Life Links 9/15/10

Abortionist Rapin Osathanondh will serve 6 months in jail (he was sentenced to 30 months but the rest was suspended) after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the death of Laura Hope Smith. Osathanondh will also pay the family $2 million as a result of their civil suit against him. I think Brian Ballou's article in the Boston Globe goes a good job of trying to show the Smiths' love for their daughter and their loss.

She arrived at the Smith household almost 18 years ago, a small raven-haired girl with tattered and dirty clothing, a black eye, and all her possessions in a plastic grocery bag, except for the doll she held in her hand. Tom and Eileen Smith wrapped the neglected, abused, and abandoned girl with their love, only to lose her later to a botched medical procedure.

Assisted suicide advocate George Exoo, who claims to have assisted in more than 100 suicides, is planning on opening up a Dignitas-style death house in North Carolina where individuals from neighboring states looking to kill themselves can come to die. North Carolina doesn't have a law against assisted suicide.

To establish such a facility in Gastonia would require several steps on Exoo’s part. The area, currently listed as residential, would have to be rezoned. If dubbed as a hospice center, Exoo would need to apply for a certificate of need from the state.....

Exoo’s attempt to renovate the house from afar hasn’t met with success, according to Taylor. Men hired to work on the home lived in it and appeared to sell drugs, said Taylor. People have come and gone through the back door and even used buckets as toilets only to throw the waste in the yard, Taylor said.

In West Michigan, Kent County commissioners have voted to remove abortion from Kent County's employee benefit package.

Despite it being a controversial issue, the legislative and human resources committee vote was 9 to 0 to remove elective abortions as a covered benefit from one of the county's two medical insurance plans....

Opponents bombarded commissioners with E-mails and letters voicing objection to the decision, saying it threatens a woman's right to have a safe and legal abortion.

Part of one letter read "access to a safe, legal, high quality abortion is very important to me."

In response, Antor said "well safe, high quality abortion is an oxymoron. There is nothing safe about two individuals entering an abortion clinic and only one of them coming out. There is nothing safe for the baby in the process of an abortion.

A judge in Louisiana has stayed an abortion clinic's license suspension order. Hope Medical Group for Women is now allowed to stay open until a hearing on September 21.

State health officials are "very disappointed" about the ruling, said Bruce D. Greenstein, the new Health and Hospitals secretary.

"This order was signed without any notification to us and without any effort to hear from medical professionals about the risk to the facility's clients posed by the violations our inspectors found," Greenstein said in a written statement. "We will continue to fight to protect Louisiana residents and to shot down activities that put women in harm."

State officials are still working to revoke the clinic's license. The state is pursuing an unrelated revocation case against Gentilly Medical Clinic for Women in New Orleans. Inspections that started in 2009 allege employees there were dispensing narcotics without proper authorization.