Life Links 4/28/08

Peter Augustine Lawler reviews Robert George’s and Christopher Tollefsen’s Embryo in the City Journal.


Indian Prime Minister calls his nation’s practice of sex-selection abortion “a national shame.”

"No nation, no society, no community can hold its head high and claim to be part of the civilised world if it condones the practice of discriminating against one half of humanity represented by women.

Baylor philosophy professor Alexander Pruss provides an argument against abortion (Don Marquis’ future-like-ours), a standard pro-choice response and then his response to that response.


The twins of a bank teller who was 5-months pregnant have died after their mother was shot during a bank robbery. One twin died before birth and the other shortly after. Police are still looking for the shooter.


Switzerland has passed a law which provides certain rights to social animals.

From guinea-pigs to budgerigars, any animal classified as a “social species” will be a victim of abuse if it does not cohabit, or at least have contact, with others of its own kind.

Friday Baby Blogging

From the front


And a view of her baby mullet

Are all reproductive choices really okay?

In an editorial in the Yale Daily News, Pierson College sophomore O'Hagan Blades discusses Aliza Shvarts abortion art project by writing:

Her project, surely, will become the poster child for irresponsible and disrespectful abuse of the right to abortion and a counter-example to the notion that a woman knows what is best for her own body.

The problem with this statement is it totally undermines the foundation of the pro-choice position. The pro-choice position states that women have a right to abortion because they (and not politicians, prolifers, etc.) know what is best for their own body and they therefore have the right to choose to do whatever they want with their bodies regardless of whether their actions would end the life of a developing human being.

Blades' comments here assume that some decisions to have an abortion can be irresponsible and disrespectful. But the pro-choice position doesn't really allow for claiming individual choices about reproduction are wrong. The pro-choice position affirms all reproductive choices regardless of what is being chosen. If an art student wanted to intentionally impregnant herself, carry the child for five months, have a late-term abortion and then display the remains of the child as "art," the pro-choice movement may be able to claim it's bad art but I don't see how they can claim it's a bad choice and that choice should be prohibited.

Blades continues:

I am fervently pro-choice, morally-relative, non-religious, politically liberal — and I will defend free speech with my life — but Shvarts’ project makes me want to cringe. It is not that she should have been disallowed from following through with her plans. But she seriously underestimated potential repercussions. Those who defend the right to abortion defend a woman’s ability to choose — to reason, to make decisions — yet with that right comes the expectation that her decision will be thought-out and considered somberly.

Somberly? Since when? I can't recall the movement ever claiming they were pro-somber-choice or pro-thought-out-choice. Heck, this is movement that fervently opposes 24-hour waiting periods. Plus, I'm not sure you can argue Shvarts' decision wasn't thought out. She may not have expected the national attention her project has drawn but she certainly seemed to be well aware that her project was controversial and put some thought into it.

Blades eventually gets to the reason she cringes at Shvarts' art. It isn't because Shvarts may have callously created and killed unborn children. It's because, horror of horrors, she may have hurt the pro-choice movement:

But I am not OK with the fact that in invoking abortion with the media, Shvarts has set back the pro-choice movement.....

It is “art,” she claims. Fine. Sure. I might even agree. But Shvarts cannot be so naive as to ignore the fact that millions of people do not agree and see this only as an abuse of choice. Just because she does not (as I do not) endow abortion with moral ideology, she must recognize that more than half of voters in America do. They will judge her piece. They will moralize it. And they will use it as impetus to ban abortion.

From a pro-choice perspective, I think Blades is actually right-on here. The reason pro-choicers should be upset with Shvarts isn't because she supposedly partook in a callous means of possible impregnantation and abortion, but because her actions point to gaping holes in the foundation of the pro-choice argument. A large majority of individuals (be they prolife or pro-choice) were instinctively disgusted by the idea of someone intentionally trying to impregnant themselves and then terminate their pregnancy for "art."

The question that then comes to my mind is: Which position (prolife or pro-choice) is better able to explain this instinctive disgust?

I don't think the pro-choice position can explain it at all. I don't see how the pro-choice position can pick and choose which reproductive choices to support when the foundation of the position is the idea that women should be able to make their reproductive for themselves regardless of the circumstances which surround that choice. If you want an abortion because you were raped - okay. If you want an abortion because you're in tough financial times - okay. If you want an abortion because your child has Down Syndrome - okay. If you want an abortion because you think fetal remains will make a good medium for your art projects - okay. If a woman's choice trumps all, then the desire of an art student to make a point trumps the life of her unborn child. The one caveat here seems to be that if you want an abortion and that abortion might turn people off to the pro-choice movement, that's not okay.

On the other hand, the prolife position can clearly explain the disgust because the prolife position recognizes the value of the unborn child regardless of a woman's individual reproductive choice and the circumstances that surround it.

The real reason pro-choicers should be mad a Shvarts is because Shvarts' choice shows that not all reproductive choices are okay.

(HT on the Blades' editorial to Jill Stanek)

Overheard 4/24/08

Ross Douhat on Doug Kmiec’s suggestion that Obama embrace the Democrats for Life’s 95/10 plan:

You can read up on the 95/10 plan here, on the website of Democrats for Life. They describe it as "a comprehensive package of federal legislation and policy proposals that will reduce the number of abortions by 95% in the next 10 years." I would describe it as a grab-bag of modest proposals, some of them creditable, that might reduce the abortion rate by 10 percent over 95 years.

Steve Wagner on Yale’s decision to block Aliza Shvarts’ ambiguous abortion art project:

And if Yale is censoring this project because abortion kills a human being, and Shvart's art may have included that sort of killing (she claims one point of her project was to be ambiguous about this), then is Yale willing to follow that logic and discourage all Yale students from getting abortions? Why is Yale so concerned about such a small-scale abortion operation as Shvarts's when the Yale Medical Center Family Planning Department teaches doctors to perform abortions and appears to offer abortions as a service?

Dolly cloner Ian Wilmut in the Yomiuri Shimbun on the future of human cloning in the face of the success of induced pluripotent stem cells:

Wilmut said he had initially planned a study to produce embryonic stem (ES) cells from cloned embryos, which are produced by placing the nucleus of a human somatic cell into an ova.

In connection with his research on iPS cells, Wilmut said it will be unnecessary in years to come to conduct studies to develop ES cells from cloned human embryos. Nevertheless, Wilmut stressed the need to continue studies involving cloned animals in the future.

Still trying to defend partial-birth abortion and failing miserably

Willie Parker is a Michigan abortionist who recently penned a post for the RH Reality Check blog. It never ceases to amaze how some pro-choice individuals will continue to put forward the same lame talking points on partial-birth abortion bans. It's like they assume their audience knows absolutely nothing about partial-birth abortion and partial-birth abortion bans. Parker writes,

The federal law doesn't use medical terminology, so it's difficult to define precisely what the law bans.

Here's the language the law uses. It doesn't need to have medical terminology to make it quite clear what it bans. If you don't get it, then as Joe Carter says, "If any doctors are still confused maybe I can put it in even simpler terms: If the baby's whole head is sticking out, don't kill her; if the baby's bottom half is sticking out and you can see where the umbilical cord attaches, don't kill him. If you're still confused then you need to put down the head-crushing forceps. For while you might be evil enough to be an abortionist, you're too dumb to be a doctor."

Would anyone seriously want someone stupid enough to not understand what this language bans operating on them?

As a consequence, doctors like me are barred from using certain medical techniques, even in cases when a woman's health is threatened and that procedure is the fastest and safest way to help her.

The procedure in question typically requires two days of dilation. How on earth could this be the "fastest" procedure when a woman's health is threatened?

