From Madrid, Spain (video is at link; Spain’s population is about 46.7 million):

Mar 10, 2010 / 12:51 am

Nearly one million Spaniards marched in cities across the country on March 7 defending the right to life of the unborn and demanding that the government revoke Spain’s new law on abortion recently passed by the Senate and signed by King Juan Carlos.

Over 300 pro-life organizations collaborated in the “International March for Life 2010,” which was held last Sunday in numerous cities across Spain.

The largest march took place in Madrid, where 600,000 people, including many families, dressed in red t-shirts and carried signs and banners. The protesters marched from Cibeles Plaza to the Gate of the Sun.

The event in Madrid concluded with the reading of a manifesto by journalist Sonsoles Calavera demanding the government revoke the new law on abortion—now the most liberal in all of Europe.

Go here for the rest of the story.

April Castro and the headline writers at the supposedly “objective” Associated Press are obviously not pleased with changes the Texas State Board of Education made to the Lone Star State’s social studies curriculum.

Castro’s report (HT to a NewsBusters e-mailer) makes almost no attempt to hide her clear disdain. She includes references to a “far-right faction” (a “faction” that happened to constitute a two-thirds majority!) and “ultraconservatives,” while uniformly describing leftists as mere Democrats, and generally comes across as a sore loser in solidarity with the poor, outvoted libs.

You’ll also see in the excerpt that follows that the story’s headline is disgracefully over the top:

Texas ed board vote reflects far-right influences

AUSTIN, Texas — A far-right faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded Friday in injecting conservative ideals into social studies, history and economics lessons that will be taught to millions of students for the next decade.

Teachers in Texas will be required to cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation’s Founding Fathers, but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state. Curriculum standards also will describe the U.S. government as a “constitutional republic,” rather than “democratic,” and students will be required to study the decline in value of the U.S. dollar, including the abandonment of the gold standard.

“We have been about conservatism versus liberalism,” said Democrat Mavis Knight of Dallas, explaining her vote against the standards. “We have manipulated strands to insert what we want it to be in the document, regardless as to whether or not it’s appropriate.”

…. Ultraconservatives wielded their power over hundreds of subjects this week, introducing and rejecting amendments on everything from the civil rights movement to global politics. Hostilities flared and prompted a walkout Thursday by one of the board’s most prominent Democrats, Mary Helen Berlanga of Corpus Christi, who accused her colleagues of “whitewashing” curriculum standards.

By late Thursday night, three other Democrats seemed to sense their futility and left, leaving Republicans to easily push through amendments heralding “American exceptionalism” and the U.S. free enterprise system, suggesting it thrives best absent excessive government intervention.

Castro should have been asking why the items described in the excerpt, plus the following cited by the AP writer in unexcerpted paragraphs, haven’t been in the social studies curriculum all along:

• “… the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its impact on global politics.”
• former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.
• “a reference to the Second Amendment right to bear arms in a section about citizenship in a U.S. government class.”

Apparently the ultimate insult occurred when “Conservatives beat back multiple attempts to include hip-hop as an example of a significant cultural movement.”

Oh the humanity.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Effective today (see the March 12 entry; HT Right Ohio), it’s the ORPINO (Ohio Republican Party In Name Only) establishment’s Dave Yost against the Tea Party movement’s Seth Morgan (bolds are mine):

Ohio Tea Party movement endorses Seth Morgan, CPA for Auditor of State

The Ohio Tea Party PAC, the newly formed PAC of the Ohio Liberty Council, has endorsed Seth Morgan, CPA for Auditor of State. The Ohio Liberty Council is composed of Ohio’s Tea Party groups, 912 groups, and other grassroots groups throughout Ohio.

Requiring a 7/8th’s majority of the Ohio groups, the Ohio Tea Party PAC voted to endorse Seth Morgan, CPA for Auditor of State. All statewide races were considered, but Seth Morgan, CPA was the only candidate chosen to be endorsed. Additionally, Seth Morgan, CPA is the first Tea Party endorsed statewide candidate of 2010.

“7/8ths of Tea Party and other like minded groups choosing to endorse a candidate is a strong statement. It means they have embraced someone as embodying their values. That does not come easily,” said Chris Littleton, President of the Ohio Liberty Council and the Cincinnati Tea Party.

