Life Links 5/30/13

The Supreme Court in El Salvador has denied the petition of a woman with a high-risk pregnancy who requested an abortion and by noting that the threat to her life"is not actual or imminent, but rather eventual."

The court recognized that Beatriz has lupus, but it said that her disease was currently under control and that the threat to her life "is not actual or imminent, but rather eventual."

It ordered that her health continue to be closely monitored, saying that if complications arose that put her right to life in imminent danger doctors "could proceed with interventions."

According to CNN, "Beatriz" is now 26 weeks pregnant with a child who has been diagnosed with anencephaly.  While a number of abortion advocates have acted like Beatriz is knocking on death's door and the court ruling is a death sentence for her, an article yesterday in the New York Times reveals that's not the case. 

But the case has its medical detractors as well. José Miguel Fortín Magaña, director of the Institute of Legal Medicine, which evaluates medical issues for the Supreme Court, acknowledged Beatriz's medical problems but said that her health was currently under control and that she was not in danger at the moment.

I believe abortion advocates have jumped on this case largely because Beatriz's child has a serious birth defect in the goal of helping legitimize all abortions (regardless of whether the woman has health issues or if her child has defects). 


Andrea Mzorek writes about the death of Henry Morgentaler, the longtime Canadian abortionist.

Abortion is the "choice" in that critical moment in a woman's life when hope went on holiday.

This is Morgentaler's legacy: The death of a child, renamed a choice, and without limit in Canada.

He deserves neither all the credit nor all the blame, of course. When the Supreme Court of Canada heard the now infamous Morgentaler case in 1988, their intention was not to bestow abortion as an unfettered right. Instead, the court went so far as to acknowledge a legitimate public interest in restricting abortion, and then threw the question back to Parliament — which has been holding the ball ever since.

The LA Times has a puff-piece interview by Patt Morrison with Alan Trounson, the president of California's stem cell institute.  The first sentence is patently absurd.  

In 2004, with President George W. Bush dead set against stem cell research, California just went ahead and did it.