Moral Outcry :

John Stephen

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:38:00 -0400

I received this story from a former Bound4LIFE chapter leader. Although she is no longer leading sieges she is still crying out for justice and bringing truth to the forefront. You can find this story, in it’s entirety, on her blog.

Heather was eight months pregnant with a precious little boy when another woman took their lives by kidnapping Heather, and attempting to remove the baby from her womb by cutting open her belly. Although John Stephen died as a result, the attacker/murderer will only be charged with ONE murder.

So what does the "abortion on demand" state of Oregon have to say in response to the death of this child who was never given a chance at life? "Due to the fact that we cannot prove that the "fetus" drew at least one breath outside of the womb, the defendant will only be charged with ONE murder."

Some may be wondering how this could be the reality of just how far down this nation of ours has fallen. Simple. ABORTION IS LEGAL, THEREFORE BABIES ARE NOT CONSIDERED TO BE HUMAN LIVES UNTIL AFTER THEY BREATHE OUTSIDE OF THE WOMB!!!!

It does not matter that Heather had pictures in her home of baby John’s ultrasound with his name written under them. It does not matter that there are pictures of Heather smiling for the camera as she proudly has her hands placed upon her growing tummy. It does not matter that John Stephen was loved and wanted by so many BEFORE he was born. None of that matters because our nation has NO value for human LIFE!

So innocent blood was shed without justice coming forth.

Say a prayer today for the family of Heather Snively and baby John. Let’s remember Who it was that gave us all life in the first place. Our heavenly Father. Because someone chose to give you life, today you can work, go on vacation, hold your loved ones, listen to music, pursue your dreams, and make a difference in this world in which we live. Heather and baby John no longer have that chance.

Come One, Come All

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:01:00 -0400

When Vic Pentz opens his arms to welcome newcomers, it takes on a different meaning now. That’s because the Atlanta pastor recently made a promise from the pulpit to take in any newborn baby brought to the church.

The announcement, which surprised even his own congregation at Peachtree Presbyterian Church, came toward the end of a sermon about abortion and the sanctity of life. "I make a promise to you now and I don’t want you to keep this a secret," Pentz said. "The Peachtree Presbyterian Church will care for any newborn baby you bring to this church. We will be the family to find a home for that child, and there’s no limit on this. You can tell your friends, and they can tell their friends. … You can tell the whole world."

So how did the church react to his declaration? "I had people walking out, handing me checks," the pastor said. "We just simply say too much without doing the stuff that backs up the words and the rhetoric of the church."

To see his promise through, Pentz says his church is partnering with Bethany Christian Services, a national and international adoption and orphan care agency that has helped connect families with children for more than 60 years. Though he did not elaborate during his initial sermon on the details of his church helping newborns, Pentz has already asked a Bethany representative to speak to the congregation and explain how the arrangement might work. So far a few families in the church have already volunteered to serve as foster families in the interim period.

Yet one of the biggest confirmations Pentz received shortly after making the bold decision was from those working at Bethany. Upon hearing of his decision, Pentz said, "They just smiled and nodded and said, ‘You know, we’ve been praying for a pastor to stand up and say that. Because we can provide all that support that you promised."

(via MinistryTodayMag.com)

Bound4LIFE is not just praying for the ending of abortion but for the increase of adoptions. May more churches follow this example! We need more pastors and congregations who are willing to do what this church has done.

It Does Matter

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:57:00 -0400

I usually do not write blogs pertaining to an individuals comment on any of our material but I am about to make an exception.

OperationCounterStrike commented on our IntelliGender blog post:

"It doesn’t MATTER what the fetus is. What matters is WHERE it is. I say if something is inside my body, then I’m entitled to have it killed NO MATTER WHAT it is. Even if it’s a person. Even if it’s an INNOCENT person. If you were inside my body, then I’d be entitled to kill YOU! And vice versa."

This thinking is not constitutional. It’s as easy as that. No one has the right to deprive another person of the right to life without due process.(14th Amendment)

The Roe v. Wade ruling determined that, since "life" was unknown, the liberty interest of the woman to decide how to deal with her pregnancy must be paramount. In short, there was no "person" to protect. Justice Harry Blackmun, author of the majority opinion noted, however, that if "personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’s right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment (14th)."

Well there ya go. It’s not just us crazy pro-lifers that think people have the right to life but the Justice who authored the most controversial ruling to date.

What the fetus is DOES matter! At least according to the Constitution it does.

YouTube Removes Pro-Life Video

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:50:00 -0400

Lila Rose, President of Live Action, submitted the following to the Christain Newswire:

Without offering any specific explanation, the video-sharing site YouTube has removed a new video by the student group Live Action that shows dishonest counseling practices at Planned Parenthood. The video first plays undercover footage of a Planned Parenthood counselor from Tucson, AZ telling a patient that images of aborted fetuses "are not real" and then shows photographs of a completed abortion and documentation of their authenticity.

Lila Rose, 20-year-old president of Live Action, calls on YouTube to re-instate the video in accordance with its own guidelines: "Since the video we posted does not violate any terms of use, we expect YouTube to re- instate it immediately. YouTube’s own ‘Community Guideline Tips’ advise that intense or disturbing imaging should be ‘balanced with additional context and information,’ which is exactly what Live Action has done." YouTube has removed videos posted by Live Action without explanation before, including videos showing Planned Parenthood employees caught on tape sympathizing with donors with racist agendas to encourage the abortion of black babies.

Live Action’s videos use undercover tactics to expose fraudulent practices in the abortion industry and are similar to other "sting" investigations which journalists often post on YouTube. The most recent video is part of Live Action’s Mona Lisa Project, which documents abusive practices in Planned Parenthood clinics across the nation. Footage released to date has caught on hidden camera six Planned Parenthood clinics in three states ignoring their mandatory reporting responsibilities for statutory rape and protecting adult-child sexual relationships. Recently the Tennessee State Legislature used undercover footage from Live Action to help divert nearly $1 million in taxpayer subsidies from Planned Parenthood clinics, and in California, the Orange County Board of Supervisors voted to end a nearly $300,000 contract with the abortion provider.

"New media is vital to educating the public about the shocking realities of abortion practice in America," Rose emphasizes. "Our videos show hard truths about the abortion industry that must be seen and dealt with. Lawmakers and their constituents are recognizing this, but YouTube does everyone a disservice when they cooperate with Planned Parenthood in burying the evidence of abuse."

For more information, including the censored video, visit
liveaction.org/monalisa/tucson/pp_says_not_real.htm

Why is Youtube so prejudice toward pro-life media? Sound off in the comments below.

Obama's Essay

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:27:00 -0400

Parade Magazine, for Father’s Day, printed an essay President Obama wrote on fatherhood. In this essay, the President writes,

"We need fathers to step up, to realize that their job does not end at conception; that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one."

Please, don’t misunderstand what I am about to say, I am glad Mr. Obama is a family man and is striving to be the best father and husband he can be. This is good news and is to be commended and appreciated. But I want to know why he thinks killing children in the womb is a liberty? Especially after he just admitted that fatherhood beings at conception. I’m no genius but, last I checked, you have to have a child in order to be a father.

Pro-aborts might say, "It’s not a child". Yet, the man whom many pro-aborts voted for says fatherhood begins at conception!

Sound off with your thoughts on what President Obama said in the comments below.

IntelliGender

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:52:00 -0400

This is a transcript from a radio program called Apples of Gold. The host, Doug Apple, is the father of a good friend of mine and she is actually the one that sent this our way.

My wife and I never did find out our baby’s gender ahead of time.

It’s like opening your gifts early and spoiling Christmas.

And after all, it’s more fun to fight about two names instead of one.

But really, there’s nothing quite like waiting until the thrill of the moment, after all the excitement and labor and breathing and pushing and – oh, oh, there it is! It’s a . . .

Well for us, three times they said, “It’s a girl!” and one time they said, “It’s a boy!” and every time it was the most thrilling moment in life.

So I can’t relate to this rush to know your baby’s gender. Even when we had sonograms we said, “No, don’t tell us.”

And don’t forget all the old wives tales. For example, they say you’re going to have a girl:
—If you are craving sweets.
—Or if you are moodier than usual.
—Or if your hair develops red highlights.

But now there is a company called IntelliGender selling what they call an in-home gender prediction test. For $35 you can run your own urine analysis and find out if you have a boy or a girl. They say it’s 80 to 90% accurate.

Well the other day I heard a Catholic leader talking about it, and he warned that some mothers might go get an abortion if the baby wasn’t what they wanted.

Now I see his point, and I hope and pray to God that no mother would do that. It’s sick to even think about.

But I really like the idea of this early gender test, and here’s why.

It instantly humanizes that thing growing inside you. As soon as you take that test, you no longer have some nonspecific “fetus.” You have a boy. Or you have a girl. Either way, it’s a real live human being in there.

Do you see how that instantly humanizes the unborn child?

It stirs up visions of pink frilly dresses, or tiny Superman outfits.

Yes, I don’t doubt that there might be a few sick people who will decide to abort – probably their little girl – to hold out for a child of the other kind.

But I think that far more people will get it. Their eyes will be opened that “Hey, that’s not just some fetus. That’s not a little blob of tissue. That’s my little girl!”

