Life Links 2/5/13

The Ottawa Citizen reports that Norman Barwin, a leading abortion advocate in Canada, had his medical license revoked for 2 months for medical misconduct after he admitted to inseminating 3 women with the incorrect sperm. Barwin has also agreed to end his fertility practice. Before settling lawsuits, the families believed Barwin may have used his own sperm.

As part of his plea bargain, Barwin agreed that he inseminated three women with the wrong sperm, but according to his lawyer Karen Hamway, he was unsure how the errors happened.

"There must have been some type of human error," she said, as Barwin's victims listened from the back of the small hearing room. "He cannot explain how the error occurred." ......

He is past-president of the Canadian Fertility Society, the Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada and Planned Parenthood Ottawa.

The Daily Times is covering the New Mexico Medical Board's upcoming ruling on abortionist Shelley Sella's botched 35-week abortion.

The Albuquerque Journal reports that an attorney for the New Mexico Medical Board maintains Dr. Shelley Sella breached the standard of practice in treating a 26-year-old New York woman who had a uterine rupture during a procedure to abort a 35-week-old fetus with severe brain abnormalities.

According to a transcript of the disciplinary hearing and other documents, the patient had to be rushed to University Hospital after the rupture. She ultimately recovered, but may not be able to carry a future pregnancy to full term.

I wonder if Sella's problems with the medical board are mentioned in the documentary movie featuring her and other abortionists who do 3rd trimester abortions.


Jonathan Kay argues that Canada should have a law setting limits on abortion.

For the sake of argument, let me argue the issue on Ms. Bennett's terms. In particular, I am going to accept her contention that Canada's professional medical societies are enforcing a de facto national abortion policy — a policy whereby, absent medical need or serious fetal abnormalities, women cannot receive abortion services past 24 weeks gestation.

Having accepted this contention, my question is this: How is this status quo meaningfully different from a federal abortion law that sets 24 weeks as the gestational limit for elective abortion? The current Canadian policy, as Ms. Bennett describes and praises it, is basically a civil variant of the one encoded in the criminal laws of just about every European nation — except that most of those countries generally have gestational limits well below 24 weeks (12-18 weeks is typical)......

When politicians do finally muster the courage to tackle this issue, there will be a hearty political battle over where the gestational limit should rest. But I have never understood the argument that we should avoid such a political battle lest it be too "divisive." Britain recently has had a vigorous debate about whether that country's gestational abortion limit should be rolled back from 24 weeks to 20 weeks — yet the country seems to have survived the experience. Why is Canada, alone among Western nations, seen by many of its citizens as so delicate that we must be spared any real debate about such an important moral question?