Life Links 8/21/08

Barack Obama’s web site has now posted their defense of Obama’s votes against Illinois Born Alive legislation. As far as I can tell, it’s the same “factsheet” as the one given to CBN’s David Brody which I linked to and commented on yesterday.

It fails to ‘fess up to Obama’s years of misrepresentation regarding his excuses against voting to provide protection to infants who survive abortions. The only defense it can provide of Obama’s committee vote against the 2003 Born Alive legislation with the neutrality clause is a Planned Parenthood talking point dated before the neutrality clause was added and a note about the Illinois Medical Society’s opposition to the bill which doesn’t give a date (so you don’t know if the opposition continued after the addition of the neutrality clause).


If you want to get a slight idea of how pathetic some in the pro-choice blogosphere are, check out this piece* from the RH Reality Check’s Brady Swenson, who links to the Obama campaign’s “fact sheet” as if it somehow disproved National Right to Life claims and then intentionally attempts to mislead people into thinking Jill Stanek is now claiming her accusations against Obama opposition to the Born Alive bills were a “mistake.” The mistake in question was that Stanek previously believed Obama didn’t allow the neutrality clause amendment to be added to the legislation. Scott Swenson, also at the RH Reality Check blog, makes similar misleading accusations. *UPDATE* - Brady edited his post (though it's not completely satisfactory) after I pointed out his mistake. Scott failed to do so.

After reading this I’m beginning to wonder if pro-choice supporters of Obama are just too stupid to realize Obama has been misrepresenting himself for years or just so infatuated with him they can’t take an honest look at the evidence. Can someone be so intentionally dishonest about something that is so easily checked - Stanek’s “mistake” didn’t cite the firestorm but the correction of the “mistake” by National Right to Life and the realization and admittance by the Obama campaign that Obama has been misrepresenting the reasoning for his votes.


David Reinhard of the Oregonian isn’t buying the Obama’s ever-changing story.

Right after the Brody interview aired, the Obama camp admitted to The New York Sun that he had voted against a "Born Alive" bill with the neutrality clause. Which prompts two questions:

When will the media start chastising Obama for such fast-talking? How could Obama have voted to deny legal protection to these "born alive" babies?

Fox News has Jill Stanek’s interview with Sean Hannity from last night.


At Hot Air, Ed Morrissey lays out why he thinks Obama voted the way he did.

Nowhere in this argument does Obama say, “I oppose this bill because of its companion bill,” the lame argument that has surfaced over the last 48 hours from Team Obama. He doesn’t talk about the bill’s supposed unconstitutionality. Moreover, during the presidential campaign, he said he would have supported the federal bill even though it had all of the same supposed flaws Obama argued against in this passage.

Obama protected infanticide in order to protect abortion on demand. There simply is no other explanation except abject stupidity, and this passage proves it.

The Sydney Morning Herald highlights the accomplishments of Dutch swimmer Maarten van der Weijden, who won the gold medal in the 10K open water race. His leukemia was previously treated with a stem cell transplant.

Life Links 8/20/08

Yuval Levin reads and reviews Representative Diane DeGette's book so you don't have to. It's amazing how little the chief sponsor of the bills attempting to overturn President Bush's policy on embryonic stem cell research knows about stem cell research.

This complete inability to comprehend the arguments of her opponents characterizes DeGette’s depictions of all the political struggles she describes in the book. Nowhere does she actually discuss what the other side might be arguing, or indeed what her own ethical premises might be. Indeed, she revels in her ignorance of the opposing arguments. “Because the right wing’s objections were at least consistent, I never gave them much thought,” she tells us. That much is certainly clear from the book.

Levin also dissects the various attempts to defend Obama's Born Alive votes in the recent New York Times article on the controversy.


For the Didn't-We-Already-Know-That? file - Scientific American has an article entitled "Body May Reject Transplanted Human Embryonic Stem Cells."

Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine found that mice mounted an immune response after being injected with human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). The result: all the transplanted stem cells—which hold the promise of maturing into several different types of tissue—were dead within a week.....

"[This result is] not a disappointment, it's more of a reality check," Wu says. "I think there's some promise [to hESCs], but you don't want to be foolish and say these cells are going to cure things in the next five years."

Stephen Waldman has the "real story" regarding the Democratic Party's abortion plank. What I found most interesting is that the pro-choice members of the platform committee wouldn't accept language which, as Waldman puts it, "encourages and supports women who choose to have the baby" until language which "beef(ed) up" the platform's language defending legal abortion was added. Since when did it become controversial to encourage and support women who want to have a baby?

Obama's New Born Alive Excuses

It took a little while but the Obama-Born-Alive-Cover-Up story is getting some attention from mainstream media outlets including the New York Times, Associated Press, Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post.

Obama's newest defense is hiding behind his children and having surrogates weakly claim the Illinois Born Alive legislation was different than the federal legislation, no longer because it supposedly lacked an abortion neutrality clause but because Illinois has an abortion law while the federal government doesn't. Here's how the AP article puts it:

The Obama campaign's explanation is that even if the federal and state versions had identical language, they would have very different consequences.

The federal government doesn't have a law regulating abortion, so Congress could pass a "born alive" measure without actually affecting anything. But Illinois has an abortion law that would be muddled by changing the definition of a person with full rights, the campaign says.

So the first excuse was the laws had different language. Now that it has been revealed that the 2003 version of the law Obama voted against had virtually identical language, the new, never-before-heard excuse from the Obama campaign is that the laws with identical languages would have had different consequences.

All you get from the Obama campaign regarding the 2003 law is a "fact sheet" which notes that a guy from the Illinois Medical Society filed a slip noting the Society's opposition to the bill and a Planned Parenthood talking point from 2003 about the Illinois Born Alive law claiming it's different because it's a state law, not a federal law. What's really interesting here is that the Planned Parenthood talking point is dated 2/28/03. That's a couple of weeks before Obama's committee voted to add the neutrality language in March of 2003. In other words, the Planned Parenthood talking point doesn't really address the amended language Obama voted against. The material from the Obama campaign doesn't mention if the Illinois Medical Society opposed the bill before or after the neutrality clause was added.

How the virtually identical language of the Illinois Born Alive legislation would have had different consequences and what those supposed consequences would be for the 1975 Illinois Abortion law isn't explained in any sensible way.

If you read the Illinois law from 1975 (which includes language from the 2005 Illinois Born Alive bill), you'll see that this explanation is even more ridiculous since the 1975 Illinois law has been amended numerous times since 1975 and it's preamble says things like,

Without in any way restricting the right of privacy of a woman or the right of a woman to an abortion under those decisions, the General Assembly of the State of Illinois do solemnly declare and find in reaffirmation of the longstanding policy of this State, that the unborn child is a human being from the time of conception and is, therefore, a legal person for purposes of the unborn child's right to life and is entitled to the right to life from conception under the laws and Constitution of this State. Further, the General Assembly finds and declares that longstanding policy of this State to protect the right to life of the unborn child from conception by prohibiting abortion unless necessary to preserve the life of the mother is impermissible only because of the decisions of the United States Supreme Court and that, therefore, if those decisions of the United States Supreme Court are ever reversed or modified or the United States Constitution is amended to allow protection of the unborn then the former policy of this State to prohibit abortions unless necessary for the preservation of the mother's life shall be reinstated.

I'll be waiting for some pro-choice blogger to provide a explanation of how anyone could think the amended 2003 Illinois Born Alive law would have somehow impeded a woman's ability to obtain a legal abortion but I won't be holding my breath. As Ramesh Ponnuru writes,

So far, only the conservative blogosphere has been calling Obama on his misrepresentations of his record on the Born-Alive Bill, and on his reckless accusations against his critics. Reporters should stop carrying his water. As for his defenders in the liberal blogosphere, if they want to take up for him again I would advise them to wait a while. The campaign doesn’t yet have its story straight, and it has no room for the truth.

Life Links 8/19/08

National Review and David Limbaugh both urge John McCain not to pick a pro-choice running mate. David Limbaugh goes so far to call the pick of a pro-choice vice-presidential candidate "political suicide." The McCain campaign has supposedly been testing the waters by floating this idea by key Republican in various states.