It’s one more window into the womb, and the more windows we have, the more pro-life we become.

A major strategy among pro-lifers is to provide sonograms to pregnant women. Why? Because it’s a window to the womb. It’s a picture that says a thousand words. Look at the hands. Look at the feet. Look at that precious face.

But I will admit, I am naïve. I remember when I first saw the beautiful full color photographs they were able to take of living babies inside their mothers. Those pictures are simply jaw-dropping in beauty and clarity. When I saw those I thought, “This is the end of abortion. Soon every young woman will have seen these pictures and will know exactly what they are doing and who they are doing it to when they have an abortion.”

And I’m sure those photos have caused many to choose life. And yet somehow we are still knocking out thousands of abortions each day in America.

“But Doug. It’s legal.”

Laws must sit on a foundation of truth. Our current abortion laws do not. They are built on the notion that children have no rights until they are outside their mother’s womb.

It’s as if they are not human beings. Is that scientific? We Americans, we love our science. But science says that at conception a unique human being is created with their own unique DNA.

Yes, they are inside their mother, but they have their own blood type and their own brain waves. If you could scan heartbeats in the room, you would get two: the mother’s and the child’s.

I think someday we will look back on this time in American history and decry the barbarity of abortion.

But for now we must continue to educate women about what is really going on – that what is inside them, starting at conception, is their very own, very real child.

And I think that education will be advanced with this little test that will open a window to their womb and announce, “It’s a . . .”

Inside Bound4LIFE 6/19/09

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:11:00 -0400

Weekly updates from Bound4LIFE with Executive Director Matt Lockett.

Rebranding FAIL

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:04:00 -0400

The debate over health care reform is in full swing. Unfortunately, this administration and the majority of Congress believe that YOUR tax dollars should be used to pay for abortion. Pro-abortion lobbyists are working hard to insure that you have no say-so in the matter. If they get their way, then you will be paying for abortion regardless of your moral convictions.

This cannot be allowed to happen. This summer Bound4LIFE will be helping to launch and participate in multiple efforts geared to inform the public of this taxpayer-funded abortion push as well as mobilize prayer. I would suggest that you subscribe to our RSS feed as we will be releasing information as it happens here on this blog.

In the meantime, I want to show you an example of the kind of "rebranding" and deceptive packaging taking place right now geared at Washington. The following ad by Planned Parenthood was created specifically for legislators and is running on television in the Washington market. Now let me just take this opportunity to mention that in my previous career I worked in advertising and marketing. Specifically I was a creative that worked on television, print, radio, outdoor, web…you name it. In my humble professional opinion, this ad is really weak and poorly executed. Actually it looks like someone fell in love with the storyboard and they didn’t have money for actors. Had I churned out mediocre work like this, I’d have been sent back to the proverbial drawing board. #adFAIL

That being said, I want to focus purely on messaging content.

Wow. Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood’s president, wants lawmakers in DC to believe that an astounding 90% of their business activities are benevolently geared for women’s health care. When I first saw this, I couldn’t believe that they had made such a deceptive statement. Their little "blueprint" cartoon ad hopes that Congressmen don’t scratch below the surface of these numbers or try to make sense of them. You may be asking as well, "How can they say that?" Well let me break it down for you. It just so happens that my research assistant is also a medical transcriptionist and was taught how this works in a medical coding class.

The overwhelming majority of Planned Parenthood’s "business" is abortion. Make no mistake about this. Their annual reports show during the last decade that as governmental funding has steadily increased, abortion procedures increased in a parallel trajectory while prenatal care and adoption referrals have decreased at a steady rate. In fact, adoption referrals have completely disappeared from being reported. I’ll be detailing these important points in a follow up post, but the moral of the story is MORE GOVERNMENTAL FUNDING OF FAMILY PLANNING SERVICES MEANS MORE ABORTIONS.

Each abortion appointment is divided into various "codes." The pelvic exam before the abortion is one code; the injection for the abortion is a code; the medication dispensing for the abortion is a different code; counseling is a different code. The abortion procedure itself gets a procedure code. By breaking the visit down into different codes, they assign value to various parts of the abortion visit that take away the percentage "value" of the abortion. That is how they can say that 90% of their business is care other than abortion. Since they take at all those codes and break the abortion visit down and parse it, the ACTUAL ACT OF ABORTING THE CHILD is only 10% of what they do. VERY DECEPTIVE…IN THE EXTREME. They do a pelvic exam with every abortion. They also dispense medication and/or birth control of some sort with every abortion, so they can say that they do a lot more of these types of services leaving the impression that those are SEPARATE visits other than abortion visits. A large number of the pelvic exams and birth control dispensing are done during the course of the abortion visit and during the course of the postabortion visit.

