Life Links 7/17/09

The House of Representatives has passed a spending bill with an amendment to allow the District of Columbia to pay for the abortions of poor women. Here's the roll call vote. A press release by the Susan B. Anthony list notes that the House voted 216-213 to prevent amendments dealing with social issues from receiving an up or down vote in the House.


Michael New reports that even pro-choice organizations can recognized that ending tax-subsidized abortions reduce the number of abortions performed.

The evidence presented about the effectiveness of public funding restrictions is very persuasive. A 1999 study by Cook et al. analyzed North Carolina’s provisions for public funding of abortions. North Carolina is unique because instead of funding abortions for low-income women through Medicaid, they did so through a separate state fund which periodically ran out of money. When funds were unavailable, the authors found a consistent increase in the birth rate and a decrease in the abortion rate. Furthermore, these trends were more pronounced among blacks. Another Guttmacher study found that the abortion rate among Medicaid recipients was more than twice as high in those states that publicly funded abortion through Medicaid.

The Washington Times has an article on a study which shows the unborn have memories. The best line comes when, after quoting a representative from National Right to Life, the story notes:

A call to NARAL Pro-Choice America for comment on the implications of the research were not returned.

Americans United for Life has posted Charmaine Yoest's testimony at the Sotomayor confirmation hearings.


In the News, reports on a report in the journal Obstetrician and Gynaecologist which notes a link between domestic violence and abortion.

A report in the Obstetrician and Gynaecologist (TOG) journal said a "significant number" of women requesting an abortion have been or are still in a violent relationship.

One in three has reportedly experienced a lifetime of domestic violence.

The report's authors are demanding a greater awareness about domestic violence; claiming the research underlines the need to support women seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies associated with violent partners.

Thirty per cent of women having a second abortion reported being in a violent relationship and women having a third or subsequent abortion were over 2.5 times as likely to report a history of physical or sexual abuse by a male partner.

Unfortunately, the authors somehow believe abortion can be a good thing for victims of domestic violence and can become a way for them to get away from their abuser.

They stress that some women are protected by abortion from continuing with unwanted pregnancies and are enabled to escape violent relationships.

Life Links 7/16/09

Wesley Smith shoots down Peter Singer’s advocacy for the health care rationing of people with disabilities.


Rebecca Taylor shows that Pharnygula needs to actually read a bill regarding human-animal hybrids before commenting on what it would do. It’s hilarious when someone who hasn’t read the bill, and apparently has no clue (he doesn’t seem to know that Britain has allowed attempts at human cloning using animal eggs) what Senators Brownback and Landrieu want to prevent in the U.S. tosses, out the terms “ignoramus,” “clowns” and “Rethuglicans.”


Michael Fumento relays embryonic stem cell research’s dirty little secret in Forbes.

Addressing a 2007 Wisconsin convention nine years later, Thomson articulated that the time frame had shifted to "decades away," plural.

The scientist didn't blame too little federal funding, as have others, according to the Associated Press. (Indeed, it's common for major publications to claim ES cell research has been "banned.") Rather Thomson blamed simple biology. Among other problems, ES cells require permanent use of dangerous immunosuppressive drugs. They have a nasty tendency to form tumors both malignant and benign including teratomas--meaning "monster tumor." Teratomas can grow larger than a football and can contain eyeball parts, hair and teeth. Yech!

OK, so how many "decades?"

The LA Times has a long article on Rev. Walter Hoye and his sidewalk counseling outside of an abortion clinic in Oakland.


David Freddoso posts an exchange between Senators Brownback and Durbin regarding tax-funded abortion in Washington, D.C.


NPR has an audio piece on the difficulty of creating embryonic stem cell lines.

Defaming Democrats for Life

I knew some pro-choice feminist bloggers were lazy but come on. Jessica at Feministing, Jill at Feministe and Amie Newman at the RHReality Check all claim Tim Ryan got kicked off Democrats for Life advisory board because he supports contraception or as Jill puts it “Congressman booted from Democrats for Life because he wants to reduce the abortion rate.”

None of them took a second to review Congressman Ryan’s voting record to see if it made sense for a prolife group to continue to have someone with a 0% prolife voting record over the last 3 years on their advisory board. Nor did they take a gander to see if anyone else who hadn’t been kicked off Democrats for Life’s advisory board supported contraception like say Nat Hentoff or James Langevin.

I guess anything to defame prolife groups, huh?

Life Links 7/15/09

Charlie Savage has an interesting piece in the New York Times about the Sotomayor hearings, abortion, Gonzalez v. Carhart, settled law and precedent.


Jonah Goldberg notes the lack of news about or follow up questions to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg rather noteworthy quote in her recent interview with the New York Times. He also discusses abortion's eugenics roots.


In First Things, Hadley Arkes discusses empathy and apathy. After discussing Laci's and Connor's law and court cases involving partial-birth abortion, Arkes writes (my emphasis),

These moments of empathy in the law should make clear enough that a jurist on the left is not supplied with levels of empathy for the suffering of pain that exceed the levels of ordinary folk not elevated in their sensibilities by a liberal persuasion. But these cases contain as well a deeper point that is rarely remarked and almost never speaks its name: Before we can engage our empathy there must be a prior judgment on the persons or animals or even things whose pain or disfigurement count. We recoil from inflicting cruel pain on animals, and we may even be appalled by the disfigurement of fine furniture in acts of gratuitous destruction. But the annals of our species also reveal the most remarkable capacity to screen out, as unnoticed or unheard, the pains of those marked for liquidation or subordination.

We do not ordinarily think that people lose their standing as human beings, and as bearers of rights, when they suddenly become weak and vulnerable and dependent on the care of others. But for many who have absorbed the idea of a right to abortion, the dependence of the fetus in the mother’s womb has been taken as a sign quite sufficient that the child has no standing as a separate being, with a claim to the protection of the law. The laws on abortion mark the child now as a living thing under the unchecked power of the pregnant woman. Whether it lives or dies must depend entirely on her will, not to be reviewed or judged by any other standard.

It is this hopeless subordination of the child in the womb that works, in this inverted outlook, to extinguish its rights. When we strip away the fuzzy language of empathy, what stands revealed is a prettified version of the Rule of the Strong: The strong will rule the weak, and their power to rule confirms the rightness of that rule.

The Miami Herald has an article whose title describes Obama's pick for surgeon general as "a Catholic who back abortion rights."

Regina Benjamin's Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic doesn't perform abortions. A clinic employee who declined to be identified said by telephone that patients seeking information about abortions would be referred to providers in the state.

But White House spokesman Reid Cherlin said Benjamin "supports the president's position on reproductive health issues."

Life Links 7/14/09

Good for Democrats for Life. They finally kicked Tim Ryan (D-OH) off of their advisory board. Ryan claims it has to do with his promotion of contraception but I'm guessing it has a little more to do with his voting record over the past couple of years including his votes in favor of expanded federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, his vote against an amendment to protect the Mexico City policy, his vote to protect Planned Parenthood's funding. His recent vote on the House Appropriations Committee against an amendment to prohibit the public funding of abortion in the District of Columbia could have been the straw that broke the camel's back.

His voting record since 2007 is basically the same as the most adamant of pro-choicers. He was even honored by Planned Parenthood.


It appears the individuals, including Norma McCorvey, who interrupted the Senate hearings on Judge Sotomayor were with Randall Terry.


Justin Barnard writes about new NIH head Francis Collins' positions on life issues. I was unaware of Collins' support of human cloning for research and his odd justification for it before reading this.


Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona signed a variety of abortion restrictions into law on Monday.

Why does evidence matter?

At Bench Memos, Wendy Long shares some questions from Cathy Cleaver Ruse regarding a question Judge Sonia Sotomayor asked regarding the case against the federal ban on partial-birth abortion.

In the case, National Abortion Federation v. Ashcroft, the National Abortion Federation claimed that partial-birth abortion was the safest abortion method in some cases and therefore the law banning the practice was unconstitutional. The Department of Justice requested the medical records to back up this claim with all identifying information regarding the patients removed. The partial-birth abortionists refused to provide any records with evidence to support their claim. As Cathy says: "This was tantamount to arguing that they should win the case on their word alone."

The District Judge ruled that the abortion providers should produce the medical records. That decision was appealed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Sotomayor sat on the appellate panel. During oral argument, according to the Associated Press (April 22, 2004), she stated: "I just don’t understand what the records will prove in this case."

Says Cathy: "What the records would prove is whether or not the partial-birth abortion doctors were telling the truth. It is irresponsible for a judge to insist that one side in a case merely be taken at its word, especially when evidence is readily available to corroborate or impeach its statements. Appellate courts are particularly unsuited to second-guessing the decisions of the trial court regarding evidence of this nature."

Overlooking the Obvious

The Abortioneers is a blog run by individuals who work at abortion clinics.

Here’s a taste of the thought process of one poster named Mr. Banana Grabber, who after discussing Lila Rose and all the abortion clinic counselors whom Lila has caught attempting to help cover-up statutory rape, tries to think about how to get rid of the “creepy older dudes who like sleeping with minors” (CODWLSWM).

Obviously, if I have to side with anyone I am going to side with clinic, but also there is a lot of footage of people at clinics definitely advising minors on how to avoid being caught by the clinic. I think this is inappropriate and not okay, but at the same time, they are trying to help the patient at the end of the day, and these young girls do need somewhere to go. Further, if Planned Parenthood or wherever is like YES WE WILL REPORT YOU that makes me nervous the creepy older dudes who are sleeping with minors will just take them to a sketchy doctor to get the procedure done which is also bad. Because the problem here is creepy older dudes who like sleeping with minors (CODWLSWM). Not the minor. If we could make CODWLSWMs go away, then we wouldn't have this problem, right? How do we make CODWLSWMs go away?

How about following the law, reporting the statutory rape and allowing the authorities to deal with the CODWLSWMs?

Banana Grabber is more concerned about the implausible scenario of a creepy older guy taking his victim to some other sketchy doctor (apparently different from Planned Parenthood, the supposedly non-sketchy abortion provider which is flouting the law) than Planned Parenthood violating the law, covering up statutory rape and sending a minor back into the arms of the creepy older guy.

Life Links 7/13/09

Marjorie Dannenfelser has a piece in the Weekly Standard entitled “The Abortion Administration” which discusses, among other items, the current health care plan being pushed through Congress.

But by now, nearly six months in, the bottom line for Barack Obama is clear. After making a few polite noises about finding "common ground" with pro-lifers, his administration has shown zero interest in doing so. Instead, the Obama agenda is to weave government-backed abortion into the fabric of American life and make it a far more integral part of domestic and foreign policy than ever before.....

Clearly, if Obama's preferred health reform becomes law, abortion will be defined as a "health benefit" automatically provided to every American family. The Hyde amendment, which for more than 30 years has banned federal funding for almost all abortions and has enjoyed overwhelming congressional support, will become all but irrelevant once abortion on demand is defined as a universal "health benefit."

Alice Eve Cohen writes about how she considered a late-term abortion and how her husband, who was then her fiancee, reacted.

At my request, he (“an abortion specialist”) scheduled an abortion in Wichita for the following Tuesday. "Think about it for the next few days before you decide," he said. Then he turned to Michael. "What do you think about all this?"

"Me? Oh, Jesus … a lot of different things," Michael answered. "I’ve seen Alice in the throes of this terrible unhappiness, and I don’t recognize her. I’ve been politically in favor of choice, but uncommitted on the personal side — it’s been an abstraction. But now that this is suddenly so real, all I can think is that there’s a baby. Our baby. My baby. And I can’t stand the thought of this baby being aborted. So If Alice has an abortion, I won’t go to Wichita with her. And I might not be here when she gets back. I’ll have my own unbearable sorrow about losing this baby, about endorsing this decision. But I don’t want Alice to kill herself. So she should do what she needs to do."

The AP has an article which provides some depth to the current abortion debate taking place in Spain and the possibility that the proposal to allow 16-year-olds to have abortions without parental consent might get junked.

The conservative opposition Popular Party asks why a girl who cannot legally buy alcohol can have an abortion without asking her parents. "The inconsistency is crushing," lawmaker Sandra Moneo wrote in the newspaper El Pais.

"No father or mother can understand the idea of a minor going through that trauma without the advice, support and opinion of her parents," Moneo said.

Zapatero's camp counters by noting that 16-year-old Spaniards can choose to have open-heart surgery or chemotherapy without parental consent, but not an abortion.

Tempers have flared on both sides. Conservatives were enraged when Bibiana Aido, the minister of equality, suggested abortion was no bigger an issue than breast enlargement.