Every abortion restriction that follows this pattern creates a barrier between women and their doctors. If you were facing a grave medical situation, who would you want to determine your best course of treatment: your trusted physician, or a politician in Lansing?

What grave medical situation in pregnancy would lead a doctor to forcibly dilate a cervix over 2 days before partially removing the child?

Ah, yes - the trusted physician whom you've never met before.

Several states are weighing legislation that would force doctors to perform unnecessary -- and expensive -- ultrasounds before an abortion.

Ultrasounds are unnecessary? But aren't they the only way to confirm an early term pregnancy isn't ectopic? Aren't they the standard way abortionists figure out how far along a woman is in her pregnancy so they know how much to charge and which technique to use? Don't the National Abortion Federation's Clinical Policy Guidelines note, "Ultrasonography, using a consistent and published table of fetal measurements can be of clinical value in verifying intra-uterine pregnancy and gestational age."

More from Yale and Aliza Shvarts

Shvarts has written a guest column explain her "art." She somehow believes that her "art" of artificially inserting herself with semen, taking some herbs (which were supposedly abortifacient) and then saving the fluid which comes out of her body "call(s) into question the relationship between form and function as they converge on the body" and "creates an ambiguity that isolates the locus of ontology to an act of readership. An intentional ambiguity pervades both the act and the objects I produced in relation to it. The performance exists only as I chose to represent it." Shvarts also claims, "The reality of the pregnancy, both for myself and for the audience, is a matter of reading."

Yeah, uh-huh. Shvarts seems to fail to understand that just because she may not be certain of whether she was pregnant or not doesn't mean the reality of whether she was pregnant or not is up for grabs.

One commenter at Feministing had this to say about Shvarts' explanation:

Pompous, pretentious twaddle. And hurtful, too, to those of us who have actually suffered from losing a pregnancy--either by way of abortion or by way of a miscarriage. I've done it both ways, and her wordy pseudo-intellectual psychobabble doesn't give me some kind of artistic epiphany. Her style of "art" doesn't make me think about my life or anyone else's in a new way. It makes me think that she's an attention-sucking, ego-inflated dingbat who's milking her 15 minutes for all it's worth.

The pro-choice group at Yale wrote a letter to the editor where they note they "stand by the right to reproductive freedom, we cannot approve of her approach and presentation." and "Like most who have heard of these events, we are shocked by the content of the art piece in question and the manner in which very serious aspects of reproductive rights have been treated."

The New York Sun has an article with some background information on Shvarts and some of her past "art" projects.

Ms. Shvarts also railed against those who take a narrow view of what constitutes art. "People have to stop being so dismissive about what art is. It has to stop hanging on the wall. It has to be something lived, breathed every day," she said.

People who think mixing their menstrual blood with vaseline is art certainly would like it if people took a wider view of what art is.

Is Senator Tom Coburn comparable to a former domestic terrorist?

Byron York doesn't think so:

But wouldn’t Coburn be more comparable to Ayers if he, Coburn, had bombed abortion clinics in the past — and then said that he not only did not regret bombing the clinics but wished that he had done more? And then, after bombing abortion clinics and refusing to express regret, he held a political event in his home for Barack Obama, which Obama attended?

And if all that had happened, would Obama say it wasn’t a problem because Coburn had bombed those clinics a long time ago, when Obama was just 8 years old?

Do you believe that would endear Obama to voters in the Democratic primaries?

As it was, Obama used his Senate colleague Coburn to suggest that the issue was not one of violence, and radicalism, and lawbreaking, but rather a simple disagreement: Sen. Coburn and I disagree on some things, and yet we’re still friendly. Bill Ayers and I disagree on some things, and yet we’re still friendly. So what’s the problem?

That’s not quite good enough.

Abortion art was all a scam, says Yale. No it wasn't, says student

Yale University has released a statement a Yale spokesperson claiming that Aliza Shvarts' "art project" is a hoax:

Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art. Her art project includes visual representations, a press release and other narrative materials. She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages. The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body.

She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art.

Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns.

Shvarts, however, is sticking to her story in a new article in the Yale Daily News.

But Shvarts stood by her project, calling the University’s statement “ultimately inaccurate.”....

But Shvarts reiterated Thursday that she repeatedly use a needleless syringe to insert semen into herself. At the end of her menstrual cycle, she took abortifacient herbs to induce bleeding, she said. She said she does not know whether or not she was ever pregnant.

“No one can say with 100-percent certainty that anything in the piece did or did not happen,” Shvarts said, “because the nature of the piece is that it did not consist of certainties.”

This afternoon, Shvarts showed the News footage from tapes she plans to play at the exhibit. The tapes depict Shvarts — sometimes naked, sometimes clothed — alone in a shower stall bleeding into a cup.

Here's the AP story on the controversy. Note the quote from NARAL spokesman Ted Miller.

Groups both for and against abortion rights expressed outrage over the affair.

Ted Miller, a spokesman for NARAL Pro-Choice America, called the concept offensive and "not a constructive addition to the debate over reproductive rights."

Why Ted? If abortion is just another simple medical procedure that women have the right to, what's wrong with intentionally getting pregnant for the purpose of inducing abortions?

Life Links 4/17/08

Jen from Turn the Clock Forward on Damon Wayan's "Abortion Man."

For those of you who would rather not watch the video and possibly generate ad revenue for its creators, here's the rundown: a woman calls her boyfriend to tell him she's pregnant. He pretends to be happy about the news; she's thrilled that he wants the baby, and starts making plans for their new family life. When he gets off the phone, he calls for help, and "Abortion Man" answers the call. Abortion Man accosts the young woman as she's walking down the street and beats and kicks her. Miscarriage hilarity ensues.

I really hesitated to post this, because I know that giving the creeps who made this video more publicity is exactly what they want, and will let them claim they're "edgy". But we need to speak up and let them know that they're not edgy or funny or clever; they're just misogynistic bullies.

The Council of Europe calls for "safe and legal" abortion for all women in its 47 member states.


Mike Long from Political Mavens makes a point regarding Yale student Aliza Shvarts and her attempt to make her repeat abortions into art.

As I've said before, if abortion is simply just another medical procedure, as "pro-choice" advocates insist, then they have no grounds to object. She might as well be plucking hairs from her head to make a pillow.

California's embryonic stem cell agency appears to be taking credit for research they didn't fund. They funded some of the scientist Catriona Jamieson's work with embryonic stem cells and then tried to take credit for funding her successful work which had nothing to do with embryonic stem cells. I guess when you fool the public into wasting $6 billion of their tax-dollars on embryonic stem cell research, you've got to act like they're getting something for their money.

Yale student tries to make repeat abortions into art

Aliza Shvarts is a sick, sick, sick individual. This is beyond disgusting:

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts' project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock — saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion......

The display of Schvarts' project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Schvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts' self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

Schvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.

UPDATE:Warner Todd Huston at Newsbusters is extremely skeptical that Shvarts (or Schvarts) was ever pregnant:

The main question is, was she ever pregnant? I have to say most likely no. The "turkey baster" method of implanting semen for impregnation is very ineffective, though known to be successful. Sperm does not live for too long once it hits the open air, so implantation would had to have occurred quickly after the issuing of the fluids. So, to assume that this girl had actually impregnated herself is not a good bet. There is no indication that there was any sort of "controls" placed on her efforts at implantation and, since there was never once any medical care, there is no proof that she ever was pregnant at all.

Related:
Abortion art was all a scam, says Yale. No, it wasn't, says student.

How not to prove something wrong

Don't read the study, don't link to information about it, just assume its rather common sense results are wrong because you don't like the groups which funded it.

As always, solid analysis from Jessica Valenti and Feministing.

Life Links 4/15/08

Two teens in Ohio have been found guilty of murder after assaulting a young woman and killing her unborn child.

