Life Links 2/28/11

According to Jim Geraghty, Planned Parenthood will be spending $200,000 to play the ad below which stresses their need for tax dollars. Notably missing is any mention of the a-word.



Robert George discusses Bernard Nathanson's prolife conversion at Public Discourse.

Fourth, the abortion movement sought to appeal to conservatives and liberals alike by promoting feticide as a way of fighting poverty. Why are so many people poor? It's because they have more children than they can afford to care for. What's the solution? Abortion. Why do we have to spend so much money on welfare? It's because poor, mainly minority, women are burdening the taxpayer with too many babies. The solution? Abortion. Initially, Nathanson himself believed that legal abortion and its public funding would reduce out-of-wedlock childbearing and poverty, though (as he later admitted) he continued to promote this falsehood after the sheer weight of evidence forced him to disbelieve it.

A new Planned Parenthood facility is opening today near San Francisco.

"And while most of our clients are not high school students, some of them are," Estes said. "Those students in particular don't always have access to cars, so being close to the high school was important. It was a combination of factors that made this the best space for us."

Pastor Pat Michaels of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on Oakdale Ave. was less enthused than Estes about the arrival of a clinic that would be providing abortions.

The article also notes how Planned Parenthood has been able to move back into the San Francisco area so quickly after disaffiliating the former Planned Parenthood Golden Gate.

Planned Parenthood Shasta Pacific has received about $1 million in donations to help fund its expansion, including grants from the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Foundation, the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Fund and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Estes said.

Melanie Phillips writes in the Daily Mail about the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists' latest guidance.

This guidance, intended for all doctors, nurses and counsellors advising women contemplating having an abortion, said such women should be told that terminating a pregnancy was safer than having a baby.
To which one can only ask: safer for whom, precisely? Not for the baby, certainly.

This is not meant to be a flip comment. For the point is that these doctors seemed to have totally lost sight of some basic humanity here.

Overheard: Pro-choice blogger says planned child was "an alien life form"

Pro-choice blogger Left Hand of Feminism discusses her two abortions and then how she felt when she was pregnant with a planned child.

The next time I got pregnant I meant to. I got really sick again–but it was, as a dear friend and ob-gyn told me, “a good sick.” I did not enjoy being pregnant. I felt invaded by an alien life form. I had been invaded by an alien life form, albeit one who shared some of my genes. But I choose to bring it to term, and I was very lucky that he turned out to be healthy and beautiful and himself. I was ready for him–although it still seemed too soon.

Former commenter arrested by the FBI

I knew SoMG/Operation Counterstrike/Theodore Shulman had some serious issues when he left like 20 comments on my blog under 4 different names during a night in which no one responded to him. I didn't know his issues went so far as to threaten violence against prolifers.

Friday Big Girl Blogging

Snow fun

Life Links 2/25/11

The prolife billboard in New York which caused a stir has been taken down after the advertising company feared for public safety. Pro-choicers had apparently been harassing staff at a nearby restaurant.


I wonder if William Saletan's latest piece which discusses a number of abortionist horror stories in a variety of states will get any pro-choice bloggers to get off the company line that prolife laws are what led to Gosnell's clinic.

The clinic's owner, Barbara Lofton, blamed reports of her recklessness on the pro-life views of the local paramedic chief. He denied that he held such views. Months later, on 60 Minutes, Lofton's former employees and patients alleged that she had practiced medicine without a license and had nearly killed a patient by botching her abortion. CBS correspondent Meredith Vieira reported that "many pro-choice leaders knew about problems at Hillview but didn't want them publicized. National Abortion Federation head Barbara Radford admitted she was just hoping we would go away."

Nor were these leaders eager to address the underlying problem: Maryland had no laws for abortion clinics or outpatient surgery centers. Anesthesia and emergency medicine in these facilities were unregulated. That was why Lofton had moved her clinic to Maryland when the District of Columbia ordered her to stop performing abortions without a clinic license. A pro-choice legislator in Maryland had sought to regulate clinics but had met resistance from her colleagues. "There's only so much of a willingness to try to push ... the pro-choice movement to do what I think is the responsible thing to do," the lawmaker lamented, "because they then treat you as if you're the enemy."

The country of Hungary is so desperate for children that they're extending maternity leave to 3 years along with a variety of other measures including the possibility of giving parents more voting rights. Plans to ban abortion were scrapped.


The prolife group at Carelton University in Canada is suing their university for discrimination.

The $225,000 lawsuit filed in Ontario Superior Court on Feb. 18 by Carleton students Ruth Lobo and John McLeod claims the university breached its own human rights policies and procedures by refusing to let a campus club called Carleton Lifeline set up a controversial display featuring large images of aborted fetuses and genocide atrocities in the Tory Quad, a high-traffic square at the centre of campus. (University officials offered the group space at a different spot.)

Claiming the university was trying to censor its message by suggesting the group set up its displays in an alternative location, Carleton Lifeline attempted to set up its display in Tory Quad last October and were arrested by Ottawa police and campus security.

Virginia passes abortion clinic regulation bill

The Virginia Senate, in a 20-20 vote (where the Lt. Gov. had to play tie-breaker), passed a bill to regulate abortion clinics like hospitals.

Abortion rights advocates say it will make the state one of the most restrictive for abortions in the country and could force as many as 17 of the state's 21 abortion clinics to close.

Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) has said he will sign the bill, which gives the state's Board of Health 280 days from the law's enactment to write new rules for clinics that perform at least five first-trimester abortions a month....

