Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – President Barack Obama, abortion, the Supreme Court and health care dominated pro-life news in 2009. As LifeNews.com looks back on the year — the first with a new pro-abortion president — we find the pro-life movement essentially on the defensive.

Thanks to a pro-abortion president and Congress, pro-life advocates spent most of their time attempting to hold back the opening of the floodgates ushering in an expansion of abortion and taxpayer financing of it.

With the health care debate continuing into the new year, those efforts will be forced to continue — although the potential for pro-life gains in the 2010 elections provides significant hope for the future.

1. Health Care: The health care debate has become the central focus of the pro-life movement during the latter half of 2009 and for good reason. If the abortion language in the final bill is anything like what is currently in the Senate version of the legislation, the result would be the greatest expansion of taxpayer funding of abortions since the 1970s when the Hyde Amendment was adopted. The Senate bill not only would allow the forcing of taxpayers to pay for abortions but would let the Obama administration force insurance plans to pay for them as well.

The end result? With Hyde getting credit for stopping more than 100,000 abortions annually, the health care bill could result in a 10% or greater increase in abortions — all financed with government money. This doesn’t even touch on the rationing, promotion of assisted suicide, and lack of conscience protection for medical professionals found in the bill.

2. Barack Obama promoting abortion: The influence of the president of the United States on abortion policy can never be underestimated, despite some who still think the president doesn’t have any impact.

LifeNews.com has the most comprehensive chronicle of Obama’s pro-abortion actions, but the most consequential ones include his overturning of the Mexico City Policy and allowing tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to flow to abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood and Marie Stopes International that not only do abortions by lobby pro-life nations to overturn or water down their laws. Full story at LifeNews.com

Planned Parenthood Found 2009 Difficult With Abortion Centers Closing Rapidly
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion business in the United States, doing 305,310 abortions in its own facilities or just under one-third of all American abortions. But the billion-dollar abortion giant faced a tough year in 2009 as it saw abortion centers close at a higher rate than normal.

Jim Sedlak, the director of STOPP International, a watchdog group, told LifeNews.com today that he’s seen Planned Parenthood centers close over the year but never as fast as in 2009.

“STOPP has been fighting for 25 years to close down Planned Parenthood abortion facilities. During that time, we have seen the number of Planned Parenthood non-express clinics fall from a high of 938 in 1995 to 797 today,” he explained. “More significantly, 2009 saw the rate of Planned Parenthood closings go from one a month to over two a month,” he said.

“Although the organization reported record income ($1.04 billion) and a record number of babies killed in its own facilities, there have been a number of signs that Planned Parenthood is beginning to feel the relentless pressure from those of us who will not stand by and watch it take our money and kill our children,” he said. Full story at LifeNews.com

Highlight any portion you want: