Katherine Kersten has written a provocative essay about the intense bias against hiring conservative and pro-life professors as college and university professors. She focuses on the case against the University of Iowa Law School involved Teresa Wagner, a qualified individual who sought to teach at the school that had a lopsided ratio of only one registered Republican among the 50 faculty members.  The law school refused to hire Ms. Wagner, in spite of her obvious qualification for the job.  Why would the law school reject a qualified candidate?  Because she was conservative and pro-life.   Kersten writes, ”Wagner had committed one unforgivable sin:  She is pro-life, and actually once worked for the National Right to Life Committee in Washington, D.C.”    The University of Iowa instead chose a candidate right out of law school rather than add another conservative to its faculty.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in its recent ruling in favor of Ms. Wagner, stating that her lawsuit could proceed to trial on her claims that the University of Iowa violated the First Amendment by refusing to hire her.  The Eighth Circuit’s opinion states: ”No more direct assault on academic freedom can be imagined than for the school authorities to [refuse to hire] a teacher because of his or her philosophical, political, or ideological beliefs.”

Wagner’s lawyer, quoted in a New York Times article, said “It’s gotten to the point where the law school’s diversity efforts are to eliminate everyone from the mainstream,” he said. “They espouse cultural diversity, but won’t consider the conservative viewpoint.”

The ADF Center for Academic Freedom has been fighting for academic freedom for conservative, Christian and pro-life faculty members who are frequently denied hiring and tenure because of their beliefs in such cases as Mike Adams’ lawsuit against the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.

If you have been censored or punished because of your faith give us a call at 1-800-TellADF or Tell us your story of injustice.  We are here for you!

_____

Speak Up for LIFE! Envision… a World Without Abortion! RSVP to watch the nation’s largest pro-life conference LIVE online on 1/22/2012 at http://adf.am/SFLArsvp

The 2012 Students for Life National Pro-Life Conference is little more than a week away, and ADF is excited to once again partner with Students for Life to hold the biggest pro-life student conference anywhere.  I went for the first time last year, and I was blown away by the quality of the speakers and their presentations.  Those attending will learn from many experienced experts about many aspects of the pro-life movement.  Dr. John Bruchalski is one I am looking forward to hearing from.   Former Governor Mike Huckabee will speak and introduce a new movie, called ”The Gift of Life.”

Also, I found the mere fact that so many pro-life young people are gathered in one place to be one of the most encouraging things I saw last year at the conference.  We are not alone, and everyone draws energy and encouragement from the fact that there are so many of us working together for life.

And they served great pizza, too.  Pizza and pro-lifers – who could ask for anything more!  See you Sunday!

Don’t forget to RSVP to watch the nation’s largest pro-life conference LIVE online on 1/22/2012 at http://adf.am/SFLArsvp. Stay informed! Envision… a World Without Abortion!

Birth brings out the best in people, and sometimes death does, too.

Hip Hop superstar couple Jay-Z and Beyoncé celebrated the birth of their daughter Blue Ivy this Saturday January 7, and proud papa Jay-Z wrote the child a jubilant song.

The song, “Glory,” reaches into the very high and low moments of this celebrity couple’s parenthood.  It also reveals that not-so-deep down, ordinary folk know exactly what our own human offspring are, regardless of the child’s age or location.

Jay-Z’s lyrics speak to baby Blue herself, and speak of her as someone the father has known and loved for 8 or 9 months already.  We get the baby dancing inside her hip-hop dancer mother; we get the baby wiggling her tiny preborn hands for her mommy; we even get a little too much information, with Jay-Z precisely dating the baby’s old-fashioned conception to the couple’s April 2011 trip to Paris, “You don’t yet know what swag is / But you was made in Paris / And mama woke up the next day and Shot her album package.”

Jay-Z expresses no agnosticism about the moral status or identity of his baby girl even as a one-celled zygote–it was “you,” Blue, who he and Beyoncé made that magical night in the City of Light.  Jay-Z’s special affection for his daughter since the earliest days of her “creation” is born from something else the song reveals: the couple previously suffered a miscarriage.

Jay-Z describes the turmoil that so many of us have felt during subsequent pregnancies, hanging on with suspense to every medical report and test, having “false alarms” that this baby might also miscarry, offering up deep prayers that God would let this baby live, and feeling a hopeful thrill from milestones like the ultrasound heartbeat signaling that things will be well.  “Last time the miscarriage was so tragic / We was afraid you disappeared / But nah, baby you magic.” And then “Glory! Glory! Glory!”

Overflowing joy at the child’s safe birth, and a father prouder of his baby girl than of anything else he has ever produced.  “God makes no mistakes.”  If Jay-Z had spoken like this about preborn children in another context, cultural elites might be furious.  Just look at what pro-life Senator Rick Santorum’s family has endured from their grieving actions to humanize their prematurely born child after the young one’s death.  But as “Glory” illustrates, we all really know that babies in the womb, even from the first day they were made, really are the same children we meet and carry and love a few months later.  “Life is a gift love, open it up.”

For all the pro-life student activists out there participating in today’s Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity with the unborn: Take heart.  You’re winning.