The practical impact of the vote will rest heavily on guidelines ultimately approved by the Virginia Board of Health. Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, said she fears the worst, though the 15-member board is dominated by holdover appointments made by former Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D).

Life Links 2/24/11

A prolife billboard in New York is drawing the ire of abortion advocates. Apparently, there's something racist about providing objective information regarding the dangers to unborn African-American children.


Rapper Kanye West tweeted about abortion and how it can cost men he knows $50,000-$100,000 to pay women they've impregnated (Kanye uses more colorful language) to get an abortion.


Part 6 of William Saletan's piece on dangerous abortion clinics in Florida and pro-choice efforts to prevent any type of regulations is up.

The draft bill released by the committee on March 5 was hardly earthshaking. Clinics would have to submit the names of their doctors to HRS as part of their annual license renewal. HRS would have to verify with DPR that each doctor was licensed. Anyone who leaked a doctor's name would be fired and charged with a first-degree misdemeanor. In fairness, and to close a loophole, the same rules would apply to any private doctor's office whose business was mostly abortions. Mary Grizzle, the bill's sponsor, wanted simple sanitation standards but agreed to propose none until Judge Gonzalez relaxed his injunction......

The rest of the pro-choice lobby—Florida NOW, POWAR, the ACLU, and the Florida Abortion Rights Action League—refused. They dismissed as persecution any crackdown aimed only at abortion clinics. They saw no proof that the unsavory conditions in south Florida had caused any injuries. At bottom, they believed that no law could be a good law.

The wife of prolife advocate Bryan Kemper recently miscarried.

As you may know Carrie and I lost a child this morning through miscarriage. I had to rush Carrie to the hospital as she was losing a lot of blood. The Doctor in the ER was able to stop the bleeding.

He updates that his wife will be able to go home today.

Trouble for Delaware abortion clinic which employed Kermit Gosnell

Delaware's AG's office wants the suspension of the medical licenses of two abortionists at the same clinic (Atlantic Women's Medical Services) where abortionist Kermit Gosnell worked part-time. Atlantic Women's Medical Services was certified by the National Abortion Federation up until it came to light that Gosnell worked there part-time.

Because of regulatory reforms passed last year after sex-abuse charges were lodged against Lewes pediatrician Earl B. Bradley, the board now has the ability to act on emergency complaints within 24 hours, meaning the two doctors -- Albert Dworkin and Arturo A. Apolinario -- may be suspended from practicing in Delaware as soon at this evening.......

Prosecutors charge that Dworkin knew or should have known about the "deplorable" conditions at Gosnell's clinic along with the substandard care that was provided to patients there, including "permitting unlicensed employees to administer drugs ... and perform examinations and procedures on patients ... and murdering babies born alive at the clinic."......

Delaware prosecutors also are asking the Board of Medical Licensure to issue an immediate cease-and-desist order against Atlantic's owner and sole shareholder, Panzy Myrie, charging she has been holding herself up in online advertisements as a doctor and gynecologist even though she has no license to practice medicine in Delaware.......

The Attorney General's Office also is asking the board to impose the maximum possible fines against Atlantic for the many violations of the doctors and the owner, which could be up to $10,000 for a first offense and up to $50,000 for subsequent violations.

Abortions up at Planned Parenthood again

In the least surprising news of the day, abortions provided at Planned Parenthood rose for the umpteenth year in a row. Their total for 2009 was 332,278 abortions. In the meantime, prenatal clients and adoption referrals were down.

Here's the Planned Parenthood Fact Sheet and ALL's press release.

From the ALL press release:

"Despite its protestations that abortion is only a small part of its services," said Jim Sedlak, vice president of American Life League, "Planned Parenthood has increased its number of abortions for 15 straight years. During that time, it has gone from committing 9.3 percent of all abortions in the United States to committing 27.5 percent."

Sedlak also noted that Planned Parenthood now does 340 abortions for every one adoption referral and 47 abortions for every one prenatal care client.

Life Links 2/23/11

William Saletan has continued his piece on how pro-choice groups in Florida lobbied against abortion clinic regulations and how the lack of regulations allowed shoddy abortion clinics to stay open. In light of the Gosnell case, it really shows how abortion activists are all talk when it comes their claims about wanting abortion to be "safe."

The third scandal was worse still. More scrupulous abortion providers who considered the clinic unsavory had never filed a complaint or spoken out against it. A few months before the Herald article appeared, pro-choice activists who privately disdained the clinic had rallied to its premises to resist a pro-life blockade and to present a united pro-choice front to the media.

The cover-up effort extended even to the Herald story. In a letter representing three other clinic operators, Patricia Windle had asked the Herald's publisher to sit on the story until after the special session. Windle called the Dadeland clinic "wretched" but warned Sontag that "we don't want to give the hysterics weapons." She argued, as Sontag put it in her article, that "pro-choice advocates must maintain a hard line: that a woman is safer when abortion is legal. To acknowledge that in some instances women are still not so safe is to dilute the argument, to hand something over to the other side."

Two doctors in India have been sentenced to two years in prison for carrying out a sex-selection abortion. It appears the only reason they were caught was because they said the child was female when he was actually a male. This angered the family looking for a male child.


Legislation regulating abortion clinics which perform first-trimester abortions is headed for a vote in Virginia.


An illegal abortionist in Botswana who killed a woman is defending herself by saying that her illegal abortion practice is safe as long as the women don't lie about how far along they are.

