A woman says she cannot believe her premature baby is alive even after doctors told her the baby was not likely to live.

When Kirsty Mizon’s water broke at 13 weeks, doctors told her she would likely have a miscarriage.

“I was devastated. I went home and I waited for the inevitable to happen,” Mizon explained, according to the Christian Institute. “But it didn’t. My baby’s heartbeat was still going strong.”

Doctors then told her that she would need to consider an abortion because they said the baby could be born with abnormalities or stillborn.

“All the way through the pregnancy they were offering me terminations and saying he will be handicapped and won’t be able to use his limbs,” Mizon said.

“They gave him a one percent survival rate, because I was constantly losing amniotic fluid.

“I didn’t know if I was strong enough to go through it, but I couldn’t give up on my baby,” she said.

Mizon, 23, eventually began making funeral arrangements for the baby, and she went into early labor at 29 weeks and gave birth to a baby girl.

“I heard my baby cry,” she said. “It was the best feeling ever, the greatest sound I have ever heard. The midwife turned to me and said ‘He is a she, you have a little girl.’ I couldn’t believe it.

“I couldn’t believe it. I had kept her in there without fluid for almost four months.

Mizon named the baby girl…

The Trump administration issued a new rule Friday requiring insurance companies that cover abortion within Obamacare to issue two bills to consumers – one for abortion coverage and one for the rest of their monthly premium.

Under a current law known as the Hyde Amendment, taxpayer-funded abortion is prohibited except in the cases of rape, incest and to save the mother’s life.

The new rule, issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), applies to insurance plans within Obamacare’s state-based exchanges that cover abortions prohibited under Hyde. CMS estimates that 18 states currently have insurers that offer coverage of abortion services prohibited under the Hyde Amendment.

Section 1303 of the Affordable Care Act – better known as Obamacare – requires insurance companies that offer plans covering abortion to “collect from each enrollee in the plan (without regard to the enrollee’s age, sex, or family status) a separate payment” for abortion services.  

The requirement received significant mainstream coverage when Obamacare was debated and was added as a compromise between pro-life and pro-choice groups – although both sides at the time criticized the concept. 

“Providing these separate bills is an essential step in implementing the Affordable Care Act’s bar on tax credits going toward coverage of abortions for which public funding is prohibited,”…

YANGON, Burma, December 20, 2019 (Morning Star News) – Ethnic rebels who closed more than 100 churches in eastern Burma (Myanmar) in 2018 have allowed 51 Baptist churches to reopen, sources said.

Ethnic Wa rebels of the United Wa State Army (UWSA) this week announced they had permitted 51 Baptist churches to reopen in northern Shan state after investigating the congregations and their activities for 14 months. The review process is still underway for the remaining churches, according to UWSA officials.

At least 10 church buildings were destroyed when UWSA troops closed the churches in September 2018 and detained more than 200 Christians who were later released after investigation.

“We are investigating the rest of the churches. We shut down the churches because some people who work at the churches were very extreme,” Nyi Rang, in-charge of UWSA’s liaison office in Lashio town, northern Shan state, told Morning Star News. “In some places, there were a few houses. But there were many churches. It created disunity with local ethnic communities.”

The general secretary of Lahu Baptist Convention, identified only as the Rev. Lazarus, said the churches were not “extreme.”

“I don’t think churches and our religious activities create division and problems, because we have churches that belong to ethnic Wa, Kachin, Lahu, Ahkar and Lisu,” Lazarus told Morning Star News. “There…

President Trump’s nominations to the federal courts have flipped three circuits making them majority Republican-appointed, lowered the age of GOP-appointed judges by 14 years, and reshaped the judiciary for decades to come, according to a series of new reports.

When Trump took office in January 2017, only four of the 13 U.S. appeals courts had a majority of Republican-appointed judges. Today, seven of the 13 appeals courts do.

This year alone, the Second, Third and 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have flipped from majority Democratic-nominated to majority Republican-nominated, according to Law.com. 