Why do I say this?  We are constantly reminded that Roe v. Wade is still “the law of the land.”  I know that Planned Parenthood still receives over three hundred and sixty million dollars of taxpayer funding annually – over 1/3 of its budget.  I know that Planned Parenthood and its allies are aborting babies at such a rate that over 1.2 million children in the U.S. alone will be denied life this year because of their work.  So how can I claim that you are winning the war when it seems that you’re charging up such a steep hill?

This.

Listen as the Planned Parenthood representatives struggle to wrap their arms around scientific ignorance.  This is all they have.  Faced with a growing scientific understanding of how life develops in the womb, all they can do is fall back on the postmodern game of elevating personal feeling over facts.

Here are a few choice quotes:

 “Science cannot be applied to my body.”  (I generally hope that my doctor is applying science to my body.)

“Science is not ultimate truth.  That’s why it’s science.”  (I agree that there is a real ultimate Truth, but I’m not sure that’s what she meant – especially because I don’t think it would help her argument.)

“The living breathing sentient being that has control over her body is the one we listen to, not science.” (So people who lack control over their bodies are not worthy of life?)

“Their (pro-lifers) researchers say that the heart beats in 21 days.  There’s people on our side and research that says that the heart doesn’t beat until 24 weeks.”  (The Mayo Clinic says “Just four weeks after conception … your baby’s heart is pumping blood.”  And I’ve listened to my own childrens’ heartbeats earlier than 24 weeks.)

“We need to focus on the birth control issue rather than the photos or scientific evidence that [the pro-life speaker] just gave you.”  (When I hear him say this I hear this).

“Anyone who is born with an x and a y chromosome is biologically female.” (Perhaps this came from the same doctor who says that the heart only begins to beat at 24 weeks?)

But it’s not just these Planned Parenthood representatives that have such a difficult time battling science.  Pro-abortion elected officials also must work very hard to ensure that they don’t let facts get in the way of their ideology.  Listen as Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee describes an unborn child’s heartbeat as “sounds that might discourage this needed action” in the recent House debate on the Protect Life Act.

So, to sum up the pro-abortion mentality:  What is that thing in a woman’s body?  We know it was placed there because of the actions of two people and when it comes out it certainly seems to be a person.  But there just is no settled scientific answer as to what that thing is.  It’s a riddle wrapped inside an enigma really.  Science can never tell us what it is so we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

Of course, the temperature trends of the Earth over the past several millennia and the factors that cause their change is such settled scientific fact that merely to type this very sentence implicitly questioning this overwhelming scientific consensus might be an act of planetary treason.

When the pro-abortion lobby is reduced to pleading with us to ignore the facts and inventing fake science (24 weeks?!) to defend their ideological commitments to ending unborn lives (which happens to be very profitable) they’re on the ropes.

Take heart.  And don’t grow weary in doing good.

The Alliance Defense Fund family extends its heartfelt condolences to the staff and friends of  Students for Life of America (SFLA), who lost a dear friend and co-laborer for life, Kortney Blythe Gordon.  Kortney, the  northeast field director for SFLA, perished in a car accident along with her preborn daughter Sophy on Saturday night.  ADF has worked hand-in-hand with SFLA and Kortney over the last several years to end the taking of innocent human life through abortion.

In 2005 ADF and Students for Life joined forces with the common vision to change the landscape of public university campuses across America.  At the time SFLA was a small but growing student organization working to educate pro-life college students about the issues of abortion, euthanasia, and infanticide and equipping them with the training, skills, and resources to be effective and successful advocates for life on campuses across America.  As they stirred students into action, they  increasingly found themselves shut down by campus officials, and, this is where ADF stepped in.  Working together over the past several years with SFLA and many other whole-hearted pro-life allies, we have seen lives saved, policies changed and in 2009, Gallup recorded a “pro-life” majority for the first time in the then-fourteen year history of their poll. The rate of abortion, after skyrocketing in the late 1970s, has decreased significantly, and abortion restrictions are far more likely to pass Congress and state legislatures than are expansions in access. Even pop culture now offers notable examples of the “choose life” mindset.

But there’s something else, something beyond the numbers that tell us that we are quite possibly on the cusp of historic change. Within the Christian community, young people are proving to be far more actively pro-life than their parents.  Kortney was an inspiring example of the new “youth movement” committed to living and proclaiming the “Gospel of Life.”  Recently, Kortney joined ADF staff and other national leaders to help train and facilitate key pro-life organizations and activists in various states to bring a more coordinated approach to ending abortion.   Her contributions to this effort will be greatly missed.

No one, not even a beautiful soul like Kortney, is promised a long life.  For that reason, the Scripture reminds us to pray that our Heavenly Father would “Teach us to number our days, and apply our hearts to wisdom.”  Kortney took those words to heart, so much so that one of her favorite sayings was, “To live is Christ, to die is gain.”  With her hand in her daughter’s, no longer bound by space and time, Kortney has already heard the words of her blessed Savior, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.  Enter into your rest.”  May it be said of us as well when our course is run.

Please pray with us for the families of Kortney and her husband Benjamin, for recovery of others, including a second SFLA staffer, who were injured in the accident, and for comfort and healing for all who loved and were loved by Kortney.

_____________________________

Kortney leaves behind her husband Ben, who will bury his bride (just married this year) and their first child. Donations are being accepted to help with burial costs and support for Ben, and may be made by clicking here.