Tshekiso argued that even though the accused conducted abortion on Maruping, the act is not the one which killed her because the accused had been performing this successfully in pregnant woman that were less than three months but never died.

“The deceased is the cause of her death because she deceived the accused telling her she was two months pregnant while she was five months in actual fact,” charged Tshekiso.

Overheard: Killer uses abortion to try to convince girlfriend to spouses

From The Independent:

Colin Howell tried to convince Hazel Stewart to go along with his murder plan by telling his lover her abortion proved she could kill, the court heard today.

The mother of two alleged the killer dentist used the depraved logic when he outlined his plot to kill his wife Lesley and her policeman husband Trevor Buchanan.

She told investigating officers: "He threw up my abortion - he said sure you've killed a child, what's the difference of killing other people."

Life Links 2/22/11

In India, two individuals have been arrested after a woman died during an abortion. Sounds like it might have been an sex-selective abortion.

Two persons, a head nurse of the district hospital here and the husband of a four-month-old pregnant woman were arrested after the woman died during abortion here, police sources said today. Deputy Superintendent of Police Girish Pandey said Sabatina Toppo, the head nurse of the district hospital, was conducting the abortion on 32-year-old Seema Devi in an illegal private clinic when she died in process last evening. Seema Devi's husband Lalan Prajapati, who brought her to the clinic and Toppa were arrested by the police after Devi's grandfather lodged an FIR in the town police station today. The two were arrested on the charge of conducting operation in an clinic being run illegally, causing death in the process as well as destroying female foetus, the DSP said.

Congresswoman Jackie Speier has a piece in the Huffington Post which seems to strongly indicate that she didn't have an abortion but rather she had a D and E to remove a miscarried child.

You admit guilt, but for me there was no guilt, only the pain of a pregnancy that did not work. The fetus had slipped from my uterus into my vagina and could not survive. To stave off a life-threatening infection and to keep the possibility of a future birth alive, I had what's called dilation and evacuation or "d & e." But for people, particularly my colleagues who don't want Planned Parenthood to be funded, I simply had an abortion.

The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the AP all have articles on the death of NARAL founder turned prolife advocate Bernard Nathanson.

Overheard

I enjoyed this Washington Post letter.

Letter writer Tony Gorman [Free for All, Feb. 12] chastised The Post for characterizing prenatal surgery patients as "babies" instead of "fetuses."

I understand his indignation. While I was pregnant, I searched desperately at the store for the section of clothes for women accommodating a parasitic womb inhabitant. Oddly, I found only the "maternity" section.

Other events during my pregnancy were puzzling as well - when the doctor found the heartbeat, I convinced myself that it was simply a mass of tissue beating in a rhythmic fashion.

One night, while I was resting on the couch, a little foot-like impression appeared on my belly, from the inside out. I dismissed that; it simply had to be intestinal.

My friends and I enjoyed cupcakes and tea for my "fetus shower"; what a joyous occasion.

Goodness, all during the pregnancy, I just loved my little ba-, I mean, fetus.

Kerry Haslam, Alexandria

Life Links 2/21/11

Here's the roll call on the Pence Amendment to de-fund Planned Parenthood.

David Freddoso writes about how Congress voted on the Pence Amendment including this about my representative, Congressman Justin Amash, who voted present.

I'd also point out that Justin Amash, R, a freshman from western Michigan, was the only member to vote "present." Here is the explanation he gives on his Facebook page:

Legislation that names a specific private organization to defund (rather than all organizations that engage in a particular activity) is improper and arguably unconstitutional. Moreover, the legislation is easily thwarted because the organization may simply change its name.

As a conservative, and as the Representative for the people of Michigan’s Third District, I cannot vote "yes" on legislation that violates the rule of law and does not take the process of legislating seriously. A responsible amendment—one that I would fully support—would defund all abortion providers. That is why I support Mike Pence’s H R 217, which cuts off all federal funds to any organization that performs an abortion—including Planned Parenthood.

I think he makes a mistake by accepting the premise that individual groups have some kind of right to federal money and that barring them is constitutionally dubious. No such right exists, and the Second Circuit Appeals Court ruled on the latter issue this last year when it upheld the ACORN defunding provision.

Two of the women who appeared alongside Markai Durham to talk about their abortions in MTV's No Easy Decision are hosting screenings of the show with Planned Parenthood in Wisconsin.

Natalia got involved with the MTV program because she was active in the reproductive rights community. Katie worked for Barack Obama’s campaign and got in touch with some people through her work with the National Abortion Right Action League.

Kacey Jordan, the "adult" film actress Charlie Sheen recently partied with, had an abortion in her home state of Oregon. Jordan told RadarOnline that she gets pregnant easily and has had 3 previous abortions.

Overheard - Pro-choice leader says pro-choice arguments are "failing us"

Former leader of Catholics for Choice, Frances Kissling in the Washington Post today:

Meanwhile, those of us in the abortion-rights movement have barely changed our approach. We cling to the arguments that led to victory in Roe v. Wade. Abortion is a private decision, we say, and the state has no power over a woman's body. Those arguments may have worked in the 1970s, but today, they are failing us, and focusing on them only risks us all the gains we've made.....

We can no longer pretend the fetus is invisible. We can no longer seek to banish the state from our lives, but rather need to engage its power to improve women's lives....