“Ohio Republican Party Chairman Kevin DeWine said that the Republican Party needs to listen to the Tea Party movement. Well, the movement has spoken and said they want Seth Morgan as Auditor,” said Rob Scott, Friends of Seth Morgan Communications Director. “The Ohio Tea Party movement is behind Seth Morgan.”

… Members of the Ohio Liberty Council include:

Akron Tea Party, Americans Against Government Excess, Ashland Tea Party, Ashtabula County Patriots, Athens Tea Party, Buckeye Firearms Association, Canton Tea Party, Cincinnati Tea Party, Central Ohio 912 Project, The Children of Liberty, Chillicothe Tea Party, Cincinnati 912 Project, Columbiana County Tea Party, Columbus Tea Party, Cleveland Tea Party, Dayton Tea Party, Defiance Freedom, Eastern Ohio Concerned Citizens, Findlay 912 Project, The Forgotten Man, Grand Lake Patriots, Hamilton Tea Party, Holmes County Liberty Coalition, Homemakers for America, Holgate Tea Party, If You Believe, Knox County 912 Project, Lancaster Tea Party, Lorain County 912 Project, The Mansfield North Central Ohio Tea Party Association, Marietta OH 912 Project, Medina County Friends and Neighbors, Mentor 912 Group, North Central Ohio Conservatives, Ohio Freedom Alliance, Organizing for Freedom, Ottawa Tea Party, Patriots Unite, Portage County Tea Party, Sons of Liberty Riders, Springboro Tea Party, Springfield Tea Party, Stark 912 Patriots, Summit 912 Project , Union County 912, WALNUT, West Central Ohio 912, Wilmington 912 Project , Wellsville Tea Party, Westlake 912 Project, Wooster 912 Project, Van Wert Tea Party, Young Americans for Liberty – OSU, Young Americans for Liberty – University of Cincinnati, and Zanesville Patriots.

All of a sudden, old Dave’s list of endorsing politicians and others afraid for their future viability if they’re seen supporting or donating to the opposition doesn’t look quite as impressive when side-by-sided against over 50 legitimate grass-roots groups. Not to slight all of the others in any way, but the Buckeye Firearms group’s inclusion in the list is an especially huge coup for Morgan.

One thing you can say about the Apparatchik Press — er, the Associated Press — is that it’s leaving no stone unturned in its attempt to prop up their guy Barack Obama.

In the tenth paragraph of an AP report today by Ben Feller on President Obama’s stack of priorities (“For Obama, big agenda and small window for results”), the wire service’s Ben Feller bitterly clings to an AP-GfK Roper poll result that is sharply at variance with others, and assumes that it gives Obama a level of clout that doesn’t exist outside the grounds of the White House:

Obama has a key edge in setting the agenda: public approval. His job-performance rating is holding mainly steady at 53 percent, while a new Associated Press-GfK poll finds that fewer people approve of Congress – a mere 22 percent – than at any point in Obama’s presidency.

Well, of course his approval is 53% in AP-GfK la-la land. The poll’s sample, as you can see at the top right (found at Page 31 of the 42-page PDF, consisted of 33% declared Democrats and 23% declared Republicans. The sample’s independents who were willing to declare a leaning split evenly at 12% each, leading to overall party totals of 45% Democrat and 34% Republican. That’s so widely and obviously at variance with what other polls are finding that it almost isn’t worth documenting. But I will anyway.

AP-GfK has Obama at 53% approve, 46% disapprove (Page 3 of the report).

Gallup has Obama at 46% approve, 45% disapprove today. That’s a 6% difference in the approval margin compared to AP-GfK.

Rasmussen has Obama’s approval numbers during the past week at 43%-48%, and his disapprovals from between 52%-56%. Today’s figures are 44% approve, 54% disapprove — a 17-point swing from AP-GfK (from +7 to -10). Rasmussen has the party affiliation as 35.1% Dem and 32.1% GOP, a difference of 7 points from AP-GfK’s 33%-23%.

But the most telling approval result relating to Obama’s popularity was found in Missouri on Wednesday, when “The Show Me State temporarily became the No-Show State on Wednesday as some prominent Missouri Democrats decided they’d rather be somewhere else when President Obama came to push his massive health care overhaul plan.”

