After public outcry, San Clemente rejects anti-abortion ‘sanctuary for life’ resolution

August 7, 2022 By Erika Ritchie 4 Comments

After Public Outcry, San Clemente Rejects Anti-Abortion ‘Sanctuary for Life’ Resolution

Between the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of constitutional protections for abortions and the addition of Proposition 1 on the upcoming ballot in California, a San Clemente councilman said he saw the opportunity for his city to take a stand to “protect the sanctity of life.”

The San Clemente City Council was set to consider a resolution later this month that declares the city a “sanctuary for life where the dignity of every human being will be defended and promoted from life inside the womb through all stages of development in life up and until a natural death.”

But instead, City Council members ultimately hastily called a meeting on Saturday, Aug. 6 in the city’s community center, drawing a crowd of hundreds. Protestors stood on the lawn and an overflow room was made available to those who didn’t fit into the main area. About 50 speakers addressed the council — many calling the proposed resolution abuse of power, overreach, political grandstanding, and far outside the purvey of a city council.

After a nearly three-hour meeting — where Mayor Gene James pounded his gavel several times to restore order — the council ultimately voted 3-1 to remove the resolution from the Aug. 16 City Council agenda. Knoblock was the lone vote against pulling the item, and Councilwoman Laura Ferguson was not present.

“We’ve heard the community from all sides,” said Councilwoman Kathy Ward. “Let’s pull this from the agenda and get back to the business of San Clemente. There’s no need to let this go any further. I didn’t talk about the issues (pro-life, pro-choice) because I don’t believe they belong here. Let’s get back to the business we should be doing.”

If it had remained on the agenda and were passed, the resolution could have led to a follow-up city ordinance that would enforce a ban on abortion procedures within the city limits, said Councilman Steve Knoblock, who authored the resolution. Such an ordinance would run counter to state law. But Knoblock said he wanted San Clemente’s resolution to send a message “recognizing the full humanity of the pre-born life and human life and to protect and defend that.”

“We know since Roe vs. Wade, 62 million deaths occurred,” he said. “That’s a stack of babies 4,000 times higher than the Empire State building. The purpose of government is to protect life.”

A draft of Knoblock’s resolution said the City Council “considers life to begin at conception” and “stands against the establishment of Planned Parenthood health centers or any other clinics where abortions are performed.”

Such a resolution, however, would simply reflect an opinion by a majority on the city council. It’s unclear if the city can ban a provider of a legal health service. The closest Planned Parenthood clinic to San Clemente is in Mission Viejo, a few miles up the 5 freeway.

The resolution — scheduled for discussion by a council comprised of two women and three men — didn’t have language on enforcement. But it could have signaled official city support for a later ban on abortions except in cases where the mother’s life is at stake or the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.

Ahead of Saturday’s meeting, San Clemente Mayor Pro Tem Chris Duncan said the resolution caused concern within the community. He said this topic has drawn more email responses from residents than any other that he’s handled during his two years on the council. Most of that communication has been against the proposed resolution.

“I don’t think the majority of residents in San Clemente … want government taking away their long-held rights to control their body,” said Duncan, a Democrat running to represent the 74th Assembly District. “We saw that with the vote in Kansas the other day.”

National abortion fight gets local

The back-and-forth in San Clemente is part of a larger national conversation that’s grown louder since June, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and left the issue of abortion to individual states. Since then, at least 13 states have moved to ban or restrict the procedure, with more expected to do so by the end of this year. Many other states, including California, have passed laws to expand access to abortion and back a woman’s right to choose.

Earlier this week, voters in Kansas — a state that preferred Donald Trump over Joe Biden in the 2020 election by about 15 points — overwhelmingly chose to uphold abortion rights protections in the state constitution.

“This vote makes clear what we know: The majority of Americans agree that women should have access to abortion and should have the right to make their own health care decisions,” President Joe Biden said on Wednesday, Aug. 3, a day after the vote in Kansas.

Knoblock said he hasn’t paid attention to what other groups or states are doing about abortion but, as a public servant, he believes he should bring the discussion forward. He added that he’s particularly concerned about Proposition 1, which if approved by state voters in November, would prohibit anyone in California from denying or interfering with a person’s reproductive health care, including any decision a person might make about abortion and contraception.

‘All it takes is one city’

Should San Clemente have declared itself a “sanctuary for life,” it wouldn’t be the first to do so. In fact, several dozen cities, working with Right to Life of East Texas, have passed ordinances that outlaw abortion procedures within city limits. Still others have passed resolutions.