The fetus is more visible than ever before, and the abortion-rights movement needs to accept its existence and its value. It may not have a right to life, and its value may not be equal to that of the pregnant woman, but ending the life of a fetus is not a morally insignificant event....

We need to firmly and clearly reject post-viability abortions except in the most extreme cases.....

If the choice movement does not change, control of policy on abortion will remain in the hands of those who want it criminalized. If we don't suggest sensible balanced legislation and regulation of abortion, we will be left with far more draconian policies - and, eventually, no choices at all.

Life Links 2/18/11

Pennsylvania newspapers have requested information about a court case where a minor was denied a parental consent waiver be open to the public.

Last March, a pregnant teenager three months shy of her 18th birthday asked an Allegheny County judge if she could have an abortion without her parents' consent.

Judge Philip Ignelzi said no.

His denial launched a legal battle in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that could change a state law that has allowed teenagers to obtain abortions without their parents' permission since it took effect in 1983......

The high court's decision to review the case, including whether the law requires parental consent, has galvanized groups on both sides of the abortion issue.

It also has prompted a petition from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and several other media companies to make the court decision public.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has released two opinions which could prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving state family planning funds.

The rulings stem from a request made by Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville, who has not hidden his desire to get Planned Parenthood clinics out of the state's Women's Health Program. Deuell says the 2005 law that created the program should exclude them already. It says that participating clinics can't "perform or promote election abortions" or be "affiliates" of those that do.

But HHSC has for years overlooked the rule, fearing that barring Planned Parenthood clinics might be unconstitutional. After Deuell asked the AG for an opinion, HHSC Commissioner Tom Suehs sent in his own request for an opinion, asking the AG if HHSC had the authority to define the term "affiliate."

Abbott says there's no constitutional problem, and that the state is within its rights to exclude certain types of providers from Medicaid programs. He also said HHSC is within its rights to define the word "affiliate."

An Indiana county has settled a lawsuit with traveling abortionist George Klopfer.

The law, known as the Patient Safety Ordinance, requires doctors who practice in Allen County but don’t live there to designate a local backup doctor, so that doctor can treat patients who experience complications.....

Klopfer sued, arguing the enforcement provisions – which required patients to sign a form saying they had been given contact information for the backup doctor – violated privacy statutes because the ordinance allowed county officials to inspect the forms.

County Commissioner Nelson Peters, who championed the law, said the settlement keeps all the key provisions of the law in place, but drops the ability of county officials to inspect the forms.

Congresswoman talks about her abortion(?) on House floor

According to a FOX News blog and The Hill a congresswoman from California named Jackie Speier told the House of Representatives she had an abortion.

A contentious debate over blocking Planned Parenthood from receiving taxpayer money took an unexpected turn just before midnight Thursday when Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) shocked her colleagues by announcing on the House floor that she once had an abortion.

Just before Speier assumed the floor, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), one of the most ardent anti-abortion voices in Congress, spent several minutes reading explicit descriptions of what happened to one woman when she had an abortion.

"I planned to speak about something else. But the gentleman from New Jersey just put my stomach in knots," Speier began. "I'm one of those women he spoke about just now. I had a procedure at 17 weeks pregnant with a child who moved from the vagina into the cervix. The procedure you just described is the procedure I endured."

I'm not sure if she was misquoted but an unborn child can't move from the vagina (did she mean uterus/womb?) into the cervix.

The Hill article includes this quote:

“I lost the baby. And for you to stand on this floor and suggest that somehow this is a procedure that is either welcomed or done cavalierly or done without any thought, is preposterous,” Speier said, glaring at the Republicans on the other side of the aisle.

That makes it sound like she had a miscarriage and then the child was removed after he or she died.

A Washington Post article notes that Representative Smith was reading Abby Johnson's description of an ultrasound guided abortion from her book unPlanned.

How pro-choicers keep dangerous abortion clinics open

William Saletan has a piece at Slate, part of which was originally intended for his book, regarding the factions in the abortion industry on how pro-choice organizations refused to speak up against subpar abortion clinics.

But much of what's documented in the Philadelphia report—unsanitary conditions, sloppy anesthesia, unlicensed practitioners, busted emergency equipment, lax record-keeping, and a patient's death—was found in the Florida clinics, too. And when legislators tried to step in, abortion rights advocates stopped them.......

Providers varied considerably in motives and quality. Insiders divided them evenly into two categories: mission clinics and entrepreneurs. Mission clinics often operated in rural areas, especially in central and north Florida. The only people willing to perform abortions in the face of the hostility common to such regions were those driven by moral commitment. Most were maverick feminists. Where nobody else would meet women's needs, they would. Entrepreneurs favored more profitable, tolerant, and anonymous urban areas. If business went bad, they would pack up and turn to other trades. But the mission clinics would find a way to stay open......

Twenty-three clinics in Florida belonged neither to NAF nor to FLAC. Some had failed to meet the requisite standards. Others hadn't bothered to apply. Nearly all were entrepreneurial. Most were owned by doctors. Many were concentrated in a stretch of south Florida, around Miami, that was foreign to leaders of the clinic associations. These clinics didn't cooperate with the associations on peer review. They enjoyed the legal protections hard won by activist providers but shared none of the work or expense. And stories about them, involving dissatisfied patients and substandard care, circulated among the more responsible clinics.

In south Florida, conscientious providers privately blacklisted the bad clinics and avoided referring women to them. Many referred patients only to NAF or FLAC members. But making this private rating system public seemed unthinkable. As little as the good providers trusted the bad ones, they trusted the government less. Nothing would make them break their silence. Not even a woman's death.