Rich Lowry has a column Obama's extremism and his "mistatement" on his Born Alive votes:

Asked by Pastor Rick Warren when a baby gets rights, Obama said, “I’m absolutely convinced that there is a moral and ethical element to this issue.” This is a crashing banality couched as thoughtfulness. If Obama is so sensitive to the moral element of the issue, why does he want to eliminate any existing restrictions on the procedure?

In 2007, Obama told the Planned Parenthood Action Fund that the Freedom of Choice Act would be the first piece of legislation that he would sign as president. The act would not only codify Roe v. Wade, but wipe out all current federal, state and local restrictions on abortion that pass muster under Roe, including the Hyde Amendment prohibiting federal funding of abortion. This is not the legislative priority of a man keenly attuned to the moral implications of abortion.

On the Born Alive legislation controversy:

Confronted about this on CBN, he said the pro-life group was lying. But his campaign has now admitted that he had the legislative history wrong. Obama either didn’t know his own record, or was so accustomed to shrouding it in dishonesty that it had become second nature.

National Right to Life has updated their web page on Obama's attempt to cover-up his Born Alive votes.


The Wall Street Journal has an article on plastic surgeons using stem cells in cosmetic breast surgery.


Canadian and American researchers have used stem cells from human menstrual blood to treat mice whose legs had blocked blood vessels and tied nerves.

Marcotte fails miserably in her attempt to defend Obama

Not that you didn’t know it already but Amanda Marcotte’s rabid pro-choice position often prevents her from examining evidence and coming to obvious conclusions. She’s now using Dana Goldstein’s utterly pathetic it-was-really-about-partial-birth-abortion defense for why Obama voted against Illinois’ Born Alive legislation.

Never mind that Obama and his campaign have defended his Born Alive votes numerous times and have never once claimed he voted against the legislation because it would have banned partial-birth abortion. They’ve claimed it wasn’t the same as the federal bill (even though one version was). They’ve claimed it would somehow undermine Roe v. Wade and was unnecessary because Illinois law already protected infants who survive abortions. They’ve never claimed it was about partial-birth abortion because only someone too lazy to read the actual legislation would believe something that laughable.

Marcotte continues her elementary school reasoning that the Born Alive legislation was really about banning abortion because Jill Stanek is prolife and wants abortion banned. Never mind that Jill Stanek began working in the prolife movement after she blew the whistle about how Christ Hospital was letting survivors of abortion to die in a utility room. Talk about putting the cart before the horse.

Compare Marcotte evidence-and-reasoning-free writing with that of David Freddoso’s piece on Obama’s Born Alive votes and you’ll wonder how any thoughtful person could actually believe Marcotte.

Speaking of infants who survive abortions...

The Jerusalem Post has a story about a child “coming back to life” after being removed from her mother after she stopped showing signs of life.

The mother, 26, from a Western Galilee village, was in the fifth month of her pregnancy when she underwent a series of tests, during which it was discovered that she was suffering from internal bleeding and that the embryo had ceased to show signs of life.

The woman underwent an abortion and the baby, weighing 610 grams (ed. - about 1.3 pounds), was extracted from her womb without a pulse, hospital officials said.

A senior doctor pronounced the baby dead and she was transferred to the cooler.

Five hours later, the woman's husband came to the hospital to take what he thought was his dead baby girl for burial.

When the baby was taken out of the cooler, she began to breathe. The premature baby was then taken to the intensive care ward, where doctors were attempting to save her life.

Obama on Abortion at Saddleback

If I were an Obama supporter, I’d be embarrassed to be supporting a candidate for president who thinks (video here) answering a question about when human rights begin is “above (his) pay grade.”

I’d also be embarrassed to support a candidate who says he is pro-choice and supports Roe v. Wade because he doesn’t “think women make (abortion) decisions casually.” How on earth does the idea that women don’t make abortion decisions casually (something most prolifers accept) translate into a reason to be pro-choice and support Roe v. Wade?

I’d be embarrassed to support a candidate who knows so little about abortion, he thinks abortions haven’t decreased since President Bush took office.

I’d be embarrassed to support a candidate who thinks that recognizing the scientific reality that the life of an individual human being begins at conception is “a core issue of faith.”

I’d be embarrassed to support a candidate who claimed an organization was lying about his votes against giving basic rights to infants who survive abortions only to have his campaign admit two days later that the candidate did indeed vote against legislation he’s been saying for years he would have voted for.

I’d be embarrassed to support a candidate whose campaign’s newest excuses for voting against giving basic rights to infants who survive abortions is completely nonsensical and very different from his original excuses for why he didn’t support the legislation.

Life Links 8/15/08

The Wall Street Journal's John Fund writes about Obama's misrepresentation of his votes against Illinois' Born Alive legislation.


Meanwhile, Jill Stanek notes that Obama's campaign hasn't come up with a new defense for documents showing Obama voted against legislation which was virtually identical to the national legislation.


Frances Kissling, formerly of Catholics for a Free Choice, disputes Jim Wallis' claims that the new language in the Democratic Party's platform is somehow an achievement for prolife Democrats. Her reasoning behind why Wallis is "spinning" this document doesn't make any sense (it's more likely the spinning has to do with not wanting to look like a complete failure) but I think she's right in pointing out this document is hardly a "historic step forward" for progressive prolifers.


Rekha Basu, a columnist for the Des Moines Register, writes a column on ALS and shows how utterly ignorant and lazy some journalists are regarding stem cell research.

With so little to go on, the 5,600 people diagnosed every year know only that it is a death sentence. There are clinical trials but, so far, nothing promising. There's the prospect of embryonic stem-cell surgery - once the ban on federal research on it is lifted.

Reaction to the Democratic Party's new abortion plank language

The Trail (Washington Post's campaign blog) provides the old vs. the new language in the Democratic Party's platform's abortion plank and reports,

On a conference call Tuesday, a half-dozen anti-abortion pro-Democratic thinkers and religious leaders claimed victory for the party's new abortion plank, which they said took a big step in their direction by more explicitly stating the party's support for women who choose to carry their pregnancies to term. By doing so, they said, the Democrats were moving closer to the middle ground where most Americans reside -- not wanting to criminalize abortions, but wanting to reduce the number performed.

Jen, a prolife liberal, who blogs at Turn the Clock Forward, believes prolife Democrats made a difference and should be proud. She writes,

Yes, the support for abortion is still there. But because of pressure from pro-lifers, there’s far more support for nonviolent options. Because of pressure from pro-lifers, the Democratic Party explicitly committed itself to supporting women’s decision to choose life....

We did this, and we should shout it from the rooftops. I’m not saying that pro-choicers don’t want to support women who carry to term, or that pro-lifers were the only ones who pushed for it. But that language wasn’t there in 2004, was it? We made the difference. There’s a lot more to do, and I don’t want to gloss over that, but let’s be proud for a moment.

Pro-choice blogger Dana Goldstein (whose ridiculous defense for Barack Obama's opposition to Born Alive legislation I previously blogged about) doesn't see it the same way,

Lastly, it's worth saying a bit more about the abortion language in the platform draft. Some conservatives are interpreting the platform's mention of adoption and a woman's right to choose motherhood as a new attempt to reach out to mixed and anti-choice Evangelical and Catholic voters. But I also think the platform is a significant victory for reproductive rights advocates. The Clintonian formula of "safe, legal, and rare" has been scrubbed. The adoption stuff is hardly new....

I simply don't see this as a modification of the party's pro-choice stance. Rather, it's a strengthening of that position and a re-articulation of the commitment to helping low-income expectant mothers.

Pro-choice feminist Linda Hirschman sees the new platform as a step forward for pro-choicers because it "offers an opportunity to put an end to this self-destructive cycle of Safe, Legal, and Rare, otherwise known as regret, depression, and self-denigration. In its place, it can finally argue for the value of women's lives."

You can read the platform language change and judge for yourselves. My feelings on the platform language change probably fall more in line with Steven Waldman, editor-in-chief at Beliefnet, who writes,

It seems to me that, on balance, if you're pro-life this platform is about the same as the 2004 platform -- slightly better in some ways and, actually, slightly worse in other ways....

