HYDERABAD, India, July 15, 2019 (Morning Star News) – Christians who worshipped privately in their homes in a village in eastern India were dragged to local leaders last month and forced to bow to a goddess idol, sources said.

The mob action on June 14 followed an announcement two days earlier by the heads of Mahuatoli village, Gumla District in Jharkhand state, that 12 Christian families would be banished if they did not return to the tribal Sarna religion, they said.

Threatened with death, most of the Christian families have fled the village.

“Threats have always been there in this area in Gumla District, but it had never escalated to this point that the Sarna extremists vowed to take lives,” said area pastor Boyen Munda. “They are not in a right state of mind now. The Hindu extremist forces have joined hands with them and have been inciting them against the believers.”

The mob of 20 villagers broke into the home of Jogiya Munda and pushed him and his widowed mother out of their house, the pastor said. Munda and his mother, who have been Christians for 17 years, were dragged to the village leaders and forced to sit and bow to the goddess idol, Pastor Munda said.

“They poured buckets of water on them [as a purification rite] and made them do a ritual which is believed to be a procedure to renounce Christ,” Pastor Munda said. “They fled to a safer place…

An Oklahoma state judge on Friday upheld the state’s ban on a common late-term abortion procedure, making it the first time a judge in the U.S. has reviewed such a law and not overturned it.  

Oklahoma County Judge Cindy Truong handed down her decision from the bench. 

The lawsuit was brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights and Tulsa Women’s Clinic, an abortion clinic. 

Truong upheld a 2015 law that bans dilation and evacuation (D&E) abortion, a procedure that involves the dilation of the cervix and the removal of the unborn baby by literally pulling it apart, limb by limb – pulling out an arm, a leg, the head, and so forth. Pro-life groups refer to the procedure as “dismemberment abortion.”

Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter called Truong’s decision “a major victory for basic human decency in Oklahoma.” 

“Dismemberment abortions are barbaric, brutal and subject unborn children to more cruelty than we allow for death row inmates,” Hunter said. “It is unconscionable to think that we would allow this practice to continue. Judge Truong is to be commended for declaring this legislation constitutional.”

D&E abortions were described in excruciating detail in the movie Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer.

The Center for Reproductive Rights said in a statement it was exploring its legal options….