Gibson said 18-year-old Kerria Anderson told Price she was pregnant with his child. Price learned he and Anderson were cousins and urged her to have an abortion. Anderson refused.

That's when the teens planned to beat Anderson until she lost the child, Gibson said.

Tests later revealed Price wasn't the father, but that wasn't until months after the attack.

The boys lured Anderson to an Over-the-Rhine apartment, where they kicked, beat and stomped her. Anderson went into labor and the baby was stillborn, Gibson said.

Students at New York University recently debated abortion. Here's one random nonsensical quote from a pro-choice student in attendance who lost a sibling to abortion:

"I think about the independence of women. I couldn't imagine having sex with a pro-life woman," one student said.

"License to Lie" is an interesting title choice for a post attempting to attack Choose Life license plates, especially considering that's what Michigan abortionist Alberto Hodari told a group of pro-choice medical students he had.

Shout to the Lord on American Idol

Joshua Harris has some background information and thoughts on American Idol contestants singing Shout to Lord on the show last week.

I guess I'm not really at home with either group. With all due respect, I don't think that having a song like Shout to the Lord sung (even though I like it) is going to usher in revival. This reminds me of the fervor before the movie The Passion of the Christ was released. People spoke about this movie as if it was the ultimate opportunity for the gospel to advance. I don't think it was. Was I glad that it was released? Sure. But I think that it's too easy for Christians to think that any moment in the media spotlight on TV or in film is a bigger deal than it really is. We should welcome any opportunity for media to help spread the good news about Jesus, but I don't think we should put too much stock in that vehicle.

Life Links 4/14/2008

Here's the full text of Senator Clinton's and Senator Obama's remarks at the Compassion Forum.

I, like Jill Stanek, wish the presidential candidates would be asked to explain their positions and reasoning on life issues a little more with some follow-up questions. If "I believe that the potential for life begins at conception" doesn't necessitate a follow-up question, I don't what does. Clinton also claims that laws against abortion would be very difficult "to sustain in our kind of open society" as if there weren't laws against abortion in various states less than 40 years ago or as if there aren't currently prolife laws in a variety of open societies.


The new New Atlantis is up and includes a piece by the editors on John McCain's position on embryonic stem cell research and an article by Yuval Levin on science and the left.


Abortion clinic protestors in Rockford, Illinois have posted this video (warning: lots of n-word usage by the pro-choicer) of a local pro-choice man verbally attacking them. Besides swearing, calling one of the protesters the n-word numerous times, the pro-choicer neighborhood resident also calls the protester a "confederate" and a "degenerate." He also yells to a woman who apparently is on her way into the abortion clinic, "You're doing the right thing. God will honor you. I believe in you mom."

Life Links 4/11/08

Authorities in Mexico have captured Cesar Laurean, the Marine suspected of killing Maria Lauterbach, a pregnant fellow Marine he was suspected of raping.

Laurean has been on the lam since January, after investigators say they found the charred remains of Lance Corporal Maria Lauterbach and her unborn baby buried in Laurean's back yard. Lauterbach, who was eight months pregnant, disappeared in December 2007. The discovery of her remains prompted authorities to file murder charges against Laurean.

The FDA is holding two days of hearings to discuss how they might regulate future attempts to use embryonic stem cells in human therapies. The Wall Street Journal article notes how Geron is claiming they plan to submit a proposal to begin a clinical trial using embryonic stem cells on patients with spinal cord injuries this summer.


A CNN Money article mentions, "The FDA seems to be more concerned with the stem cells' possible side effect of producing tumors. Because of the 'potential risks' of human embryonic stem cell products, data showing a drug's effectiveness 'may need to be particularly strong,' the document said."


In other stem cell news, Germany has eased their restrictions on importing embryonic stem cells. While killing human embryos for research is still illegal in Germany, researchers can now import embryonic stem cell lines created before May 1, 2007, whereas before they could only work on embryonic stem cell lines created before January 1, 2002.


A police officer from Olathe, Kansas is on paid leave after threatening to arrest a prolifer for displaying graphic images of aborted children on the side of his truck.


Alex Kindell, the president of the pro-choice group at Northern Kentucky University claims the Genocide Awareness Project's pulic display of aborted children is promoting hate and violence.

"This isn't promoting free speech," she said. "They're promoting hate. They're promoting violence."

So showing images of violence against unborn children in an attempt to stop this violence is somehow promoting violence?

For those of you who might remember, Northern Kentucky is the place where now-former NKU professor Sally Jacobsen and her students destroyed a prolife display of crosses.

Life Links 4/9/08

In First Things, Christopher Kazcor discusses the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' recent attempt to push prolife doctors into referring women to abortion providers against their consciences.


Stem cell research may not find wonder cures?

Stem cell research, we have long been told, should pave the way for revolutionary new treatments to help millions of patients around the world.

Yet despite the years of study and debate about the potential, therapies have been slow to materialise.

Even the head of the UK National Stem Cell Network has now conceded that stem cell research may never deliver new treatments.

Paul Kengor on Bob Casey Jr., Barack Obama and abortion:

Sen. Barack Obama is so extreme on abortion that he has managed to achieve what I once thought impossible: He is to the left of Hillary Clinton on abortion. I say that as someone who has written a book on Hillary Clinton, with a special focus on her abortion fanaticism.....

Does Casey not understand the threshold upon which he and his nation now stand? Roe v. Wade is at last in peril, but if he achieves his dream of an Obama presidency, Obama can tip the Supreme Court’s balance in a pro-Roe direction for decades to come. There have been 40 million abortions since 1973.

Consequently, Senator Casey’s endorsement of Obama is an undeniable betrayal of his, his father’s, and his church’s pro-life work and commitment.

Michael West, founder of Geron and former head of Advanced Cell Technology, is working on a new way to try to make money off embryonic stem cells. He hopes to "sell lines of cells that he dubs 'human embryonic progenitors'--cells that have inched partway along the continuum from embryonic stem cell to differentiated adult cell" because embryonic stem cells are so difficult to control.

Life Links 4/8/08

UPDATE 4/10: From a recent post on his blog, it appears the Newsweek reporter may taken liberties with Pastor Hamilton's position on abortion. It seems (from the blog post) that a more correct label for his position would be prolife-with-exceptions rather than pro-choice. I still haven't had time to listen to the audio of his sermon and I'm just starting to read the abortion chapter in his book which was recently made available online.

Newsweek has a small article entitled "How Would Jesus Choose" about a pro-choice Methodist pastor named Adam Hamilton who prefers to call himself "pro-life with a heavy heart" even though he believes abortion should be legal and available. The Newsweek article notes how Hamilton received a letter from his mother which mentioned how she was pressured to but refused to have an abortion when she was a teenager. The article doesn't note if the child who wasn't aborted was Hamilton or one of his siblings.

You can listen to a sermon on abortion by Hamilton from 2004 at the web site of the United Methodist Church.


Scientists from the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research have used induced pluripotent stem cells to treat Parkinson's in rats. According to MIT stem cell scientist Rudolf Jaenisch, "These cells are more readily available and much less controversial than embryonic stem cells. But they seem to have identical potential."

Could someone tell me again why proponents of embryonic stem cell research continue to push cells which are more controversial, less readily available and seem to have the same potential as cells which aren't controversial and are more readily available?


Italian pro-choicers who dislike a political candidate running on the slogan "Abortion? No thanks" showed their distaste by hurling "eggs, tomatoes, oranges, bottles and coins" at Giuliano Ferrara, a devout atheist.

Stay classy Italian pro-choicers.

Monday Neighborhood Blogging

Last week, a car caught on fire right next to my house.