Life Links 2/17/11

In Canada, the speech police have again gone after another prolife club. This time at Victoria University where the Students' Society has ruled the prolife group Youth Protecting Youth violated the university's harassment policy by comparing abortion to the Holocaust.

"Because many students on campus are capable of having abortions and/or are students of Jewish decent, YPY should have reasonably thought to have known that using marketing materials for their presentation, which compares the Holocaust to abortion, could reasonably create a hostile, intimidating, threatening or humiliating environment on campus for individuals of the student body," said UVic Students' Society chair James Coccola. "In this case, we felt that the harassment policy was broken by YPY."

The censure is little more than a public disapproval, Coccola said, confirming that YPY's club status, reinstated last spring in B.C. Supreme Court, is not in question.

In Slate, Dave Weigel discusses the pro-choice movement's strategy:

1) Wait for the pro-life movement, now at an apex of political power, to do something stupid.
2) Pounce on the stupid thing that it just did.
3) Repeat.

In California, a man named Steven Smith was found guilty of attempted voluntary manslaughter but not guilty of attempted murder and attempted murder of a fetus after he shot his pregnant girlfriend.

Smith was accused of shooting Gina Stanko, 35, in the head and hand with a .22-caliber pistol Nov. 6, 2009, in her Paso Robles home. During the trial, Smith was described as a narcissistic womanizer by prosecutors and characterized by his defense as a man emotionally driven to violence by the woman he feared.

Do you really understand people's aversion to abortion?

Jackie Walkins, writing in the Smith College Sophian shows how you can undermine yourself almost immediately.

I understand people's aversion to abortion. Really, I do. What I don't understand is the need to legislate against it. Roe v. Wade is the law of the land; no human beings' lives are destroyed - just some cells. Can't we just leave it at that?

She further display her ignorance by thinking that tax-funded abortions are "tax-deductible."

Former NARAL New York president facing criminal investigation

Manhattan's District Attorney has launched a criminal investigation into the company credit card spending habits of NARAL New York's former president Kelli Conlin.

The investigation came on the heels of a bombshell internal audit that found ex-NARAL Pro-Choice New York President Kelli Conlin siphoned more than $100,000 from the abortion rights group to support her own lavish lifestyle......

NARAL has slipped into the red in recent years, running up a deficit of at least $417,616 in 2009 despite only taking in $310,324 in revenue, according to Post review of its public financial statements.

That year, the charity reported paying only $171,255 in salaries and compensation on its balance sheet, even though it listed elsewhere five employees earning more than $100,000.

Conlin herself claimed a compensation package worth $349,502, including a $90,000 bonus.

Hilariously, the father of New York's attorney general was the treasurer of the group in a year when the group's president "earned" more than the organization brought in.

Here's some of what Conlin spent the organization's money on:

The audit, conducted by the accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron, details numerous questionable charges on NARAL credit cards by Conlin between 2008 and 2010, including $5,709 worth of high-end clothing at Giorgio Armani and Barney’s and a $17,000 reimbursement on a Hamptons summer rental where Conlin stayed in the summer of 2009.

Between March 2008 and December 2010, Conlin spent just over $100,000 on car service. She often had the driver drop her children off at their school on the Upper West Side, the audit found.

The audit also raised a red flag on more than $22,000 Conlin spent on meals. In some cases, it appears she dined with non-work friends, but it’s unclear what percentage of these charges were personal.

Justin Bieber is prolife?

It seems that way from an excerpt from a Rolling Stone interview:

Bieber, the product of an unwed teen mom (Justin's mom Pattie Mallette, 34, had him when she was 18), is undecided about politics but is opposed to abortion.

"I'm not sure about the [political] parties," he says. "But whatever they have in [North] Korea, that's bad.

"I really don't believe in abortion. It's like killing a baby?"

How about in cases of rape?

"Well, I think that's really sad, but everything happens for a reason," he says. "I guess I haven't been in that position, so I wouldn't be able to judge that."

Life Links 2/16/11

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has fired a number of state employees in wake of the arrest of abortionist Kermit Gosnell.

Corbett said four attorneys and two supervisors at the departments of Health and State were either fired or resigned on Friday and that eight other employees involved in the internal investigation remain on the state payroll. Others had previously resigned, he said.

Corbett has also made sure this complete lack of regulation won't happen on his watch.

Corbett said the Department of State, which licenses medical professionals, has changed how it handles complaints and now requires more detailed reports. It also will train lawyers on investigative procedures, rules and regulations, and how to prosecute complaints, he said.

At the Health Department, which was not performing systematic checks of the state's abortion clinics for more than a decade before Gosnell's clinic was raided last year, yearly inspections are now mandatory and the results will be posted on the state website.

Kelli Conlin, former president of NARAL New York is being investigated by her former organization to see if she abused her expense account. Conlin left the organization last month.

The audit reportedly examined tens of thousands of dollars worth of spending on clothing, meals, car services and even a summer rental in the Hamptons, according to the blog, all charged on Naral credit cards. In the statement, the group described the report as merely preliminary.

Pro-choicers got themselves into a tizzy yesterday about a South Dakota bill which they claimed would allow prolifers to kill abortionists. The Washington Post didn't jump to the same silly conclusions and got the sponsor to explain the purpose of his bill.

