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.