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As school returns to session across Louisiana, our team members have been preparing a busy fall season of speaking in classrooms and other venues about the life issues. Just today we were in Lake Charles with school administrators planning for "Pro-Life 101" presentations in middle and high school classrooms.
Earlier this year, a school administrator shared with us the positive impact of our time with their students: "The presentation was very effective. Students responded positively to the information.
Many of our students felt it was good to know the truth about abortion."
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| Invite Our Team to Speak! |
In the Lafayette area, we even have had success speaking in public schools by working with specific teachers or administrators.
Contact us today to invite us in to speak to your group! Call us at 1.866.463.5433 or email [email protected].
For a Pro-Life Louisiana,
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Fund-Raiser for Acadiana Education Fund Oct. 13
Please join us at the second
Chers Bébés Soiree for Life in Lafayette on Oct. 13 to raise funds to form the pro-life future of Acadiana.
This event will be held in honor of two pioneers who helped develop Acadiana's strong culture of life,
Dr. Wilton Bergeron and Ms. Evelyn Landry, RN. Dr. Bergeron and Ms. Landry have served Acadiana Right to Life very generously for the past 40 years through education efforts, raising awareness of the humanity of the unborn, and assisting young mothers in need.
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Planning Continues
for 40 Days for Life
Stand with us this fall to protect women and unborn children from abortion through inter-denominational prayer, peaceful vigil, and community activism.
The 2015 campaign is Sept. 23 through Nov. 1. Events are held in New Orleans, Shreveport, and Baton Rouge.
There will be free dinner (first come, first served), testimony and fellowship. Archbishop Gregory Aymond and Pastor Willie Wooten of Gideon Christian Fellowship will speak during the event.
For more information on the party, contact Debbie Shinskie at 504.834.5433 or [email protected].
To sign a group or yourself up for a vigil time at the abortion facility on Ridgelake Drive in Metairie,
click here. For more information on the New Orleans campaign,
click here.
In Shreveport-Bossier City, the kickoff rally will be Sept. 19 at 6:30 p.m. at Messmer Stadium in the Loyola Athletic Complex on Clyde Fant Memorial Parkway. Ramona Trevino, a former manager of a Planned Parenthood abortion-referral center, will be the guest speaker.
Also, Sidewalk Advocates for Life will be leading a training for new counselors Sept. 11-12 at the Arklatex Crisis Pregnancy Center on Kings Highway. See
40daysofrlifesb.com for time and building location, which will be announced soon.
Contact campaign director Chris Davis at 318.349.3279 or email [email protected]
for more information.
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LARTL Welcomes New Team Members
Louisiana Right to Life has welcomed new members to our life-saving team!
Deanna Wallace joined the Louisiana Right to Life team in June as our Legislative Director and Baton Rouge Outreach Director. She grew up in Shreveport, where she attended Calvary Baptist Academy from K-12, and during a school chapel service she was inspired by the testimony of attorney Mike Johnson to one day become a pro-life legal advocate.
Deanna received a degree in Speech Communications from LSU-Shreveport. She also graduated from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at LSU, where she founded LSU Law Advocates for Life.
She can be reached at [email protected].
Alex Seghers joined the LARTL team earlier this month as the Youth Programs Director. She directs youth initiatives such as the Joshua Leadership Institute, Camp Joshua and the Geaux Forth Rally at the March for Life in Washington D.C. and leads LARTL youth education efforts in schools and youth organizations throughout Louisiana.
Alex grew up in Covington and was a member of St. Peter Parish's pro-life youth club. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in politics from the University of Dallas in May. She and her husband, Robert Seghers, live in New Orleans.
Her email address is [email protected].
Shanon Snyder, who has worked part time for LARTL for several months, became the full time New Orleans Projects Director earlier this month. He grew up in Mobile, Ala., where he became involved with 40 Days for Life in April 2012.
Shanon received a Bachelor of Arts degree in theology from the University of Mobile. He is a graduate student at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, where he is preparing for his Doctorate of Theology. He lives in New Orleans.
Shanon can be reached at [email protected].
In addition, Jessica Trosclair and Sarah Trosclair are working with LARTL to run Pro-Life 101 education efforts in Acadiana. Both are homeschool parents with classroom experience.
Jessica can be reached at [email protected], and Sarah can be reached at [email protected].
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'Kind Of Morbid, Don't You Think?'
NOLA Reacts to Planned Parenthood Video
Louisiana Right to Life recently did some "man on the street" interviews in the French Quarter of New Orleans to get reactions to the recently released undercover videos of Planned Parenthood selling parts of aborted babies.
Watch the compilation video and see what people think about the videos and the Planned Parenthood abortion facility currently under construction in the city.
While the interviews showed that people still have differences on the decision for an abortion, there was almost consistent disgust toward the selling of baby body parts. The man eating the ice cream showed this clearly when he asked, "That's kind of morbid, don't you think?"
But as these undercover videos have shown us, abortion and the selling of baby body parts are part of the same process at Planned Parenthood. If you can dismember a baby limb by limb, what's the big deal about harvesting and trafficking their body parts?
With the release of the fifth video focusing on Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast's involvement in selling body parts, Louisiana Right to Life believes that Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast's abortion expansion in Louisiana will mean the selling of baby body parts of babies aborted here in Louisiana.
