Life Links 8/19/09

The FDA has put an indefinite hold on Geron's embryonic stem cell clinical trial.


In First Things, Richard Stith, discusses how abortion may not be as liberating as some pro-choicers think.

If she says she is pro-life so that he thinks abortion is not an option for her, he might decide to keep her from getting pregnant by leaving her for someone more open to abortion, a woman who doesn’t insist on his using a condom. That is, the presence in the sexual marketplace of women willing to have an abortion reduces an individual woman’s bargaining power. As a result, in order not to lose her guy, she may be pressured into doing precisely what she doesn’t want to do: have unprotected sex, then an unwanted pregnancy, then the abortion she had all along been trying to avoid. Even though her abortion in this case is not literally forced, it would be, in an important sense, imposed on her. And, far from alleviating her overall situation, it would merely return her to the same sexual pressures, made worse by a new assurance to her boyfriend that she is willing to take care of a ­pregnancy.

Stith also notes how legalized abortion may have lowered sympathies directed towards women who choose to give birth.

But once continuing a pregnancy to birth is the result neither of passion nor of luck but only of her deliberate choice, sympathy weakens. After all, the pregnant woman can avoid all her problems by choosing abortion. So if she decides to take those difficulties on, she must think she can handle them.

Birth itself may be followed by blame rather than support. Since only the mother has the right to decide whether to let the child be born, the father may easily conclude that she bears sole responsibility for caring for the child. The baby is her fault......

The deepest tragedy may be that there is no way out. By granting to the pregnant woman an unrestrained choice over who will be born, we make her alone to blame for how she exercises her power. Nothing can alter the solidarity-shattering impact of the abortion option.

An Oklahoma district court judge has overturned Oklahoma's ultrasound law because of an Oklahoma constitutional requirement that laws only deal with one subject.

In his ruling, Robertson referenced several difference provisions in the bill. It also allows doctors and other health care providers to refuse to take part in an abortion for moral and religious reasons; requires certain signs to be placed in clinics where abortions are performed; mandates that federal guidelines be followed in the use of the abortion pill RU-486; and prohibits wrongful life lawsuits arguing a disabled child would have been better off aborted.

Special Assistant Attorney General Teresa Collett said all of the provisions relate "to the practices that have arisen related to the taking of human life."

An 18-year-old named Alex Santana has been arrested for stabbing his 28-year-old girlfriend because she refused to have an abortion. According to police, she may not have even been pregnant.