Life Links 7/2/10

Spain's conservative Popular Party is suing to prevent the implementation of Spain's new liberal abortion law.

In challenging the 14-week clause as unconstitutional, the Popular Party cited a 1985 ruling from the Constitutional Court that said a woman's rights could not automatically take precedence over those of an unborn child, but rather only in cases of rape, fetal malformation or when the mother's health is in jeopardy.

To establish a period for unrestricted abortion "violates the balance between the rights of the mother and the rights of the unborn," Popular Party lawmaker Sandra Moneo said.

Planned Parenthood affiliates in New Jersey could suffer a huge blow if Governor Christie vetoes a family planning provision.

Clinics in Englewood, Hackensack, Garfield, Paterson, Passaic and Pompton Lakes will be affected if the cuts are implemented. Two Planned Parenthood chapters with a total of 16 clinics in northern New Jersey face the loss of a combined $2.4 million, and the North Hudson Community Action Corp., with eight sites providing family planning, will lose $550,000.

Planned Parenthood's clinics in Englewood and Hackensack could face closure or cutbacks. "I've got two centers in one county," said Triste Brooks, head of Planned Parenthood of Greater Northern New Jersey. "Can I make do with one?"

Abortionist Malachy DeHenre's appeal for a mistrial has been rejected by the Mississippi Supreme Court. In 2008, DeHenre was convicted for manslaughter in his wife's 1997 death. During the trial, a prospective juror called him an "abortionist" during jury selection.

"Despite the incendiary nature of abortion, we cannot say that the isolated comment with respect to DeHenre being an abortionist was so irreparably prejudicial as to warrant a mistrial," the court said in its written opinion.

Induced pluripotent stem cells have been created from frozen blood samples.

These iPS cells have in the past been made from plugs of skin, but blood is much easier to take from people and to store, the researchers reported in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

"Blood is the easiest, most accessible source of cells, because you'd rather have 20 milliliters of blood drawn than have a punch biopsy taken to get skin cells," Judith Staerk of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Massachusetts, who worked on the study, said in a statement.