimating that protecting a "woman's freedom to choose" necessarily requires unilaterally supporting the choice to end life with the force of government.

The state General Assembly has allocated funding to Real Alternatives since 1995. The initiative was developed under pro-life Democratic Gov. Robert Casey and buttressed by the legislature's pro-life caucus after the state moved to bankroll abortion providers like Planned Parenthood, reported the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Casey had stressed years ahead of Real Alternatives' state funding, "Abortion is unjust in every sense of that term. ... And the Democratic Party ... has been at the forefront of that injustice."

Real Alternatives indicated that it had been funded to the tune of $7.26 million in fiscal year 2022-2023 through the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services. In turn, the non-profit distributed those funds to 83 centers.

Despite having helped over 350,000 women over the past three decades, Shapiro indicated Real Alternatives would lose state funding effective Dec. 31, 2023.

"For decades, taxpayer dollars have gone to fund Real Alternatives. My Administration will not continue that pattern – we will ensure women in this Commonwealth receive the reproductive health care they deserve," said Shapiro. "Pennsylvanians made clear by electing me as Governor that they support a woman's freedom to choose, and I will be steadfast in defending that right."

Val Arkoosh, the secretary of the PDHS whose experience administering anesthesia to women having abortions reportedly won her favor with some leftists, said in a statement, "The Shapiro Administration is taking a huge step forward today by ending the Real Alternatives contract after 30 years. Every woman seeking reproductive health care has the right to unbiased, medically accurate care and counsel."

Arkoosh, a failed candidate for the U.S. Senate, suggested further that Real Alternatives had not been a good steward of taxpayer resources.

"We believe the governor has been terribly misinformed about the need for the program and its success," Real Alternatives told the Inquirer. "Terminating this program will result in an increase in abortions throughout the commonwealth."

Nearly 60% of the women who come to Real Alternatives considering abortion reportedly choose to preserve the lives of their childresn, and 84% pressured into abortions end up alternatively choosing life.

Real Alternatives told LifeSiteNews, "For 27-plus years, Real Alternatives and its service providers have served close to 350,000 women at 1.9 million office visits. ... At every visit, women are directed to call Real Alternatives with any complaint or concerns about the services they received. There has never been a complaint from the 350,000 women we have served."

Eileen Artysh is the executive director of St. Margaret of Castello Maternity Home, which has received funding via Real Alternatives to provide housing, parental counseling, and other critical services to mothers. Artysh suggested this latest Democrat-led defunding effort will prove ruinous, but won't ultimately dissuade her from continuing to help, reported the Associated Press.

"Until there's that last penny left, I'm in this for the long haul," said Artysh. "And the moms that we help — I can't imagine deserting any of them."

Amy Scheuring, executive director of the Women's Choice Network, similarly noted last month in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Shapiro's move to defund the non-profit will be to the detriment of women's health and safety.

"Local pregnancy help organizations exist to provide safe and confidential health care to those at risk for abortion before the decision and, if needed, after," wrote Scheuring. "Recently mischaracterized as 'fake centers' and 'pseudo-medical,' these locally operated pregnancy centers are directed by board certified physicians, staffed by RNs and certified ultrasound techs. There's nothing fake about offering women and men free STD testing, free ultrasounds and meaningful support."

Scheuring underscored that this decision, coupled with the promotion of self-administered abortions, serves to limit choice in the state and endanger women.

State Rep. Kate Klunk (R) noted in a recent opinion piece, "These organizations – whether supported by Real Alternatives or not – provide incredible services that stand, in fact, as real alternatives to abortion. Providing those alternatives is not extreme: shutting them off is."

"By ending the nearly 30-year-long state commitment to providing non-abortion pregnancy health services, Gov. Shapiro is choosing extremism and the interests of his campaign donors like Planned Parenthood at the expense of state funding for family support options, which the Commonwealth has provided for decades," continued Klunk. "The pro-abortion fringe has won the day."

"Gov. Shapiro’s actions will jeopardize the health of pregnant women and lives of babies across the commonwealth," stressed state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R). "Pennsylvania women currently have access to counseling and services that provide resources about parenting, adoption and other healthy alternatives to abortions. Gov. Shapiro’s decision amounts to a death sentence for countless Pennsylvania babies."