Texas is among the states banning abortion. The state also has passed rules that allow citizens to sue clinics or anyone else who “aids or abets” a legal abortion outside of Texas.

According to Mark Lee Dickson, the director of Right to Life of East Texas and founder of the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn Initiative, 50 cities — mostly in Texas — have passed ordinances banning abortion.

“Cities should do everything in their power to protect residents of their communities — both the born and the unborn,” Dickson said in an email.

“In the same breath, cities must also be smart about the laws they enact to protect their residents,” he said, advocating for an enforceable ordinance over a resolution.

“Gov. Newsom has been very clear that he wants California to be a sanctuary for abortion access,” Dickson added.

“This leaves the people of California who believe in protecting innocent human life having to make a decision: Will San Clemente be a ‘sanctuary for abortion,’ or will the good people of San Clemente do everything in their power to fight against it? All it takes is one city who is willing to go first. All it takes is one city which fears God more than they fear Gov. Newsom.”

San Clemente’s draft resolution did, in fact, invoke religion.

“We believe that life is God-ordained and God is the author and finisher of every life,” the resolution said. “No matter if at the beginning or at the end. We stand in agreement that, as a City Council, we will protect and sustain life at every stage. As we ask God to bless America, we first have to honor and respect God. We feel that we do both by protecting life and passing this resolution.”

Click here to read the full article in the OC Register

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: Abortion, California Politics, Planned Parenthood, San Clemente

Will Iceland’s Shameful Abortion Laws Rise in California?

August 30, 2017 By Todd Royal 1 Comment

Iceland is killing babies in the womb who have Down syndrome for no other reason than they are considered an inconvenience to their parents and socialist government.

Abortion, except when the woman’s life is in danger, is murder plain and simple, and there are many doctors and clinics complicit in this butchering in the same manner the Nazi’s burned Jews across Europe over seventy years ago. This isn’t a religious screed as I’ve written about the implications of abortion and the causes of declining birth rates since abortion’s enactment, here and here. This is about defending unborn children in Iceland and ultimately California.

Furthermore, vulnerable women in the United States are dying in these supposed women’s clinics as well for no reason at all other than they had an abortion. Atrociously vile Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, has quotes that the defend abortion actions that Iceland is taking and she advocated for eugenics, killing babies through abortion, advocating for the KKK and racial purification by eliminating all black men, women, children and unborn babies.

California communities, churches, synagogues and parishes that continue voting for Democrats and Republicans who defend abortion have to answer for their complicit quiet on this issue; meanwhile they are supposedly upset over white nationalists and leftist Antifa thugs fighting a pretend racial skirmish in nowhere Virginia, USA.

60 million babies have been killed in the U.S. since abortion was legalized so spare me your faux outrage over some idiot giving a Nazi salute to another violent, Antifa idiot who was paid to be there by George Soros linked groups.

Anecdotally drive through a predominant minority community (African-American in particular) and notice how many Planned Parenthood abortion clinics they have; it’s for a reason – to kill innocent, beautiful black and brown babies and fetuses for profit. And California Democrats overwhelmingly defend these actions; Senator Kamala Harris specifically has chosen political power over defending her ancestors, family and constituents.

Iceland is committing genocide by claiming they are “eradicating Down Syndrome babies,” when in actuality they are using prenatal screening to then abort the affected fetuses; and CBS is duplicitous in how they reported the case of Iceland supposedly “solving Down’s syndrome,” when the report said:

“The number of babies born with Down syndrome has significantly decreased but few countries have come as close to eradicating Down syndrome births as Iceland.”

Any person who touched the Iceland report at CBS (they have locations in Studio City and Los Angeles, CA) should at the very least be fired and next be prosecuted for aiding and abetting the killing of defenseless, unarmed human beings. It’s depraved evil what Iceland and CBS are doing and have done. The world hunted those beasts down in World War II who slaughtered innocents for their own personal gain. Children in the womb are the most vulnerable people on the planet – they literally have zero defenses against the knives, hoses and vacuums at the abortion worker’s arsenal to kill.

The people and leaders of Ireland and anyone who advocates for slaughtering innocent babies, because they have Down syndrome, should be treated as depraved criminals. Puppies are treated better than abortion-targeted children. PETA would never stand for animals being killed this way if they had a deformity that inconvenienced their owner. That is exactly what Iceland is doing, but more importantly, people with Down syndrome have a voice, conscious and dignity.

Moreover, CBS television in California attempts to backpedal or at least cover their tracks when they stated in the report: “Many people born with Down syndrome can live full, healthy lives, with an average lifespan of around 60 years.”