Friday Baby Blogging

After much effort, we were final able to convince our daughter to wear her hat for about 20 seconds.

Teen sentenced for life after killing unborn child

In West Virginia, 16-year-old Kelly J. Chapman has been sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder after shooting Nastasha Folden, five months pregnant at the time, in the stomach and killing her unborn child. He was also sentenced to 3-15 years for the attempted murder of Folden.

According to a television news story, his sentence could be changed when he turns 18. The story also features video of Nastasha emotionally speaking out about the attack and how the loss of her son has affected her.

Life Links 7/9/09

The Hill shares the Obama administration’s reasoning for not mentioning and responding to the vast majority of comments regarding the NIH’s new human embryonic stem cell funding guidelines.

The NIH witnessed this emotional intensity firsthand. The agency received more than 49,000 comments from the public after issuing a draft of its guidelines in April. About 30,000 of them — many of which were form letters — debated whether the NIH should be funding embryonic stem cell research at all, Kington said.

The NIH disregarded all such comments, labeling them “unresponsive” to the guidelines it released. “We actually did not ask the public whether we should fund research on human embryonic stem cells. We asked the public how we should fund human embryonic stem cell research,” Kington said.

The New York Times has an interview with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg which focuses on women on the courts but also highlights the abortion issue on pages 3 and 4.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.

A woman who received an abortion at the currently shut down Clinica de Mujeres in Las Vegas shared her experience with the local news.

"I had to pay for it first. They didn't give me a receipt. They did an ultrasound which they didn't know how to do," she said. The woman also noted that the equipment appeared dirty.

The health division says Dr. Vickie Mazzorana owns the clinic and is licensed by the medical board. But this patient isn't so sure a female doctor performed her pregnancy termination.

"I was in and out of the procedure and I didn't see the girl doctor in the room. I saw a guy that I hadn't seen at all when I was checking in and he was performing the actual abortion," she said.

Here’s an article which has some background on how the clinic was closed temporarily.


The Kansas City Star has a piece on Randall Terry and his current lack of a following. Terry also seems to have misled the reporter Mary Sanchez into thinking that we was fighting the RICO lawsuit.

But Terry took his hits as well. Years of battling lawsuits, some from abortion providers for disruption of commerce, eventually bankrupted him and he bowed out for years.

Except he didn’t battle the lawsuit.


This is embarrassing. A program in Great Britain which was trying to lower the number of teen pregnancies instead saw program attendees having a much higher rate of pregnancy than their peers.

But research funded by the Department of Health shows that young women who attended the programme, at a cost of £2,500 each, were 'significantly' more likely to become pregnant than those on other youth programmes who were not given contraception and sex advice.

A total of 16 per cent of those on the Young People's Development Programme conceived compared with just 6 per cent in other programmes.

Experts said the scheme failed because it introduced girls 'at risk' of becoming pregnant to promiscuous girls they might not otherwise have met.

Because of peer pressure, the more timid teenagers were more likely to have sex and become pregnant....

The failed YPDP, launched in 2004, was based on a similar scheme in New York claimed to have significantly reduced teenage pregnancies.

However, attempts to replicate the work elsewhere in the U.S. did not lead to a fall in teenage pregnancies, casting doubt on the project as a whole.

Life Links 7/8/09

Time has an article entitled, "Could Abortion Coverage Sink Health Care Reform?"

Under the legislation being worked on by three committees in the House, Americans earning up to 400% of the poverty level — $43,000 for an individual; $88,000 for a family of four — would be eligible for government subsidies to help them purchase coverage. But if the anti-abortion legislators get their way, those subsidies would have a big string attached; they could not be used to purchase a policy that has abortion coverage. For many women, that would mean giving up a benefit they now have under their private insurance policies.

The House of Lords has voted against allowing Britons to take to another country to for assisted suicide.

Nevada's state Health Division has ordered a clinic in Las Vegas named "Clinica de Mujeres" to stop performing surgeries after finding evidence that abortion had been performed their in an unsafe manner. The owner of the clinic, Vickie (also spelled Vicki) Mazzorana is an assistant professor at the University of Nevada Medical Center.


A woman from Australia and her boyfriend have been charged after smuggling in and using an RU-486 abortion pill.

