Life Links 11/18/11

The New Jersey Star-Ledger has an editorial scolding the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey for attempting to force nurses to assist on abortions.

In other words, UMDNJ believes it should be able to compel nurses and other health care professionals, against their moral beliefs, to perform duties leading all the way up to the actual abortion, then force those health care professionals to attend to patients immediately afterward — or lose their jobs.

Narrowing the law to specify that nurses have the right to opt out of only the actual abortion procedure strains common sense.

For decades, the law has been interpreted to allow nurses and others, if they object, to opt out of any care given to an abortion patient. The nurses involved in the lawsuit say that simply helping to admit an abortion patient facilitates the procedure, making the nurses an active participant.

And they object to that.

A Pennsylvania judge has refused to separate the trials of two of abortionist Kermit Gosnell's employees from his trial.


While former Gosnell employees are pleading guilty left and right, abortion clinics are still fighting against legislation to strengthen abortion clinic regulations. One Newsworks article has a few quote from abortion clinic director Jennifer Boulanger.

"What people don't understand is how abortions are done and how simple they are," Boulanger said. "I'm going to speak very frankly; an abortion is a five-minute procedure."

Well, that's an incredibly broad generalization designed to mislead people. The length of an abortion procedure varies a great deal based on the length of gestation and procedure being used. Boulanger also laughably claims her clinic welcomes inspections.


Albert Mohler reflects on the loss of Mississippi's personhood amendment.

The bitter lesson of Mississippi's defeat of the human personhood amendment is this: When it comes to moral reasoning concerning the unborn child, far too many just adopt Harry Blackmun's moral framework and want to tweak it. Many in the pro-life movement want to shift his lines of moral judgment, but not to repudiate his deadly logic.

We may think we are pro-life, but if we do not affirm the personhood of every human being at every point of development, from fertilization onward, we are not really so pro-life as we think. Or, in other words, we're all Harry Blackmun now.