Life Links 11/8/10

According to New York Magazine, George W. Bush's view on abortion was affected by an incident in which his mother (who is pro-choice) showed him the remains of a child she miscarried. The story will be recounted tonight in an interview on NBC with Matt Lauer.

After Barbara Bush suffered a devastating miscarriage, "she said to her teenage kid, 'Here's the fetus,'" Bush told Lauer, "gesturing as if he were holding the jar." According to the Post, Bush says he got special permission from his mom to recount the private incident in print. Lauer reads an excerpt from the memoir where Bush, who had to drive his mother to the hospital, wrote, "I never expected to see the remains of the fetus, which she had saved in a jar to bring to the hospital." In the interview, he tells Lauer, "There's no question that affected me, a philosophy that we should respect life," adding that, "[The anecdote] was really to show how my mom and I developed a relationship."

A traveling abortionist may have performed abortions in North Dakota after her medical license there lapsed.

The clinic director called the matter an "administrative oversight," and the head of North Dakota's doctor licensing board said he can't recall a case in which a lapsed medical license led to criminal charges.

The doctor has active medical licenses in her resident state of Colorado and in South Dakota, but her North Dakota license expired June 30, The Forum reported....

Clinic director Tammi Kromenaker would not say whether the doctor performed abortions after her license expired. She said the clinic cooperated with the police investigation and that the doctor is working with the licensing board on a renewal.

The Live Action blog has a Center for Bio-Ethical Reform video showing an individual at Indiana Purdue-Fort Wayne (IPFW) being arrested after vandalizing one of their displays.


At First Things, Richard Stith argues that prolifers should work to add Stupak Amendment language to the health care reform law instead of attempting to repeal it.

In order to explain my position, let's step back a moment to remember the situation prior to the new law, when health care was, except for the poor, much more market driven. The market was not favorable to life.

While Medicaid for the poor excluded elective abortion under the Hyde Amendment, many or most health plans automatically included fully elective abortion, giving the insured person no choice in the matter and very few effective ways to protest. Simply repealing the new legislation would presumably restore that market situation.....

However, if the healthcare law were amended to exclude all elective abortion—that is, if the Hyde Amendment were universalized and made permanent—pro-lifers would have the best of all worlds and pro-choicers would face their worst nightmare. The rules against funding elective abortion that were once applicable only to the poor would now become applicable to all, taking abortion totally out of the mainstream of healthcare and making it something no one would have covered who had not previously and deliberately chosen an abortion rider.