Life Links 5/27/08

Rebecca Walker, the daughter of author Alice Walker, discusses her childhood, her disagreement with her mother's beliefs and her abortion early in life.

Although I was on the Pill - something I had arranged at 13, visiting the doctor with my best friend - I fell pregnant at 14. I organised an abortion myself. Now I shudder at the memory. I was only a little girl. I don't remember my mother being shocked or upset. She tried to be supportive, accompanying me with her boyfriend.

Although I believe that an abortion was the right decision for me then, the aftermath haunted me for decades. It ate away at my self-confidence and, until I had Tenzin (her son), I was terrified that I'd never be able to have a baby because of what I had done to the child I had destroyed. For feminists to say that abortion carries no consequences is simply wrong.

According to the New York Post, a new book will share how Courtney Love was encourage by a doctor to have an abortion because of her heroin addiction.

During a meeting with a doctor at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center's chemical dependency program, the doctor "tried to give clinical advice, suggesting to Courtney that it was not a great idea to have a baby while dealing with addiction," writes Goldberg. That didn't sit well with Love, who exploded.

" 'You're not telling me to have a [bleep]-ing abortion, are you?' asked Courtney, her voice rising with her trademark hostile whine. 'I mean I'm pro-choice, but that doesn't mean that anyone has the right to tell me to have a [bleep]ing abortion.'

Dr. Geeta Shroff keeps getting people to pay big bucks to get injected with what she calls "embryonic stem cells" and then come home claiming the treatment improved their lives.

Perry Cross, who was left a quadriplegic by the accident at the age of 19, has been injected with embryonic stem cells, a procedure which is banned by most Western countries.

He was treated by maverick Indian doctor Dr Geeta Shroff, who has refused to publish papers outlining her research and methods....

Dr Shroff researched and developed her methods without grants or financial help and developed it almost single-handedly over two years, beginning the work in a small laboratory she set up in her garage.