It would appear that Obama’s fellow party members aren’t as convinced that the AP’s cooked polls are reliable as Ben Feller is.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Pathetic excuse of the week: In a story that is another element of the apparent press- and government-orchestrated effort to take down Toyota — an effort that early-March sales results indicate is fortunately backfiring — ABC News offers this “explanation” for including tachometer footage taken in a parked car while making viewers think it was shot during a “sudden acceleration” incident:

“This was a misjudgment made in the editing room,” Lenzner said. “They should have left the shaky shot in. But I want to make clear that the two-second shot that was used did not change the outcome of the report in any way.”

No, they never would have done the “not-shaky shot” unless the intent from the very beginning was to overdramatize and mislead.

The ABC story aired on Monday, February 22, which “just happens” to be the day after a Sunday report by the Detroit News’s David Shepardson — picked up by the Associated Press and then parroted in early Monday TV and other news reports — falsely characterized an internal Toyota presentation about recall results as one that “bragged” and “boasted.”

Once again, David, AP, and other press apparatchiks — in Japanese culture, and at Japanese-headquartered companies with operations in America, bragging is a cultural taboo, and it almost never happens, most certainly not in a presentation to a top Japanese executive.

Isn’t it amazing how all these things “somehow” came together at once, and just in time to intimidate Toyota officials about to testify at Congressional hearings?

The culturally tone-deaf enterprise conducted by a lot of people whose “diversity training” has supposedly enabled them to know better dances on the edge of xenophobia.

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HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on last Sunday’s “Meet the Press” that “(health) insurance companies (will) … ultimately pay … taxes“ imposed on them by the government.

Of course, she’s wrong. The Business & Media Institute’s Dan Kennedy correctly notes that the people who really end up paying in some combination are:

• Policyholders
• Employers
• Wage earners
• Investors

This leads Kennedy to ask, “Is the Administration Stupid or Lying?”

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, because regardless of whether postures such as these are ignorant or deliberate, they and the people who propound them are definitely dangerous.

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Awww, California RINO and gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman hearts Van Jones.

That would be former “green jobs czar” Van Jones, who is a 9/11 truther and a 9/11 “deserver.” — and who just recently was shown to have praised the so-called “human shields” who went to Iraq in a hopelessly naive attempt to “protect” Saddam Hussein and prevent the Iraq War from commencing in 2003.

Golden Staters deserve better choices in 2010 than Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown v. Whitman. It doesn’t look likely.

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Christopher Horner in “Climategate: Three of the Four Temperature Datasets Now Irrevocably Tainted” —

The warmist response to Climategate — the discovery of the thoroughly corrupt practices of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) — was that the tainted CRU dataset was just one of four independent data sets. You know. So really there’s no big deal.

Thanks to a FOIA request, the document production of which I am presently plowing through — and before that, thanks to the great work of Steve McIntyre, and particularly in their recent, comprehensive work, Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts — we know that NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) passed no one’s test for credibility. Not even NASA’s.

In fact, CRU’s former head, Phil Jones, even told his buddies that while people may think his dataset — which required all of those “fudge factors” (their words) — is troubled, “GISS is inferior” to CRU.

… wo down, two to go.

Reto Ruedy refers his inquiring (ok, credulous) reporter to NCDC — the third of the four data sets — as being the gold standard for U.S. temperatures.

But NCDC has been thoroughly debunked elsewhere — Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts have found NCDC completely incredible, having made a practice out of not including cooler temperature stations over time, exaggerating the warming illusion.

Three out of the four temperature datasets stink, with corroboration from the alarmists.

The whole human-caused global warming argument is irrevocably tainted and stinks to high heaven, i.e., it’s a proven batch of globaloney.

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Congrats to My Pet Jawa’s Rusty Shackleford and all others who followed “Jihad Jane” (HT Michelle Malkin) and did the dirty work that led to her indictment (DOJ press release is here).

It’s not very often that a group of bloggers/citizen investigators can credibly say that they have made the world a bit less dangerous. This is one of those times.

From Richmond, Virginia:

Mar 12, 2010 / 03:52 am

Rather than passing two bills headed by abortion supporters which aimed to impose restrictions on pregnancy centers, Virginia legislators chose to pass a resolution this week that praised the pregnancy centers work.