Thankfully, the fire department was there in time to put out the blaze before it reached the gas tank. Unfortunately, someone has a pile a scrap instead of a usable car.

Life Links 4/7/08

Jeff Jacoby on sex-selection abortion in America.

Most Americans rightly regard sex-selective abortions as odious; in a 2006 Zogby poll, an overwhelming 86 percent of Americans agreed that such abortions should be illegal. But they're not illegal - and as economists Douglas Almond and Lena Edlund indicate in the latest issue of PNAS, they are now occurring in the United States, too.

Almond and Edlund examined the ratio of boys to girls among US children born to Chinese, Korean, and Indian parents. For the first children of these Asian-American families, the sex ratio was the normal 1.05-to-1. But when the first baby is a girl, the odds of the second being a boy rose to 1.17-to-1. After two sisters, the likelihood of the third being a son leaped to 1.51-to-1. This is clear "evidence of sex selection, most likely at the prenatal stage," the authors write.

A young woman in the Grand Rapids area with a spinal cord injury continues to make progress with physical therapy and adult stem cell injections.


The Los Angeles Times has an article on Dallas Hextell, a young boy with cerebral palsy who has made dramatic improvements after being treated with his own umbilical cord stem cells.


Wesley Smith notes Hillary's clintonesque support of Oregon's assisted suicide policy.

Exposing Ridiculousness: How Some Pro-Choicers Attack CPCs Without Evidence

April 1st was apparently "Attack Crisis Pregnancy Centers Day" over at the RH Reality Check blog. Numerous entries decried how evil pregnancy centers are. Complaints about CPC deception and trickery were filed left and right. Evidence provided was either wax-paper thin or non-existent.

Vicki Saporta's entry (entitled "Targeting the Vulnerable: Crisis Pregnancy Centers Deceive") contained a long list of shenanigans which CPCs supposedly take part in on a routine basis but didn't link to anything which shows that any of her accusations were true. The only thing she links to is a National Abortion Federation paper which Serge summarized when it originally came out. A lot of her post is actually taken directly from the NAF paper.

As Serge notes, some of her accusations are just plain silly. For example, "Many CPCs are connected with religious organizations, but few disclose that fact in their advertising."

Yeah? So? Numerous charitable organizations are connected with various religions and they don't mention that connection in their advertisements. Listing affiliations isn't always the top priority of an advertisement (where space typically costs money). Saporta's point would be what exactly?

Others accusations are based on microscopically slim evidence. Saporta claims (my emphasis), "Once they get women inside their doors, CPCs often force women to watch graphic, misleading videos." She takes this accusation from the NAF report which states, "While women wait, CPCs often present them with videos and pictures depicting gruesome and graphic images of bloody and dismembered fetuses that have allegedly been aborted as a scare tactic in their effort to compel women not to have abortions."

On the NAF report, the sources for this information are this web site from the Brooklyn Pro-Choice Network which posts the supposed testimony of one woman from Arkansas and this 1999 newsletter from the Center for Reproductive Right where a woman named Jennifer Specht claims she watched a video with images of aborted children after signing a consent form.

Saporta additionally claims, "Some CPCs further mislead women by giving them false pregnancy test results so that they will postpone obtaining abortion care." This accusation is also taken from the NAF report which claims "When the pregnancy results are revealed they may be presented in ways that are ambiguous53 or even false.54"

The footnote 54 takes us to this web page from the Center for Reproductive Rights which claims (without a source) "Some CPCs have even been charged with misrepresenting the results of pregnancy tests in an effort to prevent women from obtaining an abortion."

Lauren Bull's post (entitled "Exposing Lies: CPC Advertising on College Campuses") was probably more pathetic. Bull tells the story about how she was "shocked" that a CPC was near her college campus and would advertise to college students. The advertisement said, "Scared, Pregnant, Need Help?" These ads were supposedly deceptive.

Bull tries shows how these ads were deceptive by deceptively pretending to think she might be pregnant and setting up an appointment at the CPC. She goes to the office and finds it has pictures of unborn children at various stages of development and parenting magazines. The horror!!!!!

Bull gets her pregnancy test back, feigns relief and leaves with abstinence brochures. The lies the CPC told her???? She doesn't mention or note a single one.

Your average pro-choice person can't find these posts persuasive, can they? I'd really like to know from the pro-choicers who read this blog if they find the Saporta and Bull posts to be worthwhile.

Can the pro-choice movement really not come up with anything more persuasive than attacking a CPC because they have parenting magazines, display pictures of unborn children (which are sooooo deceptive since if a woman thought she was at a place which provided abortions, the first she'd expect would be parenting magazines and fetal pictures) and offer free pregnancy tests to college students?

Life Links 4/3/08

Here's the next video from Lila Rose and the prolifers at UCLA who taped conversations with Planned Parenthood employees. The prolifers had a male caller act like he wanted to donate money for abortions on African-Americans and numerous Planned Parenthood employees were more than happy to oblige. The worst has to be call at the end of the video where the caller says, "The less blacks out there the better" and Planned Parenthood employee Irene Gray responds, "Yeah, yeah, it's a strange time for sure."


A 14-year-old girl in Texas apparently drowned her newborn child in a middle school toilet.

"We understand that the baby was alive when it was born and that the girl attempted to flush the child down the toilet. The child died as a result of these actions," said Lt. Eric Freed of the Baytown Police Department.

Another student who walked into the restroom heard the baby crying and ran to get the nurse and assistant principal. But by the time they arrived, officials said, it was too late.

Ross Douhat provides his thoughts on Chief Justice John Roberts and the chance he would vote to overturn Roe.


Jack Lessenberry, a pro-choice, pro-assisted suicide columnist writes about Jack Kevorkian's plans to run for Congress. The column confirms my notion that Kevorkian has been a crazy, old man for quite a while.


Speaking of Kevorkian, Stephen Drake of Not Dead Yet has posted the transcript of a FOX News piece on Kevorkian's run for Congress.


Phil Kadner of the Southtown Star discusses efforts at the University of Illinois to help pregnant college students keep their children and stay in school.

Life Links 4/2/08

Michael Gerson has a column in the Washington Post on Obama's abortion extremism.


Brave New Britain marches on as researchers at Newcastle University announced they've created cloned hybrid embryos using nuclei from human somatic cells and the eggs of cows. None of the embryos lived long enough for researchers to extract embryonic stem cells.


Prolife students at the University of Calgary have refused to comply with their university's order to hide their display which features images of aborted children.


Michael Clark and Jennifer Lahl have a long article in First Things where they argue that egg harvesting is the newest form of human trafficking.


At East of Eden, Ann Marie shares how she became prolife.


Sarah at CEC for Life shares the story and pictures of a toddler whose life she played a role in saving when she worked for Stand True Ministries.

Life Links 4/1/08

Melinda at the Stand to Reason blog has some thoughts on Barack Obama labeling babies as a "punishment."


The University of Calgary is ordering prolife students to take down a display which features pictures of aborted children.


We The Students will feature a debate on abortion tonight between students at Liberty University and the University of Vermont.


Jay Tea, who describes himself as "squishily pro-choice," has a few thoughts on the numbers in Planned Parenthood's most recent annual report.

1) As several commenters noted, those numbers mean that Planned Parenthood had about an 11% operating profit. If they weren't a non-profit, that would make them a better investment than the oil companies, whose 9% rate of return was labeled "obscene."

Life Links 3/31/08

The State News (Michigan State University's paper) has an article about the drive to legalize the killing of human embryos for research in Michigan. One MSU professor is quoted as calling embryonic stem cells the "Rosetta Stone of life." Too bad all that funding and hype hasn't translated into any successful treatments.


Apparently, Barack Obama thinks babies are some kind of punishment for women who get pregnant when they aren't planning to.


