Life Links 6/9/11

Politico notes that defunding Planned Parenthood is becoming a 2012 litmus test.


The Washington Post has an article on polling research from the Public Religion Research Institute.

Americans, regardless of generation, are deeply conflicted as they wrestle with the legality and morality of abortion, with a substantial majority identifying themselves as both "pro-choice" and "pro-life," according to a sweeping new survey.

While a solid majority — 56 percent — says abortion should be legal in most or all cases, 52 percent say abortion is morally wrong.

Rebecca Taylor looks back at California's Proposition 71.

Californians did not realize that with Prop 71 they became venture capitalists funding speculative research that creates and destroys human embryos or that their money would be going to private universities like Stanford. I am certain that they do not understand that if cures do come, they will be paying the high cost along with everyone else. They won't be getting a break on cures from research that they funded. I hope Californians have learned their lesson and I hope other states will learn from their mistakes.

New research claims inserting IUDs directly after abortions poses only a few risks to women.

The study was designed to see if IUDs, implanted immediately after an abortion or miscarriage, would remain in place. The study also gauged the risk of infection or tears of the uterus. All the volunteers had been pregnant for 5 to 12 weeks.

The IUDs were bought by the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, which paid for the study, an arrangement that avoided the federal restrictions.

Six months after insertion, the researchers found, IUDs had been expelled in 5 percent of the 258 women who had received an immediate insertion, compared to less than 3 percent of the 226 volunteers who had been required to wait. About four-fifths of the expulsions occurred within the first 2 months.