Just one week after H.B. 452 and S.B. 188 headed by Planned Parenthood and NARAL were introduced, subcommittees in both the Virginia House and Senate dismissed the bills after legislators heard from numerous pregnancy center workers and their affiliates. The pro-abortion groups had sought to impose restrictions on pregnancy centers and to limit the revenue they receive from pro-life license plates.

During a stunning turn of events in the initial hearings in January, “SB 188 was heard by a Senate subcommittee, and after an extensive hearing featuring compelling testimony by directors of pregnancy resource centers and women who have been helped by them, the bill’s patron decided to withdraw his bill from consideration for the year,” Jeff Caruso, founding director of the Virginia Catholic Conference, told CNA on Thursday.

“Immediately after this amazing reversal, a House subcommittee heard similar testimony and then voted to reject HB 452,” he explained.

“One topic that resonated especially at these hearings was the high degree of skepticism legislators had about the ‘study’ done by NARAL of pregnancy resource centers in Virginia,” Caruso added. “One committee member noted that it was very much akin to one industry doing an investigation of a competing industry, and that you would not expect such a study to be objective or credible.”

Caruso also said that he found “it particularly ironic that Virginia’s abortion clinics are not even required to be licensed by the state despite the fact that they perform invasive surgeries, and yet the same groups who have opposed legislation year after year to require abortion clinic licensing were leading the charge for intrusive regulations on pro-life centers this year.”

After the two bills were defeated on Jan. 26, a resolution praising the work of pregnancy centers in the state was introduced in early March and was passed this week by both the Virginia House of Delegates and Senate.

“Pregnancy resource centers provide extremely valuable, life-affirming services to Virginia women and their babies,” Caruso explained. “These centers are financially supported by partner churches and by generous individuals, and through the work of many volunteers. They have saved our Commonwealth millions of dollars by stepping up to the plate to provide vitally important services to those who are in need.”

“States should be helping these centers, not hindering their good work,” he underscored. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

…that once tried to destroy him.

With all due respect, the Dave Yost endorsement flies in the face of everything for which I thought Ken stood. Why not just stay out of it like we had hoped some would do in Ken’s primary? This move not only follows the establishment’s narrative but most outrageous is that it condones the musical chairs, nepotism and back-room deals that the ORP establishment played and eventually used to destroy Blackwell’s run for Governor. Forget about that Ken?

The leadership void continues…and the heart of the Republican Party’s dysfunction continues to be the fact that it is inherently impossible to fight that which you have become…or as my favorite stay-at-home mom says, you won’t ever win the “good fight,” if you try to do battle in Saul’s armor.

Man, that must be some, rockin’ sandbox…

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Note: This post originally went up at about 7:00 a.m., and will stay at the top for much of the day.

The wife of Democratic Congressman John Conyers of Michigan was sentenced yesterday for bribery.

Here is how the Associated Press presented its headline and first few paragraphs in the matter:

The headline is pretty pathetic considering who the “councilperson” is related to, but at least the AP’s Ed White got Conyers’s party affiliation into his second paragraph.

So, overall, you might be tempted to think that the AP might be improving a bit. Not really.

The treatment of the Conyers clan is markedly different from the way the wire service (mis)handled another story, this one involving a former Congressman:

It’s interesting how the unbylined item found room for “Rep. Shays” in its story headline, even though he’s no longer a congressman, and couldn’t find space for the name of current congressman “Conyers.” And though AP waited until the fourth paragraph to identify Shays’s party, it did so with the full name and not a single letter as White did with Conyers (perhaps to avoid search engine detection?).

Double standards, anyone?

Oh, and here’s a Name That Party bonus:

The AP report never bothers to inform us that the judge is a Clinton appointee.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

… and while it’s too early to weigh in, it’s also not too early to link to stories:

• Dustin Wyatt, Examiner.com — Ohio Secretary of State allegedly loses petitions for May 4th ballot
• WFIN News — Local attorney challenges ruling he won’t appear on GOP primary ballot
• William Hershey, Dayton Daily News — “DeWine foe may mount legal challenge to get on ballot”
• Matthew Fricke, Examiner.com — “Christopher stages legal battle in AG race; Brunner denies foul play”
• William Hershey, Dayton Daily News — “Brunner fires back in AG ballot signature flap”

James Nash, Columbus Dispatch — “2 dispute ballot disqualification”:

… early 2,000 petition signatures simply vanished in the hands of Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a man whom Brunner disqualified from the May ballot for attorney general alleged yesterday.

