Life Links 4/2/12

In possibly the weakest attack on ultrasound legislation so far, here's abortionist Pablo Rodriguez claiming showing a woman her ultrasound and describing parts of the child turns the ultrasound into a "torture machine." (my emphasis)

"All this bill does is turn the ultrasound into a torture machine," Rodriguez added. "You have to start turning the machine around and start describing every little part of the screen, which is hard to begin with and would serve no purpose other than to scare woman and make them change their minds. The result is to get the gestational age (of the fetus), that's why we do the ultrasound. It's not to be identifying parts of the fetus.

"For the most part, under 10 weeks, it is difficult," he added, "you have to have a knowledge of embryology and anatomy to even comprehend what you are seeing. To pretend that we can give women a course on ultrasound images in the 10 minutes it takes to do an ultrasound, it serves no purpose. It is an intrusion in the patient-physician relationship."

Sometimes abortionists let it slip why they really oppose ultrasound legislation.


Someone placed a homemade explosive device outside of a Planned Parenthood in Wisconsin.

Police say someone placed the device on an outside windowsill. It later exploded causing damage to the building and a small fire that burned out before the fire department arrived.

Dr. Barry Starr admits there were unrealistic expectations behind Proposition 71 but he has a rather delusional assessment of the "success" of Proposition 71 after providing a highly misleading description of embryonic stem cell research in the U.S. pre-Prop. 71.

There was a real worry the U.S. would be left behind and that this would keep U.S. researchers away from the forefront of biological research for the first time in our history. It was a frustrating, scary time for scientists.

Of course it was an awful time for people suffering from awful incurable diseases too. They were worried that cures involving ES cells would not come in time for them unless research was done in a big way here in the U.S.

In swooped Proposition 71 to save the day. It provided 3 billion dollars of funding for ES cell research here in California. At a minimum it provided stopgap funding to keep ES cell research alive and well here in the U.S. until President Obama re-opened the spigots again in 2009.

Even if this is all Proposition 71 accomplished, I would argue it was worth it. Eventual cures using these cells are 5-6 years closer than they would be without the money spent by California voters. This is a big deal to patients suffering from all those life threatening diseases we always hear about.

A stop gap? At minimum? Did the citizens of California really want to spend $6 billion (with a B) on a stop gap?


A doctor is Jamaica has been charged with performing an illegal abortion.