Where it's worse: the platform actually drops the language from the 2004 platform that abortion "should be safe, legal, and rare." That breakthrough formulation, popularized by Bill Clinton, reiterated support for legal abortion but rhetorically endorsed the idea that society would be better off with fewer abortions. By contrast, the 2008 platform emphasizes the goal of reducing unintended pregnancies and the "need" for abortions. It's a subtle but important difference that preserves what pro-choice activists wanted: absolute neutrality on the question of whether society is better off with fewer abortions.

As long as the Democratic Party's abortion plank calls for tax-dollars to be used to pay for the abortions of poor women (an action which would drastically increase the number of abortions performed), any language calling for the number of abortions to be reduced or for abortion to be "rare" is rhetorical window dressing which means next to nothing in my book.

Life Links 8/12/08

The Wall Street Journal has three articles dealing with abortion today. One on the recent attempt to outlaw abortion (with exceptions) in South Dakota. Another on the APA's upcoming report on abortion and mental health and an add-on to the article about the APA where Stephanie Simon summarizes various studies on abortion and mental health.


David Limbaugh comments on the abortion plank in the Democratic Party's platform.

This party has the temerity to pretend it is inclusive and wants to reduce abortions yet bans any dissent on the issue! It doesn't even want pro-life people in the party -- unless they stay in the closet.

The Detroit News features a story on the battle over an attempt to legalize the killing of human embryos for research.

A Pagan Perspective on Abortion

The abortion providers at abortionclinicdays quote and linked to an older blog post on abortion from a pagan who thinks she’s both prolife and prochoice (she a pro-choicer who believes life begins at conception). If I didn’t know better I would think this was satirical. Some choice quotes:

Where I part company with the pro-lifers is here: it is not murder to abort a fetus. The child at that point is a spirit, not a body. It resides only occasionally in its little, developing fetus body. Mostly, it hovers in and around the mother, feeling what we feel, remembering where it’s been before, riding the changes in its consciousness and ours in a completely non-judgmental way.

When it is time to abort the fetus, I have felt the spirit around me strongly. I have said good-bye in a tender, loving, deeply grieving way. The fetus is expelled, and the spirit just drifts away. It does not die, it is not harmed. I know this to be true. It goes back to the spirit world to wait for its next opportunity to come through, hopefully richer for the experience of our having been so close for a short time.....

In a term pregnancy, usually the child’s spirit fully enters its body at birth. So from a spiritual perspective I can see why pro-choice folks rally round the credo that life begins at birth. But for me, acknowledging that life is there at conception allows me to take the pro-choice argument a step further: it is a woman’s birthright, this ability to judge which spirits pass through our wombs into life, and which pass through into death. That is part of the deal, part of the package of being born a woman.

“I experience envy.”

Some women at LiveJournal’s Abortion Info community share how after having abortions they envy other young women who have children.

For reasons known and unknown, I envy every young or semi young mother that I see.

It reminds me everyday of a baby I could have cared for and carried and showed off (as new moms often do) and in that way, I suppose it does bother me a bit.

The New Republic has a piece by Sarah Blustain on John McCain and his position on abortion. While the piece is more than a little over-the-top it does contain some worthwhile quotes from various individuals who had contact with McCain in his early political career. This piece might offer some reassurance to prolifers concerned about McCain’s position on abortion.


CNN has a commentary by Steven Curtis Chapman on adoption.


Rick Garnett provides a possible response to a Doug Kmiec question regarding why someone shouldn’t vote for Obama though I disagree with Garnett's assertion about the certainty of the Freedom of Choice Act passing.

Because Sen. Obama voted against a law banning the killing of infants that survive abortions, he voted to filibuster Justice Alito (in a context where the leading arguments against the nominee involved his vote upholding abortion regulations) and would probably nominate judges and justices who, though entirely competent and decent, would have misguided views on religious-freedom and church-state matters, he opposes school choice, he would roll back the faith-based initiative, and his election means the certain passage into law of the awful Freedom of Choice Act. He looks great when he raises his chin, and some of what he says -- when he is not thundering in support of abortion rights -- sounds nice, but that's just not enough. For me. For what it's worth. . . .

National Right to Life: Obama Misrepresenting Himself on Born-Alive Legislation

From their site:

New documents just obtained by NRLC, and linked below, prove that Senator Obama has for the past four years blatantly misrepresented his actions on the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection bill.

Summary and comment by NRLC spokesman Douglas Johnson: "Newly obtained documents prove that in 2003, Barack Obama, as chairman of an Illinois state Senate committee, voted down a bill to protect live-born survivors of abortion -- even after the panel had amended the bill to contain verbatim language, copied from a federal bill passed by Congress without objection in 2002, explicitly foreclosing any impact on abortion. Obama's legislative actions in 2003 -- denying effective protection even to babies born alive during abortions -- were contrary to the position taken on the same language by even the most liberal members of Congress. The bill Obama killed was virtually identical to the federal bill that even NARAL ultimately did not oppose."

Here’s a link to the documents.

I think it’s time for someone in the mainstream media to do some research, actually push Obama on this issue and ask some follow up questions. To present the amendment, get it to pass unanimously, and then vote against the legislation is really inexplicable.

Life Links 8/8/08

Ryan Anderson has a piece in First Things on social conservatives and Mike Huckabee that is certainly worth the read.

To start with, he ran his campaign solely on religious identity politics. If Giuliani never effectively reached out to socially conservative Christians, Huckabee never effectively reached beyond them. He continually told evangelical Christian audiences to support him because he was one of them. Everyone else got the message, too.....

Rather than argue that abortion is contrary to God’s law and that we need to bring the Constitution into conformity with God’s law, social conservatives should argue that as a matter of scientific fact the child in a mother’s womb is a whole, living human being, and that as a matter of moral truth the direct killing of any peaceable human being is gravely unjust.

The New Republic has a story by Eric Zimmerman on prolife Democrats.


According to the blog of the Heath and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, it appears a draft of regulations to protect the conscience rights of medical practitioners (which has received a hysterical response by pro-choice bloggers and organizations) was drawn up in response to an anti-conscience rights push by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.


Michael Novak in the National Review on left-leaning Catholics and abortion.

Despite the fact that Cardinal Ratzinger, not to mention John Paul II, forcefully reminded Catholics of their duty not to cooperate with the evil of abortion, many Catholic leftists continue to cite the same American bishops who were rebuked by the cardinal and the pope. Why, moreover, do these leftists argue from “the consistent ethic of life”? Under the flag of “consistency” they are able to put virtually every issue dear to them on the scales. The result is to downgrade the real, distinctive, sui generis evil of abortions, which are now performed at a rate of about 1.1 million a year. They put equal emphasis on capital punishment and the “unjust war in Iraq” — the very thing Cardinal Ratzinger said they cannot in good conscience do.

Oops...

I bet someone at National Right to Life is really regretting publishing this article on John McCain back in 1999.

HT: Daily Kos

More disease-specific iPS cell lines

Harvard researchers have now created 20 different disease-specific induced pluripotent stem cell lines. From the story:

U.S. stem cell experts have produced a library of the powerful cells using ordinary skin and bone marrow cells from patients, and said on Thursday they would share them freely with other researchers.

They used a new method to re-program ordinary cells so they look and act like embryonic stem cells -- the master cells of the body with the ability to produce any type of tissue or blood cell.

The new cells come from patients with 10 incurable genetic diseases and conditions, including Parkinson's, the paralyzing disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, juvenile diabetes and Down's Syndrome.

Meanwhile, George Daley has joined Kevin Eggan on the "we'll say ridiculous crap about cloning" train.

While the cells are an alternative to the more controversial embryonic stem cells, taken from a human embryo, Daley and Melton are adamant that they do not replace them.

For one thing, viruses are used to carry the transformative genes to make the iPS cells. Daley says cloning technology is still superior. "The egg does it faster and better," he said.

What???? So says the guy who doesn't have a single stem cell line created from a cloned human embryo. It's going to start to get real hard for human cloning proponents like Daley and Eggan to not get laughed when they continue to act like human cloning experiments are still worthwhile.