Kenton lawyer Steve Christopher, a conservative Republican who had sought Ohio’s top legal job, was one of five candidates Brunner scrubbed from the ballot Friday for failing to turn in 1,000 valid signatures of registered Ohio voters.

…. the lawyer (Christopher) says the secretary of state simply lost petition forms containing 1,962 signatures. His campaign says it turned in 2,750 signatures in all.

It’s also not too early for three observations:

• It seems almost inconceivable that Christopher’s peeps wouldn’t have turned in the number of signatures claimed.
• If there really is tangible evidence that Christopher is being improperly denied ballot access, the silence of ORPINO (the Republican Party In Name Only) is deafening.
• An informant tells me that there is tangible evidence supporting the notion that Christopher indeed turned in the number of signatures he claimed.

Michael Barone in today’s Wall Street Journal:

Are there enough votes in the House to pass the Senate’s health-care bill? As of today, it’s clear there aren’t. House Democratic leaders have brushed aside White House calls to bring the bill forward by March 18, when President Barack Obama heads to Asia. Nevertheless, analysts close to the Democratic leadership tell me they’re confident the leadership will find some way to squeeze out the 216 votes needed for a majority.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has indeed shown mastery at amassing majorities. But it’s hard to see how she’ll do so on this one. The arithmetic as I see it doesn’t add up.

Prudence would suggest that nothing be taken for granted, especially given that, as noted here last Friday, supposed Blue Dog Dems like Steve Driehaus, in playing nice with Organizing For America, may be preparing to morph into lapdogs at crunch time.

Driehaus is on the National Republican Congressional Committee’s Code Red List. Here is his contact page. Burn the bandwidth, and melt the phone lines.

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Those darned staff members — “Pelosi’s staff knew of Massa allegations sooner than claimed.” And somehow Pelosi didn’t. Sure.

These people want to run a $2 trillion sector of the economy.

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The AP’s Ed White must have known that the Name That Party Patrol was on the lookout (HT Doug Ross), and he did just enough to keep them off his back:

Ex-Detroit councilwoman gets 37 months for bribery

DETROIT (AP) — A former Detroit city councilwoman was sentenced to more than three years in prison Wednesday for bribery after a federal judge refused to set aside her guilty plea during a stormy court hearing dominated by a dispute over evidence of other payoffs.

As guards cleared the packed courtroom, Monica Conyers yelled that she planned to appeal. The wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., wanted to withdraw her guilty plea, suggesting she was the victim of “badgering” last year when she admitted taking cash to support a Houston company’s sludge contract with the city.

If it had been a Republican, you can take it to the bank that the headline and first paragraph would have referred to a “Republican congressman’s wife.”

Detroit is an object lesson in what happens when one party dominates a government for decades without a meaningful challenge.

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This (HT Hot Air) is a “death panel” story.

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For the “Your Tax Dollars at Work” file:

Mass school closures approved in Kansas City, Mo.

Facing potential bankruptcy, the board that governs the once flush-with-cash Kansas City school district is taking the unusual and contentious step of shuttering almost half its schools.

Administrators say the closures are necessary to keep the district from plowing through what little is left of the $2 billion it received as part of a groundbreaking desegregation case.

According to a somewhat out of date Wiki page, the district’s budget was $328 million for 22,000 students, which is just shy of $15,000 per student.

Cato’s Paul Ciotti has the definitive analysis of what has proven to be public education’s signature failure.

“Be careful what you wish for” follow-up — On Monday, in the first Lucid Links item, I suggested that Toyota was “playing possum” and that its move to aggressive 0%, 60-month financing and other incentives will cause its March sales to “bounce back to about where they were before its recall issues hit, and that a certain pair of formerly proud automakers that are now wards of the state will be the ones most severely hurt by the resurgence.”

Well, it look like there’s a very good chance I will be wrong about the first half of that prediction, as you can see from this AP report (bold is mine):

A high-ranking Toyota executive says the auto company’s North American sales spiked around 50 percent the first eight days of March as incentives helped lure customers after a series of embarrassing safety recalls.

Don Esmond, senior vice president of automotive operations for Toyota Motor Sales, said in an interview Tuesday that the early numbers surpassed the company’s expectations. Esmond, who was speaking at a conference for Toyota suppliers, didn’t give detailed figures.