Ann Furendi, chief executive of Britian's top abortion provider has a column entitled, "Why rising abortion rates are a good sign" to explain why the rising rates of abortion in Britain is a good thing for the country. I guess "safe, legal and rare" doesn't work for British abortion providers. Furendi's basic thinking seems to go like this: "Many people are having sex who don't want kids now or possibly ever, some people don't want kids now because they don't think they could give everything they want to their child, contraception is great but doesn't work all the time and some people aren't good at using it, so in cases where contraception doesn't work or isn't taken - abortion is a good back-up because it means that more people who don't want kids aren't having them." The problem with this thinking is that from step one, it assumes the unborn aren't children.


The Associated Press picked up on the story of Tong Phuoc Phuc over the weekend but their web site currently says the story not available.


Wesley Smith on the new way Dutch doctors are killing their patients:

Demonstrating the subversive nature of the euthanasia/assisted suicide movement on proper medical care, Dutch doctors are switching from lethally injecting patients to sedating them into a permanent coma so they die by dehydration over a period of days or weeks.

Planned Parenthood commits more abortions and brings in big profits

In what's becoming annual news, Planned Parenthood performed more abortions than it performed in the year before Abortions increase 9.4% to 289,750 abortions in 2006 from 264,943 abortions in 2005 according to their according to their most recent annual report (PDF). My guess is they probably broke the 300,000 mark in 2007.

Profits for one year came out to $114.8 million while Planned Parenthood affiliates received $336.7 million in government grants and contracts.

What did Obama do to change Rev. Wright's divisive views?

Jay Cost at Real Clear Politics asks a question I've been wondering about:

Candidates make all kinds of promises about what they will do, and voters need to find some way to gauge whether they will keep their word. One way to do that is to look at what they have done. By contextualizing Jeremiah Wright in the broader dilemma of American divisiveness, Obama has identified his experience at Trinity as a small instance of a larger problem that plagues the country, the problem to which he intends to dedicate the 44th presidency. It is therefore reasonable to ask what he did - empowered as he was as a high-profile, long-standing parishioner - to change the viewpoint of Wright and Trinity, and whether those efforts were successful.

The essential problem of the speech is that it gives no answer to these queries. Obama recognizes the problem with Wright's viewpoint, feels strongly that it is part of a problem in society that needs to be corrected, but offers no evidence of his work to correct it. Instead, he says, "Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed." But there are many ways to "disagree." Did he merely shake his head quietly in the pews and complain to Michelle on the drive back to Kenwood? Or did he do something about it? Many parishioners in many churches or synagogues would do something if their pastors, priests or rabbis went astray on an important issue. Many more would expect a future president to do something.

Who's a person?

My 3-month-old child?


Or my 3-year-old cat?

Or maybe both?

Typically when individuals in favor of abortion or embryonic stem cell research argue that unborn human beings can be killed at various stages of development because at that stage of development the unborn aren't persons, they frequently use mental abilities such as awareness, consciousness, sentience, etc. to differentiate between whom they consider persons and non-persons. In the past, these assertions have always struck me as poor because there is typically very little reasoning as to why these certain degrees of mental capacities matter in such a way that we can kill one human being and not kill another. The criteria also seem to typically leave out groups of human beings like the profoundly disabled or newborns whom the criteria-setter typically doesn't think it should be legal to kill.

While raising my child for the last three months, the "they're a person if they have this mental ability" assertion has only gotten harder to accept. Over the last three months, I've come to the conclusion that my cat currently has more mental capacities than my daughter. In other words, my cat is smarter than my kid. Yet most pro-choicers who subscribe to the personhood argument for discriminating against the unborn (as opposed to the bodily autonomy argument) would likely consider my daughter a person but view my cat as a non-person. I can't see how they could reasonable argue this though.

While both of them sleep about 15 hours a day, when they're awake Rascal is more aware of herself and her environment than my daughter. I'm not sure if either of them has the ability for rationale thought but if they did, Rascal would certainly have more reasoning ability. Rascal knows how to break into our bedroom to take a nap on her favorite blanket while my daughter probably couldn't even find our bedroom if she could move around independently. Both feel pain and express themselves when they are in pain. Both attempt to communicate in their own way. My daughter doesn't appear to be able to understand a word my wife or I say to her but Rascal can lift her paw to shake on command in exchange for cat treats.

So if my daughter is currently a person because of her current mental capacities, I can't see how my cat isn't. I can't think of one thing which would make my daughter a valuable person while keeping my cat a non-person except for my daughter's humanness. But the whole concept of personhood (at least in pro-choice circles) revolves around the notion that being a living human organism doesn't necessarily make one a person. Some, like Peter Singer, even label the idea that humans are valuable simply because they're humans as "speciesism."

I wonder how thoughtful pro-choicers who hold these different criteria for personhood think when they're around young children. Would they see my daughter as a person or maybe just a potential person? I think that if they see my daughter as a person, they'd be nothing more than speciesists if they didn't find Rascal to be a person as well.

Life Links 3/27/08

Nat Hentoff takes on Barack Obama over his comments regarding Terri Schiavo.


The UK's Telegraph reports that hundreds of children in Britain survive each year after being born before Britain's legal abortion time-limit of 24 weeks.

Department of Health data show that 909 children were born between 22 and 24 weeks of pregnancy during 2005. Of those, 250 survived for at least a year.

The VietNamNet Bridge has a story about and pictures of Tong Phuoc Phuc, his cemetery for the unborn and the home where women and their children stay.


Despite abandoning human cloning for research efforts for induced pluripotent stem cell research, Ian Wilmut is still promoting human cloning and human-animal hybrid cloning research in England. Wilmut is quoted as saying,

"To me, and I suspect the majority of people in 21st century Britain, a human being is someone who is aware.

The fundamental thing is that (the hybrid embryo] is not a human being."

I guess I became a non-human being when I conked out on the couch last night while watching American Idol. Why does it always seem like scientists fail so poorly when they try to treat their shabbily argued philosophical beliefs as if they were scientific beliefs?

Life Links 3/26/08

Abortionist Alberto Hodari has been given what I wouldn't even call "a slap on the wrist" (more like a tap on the wrist) for dumping medical waste and the bodies of aborted children in his dumpster. He received a letter saying he needed to retrain his staff.


The trial of a teacher accused of having sex with a student and taking that student to an abortion clinic when she became pregnant is underway in Australia.


Jen at Turn the Clock Forward links to an article in the Daily Illini about a college student who decided to keep her baby and continue going to school after taking a semester off. Jen also notes the response of some pro-choicers in the comments section of the article.


The state of Illinois is having trouble documenting the grants it provided for embryonic stem cell research. The article never uses the term "embryonic."

Dana Goldstein is trying to defend the indefensible

By claiming that Barack Obama's numerous attempts to derail the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA) were really votes to defend partial-birth abortion. In a post on the RH Reality Check blog entitled "When Obama Voted No", Goldstein (a writing fellow for the American Prospect) displays an almost unbelievable marriage of laziness and ignorance or possibly plain old deceptfulness. She writes,

But BAIPA isn't really about protecting infants; it is anti-abortion rights legislation crafted by the hard right. BAIPA targets the abortion procedure known as dilation and extraction, which anti-choicers have so successfully re-branded as "partial birth abortion."

In her piece, Goldstein never links to any version of the actual legislation. Now I'm not sure if this is because she was too lazy to actually look up the legislation and read it or if she did look it up and then decided to intentionally deceive her readers. Here's the text of the the first version of the Illinois legislation which was introduced in 2001(my emphasis):

(a) In determining the meaning of any statute or of any
9 rule, regulation, or interpretation of the various
10 administrative agencies of this State, the words "person",
11 "human being", "child", and "individual" include every infant
12 member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any
13 stage of development.
14 (b) As used in this Section, the term "born alive", with
15 respect to a member of the species homo sapiens, means the
16 complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of that
17 member, at any stage of development, who after that expulsion
18 or extraction breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of
19 the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary
20 muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been
21 cut and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction
22 occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean
23 section, or induced abortion.
24 (c) A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be
25 fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate
26 protection under the law.

