Life Links 9/29/10

Abortionist Steven Brigham has denied any wrongdoing in his practice of beginning late-term abortions in New Jersey, leading caravans of women to Maryland and then finishing the abortion or having another abortionist finish it.

The Attorney General's Office contends Brigham "flagrantly" disregarded the state's medical rules and jeopardized patients by providing abortions to women who were more than 14 weeks pregnant. The state asserts Brigham's office and his qualifications do not meet the standards required for such second- and third-trimester abortions.

Joseph Gorrell, Brigham's attorney, said the doctor had done nothing wrong. "Everything he did complied with applicable law and was in conformance with accepted standards of medical practice," said Gorrell.

The dispute is to go before the state Board of Medical Examiners on Oct. 13. Brigham has voluntarily stopped practicing medicine in New Jersey until then.

President Obama recently answered questions about abortion and his faith at a town-hall style meeting.

The same questioner also asked Obama about regulations on early and late-term abortion, a politically charged issue in the abortion debate.

Obama responded that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare" in America, adding that families -- not the government -- "should be the ones making the decision."

Restrictions against late-term abortion are in place now, he said, adding that "people still argue and disagree about it. That's part of our Democratic tradition."

Ross Douthat points out that abortion fits perfectly in one op-ed writers criteria for a moral evil that future generations will condemn.

In the spirit of such self-congratulation, I would (predictably) nominate abortion as a presently-tolerated evil that will one day be generally deplored. After all, it fits Appiah’s rubrics pretty neatly: The moral arguments against the practice are well known, its defenders are increasingly likely to defend the social necessity of abortion rights (often along “women’s equality depends on legal abortion” lines) and the impracticality of an outright ban than they are to defend the justice of abortion itself, and the pro-life movement spends a great deal of time trying to confront Americans with the physical realities of abortion, whether via ultrasound images or grisly photos of fetuses held up at protest marches.

Elementary students at a Catholic school in southern Illinois raised $800 for a local pregnancy network. The third-graders raised the most so they got to lead a Walk for Life.