Also of note, the Washington Post write-up has a quote from Doug Melton saying the cell will be provided to researchers "virtually free."

Life Links 8/7/08

In the Mercury News, Patty Fisher argues that an attempt to enact parental notification in California is problematic because the initiative is named after a 15-girl from Texas who was in a common-law marriage. She then goes on to claim pro-choicers could tell their own stories like the one about “The Indiana girl who died from an illegal abortion because she was afraid to tell her parents.”

Except that “Indiana girl” is Becky Bell and her tragic death wasn’t from an illegal abortion. What’s amazing is for all the talk pro-choicers make about how dangerous parental involvement laws are, I’ve never seen them come up with one actual case where a minor was killed by an illegal abortion because she didn’t want to tell her parents.


In the Ottawa Citizen, Margaret Somerville shares the story of a pregnant woman who is carrying a child who supposedly has a number fatal abnormalities.

As I am writing this letter, the little one in my womb is moving around, kicking his mother, and hopefully enjoying a refreshing swim. I am told that he knows no pain, and that while he is in the uterus, he is as safe as can be. I walk him every day, talk to him often, and pray for him always. I tell you this because I want you to know that, despite the grim outlook described above, I am carrying this baby as long as he will let me, and will not be the killing hand. After his birth, if he lives longer than a few days, my husband and I will let ourselves be advised by doctors, but do not intend to extend extraordinary means to keep our little one alive (as hard as that will be). Our prayer is simple: That we will get to meet our little one, tell him that we love him, and watch him fall deep into a sleep that will bring him to heaven.

The New York Times has an article on the how Obama’s position on abortion will weigh on the minds of Catholics in the presidential election.

Life Links 8/6/08

Joseph Dellapenna notes the attempts to recycle abortion history myths in First Things.


According to the California Catholic Daily, an abortion provider in California named Howard Pfupajema was arrested after assaulting a local prolifer who was taking pictures of him.


The AP has an article on the recent news of commercial dog cloning by South Korean researchers.

According to a report released by The Humane Society in May, 3,656 cloned embryos, 319 egg donors and 214 surrogates were used to produce just five cloned dogs and 11 cloned cats who were able to survive 30 days past birth.

Michael New has a piece in the National Review on two separate prolife goals, preventing abortions and building a culture of life.

Most of the time, the twin goals of protecting the unborn and building a culture of life reinforce one another. On occasion, though, they appear to contradict each other.

A Michigan woman has been sentenced to a year in jail and five years probation after causing the death of her newborn child (she pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide). The body of the baby boy was found in a trash can at a hotel. The cause of death was blunt force trauma. There are some background details in the Watertown Daily Times.

What is it they say about great minds?

Ramesh Ponnuru echoes some of my thoughts about William Saletan’s distaste for South Dakota’s informed consent law.

It’s actually a little hard to tease out Saletan’s argument. As far as I can make out, he has two objections to the word “separate” in the required message. First, he does not consider the embryo “separate” because, for example, it is implanted in and nourished by a mother’s womb. But obviously the word “separate” has multiple meanings; there is no contradiction or even tension in saying that an embryo is a being separate (=distinct) from the mother while also being within her.

Indian Court Denies Abortion at 25 Weeks

The Bombay High Court in India has denied a couple permission to abort their 25-week unborn child. Niketa and Haresh Mehta petitioned the court for an abortion after their child had been diagnosed with a congenital heart condition which will require the child to have a pacemaker. In a paper submitted to the court, a panel of three doctors found the child would have “least chances” (I’m guessing this means low chances) of being born handicapped or incapacitated.

According to the Times of India, numerous organizations have offered to help the Mehtas care for their child, including an offer to pay for the pacemaker. The Mehtas, however, seem more focused on getting rid of India’s late-term abortion restrictions.

The Truth on Obama and Infanticide Doesn’t Matter to Media Matters

The front page of Media Matters is linking to this page which claims Jerome Corsi is making false claims regarding Barack Obama’s position on legislation designed to protect children who survive abortions. Here’s their incredibly weak defense for Obama’s actions:

In making the false assertion about Obama's position -- Obama has of course never supported giving people the right to kill their children -- Corsi was also misrepresenting the legislation to which he was referring, a bill amending the Illinois Abortion Law of 1975. Opponents of the bill said the legislation was unnecessary as the Illinois criminal code unequivocally prohibits killing children, and said that it posed a threat to abortion rights.

So because opponents of the legislation disagreed with the legislation, that’s somehow evidence that Jerome Corsi isn’t telling the truth?? Great research there, huh?

These Media Matters staffers can’t get away from the shrines to Obama long enough to know that Obama voted multiple times on multiple attempts to insure abortion survivors were given basic rights. It wasn't just one bill, it was multiple bills over multiple years. They also seem unaware that the Illinois Born-Alive law was passed in 2005 and didn’t do anything to effect whether abortion was legal or not in Illinois.

Considering other lame attempts to defend Obama on this issue, I’m not surprised.

Another iPSC advancement

from researchers at Harvard and Columbia:

While scientists had already used these reprogramming techniques to create stem cells from skin cells, this is the first time that these cells--called induced pluripotent stem cells, or IPS cells--have been generated from a patient. The ability to do so is key to creating models for studying complex genetic diseases, such as Alzheimer's. The findings also confirm that it's possible to use reprogramming techniques in older people and in those with a serious disease. "It was unclear if the fact that the patient had been sick for many years would interfere with our ability to reprogram [the cells]," says Eggan.

Sadly, Kevin Eggan is still under the delusion his failed attempts at creating cloned human embryos and killing them for their stem cells is the "gold standard" for stem cell work, according to the Boston Globe.

When they began working on the experiment more than two years ago, Eggan's team had planned to use somatic cell nuclear transfer, a technique that involves taking human eggs, removing the genetic material inside, and replacing it with genetic material from a patient. Eggan says such work is still crucial, and his laboratory continues to work on that technique, which is considered the "gold standard" for stem cell work. But because of legislation restricting scientists from paying women for their eggs, only one woman has donated her eggs, he said.

How is possible that a technique which hasn't created a single cell line, is incredibly inefficient, and will never treat millions of patients because of the lack of willing egg donors is the "gold standard" for stem cell research especially considering how quickly and easily his lab was able to generate patient specific induced pluripotent stem cells?

Gold standard? No. Somatic cell nuclear transfer isn't the Lexus of stem cell research. It's more like the 1992 Ford Taurus whose transmission has blown up for the second time. Maybe Kevin Eggan likes trying to figure out how to fix things which don't work but he shouldn't act like his preference for trying to solve difficult problems is "crucial" when an easier, quicker, less morally divisive, more affordable technique exists.

How about less than thoughtful?

In a post entitled “Call me biased....” Feministe guest blogger and Planned Parenthood employee KaeLyn writes,

but I just can’t wrap my mind around anti-choice rhetoric. I am fairly skilled at seeing both sides of most complex social issues and I even try to give credit to those that oppose my view if their reasoning is sound, but anti-choice stuff…I just don’t get it. I completely understand why a person could be morally opposed to abortion and why someone might choose to call themselves “pro-life,” but how anyone can be politically opposed to safe, legal abortion and reproductive health services?

This isn’t a issue of being “biased” but an issue of not being able to actually understand and thoughtfully consider the prolife position.

How can someone claim they “completely understand” a prolifer would be opposed to abortion but not understand why they think abortion should be illegal?

Only if they really don’t understand (as opposed to understanding but not agreeing with) why someone is prolife and opposed to abortion.

If you “completely understand” the reason for being prolife and the thinking behind it, you should know prolifers morally oppose abortion for the same reason they think it should be illegal - because abortion is an act where an innocent human being is intentionally killed.

Life Links 7/31/08

Scientists in California are whining about not being able to buy human eggs for human cloning experiments.

But researchers argue that a shortage of eggs fueled by the payment ban is what's kept them from making the advances that prove their technique's real potential.

"You need to have enough eggs to make this thing work, and when you have enough eggs it does work," said Dr. Sam Wood, chief executive of La Jolla-based Stemagen Corp.

"If these guidelines weren't in place, we'd already have many (stem cell) lines and be much closer to a treatment for devastating illnesses for which these are so well suited," Wood said.

Yeah. Right. You just have to forget that the technique is highly inefficient (remember Hwang Woo-Suk got his hands on approximately 2,000 human eggs and produced no cloned human embryos) and a complete waste of time and resources and then realize that if scientists got whatever they wanted then these treatments from the cells of cloned human embryos would magically be within our reach.


Grace Hammond has a piece in the Jackson Hole Planet on the aging population of abortion providers in western states. She starts off by telling the story of a woman who drank massive amounts of alcohol to terminate her pregnancy.

“I drank [the pregnancy] to death under the basketball hoop,” she said. “I nearly drank me dead, too. I had to find that balance between it dying and me dying, you know?”

Why is “the pregnancy” in []? My guess is the woman in question used different words, like “the baby” or “my child” to describe what she was drinking to death.


The Washington Post has a question and answer article with prolife blogger Barbara Curtis.


Here’s another case of umbilical cord blood successfully treating cerebral palsy.

Life Links 7/29/08

Some terminally ill patients in Oregon looking for medical care have been denied care by the state's health care plan and told the plan could pay for assisted suicide.

Oregon doesn't cover life-prolonging treatment unless there is better than a 5 percent chance it will help the patients live for five more years — but it covers doctor-assisted suicide, defining it as a means of providing comfort, no different from hospice care or pain medication.

"It's chilling when you think about it," said Dr. William Toffler, a professor of family medicine at Oregon Health & Science University. "It absolutely conveys to the patient that continued living isn't worthwhile."

South Africa is still trying to deal with numerous illegal abortionists.

Dr Kato, who at first said he did not do abortions and referred The Herald to other “doctors”, later admitted to offering the service, saying it would cost R600 for someone who was five months pregnant.

He promised the procedure was safe and quick.

“They call it safe abortion. You won‘t feel any pain and you won‘t see any blood.”

Dr. Joshua Hare was recently interviewed about his work with adult stem cells by the Miami Herald.

Q: If embryonic stem cells do turn out to be best, will it be because they are the best at differentiating -- that is, turning into other kinds of cells?

A: Exactly right. That's the theoretical reason they should be best, and there are stats that back that up. An embryonic stem cell is at a state that it can make a whole organism. You can make a whole mouse out of an embryonic stem cell. There are 220 cells in the human body, and embryonic stem cells can make each and every one of them.

The issue I've always worried about is do you want to make every cell in the body. That could increase the risk of cancer. What I like about our approach is that it is targeted. We're trying to heal the heart.

According to a press release from VoteYesforLife, it appears abortions haven't been taking place in South Dakota for the last week.

“It’s been four years now...”

One of the members of Feministing’s community discusses her abortion (language warning) with a comment posted on July 28 at 2:03 p.m. (you'll have to scroll down - sorry there don’t appear to be permalinks for the comments):

I made an appointment at Planned Parenthood and scheduled it for Friday, December 17th; I will never forget that day. I looked more and more information up about the baby and that it had a heart beat and what it would look like and so forth and I shared this information with my boyfriend. I asked him what he thought about me keeping the baby and he said “I would resent you and I wouldn’t see us together in the future”.....

So from 8 AM until 7PM I had contractions. It felt like my insides were being torn out. I would fall asleep and be awaked by this horrible pain....

He decided to get a tattoo of a black rose on his arm and told me that it represented the abortion. I was infuriated. It’s much easier to scar your skin than to scar your soul and sadly my scar will never fade. I will always remember how alone I was, how he didn’t care how selfish he was and how he gave me a choice and I chose him.

It’s been four years now, and this august I would have had a 3 year old, so every time august rolls around or December I get very emotional about what happened.

Life Links 7/28/08

Denny Burke highlights a recent exchange on the Albert Mohler Radio Program between guest host Russell Moore and Tony Campolo on the issue of abortion reduction vs. abortion elimination. Robert George was also a guest on the program.


The Telegraph is reporting that US Weekly has claimed the twin children born to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were created by in-vitro fertilization. While I have no clue if this tabloid’s claim is true or not, if it is true, I wonder if there were any embryos who were not implanted and then frozen and if there are frozen embryos, what Pitt and Jolie plan on doing with those embryos.

Pitt has been on outspoken advocate of embryonic stem cell research, including working to help pass California’s Proposition 71 in 2004. He was even on the Today Show promoting it.


The Fresno Bee has a long article on Janet Rivera, a comatose woman whose feeding tube has been reinserted after a court appointed legal guardian had it removed.

While Hadden says financial considerations have played no role in whether to keep her on life support, her family contends Rivera might not be in this situation if she had more money or better health-care coverage. Rivera's medical bills are being paid by Medi-Cal, the state-federal insurance program for low-income families.

There’s a piece in the Toronto Star on Geeta Shroff and what she claims are human embryonic stem cell treatments.

Life Links 7/25/08

The Students for Life group at Wayne State University is suing their university, claiming their free speech rights were violated because of Wayne State's policy on how student fees are spent.


Rapin Osathanondh, abortionist responsible for the death of Lauren Smith has plead not guilty to involuntary manslaughter.


Wesley Smith on what could be the end of the road for biotech company Advanced Cell Technology:

I have been very critical of Advanced Cell Technology, believing it to be a publicity seeking enterprise that used press releases to raise venture capital for morally problematic research into human cloning, ESC, the like, while at the same time, it tried to manipulate the political system to create an environment that would be conducive to it receiving taxpayer dollars. But now, that strategy may have reached the point of exhaustion. The company is apparently on the verge of going out of business.

ACT price per share is down to 2.5 cents.


A Wisconsin television station has a report on the case of a woman charged with homicide after letting her newborn daughter die. I wonder how pro-choicers who use the bodily autonomy argument to defend abortion feel about this case. It seems Indra Book didn't do anything to actively kill her daughter, she just didn't use her body to properly care for the child.

Friday Baby Blogging

Tag reader



Sloppy eater

Life Links 7/24/08

Sherri Shepard talked briefly about her abortions on The View yesterday.

Shepherd, 41, told the Christian magazine Precious Times that she had undergone "more abortions than I can count" during her twenties. But the article, Shepherd said, did not tell the whole story.

"The full quote was I suffer from a lot of shame and guilt, and I didn't know how to forgive myself," said Shepherd, clarifying her comments in the current cover story.

A Canadian man has been given a two-year supervision order after assaulting his wife.

Ahmed had just found out she was pregnant and they had an argument about the unplanned pregnancy.

Mr Wills said: "He got very angry and demanded she had an abortion, which she refused point blank to do."

The row escalated and he pushed her, and smashed her mobile phone.

Here’s an article on spinal cord stem cells and a new study identifying their location in animals.

Researchers have identified stem cells within the spinal cord that, if persuaded to differentiate into more healing cells and fewer scarring cells following an injury, may lead to a new, non-surgical treatment for debilitating spinal-cord injuries....

The study uncovers the molecular mechanism underlying the tantalizing results of the rodent and primate and goes one step further: By identifying for the first time where this subpopulation of cells is found, they pave a path toward manipulating them with drugs to boost their inborn ability to repair damaged nerve cells.

Drunk Lawnmower Driving

From the Grand Rapids Press:

Police: Man operating riding lawnmower had blood alcohol level more than 5 times the legal limit

The driver of riding lawnmower was so drunk -- more than five times the legal limit -- that he slumped over the wheel as it circled in an intersection before he fell to the ground and passed out, police said today.

Jerold Earhart, 29, of the Bay Shore area, had a blood-alcohol level of 0.441 percent. A driver is presumed intoxicated at 0.08 percent.

Sheriff's deputies were called around 11:30 p.m. Saturday to a report of a crash involving a riding lawnmower at Townline and Charlevoix roads.

Witnesses told police that Earhart earlier appeared to be slumped over the wheel of the mower as it went in circles in the intersection. He appeared to regain control at one point, but passed out again and was thrown to the ground. The mower continued until it struck a tree and lawn ornament. A witness shut off the engine.

William Saletan and Separation Anxiety

In a recent column in Salon, William Saletan goes after a South Dakota law which requires abortion providers to inform women that abortion “will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”

He writes,

Until now, I wasn't aware that the fetus—a term that, according to the South Dakota law, includes "the implanted embryo"—was a whole, separate, living human being. I thought it was ... you know ... implanted. I mean, I'm just a guy, not really an expert or anything. But, um, placenta? Umbilical cord? Do those terms ring a bell? And that's not even getting to the tricky stuff, like the role of maternal RNA in directing embryonic growth or all the work done by the womb to facilitate the embryo's attachment and nourishment.

At first, I wasn’t sure if Saletan was being tongue-in-cheek or if he can’t understand that “separate” in the legislation doesn’t mean physically separated (as in “not touching”) but rather that the unborn is a different or distinct or individual human being and is not a part of his or her mother even though they are connected. But the whole column rails on this point, so I’m left to conclude that Saletan opposes this legislation because he can’t understand the word separate can have different meanings.

I have to say, it's a relief to learn that the embryo is so complete and independent. I mean, it solves the whole problem. Here's this woman who just wants to be separated from her embryo. And lo and behold, it's already separate! No need to agonize. Just detach it and let it grow. It's separate, it's whole, it's living. Cancel the abortion. Perform a separation instead.

I guess sometimes it’s easier to use sarcasm when you can’t validly dismiss scientific facts about embryology. No one (including this legislation) is claiming human embryos are “independent.” The prolifer commentators I read are typically quite up front regarding the reality that the unborn depend on their mothers.

The legislation just requires abortion providers to inform women regarding the status of the human being which is about to be killed as opposed to letting abortion providers spout the usual “clump of cells” line used in abortion clinics without informed consent laws.

The rest of his column continues to act like the word separation has a singular meaning and ends with this silly tirade:

So, here's a word of advice to legislators like those in South Dakota: Stop withholding birth control and stop lying to women about their bodies. You can't even keep your lies straight. That's how you ended up telling doctors to tell women that separation will kill a separate human being. See you in court.

Sometimes Saletan’s column are thoughtful and worth reading. This isn’t one of ‘em. Just imagine if the legislators had chosen to use the word “distinct” instead of “separate.” They are synonyms after all.

What would Saletan have written then?

Life Links 7/21/08

In October of 2006, a nurse in Britain gave the chemical abortion drug misoprostol to a pregnant woman who was only in for an initial appointment. The woman later underwent a surgical abortion after experiencing pain and filed an official complaint, according to the Guardian.


A woman from the Pittsburgh area has been arrested for killing a pregnant woman and removing her child.

Authorities say a slain pregnant woman may have been alive and was possibly drugged when a baby was ripped from her womb, allegedly by a woman who tried to pass the infant off as her own.

The eviscerated body of 18-year-old Kia Johnson of McKeesport was found bound at the wrists and ankles with duct tape, and wrapped in a comforter and garbage bags.

Her partially decomposed remains were in the master bedroom of Andrea Curry-Demus, 38, who was charged Sunday with homicide, unlawful restraint and kidnapping, officials said.

The suspect was previously involved in attempts to steal newborns.


Police in the Chicago area are investigating an apparent self-abortion.

Baby boy Johnson was found unresponsive in the back seat of a vehicle at 708 W. 103rd St., according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office. The baby was pronounced dead at the scene at 6:20 a.m.

An autopsy Sunday revealed the boy died from asphyxia, the medical examiner's office said. His death has been ruled a homicide.

Life Links 7/17/08

The Boston Globe, the Boston Herald and the Cape Cod Times all have articles on abortionist Rapin Osathanondh being indicted for manslaughter of Lauren Smith after botching her abortion in September of 2007. According to the Globe article, which has a PDF of the Board of Registration in Medicine’s allegations against Osathanondh,

The board alleged that Osathanondh had placed the patient under sedation without any means to monitor her heart rate, blood pressure, or the oxygen level of her blood. The board said the doctor had no qualified person assisting him while Smith was under anesthesia. The only other person in the room was an office worker who had no CPR or other training in lifesaving procedures.

The board added that Osathanondh "failed to timely initiate a call to 911," "failed to maintain an adequate airway," and "failed to adhere to basic cardiac life support protocol."

Osathanondh also allegedly made a variety of false statements to board investigators, telling them that he had administered Smith oxygen and monitored her oxygen levels and that his office worker was certified in lifesaving procedures. He allegedly tried to deceive investigators by expanding the size of his treatment room and bringing in new equipment, which he maintained was there at the time of the abortion.

The board said he also "fraudulently obtained renewal of his medical license by providing false information."

Researchers at the University of Michigan are selling photos of human embryonic stem cells as art at the Ann Arbor Art Fair.


Wesley Smith on the Great Ape Project in Spain.

Specifically, by including animals in the "community of equals" and in effect declaring apes to be persons, the Great Ape Project would break the spine of Judeo-Christian moral philosophy, which holds that humans enjoy equal and incalculable moral worth, regardless of our respective capacities, age, and state of health. Once man is demoted to merely another animal in the forest, universal human rights will have to be tossed out and new criteria devised to determine which human/animal lives matter and which individuals can be treated like, well, animals.

Stephen Waldman has a piece on “Obama, Abortion & Conspicuous Respectfulness.”

Woman charged for killing her unborn child

A woman in Alabama has been charged with manslaughter because authorities believe she severed the umbilical cord of her 26 to 30-week-old unborn child.

The fetus was dead when it was delivered at the hospital, Tyler said, adding hospital personnel de­termined the umbilical cord had been separated while the fetus was still in Johnson's uterus....

A condition sometimes occurs called umbilical cord prolapse, when at least part of the cord emerges from the birth canal while the fetus remains in the womb. Medical literature states the condition can occur during a premature birth after the amniotic fluid is released....

"Though under normal circum­stances the members of our police department would be sensitive to the needs of a mother who recently lost her baby, our investigators simply could not ignore or over­look the evidence in this case," Tyler said in an earlier statement.

Life Links 7/15/08

William McGurn's column in the Wall Street Journal focuses on the NAACP and black abortions.

Just imagine if this institution used its voice and resources to ensure that, beside all those Planned Parenthood clinics located in our minority neighborhoods, African-American women could find another kind of place. A place not unlike Good Counsel – where a scared young pregnant woman could carry her baby to term, complete her education, train for a new job, and be treated with the love and respect that a mother needs and deserves.

The UK's Daily Mail has an article on a British woman who has had seven abortions.


A woman in New Zealand had an abortion after being falsely diagnosed with tuberculosis.


Kudos to Alex Philippidis of the BioRegion News for this article on the ballot initiative in Michigan to overturn a law preventing research on human embryos. Rarely do I see an article on issues surrounding stem cell research which allow both sides to state their case in this kind of fair manner.

Life Links 7/11/08

Authorities in Texas have searched the backyard of a teenager who claims her mother forced her to take abortion pills and then buried the girl's child in their backyard. THe mother has pointed to spot where she buried the child.

The girl said after her mother discovered she was pregnant, they visited a woman and bought pills, rather than visit a clinic. The girl said her mother made her take them which brought on contractions the next day. The girl said she gave birth inside their home, then her mother took the baby. She added that she didn't know if the baby was dead or alive.

Bertha Bugarin has pleaded not guilty to the charges of practicting medicine (read - performing abortions) without a license which she faces in San Diego. She faces similar charges in the Los Angeles area. I love the quote from her attorney.

Bugarin's attorney told NBC 7/39 that everything isn't what it seems to be and the truth will come out in due time.

I just can't wait to hear how they'd spin this.


Here's a long article on how a man from Canada with Crohn's disease has improved with the help of adult stem cells.

Since his treatment this February, the 25-year-old has significantly fewer symptoms. Some days, signs of the disease, which range from abdominal cramping to diarrhea, are almost non-existent. An estimated 200,000 Canadians suffer from inflammatory bowel disease, of which Crohn's is a major form.

"I am 100-per-cent better than I was before," said Mr. Tytaneck.