With just a little effort politicians could understand the kind of deception taking place. We have to be extremely vigilant with these matters. Planned Parenthood hopes to cash in BIG with health care reform, and there seems to be no shortage of political allies to mutually work towards expanding the culture of death and DISPROPORTIONATE targeting of African Americans and Hispanics. I for one don’t want my tax dollars paying for abortions. I say not one penny.

Slavery Apology Resolution PASSED by Senate

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:16:00 -0400

Watch the following video of Senator Sam Brownback speaking from the Senate floor.

In the video, the Senator talks about a "Kettle Tour." I was thrilled when I heard this mentioned because he was talking about the significance of prophetic prayer journeys like the one I discussed in yesterday’s post. The Kettle Tour was led by a couple of my friends Dutch Sheets and Will Ford. They literally hauled around the East Coast a huge iron pot that had been handed down for generations through Will Ford’s family.

This was no ordinary kettle. It was a cook pot. It was a wash pot. But most importantly it was a bowl filled with prayer not unlike the ones described in Revelation chapters 5 and 8. You see, Will’s ancestors were slaves and served a particularly cruel owner that would beat them severely if they were caught praying. It was believed that if they prayed, then they have hope; and if they had hope, then they’d run. Their response? Will’s ancestors would work all day, and then when everyone was asleep they would pray all night. Turning it upside down and propping it up on stones, they would prostrate themselves and pray into the kettle with their lips under the edge. The kettle captured their prayers for abolition and muffled their voices beyond the ears of their slave owner.

A young woman that had joined that prayer group was the only one to survive to see abolition. She took that kettle and passed it down through the family telling the amazing story of intercession for America.

I can’t help but think that today’s Senate Resolution is an ongoing answer to those prayers uttered so long ago.

After making detailed findings regarding slavery and the system of de jure segregation known as “Jim Crow,” the resolution reads that the Congress:

Acknowledges the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow laws;

Apologizes to African-Americans on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow laws; and

Expresses its recommitment to the principle that all people are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and calls on all people of the United States to work toward eliminating racial prejudices, injustices and discrimination from our society.

Slavery Apology Resolution

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:40:00 -0400

A big part of understanding Bound4LIFE and the prayer movement to end abortion includes also understanding the broader subject of justice and shedding innocent blood. It was in 2003 when the Lord began to speak to our company of intercessors about justice and the role of prayer in releasing it in the earth. Young David’s cry became our cry, “Is there not a cause?”

The Lord gave us a simple dream. In it, we were told that “we could not purchase the fruit of the womb until we had walked in the moccasins of the Native American.” I agree with Lou Engle and believe that dreams are invitations, and in this case the dream launched us out on an amazing journey. Many of you reading this right now, I’m sure, have participated in some sort of “identificational” prayer journey of your own. It’s when God calls you into a greater level of understanding and even feeling what someone else has felt in order to pray more effectively.

Our response to the dream was to literally prayer walk the Trail of Tears from North Carolina to Oklahoma; a forced relocation of Native Americans in which thousands died of exposure, disease and starvation. That’s right–we walked it. The question was asked of Christian Native American leaders, “What must be done to atone for this atrocity?” The response was simple yet shocking–“Apologize.” At the conclusion of the journey during TheCall Dallas Senator Sam Brownback on behalf of the United States Government bowed low to Christian Native American leaders and asked for forgiveness. From there a Native American Apology was drafted in an effort to demonstrate from the U.S. Senate that same heartfelt sentiment and usher in restoration on a broader scale. Over time that apology ultimately became part of S.1200.ES and passed the Senate on January 22, 2008 (ironically the anniversary of Roe v Wade). It ended up stalling out in House committee, but we believe God still has big plans to bring reconciliation and restoration through the apology.

Slavery and injustice to African Americans has been called our nation’s “first sin.” Many Christian leaders in recent years have done much work in the area of racial reconciliation. Intercessory work has played a major role in tearing down strongholds in America and paving the way for unprecedented restoration.

Tomorrow as a first order of business the U.S. Senate will be debating a Slavery Apology Resolution called S.CON.RES.26.

Please be in prayer that this apology would pass unanimously with no opposition. It is being presented in such a way that will NOT require the signature of the President. It will be a “concurrent resolution" between both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Please understand that these APOLOGIES carry serious weight in the spirit. This is a huge answer to prayer. It opens doors on a grand scale with governmental authority leading to God doing a deep work in our hearts and culture. Let’s look on expectantly to the day when there would be a resolution of repentance for the injustice of abortion.

Amen.