Actually in 2011 the American Journal of Medical Genetics found in its research and studies:

“That 99% of individuals with Down syndrome report being happy, 94% of their siblings express pride in their brother or sister with Down syndrome, and just 4% of parents.”

Larger countries are also practicing abortion-eugenics on Down syndrome screened unborn children in high percentages like Denmark (98%), France (77%) and disgustedly the United States at 67%. But its really a simple reason this is happening: The diagnosed child in utero with Down syndrome is being killed – and not over a medical condition.

California elected officials including abortion in their official party platform have also voted for children being labeled an undue burden to their parents, society and in Iceland medical professionals have said, “It will be better for them (the Down syndrome fetus).” But when that human being is being sucked out by a vacuum while screaming and fighting for their life and then discarded like a piece of trash, how is that good for them?

Why not stretch that argument to an older person who no longer pays taxes or any of the millions not in the U.S. workforce at this time? Let’s discard them as well. They can’t pay taxes so what use are they or others if a person is simply an economic unit for my happiness.

In a horrifying moment of candor, Icelandic geneticist, Kari Stefansson admitted, “it wasn’t for medical reasons to kill fetuses, but rather it’s due to heavy-handed genetic counseling, or pressure by authority figures to abort.”

Another pregnancy counselor in Iceland also stated:

“We don’t look at abortion as murder. We ended a possible life that may have had a huge complication, preventing suffering for the child and for the family.”

So what California elected officials, the voters who put them in office and Republicans who support abortion are saying is trust us we know what’s best for the slaughtered child. If we crush their heads, break their limbs and suck out their brains using vacuums (and all this happens during abortions) then it’s for their own good and yours as well.

This behavior was how the Nazis justified killing Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, Christians, Catholics, intellectuals, and any other group that didn’t conform to their Darwinian-Nietzschian worldview at the barrel of a gun. The first people the Nazis killed were those with disabilities.

This is using medical technology available through prenatal screening to enact eugenics at a state and worldwide level not seen since World War II. These children are being exterminated and these societies will fail. Historically fallen regimes from the Aztecs to the Romans and Greeks up to Imperial Japan all disintegrated because they didn’t value defenseless life.

If California, the U.S. and Europe don’t wake up to this remorseless holocaust then we have no hope. Forget bashing Donald Trump and bring fire and brimstone to marches, rallies and occupy movements to children unlucky enough to have parents who can afford a prenatal screening. It’s time to act and time for hard questions to be asked about what kind of society we want for California, the U.S. and the world.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Abortion, Planned Parenthood, Todd Royal

Gov’t Shutdown Could Mean No Food Stamps For Millions

September 24, 2015 By Connor D. Wolf 5 Comments

The Obama Administration warned Tuesday a government shutdown would mean 46 million people losing their food stamps. This despite a similar claim in 2011 being proven false.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the problem is a lack of reserve money. The USDA runs the food stamp program. It is officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. If the government shuts down, the USDA claims, it will have to end benefits within the first several days of October.

“If Congress does not act to avert a lapse in appropriations, then USDA will not have the funding necessary for SNAP benefits in October,” Catherine Cochran, a spokeswoman for USDA, told The Associated Press. “Once that occurs, families won’t be able to use these benefits at grocery stores to buy the food their families need.”

Cochran refused to give details on how exactly the automatic food stamp payments would stop, or why it continued unabated during the 2013 shut down. The dangling of benefits in front of a shut down is not a new occurrence under the Obama administration. According to Politifact, in 2011 President Barack Obama lied when he warned Social Security checks would not be sent out if the government shut down.

A dispute on whether to defund Planned Parenthood is the main issue which threatens to shutdown the government. Lawmakers have till the first of October to pass a budget. If they don’t, the federal government will run out of funds and have to shutdown.

House Republicans passed a budget proposal Sept. 18 which would cutoff funds to Planned Parenthood for a year. The proposal looks unlikely to pass the Senate and even less likely to be signed by President Barack Obama. If the House proposal or an alternative doesn’t pass, the government shuts down.

The move to defund Planned Parenthood comes with renewed criticism over how the group handles abortions. The debate centers around a video The Center for Medical Progress, a right-of-center medical ethics group, published that shows a Planned Parenthood employee casually discussing, over a salad, how the organization harvest fetus organs after an abortion. The video was just the first in a series of footage that prompted a national backlash. This included renewed calls to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

The footage was part of a 3-year investigative effort. Dr. Deborah Nucatola talked to undercover actors she thought were buyers from a human biologics company.