But the success of the treatment, which took place over a few months and involved multiple bouts of chemotherapy, will take more than a year to determine.

Jack Lessenberry is probably the most intentionally deceptive journalist (if you can call him that) in Michigan. He knows that embryonic stem cell research is legal and occurring in Michigan yet he still chooses to deceive his readers. I'm continually amazed by how proponents of killing human embryos for research in Michigan can never provide a reason for why they need to kill human embryos in Michigan instead of just importing embryonic stem cells from other states like they've been doing for the last 6 years. I guess it's just easier to lie and claim embryonic stem cell research is banned and call the law against killing tiny human beings for research "medieval."

Life Links 7/10/08

A committee in Brazil’s lower house voted against a bill to legalize abortion by a vote of 57-4.


James Thunder on the latest developments in the case of the 16-year-old girl who obtained an abortion while she was under the care of a Cathlic charity in Virginia.

The girl is vulnerable. Presumably she speaks Spanish, perhaps only Spanish. She is without her parents. She's in a foreign country. Her guardian is a bureaucracy. So, did she consent to the abortion?

Did she seek out an abortion? Did anyone pressure her to do so? What motives did those counseling her about the abortion have? Who arranged the appointment? Who arranged the transportation? Did she speak with a Spanish-speaking doctor in order to give consent?

Enter the Virginia Commonwealth's Attorney for Richmond, Democrat Michael N. Herring, who made an announcement Monday. He is not interested in any of the questions just raised.

Wesley Smith on the dehydration death of a conscious patient in Florida.

Once we decided that people who are diagnosed as persistently unconscious could have sustenance denied based on quality of life, then we stripped all profoundly cognitively disabled people from moral equality. The wall was breached allowing utilitarian bioethical values to come pouring in. Now, virtually anyone who needs a feeding tube and can't make their own decisions--conscious or not--can and are being denied food and water. What a testimony about the state of the times in which we live.

Politico has a long article on Obama’s attempts to clarify his position on abortion. Also, note this piece from former Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt on how she’s holding back on donating to Obama.


This article about a mother being arrested after her children (ages 2 and 4) were found wandering the street after she went to see “a doctor” appears to have been changed. I came across the article by the way of Google and the headline was “Police: Mom left kids alone to see about abortion.”

A local television station web site also has a video report on the story.

Life Links 7/9/08

Serge has some additional fisking of that really bad "stem cell ban" editorial in the Detroit Free Press.


Wesley Smith on the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine's latest sob story.

Oh, this is rich! During the campaign for Proposition 71, proponents promised that Californians would reap a cornucopia of benefits from borrowing $3 billion over 10 years to pay researchers in private companies and their business partners in universities to conduct human cloning and ESCR. And, they said, the poor of California would benefit from cheap medical treatments.

Well the California Legislature is holding them to that, and now the CIRM is wailing and gnashing its teeth that the very existence of the CIRM is threatened! Sounds serious: Is Bush sending in the storm troopers at last?

From a press release, it appears European scientists have created a single embryonic stem cell line after separating three 4-celled human embryos into 12 cells (thus killing the embryos). The embryos weren't "leftover" IVF embryos but were created solely for this research.


Jenice Armstrong of the Philadelphia Daily News describes a new book.

Written by a friend of mine, Mister Mann Frisby, a former Daily News reporter, "Holla Back But Listen First: A Life Guide for Young Adults" is essentially a collection of life lessons gleaned from celebrities and everyday folks alike on their way to success. In it, Cheryl "Salt" Wray, of the iconic hip-hop group Salt-n-Pepa, tells of getting pregnant at 14 and having a late-term abortion.

"I was awake for the entire experience," she says. "It was excruciatingly painful. I was crying and screaming through the whole thing. My mother had to wait outside because she could not be in the room with me. I had to deal with that horrible experience because it was the consequence of a choice I made."

Life Links 7/8/08

The Detroit Free Press has an embarassing editorial on Michigan's law against performing research on human embryos entitled "End the stem cell ban." There is no "stem cell ban" in Michigan and the Free Press editorial board knows this. Instead of taking the time to come up with reasoned arguments they decided to misrepresent the law, crib the bottom half of the editorial from a previous guest editorial and write silly sentences like this:

The ban is about allowing moral and religious objections to restrict public and scientific policy about an area of exciting and promising discovery, rather than letting science take the lead in figuring out what works, and why.

Yes, because we can't have silly things like moral objections getting in the way of science. The above statement is so stupid, the editorial later says that "No one's saying morality ought not guide scientific exploration" (umm... you just did) but the ban on killing human embryos for "stem cell research" is really bad because it's supposedly based on a minority view. I'll have to remember this editorial the next time the Free Press editorial board campaigns in favor of same-sex marriage.


Warren Throckmorton shares an e-mail conversation he had with abortionist William Harrison regarding South Dakota's informed consent law.


Father Raymond de Souza on abortionist Henry Morgentaler receiving the Order of Canada.

"For his commitment to increased health care options for women, his determined efforts to influence Canadian public policy and his leadership in humanist and civil liberties organizations."

That's the brief citation explaining what Morgentaler's qualifications are. Notice anything missing? The man's name is synonymous with abortion; one doesn't drop into a Morgentaler clinic for a bad back. He does one thing, and one thing only, and yet Rideau Hall could not bring itself to even mention it....

Why not tell us what Morgentaler did? Even in his moment of triumph, the eyes need to be averted. That's the instructive lesson of the episode, not so much that Morgentaler was finally dragged across the threshold of Rideau Hall, but that it was so distasteful for all concerned. Canada, due to the lawlessness of Morgentaler, the connivance of the courts and the pusillanimity of federal parliamentarians, has the most libertine abortion regime on the planet — anytime, any reason, with the taxpayer writing the cheque. Canadians don't like to be reminded that we are extremists on abortion, and giving Morgentaler the snowflake is a reminder that we are seriously adrift when it comes to common sense on abortion policy.

A man in Cleveland named Moses Cade has been arrested for beating his 16-year-old daughter after he found out she was pregnant.

After Cade was arrested, he said he beat his daughter when he found out she was pregnant and he intended to keep her in the house until Monday so he could take her to get an abortion.

Life Links 7/7/08

John McCormack on Barack Obama’s shifting abortion position.

In a speech before Planned Parenthood last year, Barack Obama said that he was well-equipped to defend a right to abortion because "I put Roe at the center of my lesson plan on reproductive freedom when I taught Constitutional law." But during the past week, Obama has proven to be woefully ignorant of abortion law, or he has been deceiving voters about the legality of abortion, as well as his own position on the issue.

Jake Tapper asks a good question on the same subject

But if Obama is saying that "mental distress" is already not a legal exception for abortion bans, then what was the point of what he told Relevant?

If Obama’s position is that late-term abortion shouldn’t be allowed for women who are “feeling blue” and he believes that late-term abortions currently aren’t legal for women who are “feeling blue,” then why did he say it was appropriate for states to prohibit late-term abortion as long as there is a well-defined health of the mother exception which shouldn’t include “mental distress?”


FOX News has posted the second part of a two-part series by John Lott on abortion and crime.


Tammie Downes, a prolife doctor in the UK has been cleared of accusations she broke ethical guidelines. She was being investigated because she encourages women considering abortion to consider other options and a pro-choice doctor involved in the pro-choice movement filed a complaint against her.

Obama, Abortion and Mental Health Revisited

Obama and his campaign are “clarifying” (or as Ramesh Ponnuru says “revising”) his position on abortion and mental health after his interview with Relevant magazine in which he came across as being against allowing late-term abortion for mental health.

Jan Crawford Greenburg isn’t really buying Obama’s newest position err..... most recent convoluted explanation of the position he’s supposedly always had but which seems to differ rather dramatically based on which audience he’s talking to.

Here's the problem with that, and why Obama's remarks are so startling. Obama is trying to restrict abortions after 22 weeks to those women who have a serious disease or illness. But the law today also covers some women who are in "mental distress," those women who would suffer emotional and psychological harm without an abortion.

This standard has long been understood to require less than "serious clinical mental health disease." Women today don't have to show they are suffering from a "serious clinical mental health disease" or "mental illness" before getting an abortion post-viability, as Obama now says is appropriate.