Life Links 7/7/09

Byard Duncan shares his experience at his first abortion party.

Maggie, a 22-year-old college senior with no intention of bringing a child into the world yet, was going to have an abortion. She told us that she had already made up her mind; she had even determined the time, date and location. A better question might have been, "How are you going to pay for it?"

She answered that one before we had a chance to ask. "We’re having a party Friday to raise money," Maggie said. "You guys are obviously invited."

An abortion party. For the price of whatever we were willing to donate, she explained, we could partake of baked goods, beer and dancing. It was going to start at 10 p.m. at Maggie’s.

Dan Gilgoff notes a few surprises from President Obama's recent talk with members of the Catholic press.

Obama aides have been careful to say that the administration is not trying to influence a pregnant woman's decision about whether or not to have an abortion. They insist they're aiming to help only pregnant women who've already decided they want to carry their pregnancies to term.

That's been key to reassuring the abortion-rights movement, which doesn't want the administration to stigmatize abortion as an option for pregnant women.

And yet on Thursday, Obama cast the decision to have an abortion in a decidedly negative light. "I don't know any circumstance in which abortion is a happy circumstance or decision," Obama said, "and to the extent that we can help women avoid being confronted with a circumstance in which that's even a consideration, I think that's a good thing."

It will be interesting to see how abortion-rights advocates react to this.

Another issue mentioned by Obama was the conscience clause. Matt Bowman at the American Spectator isn't buying Obama's conscience clause claims.


In 2006, police rescued a mentally handicapped woman who was confined and tortured by a family in Winnipeg. The details of the family's crimes are just being revealed at their trial. The main abusers claim they began torturing the victim because she supposedly told their parents they were pregnant.

Dale Hendrickson and his fiancée, O’Malley, said they were upset after the victim told O’Malley’s parents that O’Malley was pregnant. The woman’s parents eventually forced her to have an abortion and Hendrickson and O’Malley said they blamed the victim, court was told.

When reality gets in the way of your story line? Deny reality

After reading this post (language warning), I think the above must be Amanda Marcotte’s policy when it comes to abortion. She writes,

If you correctly assume that the anti-choice movement is motivated primarily by a misogynist need to punish women who have unapproved sex, then you can see how offering social support to mothers is already, from their point of view, a compromise of their basic beliefs, from two angles:

This is completely absurd. Could Amanda for one second explain how the work of thousands of prolifers to help women in unplanned pregnancies during and after pregnancy could be motivated by a misogynist need to punish women? How is giving diapers, furniture, strollers, formula, baby food, to women who’ve chosen life a means to punish them? Maybe in bizarro world where up is down and down is up.

It’s like she’s so tied to this simpleton storyline which casts prolifers as women-hating bullies who want to punish people for having sex, she can’t look at the abortion debate except through that warped lense. Maybe that’s why her writing is so entirely unpersuasive. I also wonder if that’s one of the reasons the writing of Jill from Feministe on the subject of abortion has really gone down the tubes in recent years. If you can’t look at and take your opponent’s position and arguments in good faith for more than a second, then it becomes increasingly difficult to provide a thoughtful response to them.

Memo to Amanda: Providing support to pregnant and parenting women isn’t a compromise for prolifers. It’s part of what we do every single day.

NIH Publishes Guidelines on Embryonic Stem Cell Research

They're available online here.

Life Links 7/6/09

Algerian singer Cheb Mami has been sentenced to five years in jail for his role in an attempted forced abortion.

During his testimony, Mami expressed remorse and pleaded for the woman's forgiveness.

He broke down in tears and admitted to making a "serious mistake" but said he did not love the woman and felt "trapped" when she told him she was pregnant.

"I was ashamed to have an illegitimate child. A child should be born from a union. I didn't want this child," he told the court.

Mami blamed his former manager Michel Lecorre - who is known as Michel Levy - saying he was behind the plot to force the woman to have an abortion.

"I was in a panic and I agreed," he said. "I did nothing to stop him."

Abortionist Alberto Hodari has been fined $10,000 by the state of Michigan after the death of a woman at one of his clinics.


In another example of pro-choice intolerance, a man who dropped his girlfriend off at Planned Parenthood pointed a gun at a prolife protestor who gave him a pamphlet.