Now if prolifers wanted to use this legislation to ban partial-birth abortion, why would they use the phrase "complete expulsion or extraction?" The partial-birth abortion technique kills the child when she is only partially extracted. If the goal of this legislation was to ban a technique which kills a partially extracted child, it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to include the word "complete."

Here's the 2002 bill which Barack Obama also worked to stop. Same "complete explusion or extraction" language. Ditto for the 2003 bill.

If Goldstein had done her homework, she would have discovered that the movement of various states and the federal government (whose legislation passed by a voice vote in the U.S. Senate) to pass Born Alive Infant Protection Acts had nothing to do with partial-birth abortion. That movement started in the mid-90's. The goal of the BAIPA legislation was to prevent infants who survive abortions from being left to die.

Other notes:
1. Goldstein claims without evidence (I wonder why?) that partial-birth abortions are performed "most often to end wanted pregnancies in which expectant parents learn their baby will not be viable outside of the womb."

2. She seems to believe that there are only two different late-term abortion techniques (D and E and partial-birth abortion). Her thinking seems to go like this: "There are only 2 different late-term abortion techniques. Children who get dismembered in the womb certainly aren't born-alive. Therefore, this legislation must be trying to ban partial-birth abortion."

3. Goldstein seems to think partial-birth abortions are rare because they typically aren't performed at hospitals very often. Of course, most hospitals don't perform even one partial-birth abortion a year. Most hospitals don't perform abortions. Most late-term abortions are performed by late-term abortion specialists.

4. The effort to paint Obama as the good guy using the claim that he wasn't in favor of killing infants who survive abortion because he was really just in favor of killing partial-born, late-term fetuses seems somewhat counterproductive.

5. Ann at Feministing embarasses herself and shares in Goldstein's ignorance by linking to Goldstein's post.

Life Links 3/25/08

You know those stories which make you realize that you're not doing enough? This is one of them. Tong Phuoc Phuc and his family put me to shame.


Tom Oleson of the Winnipeg Free Press gets to the heart of Robert Latimer's case and the dangers of agreeing with people who commit murder in the name of "compassion."

The third -- Robert Latimer's crime -- is doing it for someone unasked, killing a person without their instruction or consent because you think they would be better off dead. Because there is no consent, this might be more accurately described as doing it to someone, rather than for her; it is most accurately described as premeditated murder and the day that Canadians come to consider it as the "right" thing to do, as Latimer asks us to, will not only be a dark day for Canadians who are disabled, but an even darker one for those who are not.

Scientists in Britain want to meet with clergy in the hopes of alleviating their concerns about creating and killing human-animal hybrid embryos for stem cell research. The problem seems to be that the scientists have some difficulty understanding the opposition to this research.

Life Links 3/24/08

The UK's Telegraph has an editorial about the need to rethink their nation's abortion policy.

In some parts of the country, as many as one teenage girl in every 23 has had an abortion. Whatever is required to get the rate of teenage pregnancy down in Britain, it is clearly not being done.

When abortion became legal 40 years ago, its advocates insisted it would not lead to the procedure becoming widespread, or being used as an alternative to contraception. But that is precisely what happened.

I'm still waiting for some pro-choice blogger or group to try to blame the high rates of teen pregnancy/abortion in Britain on abstinence education.


Wesley Smith provides some more details about the experiment using stem cells from cloned mice embryos to treat mice with Parkinson's.


Steven Malanga on poverty:

Given that a significant body of research now shows that children raised in two-parent, married families do better in school, are less likely to wind up in jail, and are less likely to end up on welfare, the startling racial divide in marriage tells us that a new generation of children, especially blacks, are growing up destined to struggle academically, in the job market, and in forming their own families. And policy prescriptions like a higher minimum wage or tax credits are unlikely to help many of these kids. What they mostly need is another parent—usually a father.

While government can't give them that, candidates can at least give us some straight talk on poverty. But it's easier, it seems, to blame the woes of the poor on the "excessive" profits of greedy corporations, or on so-called underhanded mortgage brokers taking advantage of low-income borrowers.

On Good Friday

I thought I'd post the lyrics of a song by Echo After, local alternative rock/Christian band.

Mark Me

Let's pretend I never was
When you ask why I'll say just because
You know I need a purpose
I'm drowning just beneath the surface
I can feel it inside
Tearing down the walls of pride
I need to lay it down
But what's a prince without a crown

Chorus
Show me the nail marked hands
The thrones that stand
Show me sacrifice
Show me the spear in your side
The cat of nine
Show me sacrifice

Let's pretend that we're not dead
See with our hearts and not our heads
Let's pretend we finally see
What we've always meant to be

Chorus

Spread my arms wide open
Cut me deep inside
Place the thorns upon me
Make me a sacrifice

Give me the nail marked hands
The thorns that stand
Make me a sacrifice
Give me the spear in your side
The cat of nine
Make me a sacrifice
Make me a sacrifice

If you're interested, you can hear the song online at their myspace page. I'd also consider How Many Trees a Good Friday song.

Life Links 3/20/08

The Telegraph has a short story on repeat abortion statistics among British teens. The Daily Mail has a longer article on repeat abortions among all ages.

As campaigners claimed that termination had become just another form of contraception, figures showed that about 1,300 women had at least their fifth last year.

Almost 950 of those having a termination had already had four. Almost 200 had already had five, 110 had had six before - and 54 seven or more.

In the meantime, half of the hospitals with maternity wards in Britain have turned away a pregnant woman in labor. Woo-hoo for socialized medicine!


Will the most immediate use of embryonic stem cells be to treat patients? Nope! From a story in The Mercury News:

The most immediate application for stem cells will be to determine the toxicity of potential pharmaceuticals, Klein said. The reason stem cells are needed is that testing the safety of drugs in animals is notoriously unreliable. Agents that seem safe in rodents are often dangerous to humans.

Also, from the story:

Harvard University researcher George Daley said: "There will never be a time when we don't need human embryonic stem cells. There may be - one day - a particular method that does not need embryos. But it will never obviate the value for human embryonic stem cells."

Is Daley making a scientific prediction here or a moral judgement?


Students for Life of America has posted a video of George Tiller at a recent pro-choice conference. The video was very difficult for me to hear but it's clear that Tiller believes abortions in which the baby is born alive aren't good techniques.

Nooooo!

Terrelle Pryor is going to Ohio State. A sad day for every University of Michigan football fan. Not only do we barely miss out on getting the country's #1recruit, we have to face him on the field for probably at least 3 years.

Life Links 3/19/08

The previously cancelled abortion debate at York University occurred last night and it appears the controversy may have brought more people in.


Abortionist Alberto Hodari may face a fine and possibly misdemeanor charges for dumping medical waste, the bodies of aborted children and patients' records in his dumpster.


A judge has ruled that California's suit against federal legislation which aims to prevent physicians from being forced to perform abortion is premature.

Life Links 3/17/08

England's Royal College of Psychiatrists has issued a statement noting that while there is no conclusive evidence regarding abortion and mental health, there are some studies which "identify a range of mental disorders following abortion." The statement also notes that "Healthcare professionals who assess or refer women who are requesting an abortion should assess for mental disorder and for risk factors that may be associated with its subsequent development" and "Consent (for an abortion) cannot be informed without the provision of adequate and appropriate information regarding the possible risks and benefits to physical and mental health. " Here's the article from the London Times with reactions from various groups.


