Thursday, March 19, 2009

Life Links 3/19/09

Lila Rose and her crew at Live Action Films have another undercover video showing Planned Parenthood employees (this time in failing to report statutory rape.
After Stollar explains that her boyfriend is "a lot older than me," a staffer at the first clinic states: "we don't ask any questions." At the second clinic, upon hearing that the boyfriend is 27-years-old, the employee reassures the girls that "everything is confidential." She also tells the girls she will not intervene: "I can't say 'Don't' you know or 'I'm gonna go and do this.' I cannot be that way, it's not me."


Both Wesley Smith and Rebecca Taylor comment on a recent column by Jacob Appel in the Huffington Post where he argues that we should create a legal market of the organs of aborted children to be bought and sold for transplants and that we could even encourage women to prolong their pregnancies to get their unborn children to the stage necessary where their organs would be more usable. He writes,
The first striking feature of fetal organs is that their supply, for all practical purposes, is unlimited. Unlike living kidney donors, who must then advance through life with only one functioning kidney, pregnant women who provide fetal kidneys could do so repeatedly without incurring the medical consequences of adult organ loss. When overseen by properly-trained physicians, abortion is an extremely safe procedure -- even safer than delivering an infant at term. Since far more women have legal abortions each year in the United States than would be required to clear organ wait-lists, if only a small percentage of those women could be persuaded to carry their fetuses to the necessary point of development for transplantation, society might realize significant public health benefits. The government could even step into the marketplace itself to purchase fetal organs for patients on Medicare and Medicaid, ensuring that low-income individuals had equal access to such organs while keeping the "asking price" elevated.
Smith thinks Appel is intentionally saying radical things in an attempt to draw attention to himself as a business model and Taylor wonders if he's psychotic or a closet prolifer. I think Appel is merely following the presuppositions of the pro-choice ideology to one of its many horrifying logical conclusions. If women have the unmitigated right to kill their unborn children, then why shouldn't they have the right to gain possession of the remains of those children and do with those remains what they choose. It's their body, their choice, right? I struggle to see how a pro-choicer could hold on to the presuppositions of the pro-choice position and logically disagree with Appel's view.


David Gushee, a self-described centrist evangelical and Obama supporter, calls on President Obama to do more than just talk about how he wants to reduce abortions.
Mexico City, conscience clause, Sebelius, embryonic stem cells. In each case, I have been asked by friends at Democratic or progressive-leaning think tanks not just to refrain from opposing these moves, but instead to support them in the name of a broader understanding of what it means to be pro-life. I mainly refused.

But I do confess that my desire to retain good relationships with the Obama team has tempted me to give what was asked in return for the big payoff of a serious abortion-reduction initiative that I could wholeheartedly support.


A woman on a airplane from Samoa to New Zealand, apparently gave birth in bathroom and threw the baby in the bathroom trash bin. The baby, who is alive, was only discovered about an hour after the airplane landed. But get this note at the end of the story:
Pacific Blue's website says women need medical clearance to board a flight if they have passed the 36-week mark in their pregnancy.

"We are relieved to have been informed that both mother and child are reunited, are well and are now being looked after in hospital," the airline said in a statement.
Reunited? As if someone stole her baby. Is the proper response to a woman throwing her infant in the trash, reuniting her with the child?

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