Life Links 8/8/13

Salon has a piece by Katie McDonough in which fetal pain is called “a lie.”  McDonough’s cited sources for this conclusion is one review of studies by abortion advocates and late-term abortionist Anne Davis, who is also the consulting medical director at Physicians for Reproductive Health.  Davis claims children (born or unborn) can’t feel pain until 26 weeks.  This might be one reason Davis is so opposed to fetal pain legislation. 

“Patients are now asking me about fetal pain. This was not happening 15 years ago,” Davis says. “When you’re sitting in your office with a woman who is 22 weeks into a pregnancy with a severe fetal anomaly — she’s depressed, she’s stressed and now she’s worried, ‘Is my baby going to feel pain?’ It’s just another thing these women have to struggle with. And why? These are created concerns. They are not based in science, they are based in politics.”

 
Cleveland Right to Life is no longer affiliated with National Right to Life after CRTL added opposition to same-sex marriage to their mission statement. 

 
In the New Yorker, Amy Davidson tries to defend Wendy Davis and attack Erick Erickson for his “Abortion Barbie” tweet.  I’m not surprised Davidson doesn’t include Davis’ actual quote.  Here’s how Davidson describes the exchange:

Kermit Gosnell was the doctor convicted on murder charges after running an unsafe, illegal operation. Davis had answered a question about him and, after saying that she didn’t know much about the case, had gotten a fact about it wrong. (It had to do with whether Gosnell’s clinic was licensed as an ambulatory-surgical center.) Davis, who has a degree from Harvard Law School, rightly pointed out its disconnect from the Texas bill.    

Had gotten a fact wrong about it?  Yeah, she got wrong the only thing she said about it (her incorrect claim that Gosnell was operating a surgical ambulatory facility) and I don’t know how you could think there is a “disconnect” between tightening regulations on abortion clinics and the reality that Gosnell was allowed to operate without being inspected for more than a decade. 


Yesterday, an ambulance was called to Mississippi’s only abortion clinic.

The Clarion-Ledger reached out to Jackson Women’s Health Organization owner Diane Derzis but she declined to comment.

Wisconsin Attorney General J. B. Van Hollen issued a court filing that hospitals in Wisconsin can’t deny admitting privileges to abortionists just because they provide abortions

Federal law "provides that hospitals accepting federal funds may not discriminate against a physician because that physician has participated in or refused to participate in abortions," the state Justice Department said in its filing in federal court.

According to experts on federal law, if doctors can prove they were not granted privileges specifically because they perform the procedure, the hospital systems — Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare, Columbia St. Mary's Health System and Hospital Sisters Health System — could lose federal dollars in the form of research and public health grants.