Here's a story about a young Canadian woman whose multiple sclerosis was treated with adult stem cells. According to the article, early results of the clinical trial will be published in the summer.

According to Bowman, one patient died as a result of the chemotherapy (which is so strong, patients have a one in 20 chance of dying). Of the 16 living patients, three have reported some progression of the disease since undergoing treatment, while the remaining 13 have experienced health improvements.

At the RH Reality Check blog, Jeff Fecke shares the thoughts of a pro-choice seminarian who had an abortion in her 20's.

"Choice is what makes us human," she said. "The choice to regulate our own family is a way to love."......"I have never regretted my choice to terminate that pregnancy," Clement said to a quiet congregation. "It was the most loving thing I could do."

"it is right for you if you think it is, and it is right for the baby."

I've been reading through the new abortion stories at I'm Not Sorry and was struck by the number of times the women in these stories (like Ashley C. whose story provides the quote above) describe their unborn child as a "baby."

Ashley D. describes the noise of the suction machine by saying:

This noise did not bother me at first until.... I heard the noise it made when the baby itself was extracted. The whole thing took only five minutes. I was thinking this is a good thing cause it took way less then this to make the baby. This noise will never be forgotten.

At the end of her story she comments on her boyfriend who didn't want her to have the abortion but didn't seem to make much of an effort to convince her otherwise.

Some people are pissed and not happy with my choice but key word being MY CHOICE. The father never came to me one time and said “I want this baby.” He never said this means everything to me. Nothing. I got a couple text messages and that was it. But this was a human life he created and if it was that ****ing important, one would think he might have made an effort. I'm so happy with the decision I made. I feel almost as if I was given another chance at life. He wants me to feel bad and terrible and I never will.

To me, that reads like she really wanted him to make that effort to save the human life he helped create.

While some of the women referred to the unborn as a "baby," another woman volunteered "the material they gathered to science."

I was also struck by how soon after their abortion some of these women are writing their stories and submitting them to I'm Not Sorry. Some of the stories seem to be written in the weeks (and sometimes day) after the abortion. I guess it makes sense to a certain extent. You're home by yourself after the abortion, you're thinking about the procedure and the various feelings you're having and you google "abortion" and maybe words that describe your feelings.

Kayla writes about the circumstances around her abortion the day after the abortion. In her case, both her boyfriend and her boyfriend's mother wanted her to keep the child but as this "straight A" student said, "I have specific things that I want and right now a baby is not one of them."

Life Links 3/13/08

Joe Carter on the recent news of a CDC study finding that more than a quarter of teenage girls have a sexually-transmitted disease:

That's right. While we have Planned Parenthood and sex educators claiming that condoms can "offer effective protection against most serious sexually transmitted infections", the report finds there's no scientific basis for that claim.

What the evidence does show is that men and women who always use a condom can reduce their risk of being infected with HIV and men can limit their exposure to gonorrhea. When it comes to gonorrhea in women, chlamydial infection, trichomoniasis, genital herpes, syphilis, and chancroid, the evidence is inconclusive. (p. 3) And there is no evidence at all that condoms can prevent the transmission of the HPV infection.

Jill Stanek has a video of the trash found in abortionist Alberto Hodari's dumpster including video of the remains of aborted children.


Jack Kevorkian (who has had less than a year to live for several years now) is going to run for Congress as an independent. This actually might be good news if he can take some votes away from pro-choice, pro-assisted suicide Democrat Gary Peters who will be running against prolife Republican Joe Knollenberg.


Peter Robinson writes on how Bruce Thornton responds when asked why non-Muslims in Europe aren't reproducing.


New abortion stories are up on the pro-choice web site I'm Not Sorry.


Large (but smaller than originally planned) raises have been given to the executives and lawyers for the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (California's taxpayer funded embryonic stem cell agency). The 23% raises were approved unanimously by the board.

LifeLinks 3/12/08

The United States Patent and Trademark Office upheld the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation's remaining two patents on embryonic stem cell research. This appears to be bad news for other scientists hoping to make a boatload of money off embryonic stem cell research. Then again, what is the likelihood that embryonic stem cells will ever be used to treat human patients before the patents expire?


Véronique Bergeron of ProWomanProLife links to a commentary in French by journalist who interviewed an abortion provider in Quebec about how women in Quebec who want abortions after 24 weeks are flown to America and their expenses are paid for by the government of Quebec.


Jill Stanek has photos (warning: graphic) of the bodies part found in abortionist Alberto Hodari's dumpster. She also has a form Hodari makes women seeking an abortion sign.

Julie Burkhart: Why would parents of unborn children with Down Syndrome need more information?

They're just going to get abortions anyway, right?

I think "pro-abortion" is the word to describe Julie Burkhart of ProKanDo. I'm not sure the term "pro-choice" describes a woman who attacks Senator Sam Brownback for co-sponsoring the Prenatally and Postnatally Diagnosed Conditions Awareness Act with Ted Kennedy (a slight detail Burkhart never mentions) to provide information about Down Syndrome and other genetic conditions to parents whose unborn children are diagnosed with them. The bill would also create a list of families willing to adopt children who have special needs. Here's Burkhart reason for opposing a bill which is not opposed by NARAL:

While he may be getting cheers from some, Sen. Brownback's efforts smack of an inability to grasp the difficulty of the heartbreaking choices some families must make. A diagnoses of Down Syndrome does not always mean that a family will give birth to a living child with Down's. What it can mean is that the disorder is such that their baby will die from Down's.

So according to Burkhart because his legislation wants to give more information to parents of unborn children with Down Syndrome, Brownback (and apparently Kennedy) can't grasp the difficultly of choosing to abort a child with Down Syndrome. Therefore, parents shouldn't get the information. Now that's some sound thinking.

My guess is Burkhart would prefer legislation which would give late term abortionist George Tiller's phone number to every parent who receives word their child has been diagnosed with a genetic condition.

More on what was in abortionist Alberto Hodari's trash

Authorities discovered fetal remains along with patient records which included names, phone numbers, etc. There's more information in stories at the Detroit Free Press, the Detroit News and the Catholic Pro-Life Committee blog. I wonder how the Wayne State University Medical Students for Choice feel now about inviting Hodari to speak at their event in 2007?

Does more poverty in the U.S. mean more abortions?

Darwin Catholic has an informative post regarding abortion, poverty, presidents, and pregnancy rates. Here's the argument he's going to contend with:

1) Economic well-being (as measured by a low poverty rate and a high median income) has been greater under Democratic administrations than Republican ones in the last 30 years.

2) Abortion rates have either been lower or have decreased faster under Clinton than under Reagan, HW Bush or W Bush.

3) There is a strong correlation between economic well-being and the abortion rate.

I'm going to argue that all of these are partly or wholly false.

More trouble for abortionist Alberto Hodari

In 2004, a 15-year-old girl named Tamiia Russell died after an abortion at his hands, in 2007 he got caught on camera claiming doctors have a "license to lie" and now police have confiscated the contents of the dumpster outside of one of places Alberto Hodari performs abortions because of accusations of improperly discarded medical waste.

Life Links 3/10/08

Wesley Smith on our Me!, Me! Me! culture and the culture of death.

A deaf couple wants their children to be deaf because it fulfills their desire to be part of a subculture, so out go their other embryonic offspring into the medical waste container. Other parents demand a child without disability--even if it means resorting to late term abortion or infanticide. If someone experiences a profound brain injury, we take away their food and water based on their quality of life, and call it medical ethics.

What is being lost in all of this solipsism and neurotic obsession with control is the concept of true community. We are not islands onto ourselves but part of a whole. Some of the best things that happen in life turn out to be those things we didn't want and didn't expect. Each and every one of us belongs. None should be considered discardable refuse.