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Indiana Health Dept. Sits On Records Showing Two Babies Born Alive After Abortions, Three Women Dead

Indiana's GOP legislature is poised to increase funding 2,000 percent for an agency that oversaw abortion businesses after whose services three women died in 2022.

Over 32,000 babies have been spared death at the hands of abortionists since Roe was overturned: Report



Hundreds of pro-life groups and institutions have been attacked by pro-abortion terror groups since the Supreme Court's June 24 ruling, which overturned Roe v. Wade. While many are unlikely to see justice meted out, they can take comfort knowing that the decision that has made them targets simultaneously helped save thousands of babies' lives every month.

A new report from the Society of Family Planning, an international pro-abortion nonprofit, indicated that since the Dobbs decision, "compared to the average monthly number of abortions observed in the pre-Dobbs period, there were 32,260 cumulative fewer abortions from July to December [2022]."

While this decrease is not linear month to month, there were nevertheless fewer abortions in every month following the Supreme Court's ruling.

The Society of Family Planning report claimed that the national abortion rate fell from 13.2 per 1,000 women of reproductive age to 12.3 per 1,000 women following the Dobbs decision.

The most dramatic drops occurred in states with abortion bans in place, which "witnessed a cumulative total of 43,410 fewer people who had abortions."

The New York Times reported that most abortions are now banned in the following 13 states: Idaho, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas. In Georgia, abortion is prohibited after about six months of pregnancy. In Arizona and Florida, abortion is prohibited after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The gestational limit on abortions is 18 weeks in Utah, 20 weeks in North Carolina. Bans have been attempted but blocked in various other states.

Time magazine noted that in the aforementioned 13 states, there was a 96% drop in abortions from July to December as compared to those executed in April and May. In Georgia, the number of abortions reportedly dropped by 40%.

The largest declines were observed in Texas (15,540 fewer abortions), Georgia (10,930) fewer abortions), Tennessee (6,560 fewer abortions), Ohio (4,920 fewer abortions), Arizona (4,650 fewer abortions), and Louisiana (4,250 fewer abortions).

There was, however, a spike in killings (a cumulative total of 11,150 more) in states where abortion was permitted. Spikes were observed in the six-month period after the Dobbs decision in Florida (7,190), Illinois (6,840), North Carolina (4,730), Colorado (2,580), and Michigan (2,490).

Tessa Longbons, a research associate with the Charlotte Lozier Institute, told the Daily Caller that this report is evidence that pro-life laws are "saving lives" and "contributing to a drop in abortion nationwide."

"It means babies are being saved," said Longbons. "It means women are being protected from the harms of abortion."

FiveThirtyEight's Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux concurred, noting that "tens of thousands of people are either getting abortion pills through the gray market online - or just staying pregnant."

\u201cBUT some people are clearly not making the trip. We don't know how many, but we know that tens of thousands of people are either getting abortion pills through the gray market online - or just staying pregnant.\u201d
— Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux (@Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux) 1681221792

While optimistic, Longbons nevertheless highlighted that the number in the report "doesn't include the abortion pills that are being shipped illegally."

The report framed the drop in abortions in a negative light, suggesting that women now finding it inconvenient to exterminate their children "experience a variety of negative outcomes, including increased economic insecurity, poorer physical health, and continued exposure to violence from the man involved in the pregnancy."

The report makes no mention of the babies' lives potentially spared death at the hands of abortionists.

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Democrats fail to kill House bill that would require doctors to provide babies who survive abortions with proper medical care



A Republican bill ensuring that human beings born after failed abortion attempts receive the same protection of law and care as other newborns passed Wednesday in the U.S. House of Representatives.

While possibly good news for those children whom abortionists are otherwise unable to slaughter, Democrats in the Senate are poised to make sure this bill does not become law.

The bill

Reps. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) and Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) reintroduced the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act (H.R. 26) on Jan. 9, 2023.

There have been multiple efforts in recent years to pass some version of the same act in both the House and the Senate.