Though I can’t tell whether Mr. Esmond is referring to a March vs. February or year-over-year comparison, it shows that what has for weeks had all the appearances of an orchestrated strategy to take down Toyota, with the all too willing cooperation of establishment press apparatchiks, is backfiring big time. If so, sweeeeet.

Perhaps the AP should try to find people who say they’ve switched to Toyota from Chrysler or GM because of the recent actions of what Michael Barone first called “Gangster Government” (uppercased) in May of last year. I’ll bet they’re out there.

As to the second half of that Monday prediction, if GM and Chrysler are indeed damaged by a continuation of what we’ve seen during the first eight days of March, “… it couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch.”

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Good for them — Toyota dealers strike back, with a very serious allegation evidencing the orchestration referred to in the previous item (bolds are mine):

Toyota Dealers Fight Back Against “Predatory Tactics” by GM
Say they’re upset that their tax money is being used to lure away their customers

The head of the Toyota National Dealer Council today blasted the federal government for using ‘taxpayer dollars’ to fund incentive campaigns to lure customers away from Toyota, and accused GM of using ‘fear’ in an attempt to lure away its customers, 1200 WOAI news reports.

“As an American citizen, it is tough on my part to pay tax dollars to an entity that can turn around and use those tax dollars to get my fellow American citizens to not do business with me,” Paul Atkinson, who owns Atkinson Toyota in Bryan Texas, and is President of the dealer council, tells 1200 WOAI news.

…. “There are some mailing lists which have been given to dealers, and there have been some mailers, in fact, I’ve seen several of them,” he said. “On the outside of the envelope it says ‘important Toyota recall information enclosed.’ But when you open up that envelope, it is nothing more than an advertisement trying to get you to come trade your Toyota in at a GM store.”

Atkinson calls those ‘predatory incentives,’ which he says should not be allowed to be employed by a company which is majority owned by US taxpayers against another company which employs hundreds of thousands of Americans.

… Atkinson also suggested that the recent Congressional hearings and federal government concern over Toyota’s accelerator problems may have been sparked less by a desire to protect the public, and more by a desire to protect the federal government’s investment in GM.

“There is a list of twenty manufacturers on these recall lists, and Toyota is number 17,” he said. “If we’re having hearings on number 17, what are they doing about numbers 1 through 16?”

If the apparatchik press were interested in a tiny bit of redemption, it would follow up on Atkinson’s assertions. Don’t hold your breath.

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“Beijing vows not to use U.S. debt for political gain.” How (not) reassuring that our continued economic well-being depends on the continued forbearance of a communist state. The mere prospect affects geopolitical calculations, and not favorably.

From Indianapolis (internal link to related blog post added by me):

Mar 10, 2010 / 06:23 am

An Indiana woman who inadvertently dialed a pro-life group instead of a Planned Parenthood clinic about her appointment for an abortion instead found the support she needed to decide to bring her child to term.

The story was recounted in a March 9 report from David Bereit, National Director of 40 Days for Life.

A young woman in Indianapolis, Indiana, named as “Erin,” had sent her children to school and childcare at a friend’s house when she noticed she was late for her abortion appointment at Planned Parenthood.

Though she thought she was calling Planned Parenthood to see if she could still have the abortion, she misdialed the number and instead called the cell phone of 40 Days for Life Indianapolis.

Joseph, the man who answered her call, tried to calm the woman. He took her name and number and said that a counselor would call her back.

The counselor, Elizabeth, called back and begged her not to hang up. She told Erin she had not reached Planned Parenthood and asked if she was a Christian.

When Erin said she was, Elizabeth told her God’s grace was at work in the “wrong number,” 40 Days for Life reports.

Erin explained that desperation had led her to the abortion center. She already had four children and their father was in jail. She had lost her job, her electricity was about to be shut off and she lacked rent money.

Elizabeth spread news about Erin’s situation to other pro-lifers. One volunteer offered to pay her electric bill, while ten others pooled their cash to pay her rent.

A local group is now working with Erin to help her find a job.

“She has a lot of potential,” Eileen said, “but needs support since her mother and sister are still encouraging her to abort the baby.”

Erin has reportedly reacted with “joy and disbelief” at the strangers’ help. She has called Planned Parenthood to cancel her appointment and to request a refund. …

Go here for the rest of the story.