More than ever, we need to stand against Planned Parenthood. Two events are planned this Saturday (independent of LARTL) in Baton Rouge and New Orleans from 9-11 a.m. to protest Planned Parenthood.
Click here to learn more (scroll to Louisiana).
CLICK HERE TO WATCH VIDEO AND SHARE!
To further expose Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast's abortion business, Louisiana Right to Life has launched four billboards (see image below) in the New Orleans area.
Interested in helping to donate to put the billboard up in other areas of the state? Contact us today!
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5 States Defund, 13 States Investigate Planned Parenthood
Other States Are Likely to Follow Suit
By Ken McIntyre, The Daily Signal
(Reprinted with permission)
The five states that recently denied taxpayers' money to Planned Parenthood affiliates likely will be followed by others as public pressure mounts on governors and other state officials, regardless of whether Congress votes to defund the nation's leading abortion provider.
Defunding on the state level (
Alabama,
Louisiana,
New Hampshire, Arkansas, and Utah) may not be as sharp a blow to Planned Parenthood as loss of half a billion dollars a year from the federal government, a lawyer for a prominent opponent told The Daily Signal. But, he said, the action allows state taxpayers and legislatures to express their disapproval of the harvesting of body parts from aborted babies depicted in an ongoing series of undercover videos this summer-and to prod federal officials.
"These state leaders are providing a model to Washington, D.C., of what people in their states are wanting done and how it can be done," Casey Mattox, a senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, said.
Mattox said the Christian legal advocacy group
detects an upsurge
in public awareness that state officials control whether Planned Parenthood affiliates receive certain Medicaid payments as well as Title X "family planning" funds and Title V "maternal and child health" grants.
"There is more political will to act than on the federal level," Mattox said, "and they control the state taxpayer dollars."
Congress is expected to reconsider whether to strip Planned Parenthood of more than $500 million a year in funding, which includes some state money, when it returns after Labor Day from August recess. Senate action Aug. 3
fell short of the required 60 votes.
Meanwhile, most state legislatures aren't in session for the summer, so governors may not yet feel the heat from constituents as expressed through lawmakers.
Mattox said: "It's hard to know what's going on behind the scenes in a lot of governors' offices, but I think any state should be looking very hard at whether it wants to continue state or federal support for an organization that appears to be acting in a way that is in violation of federal law and, frankly, has a long history of being engaged in questionable legal activity-whether Medicaid fraud questions or the sale of baby body parts."
Louisiana and 12 other states - Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas - began investigations of their Planned Parenthood affiliates in the wake of hidden-camera videos in which top medical officials of the organization appear to discuss the sale of body parts from aborted babies.
Making a profit from the sale of fetal organs, limbs, or other tissue is prohibited by federal law. Officials with Planned Parenthood Federation of America have insisted that the videos distort perfectly legitimate discussions of covering the costs of donating and transporting aborted babies or body parts to outside researchers with the mothers' permission. Such donations are not against the law.
In some of the videos, produced undercover by the pro-life Center for Medical Progress, Planned Parenthood doctors and researchers appear to indicate a willingness to alter abortion procedures to yield specimens that are intact. Such changes raise legal issues.
"Planned Parenthood is an expert at finding and keeping taxpayer dollars. They receive Medicaid reimbursements, Title X funding, and block grants-through federal, state, and local funding streams," Mallory Quigley, spokeswoman for the pro-life
Susan B. Anthony List, told The Daily Signal.
Quigley, who called the state actions "encouraging," added: "Moving forward, we will be looking to state pro-life groups and state legislators, particularly members of our National Pro-Life Women's Caucus, to see where more advances can be made to defund Planned Parenthood at the state level. Our state allies know best how Planned Parenthood is accessing taxpayer funding in their state and the best means of rerouting those funds to comprehensive health care clinics that do not provide abortion."
To read this article in its entirety,
click here.
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The Obama administration has threatened states attempting to cut off Medicaid funding of Planned Parenthood with potential violation of federal law and, ultimately, the cutting off of Medicaid funds to those states.
Read Louisiana Congressman John Fleming's reaction by
clicking here.
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| Camp Joshua Minnesota Students |
Camp Joshua Program
Launches in Minnesota!
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Louisiana Right to Life has been working behind the scenes over the past five years to spread the successful "Camp Joshua" program to other states. To date, Camp Joshua has been held in Wisconsin, Nevada, North Carolina, Arkansas, North Dakota, Virgina, Oregon, and, of course, Louisiana. Similar efforts are also taking place in Texas, New York, and Indiana. Louisiana Right to Life has helped a number of these states, including Arkansas, Nevada, North Carolina, and Virginia, launch their efforts through training and financial assistance. Camp Joshua Virginia, for example, held its fourth camp in July.
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| Camp Joshua Virginia 2015 |
This summer, Louisiana Right to Life and Wisconsin Right to Life have worked with Minnesota Concerned Citizens for Life (MCCL) to launch its first Camp Joshua. It was held just two weeks ago and was a big success! Twenty new student leaders were trained over a three-day period to be new warriors for life.
In 2008, the Louisiana Camp Joshua program launched its first program with the help of the Knights of Columbus. The first weekend camp in 2009 trained 25 students. Since that time, Louisiana's program expanded rapidly and has trained well over 500 leaders to stand for life.
Congratulations to MCCL for launching its first Camp Joshua!
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