The bill's main sponsor, Rep. Phil Jensen, said the measure merely seeks to make self-defense laws consistent with other South Dakota laws that allow murder or manslaughter charges for the death of an unborn child.

"This has nothing to do with abortion. This is a self-defense bill," Jensen, R-Rapid City, told The Associated Press......

Jensen said he planned to talk with Attorney General Marty Jackley on Wednesday about the bill's language.

Under the bill, homicide would be justifiable if committed in the lawful defense of an unborn child or to prevent harm likely to result in the death of an unborn child. The bill was expected to be debated in the South Dakota House on Wednesday.

Mike Huckabee touted his prolife beliefs at a recent prolife fundraiser.

"For me this is an issue that - as I've said before - it transcends all of the political issues," Huckabee told an anti-abortion crowd at a fundraiser the Center for Bioethical Reform. "I've often said I would gladly lose an election before I would ever yield on the issue of the sanctity of human life."

Do South Dakota legislators want to legalize the killing of abortion providers?

That's the message you'd get from the headline of this Mother Jones article. The article has now been updated after legislators amended sloppily written legislation designed to allow pregnant women and their families to use deadly force to protect an unborn child from criminals attempting to kill the child. Now only women can use a justifiable homicide defense if they kill someone attempting to harm their unborn child.

The legislation was never intended to allow violence against abortion providers. Some times legislators aren't super careful in how they write legislation. That's one of the reasons why the legislative process allows for amendments.

But I'm sure we'll hear about the time South Dakota legislators wanted to allow the killing of abortionists for years to come.

Life Links 2/15/11

Abortionist-in-training Mila Means has agreed not to perform abortions at the building she currently leases in Wichita. Her landlord had filed a lawsuit to prevent her from using his building for abortions.

Dr. Mila Means asserts in the documents that she is not performing abortions at the site and does not presently intend to do so. Means said she is seeking alternative office space for her medical practice. She also agreed to give Foliage Development 30-days notice if she later decides to perform abortions, so that a hearing on a temporary injunction could be held.

The development company filed a lawsuit earlier this month arguing that performing abortions at the multi-tenant office building would be a disruption and nuisance to other tenants and create an unsafe environment. Following the agreement with Means, Sedgwick County District Judge Douglas Roth dissolved a temporary restraining order and cancelled a hearing for a temporary injunction that had been scheduled for Tuesday. All court proceedings in the case were stayed for six months.

Numerous local news outlets covered the Valentine's Day protests at Planned Parenthood.


The Kansas City Star's Mary Sanchez provides some really convoluted thinking in her attempt to defend Planned Parenthood. She even admits that she's "conveniently discounting the fact that (Planned Parenthood) provides abortions" and then provides no defense for this convenient discounting despite her claims that she "oppose(s) abortion." After discussing Live Action's New Jersey sting, she also exposes her laziness,

It’s potent stuff, yet the video is also very obviously edited. Planned Parenthood subsequently fired an employee...

There's also unedited versions of the videos but I doubt Mary ever took the time to go to Live Action's web site because it would be too much work to do some basic research for your column.

Focus on the Family looking for common ground with pro-choice orgs on reducing abortion

From the Denver Post:

Focus on the Family president Jim Daly on Friday said he will bridge a great divide by asking abortion-rights advocates to work with his conservative Christian ministry to make abortion less common.

Reproductive-rights supporters say they want abortion to be legal, safe and rare, Daly said, and so his Colorado Springs-based media powerhouse will try to walk that common ground with them — lessening demand for abortion.....

And Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains said it is willing to listen.....

"We certainly welcome any opportunity to work with anyone who wants to work on the root causes of unintended pregnancies," she said. "Most of what we do is prevention."

Planned Parenthood, McCafferty said, takes a comprehensive approach to preventing unwanted pregnancies through education and improving access to affordable birth control. But abortion, she said, must remain legal.

"We certainly never want to see the day when women can't make this personal, private decision for themselves," she said.

Michael Cromartie, vice president of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, said Daly's outreach is a bold move and likely to be misread by many conservatives.

"I suspect he will take a hit on this," Cromartie said. "People on the right will say he is giving up. But I think it could be effective."

Cromartie said Daly just might convince people there are too many abortions in the country....

Schneeberger said Focus accepts the opposition's word that it wants to reduce the numbers of abortions.

"I suspect things will happen very quickly. Within the next month, we certainly will have some conversations," he said. "This is a legitimate attempt to see if there isn't some overlapping goal."

Life Links 2/14/11

The High Court in the UK has rejected a bid by abortion providers to reinterpret abortion law to let women to get all the abortion pills on their visit to the clinic and take the second group of pills at home. Abortion provider BPAS plans on working to change the law. In the U.S., abortion clinics routinely give women the second drug in an RU-486 abortion to administer at home in opposition to the FDA guidelines.

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (Bpas) has failed in a high court bid to secure a new interpretation of UK law. Its lawyers argued that wording relating to the prescription and administration in a clinic of drugs needed to bring about a medical abortion – two pills, taken 24-48 hours apart – could be defined as the prescription and issuing of the medication, allowing women to go home after the first visit.

Bpas says that the second visit can be a hardship for women living some distance away, and that some are afraid they will miscarry on their way home.

Handing down judgment, the court ruled that this interpretation of the law was not possible. But the judge effectively put the onus back with the government, ruling that the 1967 Abortion Act, as amended in 1990, enables the secretary of state to react to "changes in medical science" as it gives the health minister "the power to approve a wider range of place, including potentially the home, and the conditions on which such approval may be given relating to the particular medicine and the manner of its administration or use".