Supporters of Planned Parenthood claim the videos were misleading and politically motivated. They also argue the organization offers too many critical services for women and families to be defunded.

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation

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Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: budget, Food Stamps, Planned Parenthood, SNAP, USDA

Planned Parenthood’s California Counsel

September 13, 2015 By Steven Greenhut 6 Comments

The recent undercover videos of top Planned Parenthood executives discussing how to position and kill unborn babies in order to preserve the marketability of their body parts offer the sort of shocking revelations that typically spur California government officials to action. One might have expected state authorities to examine the substance of the issues raised by the Center for Medical Progress, the group of citizen-journalists who made the videos. Instead, California officials have rallied to Planned Parenthood’s defense.

Democratic legislators blocked a Republican proposal to audit Planned Parenthood’s California operations, which receive more than $200 million a year in reimbursements from Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program. Thirteen legislators had wanted the Joint Legislative Audit Committee to look into whether Planned Parenthood used any of that money to harvest and sell body parts, which is a felony. Senator Connie Leyva, a Chino Democrat, said an audit would be too expensive. And besides, Planned Parenthood provides “vital health care” services. They wouldn’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, after all.

Inaction from a legislature dominated by Democrats is no surprise. Far more troubling has been the response of Attorney General Kamala Harris. Last month, Harris, who is currently the leading Democratic candidate to replace Barbara Boxer in the U.S. Senate next year, received a letter from several Democratic members of Congress demanding that she—along with U.S. Justice Department officials — investigate the undercover videographers, who posed as buyers for a biotech company that performs medical research. “Press accounts regarding this incident have reported that this group created ‘fake identification’ in order to falsely impersonate corporate executives and ‘gain access’ to meetings with Planned Parenthood officials,” the letter states. It points to reports suggesting the group “filed paperwork to create a fake corporate entity.” The lawmakers also allege the undercover videos “may implicate California’s Invasion of Privacy Act, which prohibits recording individuals without their consent.” A Los Angeles Superior Court judge on August 21 ruled against that claim, but Harris appears undaunted. She immediately agreed to investigate the investigators, and brushed aside a letter from Republican state legislators asking her to look at whether Planned Parenthood violated any laws. As with the legislature’s Democrats, such questions hold no interest for the attorney general.

Harris’s tenure as attorney general already is an instructive lesson in what happens when a partisan takes over an important constitutional office and seems to put the demands of her political supporters above any pretense of even-handed justice. California attorneys general give the titles and summary of proposed statewide initiatives, and such short explanations are typically all that voters ever read about the measures before casting their votes. Harris has been so biased in crafting these titles and summaries that she was criticized harshly by some of the state’s most liberal newspapers, such as the Sacramento Bee. In particular, she gave a summary to a pension-reform measure that sounded as if its union opponents crafted it.

Harris currently is mired in a dispute with the conservative Americans for Prosperity Foundation. She has demanded the nonprofit educational group’s donor lists in exchange for allowing it to operate in California. AFP officials are understandably concerned about letting Harris and her political allies get their hands on such sensitive information. As KQED reported, “After two gay couples sued to overturn Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriage in California, the attorney general (like her predecessor Jerry Brown) refused to defend it in court. That, along with Harris’ argument that Prop. 8’s proponents didn’t have legal standing to defend it either, infuriated conservative groups.” Typically, state officials are charged with defending initiatives passed by the voters, but Harris again behaved as a partisan. Regardless of where one stood on the question of Prop. 8’s constitutionality or its political wisdom, Harris’s effort to undermine any defense of the measure set a troubling precedent.

Harris’s probe into the Center for Medical Progress could spell trouble for investigative journalism in general, not just these investigative journalists. Undercover efforts to expose wrongdoing are a long-running TV news tradition. Do we really want to prosecute undercover reporters for not getting their targets’ permission to record questionable conduct and misdeeds?

A fair-minded attorney general would look at all the entangling legal questions involving Planned Parenthood and the people who exposed its officials’ questionable behavior. Instead, we have the Golden State’s top law-enforcement official behaving as if she were Planned Parenthood’s California counsel. Harris’s brand of partisan “justice” may be less disgusting than Planned Parenthood officials talking about a fully formed fetus’s “crunchy” parts, but it’s disgusting just the same.

Steven Greenhut is the California columnist for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Write to him at steven.greenhut@sduniontribune.com.

Originally published by City Journal online

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Americans for Prosperity Foundation, Kamala Harris, Medi-Cal, Planned Parenthood, Prop. 8