The act would "prohibit a health care practitioner from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion."

The New York Times reported that while federal law already requires that a baby who survives an abortion receive emergency medical care, this bill seeks to clarify the standard of care doctors are to provide as well as what the penalties are for failing to extend them to those they proved incapable of slaughtering.

"If an abortion results in the live birth of an infant, the infant is a legal person for all purposes under the laws of the United States, and entitled to all the protections of such laws," says the bill.

Accordingly, an infant who survived the attempted homicide "becomes a patient" within whatever hospital, clinic, or other health care facility it finds itself in.

Any health care provider present at the time of the child's birth must "exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as a reasonably diligent and conscientious health care practitioner would render to any other child born alive at the same gestational age."

Were the bill to become law, doctors and other health care professionals who failed to administer treatment to the abortion survivor as they would any other patient could face a fine, up to five years in prison, or both.

While the bill bars the criminal prosecution of the mother who sought to have her baby killed, the mother could herself bring civil action against the offending practitioners.

Partial victory and the challenge ahead

The bill passed in the House on Jan. 11 with the support of 219 Republicans and one Democrat.

The lone Democrat who supported the rights of abortion survivors was Rep. Henry Cuellar (Texas); 210 Democrats voted against the bill.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) voiced opposition to the bill, claiming, "It directs and mandates a certain medical care which may not be appropriate, which may endanger the life of an infant in certain circumstances."

\u201cNadler on the bill to ban killing babies born alive: "The problem with this bill is that it endangers some infants [born alive] by stating that that infant must immediately be brought to the hospital."\u201d
— Greg Price (@Greg Price) 1673465664

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said, "As our chairman said, not only is it illegal to not care for a born infant, but the law that you have provided on the Republican side actually could create more harm. It requires immediately taking a struggling baby to a hospital. That hospital could be hours away and could be detrimental to the life of that baby."

Schakowsky added, "This is nothing more than the part of the effort to make abortion illegal nationally in this county."

Washington Examiner writer Kimberly Ross noted on Twitter that inside the span of just a few minutes, Schakowsky had indicated that the hypothetical child she doesn't believe should be recognized under the law as a person might be harmed by the bill.

\u201cAmazingly, the vagina doesn\u2019t confer personhood. Jan supports killing a baby a few minutes before she argues for saving the same baby by giving it medical care. This is the deeply hypocritical depravity of pro-aborts.\u201d
— Kimberly Ross (@Kimberly Ross) 1673474186

Vice President Kamala Harris bemoaned the possibility that America would respect the personhood of abortion survivors, tweeting, "House Republicans passed an extreme bill today that will further jeopardize the right to reproductive health care in our country. This is yet another attempt by Republican legislators to control women's bodies."

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who recently lost her speakership, similarly lost her cool on Twitter, denouncing Republicans for pushing "their extreme anti-choice agenda."

Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert (Co.) called Democrats' opposition to the bill "sick" and "radical."

"For the last several years under Democrat control, the House failed to vote on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. This changed during the first week of the Republican majority," Cammack, one of four co-chairs of the House Pro-Life Caucus, said in a statement. "It's an honor to not only see this bill pass the House, but to receive overwhelming support from my colleagues. Upholding the value and sanctity of life has been a personal mission for me, and this bill plays a key role in affirming what the American people have always known: life is sacred."

Ahead of the vote in the House, Cammack suggested that "a child who survives an abortion attempt — who is outside the womb, breathing and struggling for life despite all attempts to end it" deserves equal protection under the law.

"Murder is illegal," she added. "That shouldn't be a controversial position."

Rep. Cammack Introduces Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act With GOP Reps. Scalise & Wagner youtu.be

Just as "murder" proved a partisan issue in the House, it is projected to split the Senate along party lines. However, with a slight majority in the Senate, Democrats have a good shot at killing the bill.

When an earlier iteration of this bill was voted on in the Senate in 2019, it fell seven votes short of the 60 it needed to advance.

At the time, former President Donald Trump said, "The Democrat position on abortion is now so extreme that they don't mind executing babies AFTER birth."

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