Strengthening families. Advancing truth.
Another mask mandate? MN 4th graders are being given required “equity surveys” with questions about gender identity? Biological males competing against female Olympians? There’s so much to keep up with this week! Tune in to get the facts & stand for truth with your hosts, Grace Evans and Moses Bratrud.
Columnist Tanya Gold recently lambasted a young writer who criticized proposed legislation that would have allowed abortion on demand for any reason up until birth in the U.K. In her op-ed Mercy Muroki described her experience with unplanned pregnancy in her teens and her decision not to abort. Tanya responded with her own story, insisting that for her, anything other than abortion would have been “impossible.” Chillingly, Tanya acknowledges that her abortion killed not a “clump of cells” but her baby. She writes,
How many women, do you think, walk into an abortion clinic not knowing what they are doing, and why? It’s not really a baby, say some pro-choice activists. It’s an, er, embryo. Of course, it’s a baby, and those having to make the decision know that better than anyone. I know that from my own experience. I don’t need people to tell me what I have done. It is always with me.
Tanya knows that her abortion took the life of her child. The abortion industry’s lies could not conceal that fact. In the aftermath, she is parroting the abortion industry’s talking points even as she struggles to live with what she claims was a choice she “had to make.”
“When I was 22, I had an abortion,” explains Tanya. “I was very sick, with alcoholism, and I didn’t know who the father was. I had no job, no money and no home of my own.” Reading those words, my computer screen blurred in front of me as my eyes filled with tears as I thought of how my sister’s birth mom was in almost the exact same situation when she found out she was pregnant. Battling mental illness and addiction, unsure of who the father was, aware that the child she was caring would be born with disabilities, and knowing that she would not be able to raise her child, she chose life. I am forever grateful for that she did and I cannot read Tanya’s insistence that her abortion was “necessary” without thinking of how different my life would have been if my sister was not part of it.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday True North Legal, a legal initiative of Minnesota Family Council, filed an amicus brief in the upcoming United States Supreme Court case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which will be argued this fall, urging the Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.
True North Legal’s General Counsel Renee Carlson co-authored the brief with Professor Teresa Collett of the University of St. Thomas School of Law and Director of the Law School’s Prolife Center. Several allied groups joined as parties to the brief, namely former Vice President Mike Pence’s Advancing American Freedom, The Family Leader (Iowa), the Center for Political Renewal, Family Heritage Alliance, and Nebraska Family Alliance.
The brief makes the case that the harms to women and families caused by current abortion law, beginning with Roe v. Wade in 1973, have not been fully addressed by the Court. It points to the relationship between statutory rape and abortion, in which abortion gives rapists, handlers, and others who hold a position of power over young women a way to cover up their crimes. As the brief states, “Roe and its progeny are the catalyst to these social atrocities, protecting men who would otherwise be criminally charged. Roe has turned statutory rape laws designed to protect young women into a license to cover up crimes against them.“
Join Moses Bratrud and Grace Evans for the 2nd episode of Minnesota Family Council's Family Beacon podcast. We called an abortion clinic - listen to the podcast to hear how that went!
Make sure you subscribe for new episodes every Friday, so you can cut through the noise, get the facts, and stand for TRUTH in our culture.
Parents and school board members in Russell County, Virginia rejected the Virginia Department of Education’s radical transgender policies in a unanimous vote last Friday. The policies were enacted by the VDOE after the Virginia legislature passed a bill mandating the change. However, as the Family Foundation of Virginia has pointed out, the policies required by the legislature present an unconstitutional attack on freedom of religion, free speech, parental rights, and the privacy and safety of students. The Family Foundation is also part of a lawsuit challenging the VDOE’s unconstitutional policies.
VDOE’s model policy would allow students to access restrooms and locker rooms on the basis of their “gender identity” rather than their biological sex, require students, teachers, and staff to refer to students using their “preferred pronouns,” disregarding any religious objections they may have, and event encourages schools to conceal information from the parents of students who are struggling with gender dysphoria and help students “transition” behind their parents’ backs. At a Russell County Board of Education meeting last month, parents pointed out that these policies are not rooted in science but are “a mandatory promotion of a sexualized agenda.”
Whole Women’s Health was one of the largest providers of abortion in Minnesota, at least until 2020. For at least six months in 2020, the state of Minnesota’s abortion report showed that Whole Women’s Health committed zero abortions.