All total, 187 Trump-appointed federal judges have been confirmed by the GOP-controlled U.S. Senate.

“America’s courts are critical to the preservation of religious liberty – and one of the greatest legacies for our first freedom has been the appointment of one of the youngest classes of conservative, textualist judges who will be on the court for the next 30 or even 40 years,” read an analysis by First Liberty Institute, a religious liberty legal organization that supports Trump’s nominations.

“The excellent judges being confirmed for lifetime appointments right now will help safeguard religious liberty for our children and grandchildren. It will be the next generation who will reclaim and reap the benefits as they are set free to enjoy more religious freedom than ever…

(RNS) — The final days of 2019 are typically a time for celebrations and congratulations. But for some United Methodists, the closing days of the year may also hold a note of anxiety.

On Jan. 1, the country’s second-largest Protestant denomination will usher in new, stricter standards barring LGBTQ United Methodists from ordination and marriage. Those bans, voted on by the global denomination in February, include new penalties for clergy violating the rules.

Three days before they go into effect, First United Methodist Church of Dallas, a venerable 172-year-old downtown institution, will take the bold step of offering a special service reaffirming marriage vows — heterosexual and same-sex.

A diverse congregation of 1,800 members, with 700-800 in attendance most Sundays, First United Methodist is not an attention-grabbing church. It does not affiliate with the Reconciling Ministries Network, an organization that seeks the full inclusion of LGBTQ people in the United Methodist Church. But neither does it take a hard line on sexuality. Its members span the theological and political spectrum from conservative to centrist to liberal.

Which makes the ceremony reaffirming wedding vows especially noteworthy. 

Senior pastor Andy Stoker said it was the recommendation of a commission he assembled shortly after the denomination’s vote to clamp down on LGBTQ inclusion.

That commission,…

A comedian who previously performed at the 2018 White House Correspondents’ dinner said in a new Netflix special that her abortion made her feel like God.

“You can feel any way that you want after an abortion,” said 34-year-old writer and comedian Michelle Wolf in her Netflix special “Joke Show.” 

She said, “Get one! See how you feel! You know how my abortion made me feel? Very powerful. You know how people say you can’t play God? I walked out of there being like, ‘Move over, Morgan Freeman. I am God!'”

She added later in her performance what she thought about the limits of abortion laws.

“A lot of people think that even if you’re allowed to get abortions, it should only be for a very few, specific reasons,” she says. “Well, I think you should be able to get an abortion for any reason you want.”

In April 2018, Wolf roasted President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ dinner. Trump did not attend.

She also joked about then-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Wolf was criticized for her performance at the dinner, but she addressed it in her new Netflix special.

“It was a job,” she said. “It didn’t pay well.”

“Then, afterward, all of these people were like, ‘You ruined the dinner,’” she recalled, “and I was like, ‘I ruin every dinner. Did you do no research?’”

She also talked about how female comedians are sometimes treated differently than their male…

Just days before a looming deadline, Tennessee’s Republican Gov. Bill Lee has consented to participate in a federal refugee resettlement program in 2020, a move that has angered conservative state leaders.

In a December 18 letter to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Lee thanked the Trump Administration for a Sept. 26 executive order requiring consent from local and state governments before thrusting refugee settlement programs on those jurisdictions.

“Thank you for consulting with the states to ensure this process is successful,” Lee wrote in the letter. “We feel strongly that this consultation is appropriate and that the federal government would be overstepping by requiring states to participate in this program.”

Lee’s decision makes Tennessee one of only a handful of Republican-led states agreeing to participate.

“The United States and Tennessee have always been, since the very founding of our nation, a shining beacon of freedom and opportunity for the persecuted and oppressed, particularly those suffering religious persecution,” the governor said in a news release announcing his decision. “My administration has worked extensively to determine the best outcome for Tennessee, and I will consent to working with President Trump and his administration to responsibly resettle refugees.”

Lee’s announcement came a…