And for 35 years—since Roe v. Wade—they've never had to show that.

So Obama, it seems to me, still is backing away from what the law says—and backing away from a proposed federal law (of which he is a co-sponsor) that envisions a much broader definition of mental health than the one he laid out this week.

Yuval Levin thinks Obama's updated position would be a good thing....if we could believe a word of it.

As with his other recent “refinements,” his substantive move here would certainly be a welcome one, even an important one from such a prominent Democrat, if there were any reason at all to believe him. But given how quickly and seamlessly he has appeared to switch positions on so many prominent issues in the last few weeks, and how he has tried to present each new position as what he has always believed (rather than, in this case for instance, make a point of having come to disagree with at least the most extreme views of the abortion lobby) it is hard to imagine that either side on any of these issues finds much comfort in these increasingly peculiar neck-snapping reversals.

As for my wondering about the response of pro-choice organizations and pro-choice bloggers regarding Obama’s original statement in his interview with Relevant, NARAL Pro-Choice America claims they don’t have a problem with Obama’s statement because of his previous votes. NARAL’s defense is something Huffington Post blogger Earl Ofari Hutchinson isn’t pleased with.

Jill at Feministe was upset:

Either Obama caved to anti-choicers on this one, or he really believes it and isn’t as strongly pro-choice as many of us thought. I’m not sure which is worse.

Zuzu at Shakesville has the feeling (language warning) that Obama doesn’t knows what he’s talking about when it comes to abortion:

So either he's making a disingenuous pitch to evangelical voters, or he hasn't taken the trouble to study the issue and the actual cases (kind of a big failing in a Constitutional Law prof, no?).

Zippy at the Lurking Canary says Obama’s comments to Revelant were “idiot statements on abortion” and isn’t happy with NARAL’s response.

You can also note some responses in the comments section of the pro-choice blogs as well as Greenburg post.

Life Links 7/3/08

The Detroit Free Press has an article on the current attempt to overturn Michigan's law which prohibits research on human embryos. Besides the headline, the article is surprisingly fair considering how some Michigan reporters have handled this issue in the past. The backers must have shelled out a lot of cash to come up with more than 500,000 signatures.


Politico is covering National Right to Life's convention and Fred Thompson's speech there.


Abortionist Deborah Lyn Levich has surrended her Alabama medical license. Summit Medical Center, the abortion clinic where she was employed, was "shut down for serious violations." Here's some background information.

Barack Obama talks abortion with Relevant Magazine

Here's an interview with Barack Obama by Relevant Magazine's Cameron Strang which featured a question on Obama's position on late-term abortion and his opposition to Illinois' Born Alive Infant Protection Act.

Strang: Based on emails we received, another issue of deep importance to our readers is a candidate’s stance on abortion. We largely know your platform, but there seems to be some real confusion about your position on third-trimester and partial-birth abortions. Can you clarify your stance for us?

Obama: I absolutely can, so please don’t believe the emails. I have repeatedly said that I think it’s entirely appropriate for states to restrict or even prohibit late-term abortions as long as there is a strict, well-defined exception for the health of the mother. Now, I don’t think that “mental distress” qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term. Otherwise, as long as there is such a medical exception in place, I think we can prohibit late-term abortions.

The other email rumor that’s been floating around is that somehow I’m unwilling to see doctors offer life-saving care to children who were born as a result of an induced abortion. That’s just false. There was a bill that came up in Illinois that was called the “Born Alive” bill that purported to require life-saving treatment to such infants. And I did vote against that bill. The reason was that there was already a law in place in Illinois that said that you always have to supply life-saving treatment to any infant under any circumstances, and this bill actually was designed to overturn Roe v. Wade, so I didn’t think it was going to pass constitutional muster.

Ever since that time, emails have been sent out suggesting that, somehow, I would be in favor of letting an infant die in a hospital because of this particular vote. That’s not a fair characterization, and that’s not an honest characterization. It defies common sense to think that a hospital wouldn't provide life-saving treatment to an infant that was alive and had a chance of survival.

This law was designed to overturn Roe v. Wade? Please. If Obama truly believes that then maybe someone should take his law degree away.

I wish Obama would share the real reason he voted against this legislation - because that's what Planned Parenthood told him to do. Which is the same reason he is a co-sponor of and promised to sign the insidious Freedom of Choice Act (whose definition for health isn't "well-defined," it's non-existent) if he got a chance.

Maybe someone should ask Obama to explain how a law that states "a live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law" could overturn Roe v. Wade. Does Roe v. Wade protect the right to kill children who survive abortion? Have other states with Born Alive legislation used that legislation to challenge Roe? His defense of himself doesn't make a shred of sense to anyone who has actually read the law. But that's Obama's hope - that people will be too lazy to take the time to read the legislation to see if his defense is valid or not.

I also like the "defies common sense" assertion. Why does it defy common sense that a hospital providing abortions would want to save children who survive abortions? Just imagine those headlines!

Child survives after hospital tried to kill her!

Hospital's botched abortion leads to effort to save baby girl

Baby survives late-term abortion at local hospital

How many women about to give birth want to have their child born at a place where they're aborting children who are old enough to survive abortions?

I guess Obama knows his crowds. In front of an audience of pro-choicers, defend partial-birth abortion. In front of evangelicals, act like you're personally opposed to abortion. I do wonder what NARAL and pro-choice bloggers think about Obama saying he doesn't "think that 'mental distress' qualifies as the health of the mother."

Life Links 7/2/08

Barack Obama's campaign weakly tries to defend Obama's votes against legislation to protect infants who survive abortions. I guess we're supposed to ignore the fact that Obama is against giving basic rights to abortion survivors because Bill Bennett said the Illinois Born Alive legislation was "exactly the same" as the federal legislation. Who cares that it wasn't exactly the same because Obama prevented it from being exactly the same.


Michael Cook, editor of MercatorNet, shreds an editorial in Nature which attacks the concept of human dignity.

Since human dignity leads inescapably to the conclusion that embryo experimentation is inadmissable, it has ditched human dignity. "Dignity as a concept cannot be a director of moral judgement," it insists.
What is cringingly embarrassing about this argument is that it was cribbed from a controversial article by the Harvard neuroscientist Stephen Pinker in The New Republic....

But has the editor of Nature never considered the consequences which accompany Pinker’s theory? Persons in permanent vegetative states are not autonomous; the unconscious elderly are not autonomous. What will be their fate if scientists, doctors and hospitals reject human dignity?...

It’s hard to understand how the world’s leading science journal could ever have taken Pinker’s hissy-fit seriously. The consequences of rejecting centuries of human dignity and replacing it with a self-serving, gimcrack theory are momentous. Embryos may be small but upon them rests our dignity, too.

HT: Mary Meets Dolly


Mark Stricherz has some questions regarding the controversy over a Catholic charity in Virginia helping a teenage girl obtain an abortion.

Life Links 7/1/08

The crazy pro-choice letter of the week award goes to Jovan Byars of Williston, S.C. In the Augusta Chronicle, Byars makes a number of claims against National Right to Life Committee including claiming they "constantly opposed expanding state CHIP programs," failed "to condemn terrorist attacks on women's health clinics," "sat idly by as groups allied with the NRLC commit acts of terrorism again and again," "they have only condoned those attacks again and again," and "this past June 7, they were terrorizing women again, by lying about the birth control pills and their functions."

Before printing a letter like this, one would hope the editors of the Augusta Chronicle would ask Byars for some evidence to back up her statements, especially considering a minute on Google would have led them to discover the American Life League (not National Right to Life Committee) was the group behind the June 7 birth control pill protests, NRLC has clearly spoken out against violence and NRLC has opposed amendments to SCHIP programs which might have led to rationing Medicare.


The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (California's taxpayer supported embryonic stem cell agency) is already trying to figure out how they continuing running after their $3 billion in funding runs out in 2017. One of their options is trying to get more public support.


Brave New Britain strikes again. First, human-cow hybrid embryos and now researchers have been given the go ahead to try to create human-pig hybrid embryos.