The North Carolina Court of Appeals will have to decide if Robert Broom can be charged with killing his daughter Lily. Robert shot and held his pregnant wife Danna captive for 12 hours when she was 26 weeks pregnant. Lily was delivered prematurely because of Danna's injuries and died 31 days after being born.

Danna Broom knows she lived because of Lily. At 26 weeks, Lily had grown big enough to push her mother's organs into different places. As a result, the bullet missed her most vital parts.

But, more than that, it was Lily's kicks and tumbles that she said urged her to survive during the 12 hours her husband held her captive.

"Lily is a hero," Danna Broom said through tears. "I'm here because of her. I want her sacrifice to matter."

.......

North Carolina, unlike more than 35 other states, doesn't treat fetuses as murder victims. In many of those states, it doesn't matter how advanced the pregnancy or the baby's chance of surviving outside of the mother when she is born. If North Carolina had such a law, Broom's case would be simple: Lily would be a victim in her own right.

The California Stem Cell Report reports on a new study which shows that only 18% of California Institute of Regenerative Medicine's grant went to projects which were "clearly" not eligible for federal funding. Remember that CIRM was sold to California taxpayers on the idea that this $3 billion in funding was needed to cure diseases and fill the supposed hole left by President Bush's embryonic stem cell funding policy.

Life Links 2/11/11

Donald Trump told Laura Ingraham that he's prolife. This would be a change of position since he wrote that he supported "a woman's right to choose" in a 2000 book.

Last November ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked Trump if he was pro-choice and the real-estate mogul was uncharacteristically demur.

"I am -- well, I don't want to discuss right now, but you will be shocked when I give you that answer," Trump said. "Well, you will be very surprised when I give you -- I'm going to make a decision [about running for president]. And when I make a decision I'll let you know about that. But, I think you'll probably be surprised."

Then, on the eve of the CPAC cattle call for GOP candidates, Trump told talk-radio host Laura Ingraham flat out: "I am pro-life." And he repeated that declaration on Thursday.

Saskatchewan's College of Physicians and Surgeons recently revised guidelines say that prolife doctors must refer patients seeking abortions to another physician.

The new introduction to the guideline is much clearer, saying doctors who won’t perform the abortion must tell the patient up-front and refer them to another physician who will give them all the tools they need to make an informed decision.

“Any physician who is unable to be involved in the further care and management of any patient when termination of the pregnancy might be contemplated should inform the patient and make an expeditious referral to another available physician,” the preamble reads.

Planned Parenthood's Stuart Schear doesn't have much to say about Live Action's tapes. At least he's staying on message, regardless of how inaccurate that message is.

One such video resulted in the firing of a Planned Parenthood employee in New Jersey. But in all other cases, the videos are "heavily edited and manipulated," said Planned Parenthood spokesman Stuart Schear.

A study has shown the benefits of operating on unborn children with spina bifida while they're still in the womb.

A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine says that if a baby is operated on while still in the uterus, the most serious complications of the worst form of spina bifada, myelomeningocele, can be lessened.

A clinical trial of 158 women found that brain malformations were reversed in one-third of the fetuses and that almost half the babies could eventually walk without crutches.

Overheard

Mark Steyn on abortionist Kermit Gosnell and Planned Parenthood's willingness to aid sex traffickers.

A government back alley, licensed and supposedly regulated, is worse than the old kind, because it implies the approval of the state, and of society. That's what Gosnell thought he had, when he murdered those babies and mutilated those teenage girls. That's what Planned Parenthood think they have, when they facilitate the sexual exploitation of Third World children. And, given the silence of the PC media, maybe they're right. Aside from the intrinsic evil of not only Gosnell but a state that knowingly colludes with him, these "little" abortion stories reveal an almost totalitarian mindset in the "pro-choice" movement's determination to brook no intrusion of reality upon the official myths. You may be one of those wealthy suburban "feminists" or "new men" indifferent to the fate of eight-pound "blobs of tissue" or 14-year old "women", but the gulf between propaganda and truth, between the fatuous feelgood bumper stickers and the rusty crochet hooks, is profound - and, in a world where statists and social engineers serve as ruthless enforcers for the prevailing ideology, its deep moral corruption will eventually swallow you, too. America should be at the very minimum deeply disquieted by these revelations. That it is not - that it is dismissed as a "little thing" - is even more disquieting.

Ultrasounds before abortion: Standard care or wasteful bullying tactic? Pro-choicers can't decide

I love it when pro-choicers just can't seem to get their talking points all lined up.

On Tuesday Amie Newman had a post at the RH Reality Check blog which attacked a state legislator because Amie supposed he was unaware that abortionists typically perform ultrasounds before abortions.

The sponsor of the bill, State Sen. Den Patrick (R-Houston), says he just didn't realize this was an imposition on women in any way. So, he says, he'll reel it back out of the goodness of his heart, to allow women to opt out of viewing the sonogram or listening to the heartbeat or the description. According to this bill and statements he's made, he apparently thinks that physicians don't already perform ultrasounds prior to an abortion (that's the standard of care) and that women don't understand that they are growing a baby inside their uterus when they are pregnant.

I found this interesting because I vaguely remembered RH Reality Check posts in which legislation requiring abortionists to perform ultrasound was considered some vile draconian policy.

For example. Kathleen Reeves called ultrasounds before abortions "a wasteful bullying tactic."

