Life Links 8/17/09

Newsweek profiles Leroy Carhart, whom they dub “The Abortion Evangelist” because of his attempts to train others to perform late term abortions.

It appears Carhart trusts fewer women than abortionist Warren Hern.

Carhart has a few firm lines; he won't, for example, do elective abortions past 24 weeks, because the fetus is likely viable. "It just makes sense to me," says Carhart. "After a certain point in time, the fetus is viable and we have to look at it differently than if it were not viable." And at 24 weeks, many studies show a fetus's chance of survival to be above 50 percent. Any earlier and the survival rate is lower; at 22 weeks it's less than 10 percent. But Carhart admits that such clear guidelines rarely present themselves. "There are times when abortion is the right answer," he says. "There are times when abortion is not the right answer. I hope I get it right."

So Carhart “trusts women” as long as they aren’t carrying a child who is likely to survive outside the womb and want to abort for elective reasons. So it's not some absolute. I wonder why he keeps acting like it is.

Writer Sarah Kliff describes Carhart shack of a clinic as “an unimpressive two-story building that shares a gravel parking lot with a shut-down gas station.”


A 25-year-old woman in South Africa is on trial after abandoning her son after a botched late term abortion.

The woman was linked to the dead infant after her Sedgefield Court neighbours in Joubert Park saw her allegedly use medication to abort her six-month-old infant in 2005.

She allegedly gave birth to a baby boy, who was born alive on July 28, 2005 and she allegedly dumped him in a nearby rubbish bin before she fled.

Neighbours found the infant in a bin and called the police. The baby later died.

Catholic Culture’s Diogenes writes about Vermont’s lack of an unborn victims of violence law after a woman’s unborn twins were killed in a car accident.

So if we begin with the feminist axiom that abortion must be legal, in order to protect the rights of women, then the rights of some women like Patricia Blair must be ignored. And if her unborn twins were both female, the feminist axiom didn't do much to protect their rights either.