I'm struggling to understand why prolifers would protest the premiere of a movie (Horton Hears a Who) which has a prolife theme.


A lawsuit by a former Planned Parenthood employee claims Planned Parenthood affiliates in California illegally billed the state of California and the federal government $180 million for birth control.

The billing manual for California's Family Planning, Access, Care and Treatment program, for example, says providers must bill "at cost" for oral contraceptives.

Planned Parenthood, however, billed the government several times more than it paid for the drugs, the lawsuit says, seeking what is known as a "usual and customary" fee that allows for the cost of storing and dispensing the drugs.

The state paid Planned Parenthood clinics more for every monthly pill cycle dispensed, on average, than it paid other public and private providers, according to a report commissioned by the state in 2004.

Ed Whelan reviews Barack Obama's thoughts on the Constitution and judicial nominees.


Ann at Feministing thinks it's funny that Congressman Rick Renzi's insurance company apparently took insurance payments from prolife organizations and funneled the money into his campaign. I think you have to be pretty sick to think it's funny when groups (whatever their views on the abortion issue may be) get ripped off to provide money for political campaigns. Also, take some time to read the comments to get a grasp of how ignorant some of Feministing's commentors are regarding pregnancy centers. Apparently, they're all the same - all they do is lie and maybe provide diapers. I guess in Ann's mind it's funny that prolife pregnancy centers (which supposedly spend all their funds lying to women) were lied to by a prolife congressman.


Jen at Turn the Clock Forward has a shorter version of Amanda Marcotte's recent column. Hilarious. The lengths Amanda will go to in order to attack people who oppose abortion are just mind-blowing.

Life Links 3/7/08

Kelly Holloway attempts to defend her actions to cancel an abortion debate at York University in Canada. Her defense is incredibly weak. It basically boils down to: "I'm pro-choice and most people are too. The prolife debater is part of group which previously displayed photos of aborted children at another university which I and other students didn't like." Holloway also asserts (without evidence) the graphic pictures are fake.


The Birmingham News highlights a clinical trial in which adult stem cells are inject into patients with heart problems.


Brooklyn Law School is holding a symposium today with 2 groups of 4 participants to discuss the recent ruling in Gonzales v. Carhart on partial-birth abortion. Guess how many of the eight participants are prolife. Come on guess.

2?

1?

How about zero. And I wonder why some pro-choice law students have difficulty grasping and grappling with the prolife position.

Life Links 3/6/08

Douglas Groothuis on Recovery for Fetus Fatigue:

Evangelicals (if that word has any meaning), for God's sake, please wake up and remember the acres of tiny corpses you cannot see. Yes, the Christian social vision is holistic. We should endeavor to restore shalom to this beleaguered planet. That includes helping Africa, preserving the environment, and much more. However, the leading domestic moral issue remains the value of helpless human life. Since Roe v. Wade, approximately 50 million unborn humans have been killed through abortion. Stalin said, "One death is a tragedy. A million dead is a statistic." Too many are now Stalinists on abortion. The numbers mean nothing, apparently.

A young boy with recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa has been treated with stem cells from his healthy brother's bone marrow. Recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa is described as a "painful and devastating condition that causes the skin to blister and fall off at the slightest touch." It will take weeks before doctors will know if the treatment is working.


This letter to the editor of the National Post defending Kelly Holloway's decision to prevent an abortion debate has one of the most duh!!! paragraphs ever. For some reason, Muriel Beauroy thinks that reminding prolifers that a lot of women are currently in various stages of pregnancy would lead prolifers to avoid defending their beliefs.


Jill Stanek has an update on the case of Belkis Gonzalez, the Florida abortion clinic owner who apparently put an infant who was born alive in a biohazard bag with bleach.

UPDATE- A couple more...

Abortion - a matter between a woman and her nurse practitioner? Maybe not for much longer in Arizona in spite of Planned Parenthood's wishes and 8 years of using nurse practitioner to commit abortions.


One pro-choicer (who I believe is from England) writes about her frustrations with certain actions by other pro-choicers at a recent pro-choice demonstration.

Telling the opposition what they think and getting it wrong does not help the cause. It makes us look stupid and vindictive. We don't appreciate it when they do it to us so we shouldn't do it to them.

We need to be a movement that understands what pro lifers actualy think so we can refute their actual arguments and not straw ones, we need to be a movement that doesnt use the tactics of the status quo to try and get people to change.We need to be a movement that doesnt automaticaly write pro lifers off as nasty/evil/woman hating

Life Links 3/5/08

Sherif Girgis (a Princeton student) has some questions for Barack Obama.

1. The heart whose beating is stilled in every abortion — is it a human heart?

2. The tiny limbs torn by the abortionist’s scalpel — are they human limbs?

3. The blood that flows from the fetus’s veins — is it human blood?

If the stopped heart is a human heart, if the torn limbs are human limbs, if the spilled blood is human blood, can there be any denying that what is killed in an abortion is a human being?

The Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health have a campaign where participants can send thank you cards to back-alley butchers "pre-Roe physicians."


Wesley Smith highlights the result of a study which interviewed the families of individuals who choose to end their life by assisted suicide.

Well a new study has come out about what family members of those who died by assisted suicide in Oregon say the reasons were for their loved ones' hastening their deaths. As previous studies have shown, it has very little to do with pain and almost everything to do with fear about future suffering.

MIT scientist and embryonic stem cell critic James Sherley spoke out against abortion recently at Tufts University.


The Supreme Court in Brazil will decide if embryonic stem cell research violates the country's constitution.

Life Links 3/4/08

I somehow previously missed this editorial by Rick Santorum on Barack Obama's position on the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. Anyone who supports Obama should have to come to terms with the reality that their candidate of choice voted on multiple occasions against giving legal protection to infants who survive abortion.


The National Post has more on the story of the canceled abortion debate at York University in Canada. My guess is there are very few people on this planet who are as intolerant as Kelly Holloway. Good for Michael Payton (the student set to share the pro-choice view at the debate) and Amir Mohareb (the president of the university's debating society) for speaking out against Holloway's actions.


The government of India is planning on providing financial incentives to families with girls in the hopes of lowering the number of sex-selection abortions.

Canadian abortion debate canceled

Some pro-choicers in Canada appear to be taking a page out of the Joyce Arthur playbook and trying to stop an abortion debate.

Margaret Fung, President of Students for Bioethical Awareness (SBA), one of the hosting clubs, describes what happened: "I was told in a meeting by members of the York Federation of Students that debating abortion is comparable to debating whether a man should be allowed to beat his wife. They said that there is freedom of speech to a limit, and that abortion is not an issue to debate. They demanded that the event not take place and shut us down."

How tolerant of them.

Monday Baby Blogging

Life Links 3/3/08

Douglas Groothuis on Obama's change of position on Terri Schiavo?

Is this the kind of "change" we want: the killing of the innocent at both extremes of life: the unborn and the disabled?

The public school teacher in California who showed his 8th grade students clips from the prolife film The Silent Scream has resigned.


Reclaiming the Mind Ministries has a long interview with Francis Beckwith about his book Defending Life and the issue of abortion.


Stacy Herald, a woman who is 28 inches tall recently gave birth to an 18 inch baby. During her first pregnancy (this was her second), she was advised to have an abortion.

When Herald became pregnant with Katira, they warned that she and the baby would be endangered and they advised her to schedule an abortion.

"We said, 'No, we're not doing that,' and my doctor – I love her to death, she's so sweet – she said, 'Okay,' she said, ‘We'll do it. We'll provide the best medical care we provide. You provide the faith and we'll see what happens,'" Herald said.