Eagle-eyed pro-life activists, including Pro-Life Action Ministry’s Brian Gibson, quickly realized that couldn’t be true. After all, pro-life activists were outside Whole Women’s Health every day last year - they knew women had entered the premises to receive abortions.
Abortion reporting is taken seriously in Minnesota, with the potential of financial penalties for a late or inaccurate report. So did Whole Women’s Health fail to report accurate numbers? Or did the state garble the report?
I wanted to get information straight from the source, so I called Whole Women’s Heath. After a long day, I was finally able to get Jackie Dilworth, Director of Marketing and Communications for the abortion chain, to pick up the phone.
Below is our response to the Star Tribune’s recent claims on critical race theory in Minnesota schools. The article in question remains unaltered as of this writing.
To the editor,
Critical race theory is controversial because it makes race and racial oppression the central fact of American identity, threatening to divide Americans by color just as profoundly as Jim Crow-era legislation once did. This is the root of its deep unpopularity in the American electorate, and the reason why GOP operatives are making it a “wedge issue” in advance of the 2022 elections.
Moreover, critical race theory is not only found in academia. It has made its way even to local schools. How then can Star Tribune’s Briana Bierschbach state in the July 18th issue of the paper that “Critical race theory is not being taught in Minnesota's K-12 classrooms?” (“GOP teeing up critical race theory for midterms in Minnesota, across the nation”, July 17, 2021) The paper must clarify or retract this statement to avoid creating a false impression in its readers.
To give only three examples of CRT in Minnesota classrooms, in late June, Minnesota Public Radio reported on critical race theory in Pequot Lakes Public Schools (“Inside one Minnesota school district’s battle over an equity training program,” MPR News, June 30, 2021), and in September, MinnPost reported on educators in Saint Paul Public Schools stumbling over themselves to embrace it (“How Minnesota school leaders are advancing equity work in a shaky back-to-school environment,” MinnPost, September 11, 2020). Even more recently, an op-ed appeared in the Star Tribune only a few days ago by a social studies teacher from Robbinsdale, Bill Boegeman, who lays out in detail how he brings critical race theory to the classroom (“What critical race theory looks like in my social studies classroom”, July 16, 2021)
It’s a big day here at Minnesota Family Council! We know you want to stay informed on the big issues relating to life, family, and religious freedom, and that’s why we’re rolling out the new Family Beacon podcast, with new episodes every Friday, so you can cut through the noise, get the facts, and stand for TRUTH in our culture.
Directed by MFC’s Director of Communications, Moses Bratrud, the podcast stars pro-life student activist Grace Evans alongside Moses, going through the week’s big issues and applying a biblical understanding that our culture often lacks.
21 state attorneys general are calling out the Biden administration’s pro-LGBT policies for threatening religious freedom, freedom of speech, and privacy rights. In a letter sent to the administration last week, the attorneys general address the recent guidance issued by the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission and the Department of Education expanding the definition of “sex” to include gender identity and sexual orientation in compliance with a January executive order from President Biden. The letter points out that States and individuals were not given any opportunity to submit feedback through the public comment process as the EEOC and Education Department finalized policies in response to a presidential executive order earlier this year. Instead, the guidance was issued unilaterally by the respective agencies.
Last year in Bostock v. Clayton County the Supreme Court redefined “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to include gender identity and sexual orientation. Immediately after taking office, President Biden issued an executive order requiring all federal agencies to adopt the Court’s sweeping redefinition of the word “sex and to implement policies that include sexual orientation and gender identity in their definition of sex-based discrimination.
A group of activists in Arkansas vandalized the 65-foot-tall Christ of the Ozarks statue with a “God Bless Abortions” banner last week. Members of the activist art group INDECLINE disguised themselves as construction workers and used pulleys to scale the statue and hang the 40-foot banner. “In Arkansas, there is only one 65-foot statue of Jesus. There is also only one abortion clinic,” the group wrote on Instagram in a post celebrating their act of vandalism. Two days later they posted a picture of a baby wearing a “God Bless Abortions” t-shirt announcing that the shirts were available at their online store.
INDECLINE said in a statement that, "The project, entitled ‘God Bless Abortions,’ is in direct response to the dramatic attempts being made in Arkansas and throughout the South, to ban abortion services to women in need.” Women don’t need abortion and they certainly don’t need the abortion industry’s lies. INDECLINE’s message completely ignores the women whose lives have been upended by the horror of abortion and the babies whose lives have been lost.
