Friday, February 27, 2009

Life Links 2/27/09

According to Noam Levey, reporting at the Swamp (the Chicago Tribune's Washington Bureau), Obama will get rid of the Bush administration's conscience rule sometime today.
Taking another step into the abortion debate, the Obama administration today will move to rescind a controversial rule that allows healthcare workers to deny abortion counseling or other family planning services if doing so would violate their moral beliefs, according to administration officials....

The officials said the administration will consider drafting a new rule to clarify what healthcare workers can reasonably refuse to do for their patients.


The New York Times is reporting that Tom Harkin and Arlen Specter have re-introduced their bill to expand the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.


Both the Daily Mail and the Telegraph have articles on the rise of teen pregnancies and abortions in Great Britian. The Telegraph article notes,
Meanwhile the overall rate for all girls under 18 rose for the first time since 2002.

It means that a Government target to halve the number of teenage pregnancies by next year now looks almost certain be missed despite intense efforts to promote contraception and more sex education in schools.
At least one leading abortion advocate in Great Britain doesn't feel the need to hide behind the rhetoric that abortion should be rare.
Ann Furedi, chief executive of the charity the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), the UK's largest abortion provider, said: "The fact that half of the teenagers in this position felt able to end their pregnancy in abortion is actually a positive sign."

She described the fact that there is less social stigma among young people about having an abortion as "an entirely good thing".


Andrew McCarthy has a piece on Dawn Johnsen's (nominated by Obama to head the Office of Legal Counsel) inability to defend her past arguments comparing involuntary pregnancy with slavery.


In Michigan, officers from the Wayne County jail are invoking Roe v. Wade to defend their actions which resulted in a young girl having brain damage because of a lack of oxygen. The jail officers refused to take a pregnant inmate to hospital and are now arguing they're not liable because the child didn't have any rights because of Roe v. Wade
Chantrienes Barker, now in state prison, was an inmate at the jail on Dec. 2, 1998. The lawsuit says she went into labor and was taken to Hutzel Hospital, where she stayed for two hours before she was discharged shortly before midnight.

Back at the jail, Barker’s labor pains intensified but no one checked on her for more than two hours, according to the lawsuit. Other inmates screamed and banged on toilets and cell bars to alert the guards.

Officers eventually responded and summoned paramedics, who arrived to immediately find the baby’s head emerging around 2 a.m. on Dec. 3, the lawsuit says.

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