Christian Counselors and Minnesotans Oppose Governor Walz Overriding Legislature on So-Called “Conversion Therapy”
ST. PAUL – Governor Walz has announced his intention to override the Minnesota legislature’s lawmaking authority by issuing a ban on so-called “conversion therapy” via executive order this morning. This is a clear example of executive overreach that will infringe dangerously on the freedom of young people in Minnesota to seek the care that is appropriate for them.
This ban is a direct attack on individual choice in health care as well as on the constitutional rights of patients, families, and therapists. The governor’s ban could prevent patients from setting their own goals when addressing sexual orientation and gender identity, something they should be free to do.
“This executive order will not end so-called ‘conversion therapy,’ since professional standards in mental health care already did that years ago. Instead, this will ban young people experiencing unwanted same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria from getting the voluntary, compassionate care they need,” said John Helmberger, CEO of Minnesota Family Council. “In legislative hearings we’ve heard the courageous testimony of many men and women who have had great, life-changing experiences with this type of counseling. At the end of the day, the Governor’s actions will hurt patients seeking to get the care they want.”
On Tuesday, the Austin, Minnesota City Council voted to remove a member of the city’s Human Rights Commission, citing concerns over his views and his involvement with groups whose missions, according to the Human Rights Commission, do not align with the Commission’s values. One of the groups in question is Minnesota Family Council. Although members of the City Council and the Human Rights Council insisted that this is “not about politics” and also nothing against Mueller personally, their interviews and statements to the press did not offer specific critiques but instead mentioned vague concerns about his social media involvement and his views not aligning with the Human Rights Commission.
Which views might those be? In a statement to the City Council, Mueller shed some light on the matter saying,
I have served on the Human Rights Commission and throughout the community since moving back to the area without incident or issue until recently with no change in my actions, commitment to the community or attitudes to others. What has changed is that my wife was elected to the MN House of Representatives and now people who were once colleagues and community connections we supported have begun to attack my wife and now me over political differences.
According to Minnesota’s recently released annual abortion report, 9,108 babies lost their lives to abortion in our state last year. The vast majority (79%) of those abortions were committed after fetal heartbeat was detectable and 45% of Minnesota’s abortions were paid for with taxpayer funds in 2020.
The fact that over 9,000 babies lost their lives to the gruesome practice of abortion is staggering and heartbreaking. But at the same time, there is hope. These are the lowest abortion numbers on record in Minnesota and represent an 8% drop from the previous year’s abortion numbers! Not only did 2020 see the lowest number of abortions on record, it also saw the lowest abortion rate on record at 7.6%. One child losing his life to abortion is too many, and we must continue to fight for life until abortion is illegal and unthinkable. The decline in abortion rates in Minnesota over the past three years is a hopeful sign that the pro-life movement is gaining ground and that life is being valued in our state!
A Minnesota school district agreed to a $218,500 settlement with a former student who claimed that she was discriminated against when her school did not allow her to access the boys’ locker room and restroom. In 2015, Helene Woods’s daughter, who had begun using masculine pronouns and adopted the name Matt, informed officials at the Buffalo-Hanover-Montrose School District that she wanted to use the boys’ restroom and locker rooms. The school refused, instead arranging for “Matt” Woods to use a single-occupancy bathroom and changing room. This, however, did not solve the situation. In 2019, Helene Woods filed a lawsuit against the District on behalf of her daughter. This week the District agreed to a settlement in the case.
In a statement, the District said that it has not admitted to any wrongdoing. Nor should it! The school district took steps to accommodate Woods when she brought up her discomfort, and did so in a manner that did not compromise the privacy of other students. However, as part of the settlement, Buffalo-Hanover-Montrose School District agreed to policy changes that allow students access to bathrooms and locker rooms and compete on sports teams that match their self-professed “gender identity” rather than their biological sex.
The Equality Act (read a quick summary here) is a threat to people of faith across the country. But are evangelicals partly to blame for it?
Evangelical theologian Matthew Lee Anderson has a long piece in Christianity Today (May/June 2021) arguing that evangelicals must realize our own role in the rise of the militant LGBT movement and its political successes.
The story that evangelicals are (merely) victims of progressive aggressors not only fails to account for the ways in which the LGBT movement was shaped by populist evangelical rhetoric and tactics. It also forgets that the gay liberation movement was a direct response to the systemic and pervasive exclusion of lesbian and gay individuals from the structures of our public life—including from America itself.
Anderson, a professor of ethics and theology at Baylor University, expands on his point. The Christian right, he writes, rose in the 1970s in opposition to the cultural excesses of the sexual revolution. It is surprising that he does not mention Roe v. Wade, which was certainly a larger motivator for the religious right than gay rights. As the Christian right rose to a position of political and cultural influence, Anderson argues, it weaponized biblical truths about sexuality (which Anderson accepts) in a way that “demeaned and disrespected our LGBT neighbors.”
An attempt to repeal Illinois’s parental notification law failed to advance out of committee before the end of the legislative session, leaving Illinois’s 1995 law requiring parental notification before a minor undergoes an abortion intact. The parental notification law is the last remaining restriction on abortion in Illinois after Governor J.B. Pritzker signed a law in 2019 legalizing abortion up until birth for any reason, repealing abortion clinic regulations, and requiring all health insurance plans to cover abortions. That year abortion rates in Illinois increased by 10%.
Like Minnesota, Illinois requires parental notification, but not consent, before a minor undergoes an abortion. The parental notification law is not only the last remaining abortion restriction in Illinois, it is also a policy that has widespread support among parents, including parents who describe themselves as pro-abortion. Removing this law would take away the last protection Illinois offers to the unborn while also attacking parental rights and teens’ relationships with their parents. The Illinois Parental Notification of Abortion Act points out that abortion can lead to long-term medical, emotional, and psychological harm and that it is not in a minor’s best interest to keep their parents in the dark.
Catholic Social Services has been providing adoption and foster care services in Philadelphia for many years. However, the city arbitrarily denied them the right to continue placing children in homes because they affirm that marriage is between one man and one woman, and declined to work with same-sex couples.
After a protracted lawsuit, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, the Supreme Court today ruled unanimously in favor of Catholic Social Services and their right to serve the children of Philadelphia. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, with concurring opinions from other justices. Chief Justice Roberts wrote
CSS [Catholic Social Services] seeks only an accommodation that will allow it to continue serving the children of Philadelphia in a manner consistent with its religious beliefs; it does not seek to impose those beliefs on anyone else. The refusal of Philadelphia to contract with CSS for the provision of foster care services unless it agrees to certify same-sex couples as foster parents cannot survive strict scrutiny, and violates the First Amendment.
On January 1, a California state law allowing male inmates who identify as female to request transfer to women’s prisons went into effect. Since then, the state has received over 250 transfer requests from men asking to be transferred. According to documents obtained by Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), more than one man who has already been transferred has been convicted of sexual assault. Due to a similar policy in Washington state, Washington Correctional Center for Women currently houses a serial rapist. Connecticut and Massachusetts have both passed similar legislation.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Abigail Shrier explains that, unlike most men’s prisons, women’s prisons do not separate inmates based on the severity of their crimes. Also unlike men’s prisons, Central California Women’s Facility in Cowchilla, which currently houses eleven male inmates, houses eight inmates to a room, with a sink and toilet inside the cell and only a cowboy door for modesty. This allows neither privacy nor escape for women who are uncomfortable or feel unsafe being housed with male prisoners.
Recent polling data reveals that the radical abortion agenda being embraced by the political left is not even popular with their own base. In a nationwide survey, the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List found that “53% of likely voters are more likely to vote for a Republican candidate who supports a 15-week limit on abortion versus just 28% of voters who prefer a Democratic candidate who supports unlimited abortion up until the moment of birth. Independent voters break strongly to the GOP side by a 54% to 18% margin.”
This is especially relevant as the Supreme Court considers Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case challenging Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks. The Court has agreed to rule on the central question of “Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.” This case could significantly undermine Roe v. Wade and play an essential role in ending abortion.
In a recent video from Take Charge MN, Rashad Turner, a former leader of Black Lives Matter explained why he left the organization. “I believed the organization stood for exactly what the name implies,” Turner said,
Black lives do matter. However, after a year on the inside, I learned they had little concern for rebuilding black families, and they cared even less about improving the quality of education for students in Minneapolis.
A year and a half after he founded the Saint Paul chapter of Black Lives Matter, Turner left and is now engaged in a movement that is seeking to rebuild families and expand access to quality education.
Until recently, Black Lives Matter stated on their website that one of their goals is to “disrupt the nuclear family.” This goal is incredibly harmful. The data shows that marriage reduces poverty in every racial demographic, and family breakdown consistently harms children and communities. Last year, World magazine’s Tim Lamer drew attention to the international data on fatherlessness, pointing out that throughout the world, fatherlessness hurts kids. Even if the economic disparities are removed, kids who grow up without a dad still face hurdles that their peers do not. No program can ever replace fathers.