Planned Parenthood spokesperson Stuart Schear owned by O'Reilly Factor producer

If you haven't seen this video, its hilarious. I'm really surprised that Planned Parenthood couldn't find someone more competent than Schear to be their spokesperson.

He's certain a video he hasn't seen has been doctored.

Audio shows DC Planned Parenthood willing to aid sex traffickers

Here's Live Action's press release with the audio file and transcript.

Another Live Action blog post notes that Planned Parenthood didn't list New York (the site of the latest video release) as a state that was visited by the sex traffickers in their letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.

Life Links 2/10/11

The Los Angeles Times has a story on a Catholic hospital in Chicago which has developed a protocol for stopping 2nd trimester abortions if a woman changes her mind during abortion procedures.

Working with two anti-abortion groups, Resurrection Medical Center, the largest hospital of one of Chicago's largest Catholic health care systems, has put in place a practice that when a woman arrives in the emergency room with an activist seeking to stop a second-trimester abortion, she should be treated immediately. Since October, four women have arrived at the hospital seeking to halt their abortions, and three of them had their abortions stopped.

In response to the Protect Life Act, the National Abortion Federation has issued press releases including one with the testimony of Mary Vargas, a woman who got an abortion at 22 weeks because her child had Potter's Syndrome. Vargas says she got an abortion because she didn't want her unborn child to suffer in the womb .

We could allow our son to suffer without comfort, to feel his bones being crushed and broken in the absence of amniotic fluid, until he died in utero, or at delivery, suffocating to death in the absence of developed lungs. Two specialists confirmed that he had no chance at life....

We "chose" to end the pregnancy – not for us, but because choosing mercy was the only thing we could do for our unborn son. I would have liked to have held him. Yet, I know our decision was the right one for our child. I know because of this experience that many times the choice to terminate a pregnancy is made because a woman value's life: because she or her unborn child, or both is dying, or because they are suffering towards no purpose.

What's the National Abortion Federation's position on fetal pain?


While the National Abortion Federation is publishing testimony on fetal pain it doesn't really believe, prolifers are debating the strategy of fetal-pain legislation. In the Human Life Review, prolife lawyer Paul Linton criticizes fetal-pain laws because he doubts Justice Kennedy the Supreme Court would find them constitutional, National Right to Life's Mary Balch responded and Linton responded to Balch's response.


In Oregon, a woman gave birth while in jail and the child died.

A pregnant Lane County Jail inmate gave birth to a fetus Wednesday night that had died by the time a jail employee checked on the woman during a routine security cell check, the Lane County Sheriff’s Office said....

Lt. Larry Brown said late Wednesday night that it’s too early in the investigation to know whether the fetus was delivered naturally and to what extent it was delivered prematurely.

He said the inmate had been in custody for only a few hours prior to the discovery of the fetus. Jail employees were aware that the inmate was pregnant, he said.

Taxpayers footing lawyers' bills to protect government officials in Gosnell case

From an editorial in the Delaware County Daily Times on the investigation into how state health officials allowed abortionist Kermit Gosnell's abortion clinic to stay open so long without inspection, we learn that the apathetic government officials who allowed the clinic to go stay open have lawyered up. And Pennsylvania taxpayers are footing the bill.

The Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure Committee, led by Sen. Robert Tomlinson, R-Bucks, will scrutinize the State Department, which issues medical licenses, and the Public Health and Welfare Committee, chaired by Sen. Pat Vance, R-Cumberland, will look at the Health Department. The two senators vowed Tuesday to subpoena officials if necessary.

Philadelphia prosecutors told the Senate Tuesday state officials are not cooperating or providing information. And, the prosecutors said, taxpayers are being billed by private lawyers hired to represent the current or former Pennsylvania employees mentioned in the grand jury report. The bill thus far is $116,000, they said.

New Gov. Tom Corbett, commenting on the case for the first time Tuesday, said he was unaware of the legal bills. He said he might have more to say on the matter later.

Let’s hope it’s sooner. And let’s hope that Sens. Tomlinson and Vance leave no stone unturned in their investigation. The people of Pennsylvania deserve to know how the West Philadelphia abortion mill was allowed to operate, without supervision, for so long, and why. Horrors like that should never happen in a civilized world. The truth must be brought to light, and it must never happen again.

Pharmacy mistakenly gives abortion pill to pregnant woman

From the Denver Post:

A 19-year-old pregnant woman accidentally took a cancer and abortion drug after she was given the wrong prescription from a Safeway pharmacy.

Mareena Silva of Fort Lupton took methotrexate, thinking it was her prescribed antibiotic.

Methotrexate is used in psoriasis and cancer treatment but is also used to terminate early pregnancies.

Silva, who is six weeks pregnant, told Fox-31 News in Denver that after taking a pill, she realized the prescription was not hers. She told the station the pharmacist recommended she throw up the pill but her doctor called for an ambulance so she could get immediate treatment.

The mix-up probably occurred because the person the methotrexate was prescribed to has a name similar to Silva's.

Silva's mother, Lynn Chavez, said her daughter was resting Tuesday afternoon.

"She is doing OK," her mother said. "We don't know anything yet. We will just have to wait and see."

6th Live Action video catches NY Planned Parenthood supervisor/practictioner willing to aid sex traffickers

Here's Live Action's press release with the video and partial transcript. Here's part of the transcript:

Pimp: Could we even sign off as guardians? Could we even sign off as a guardian, is that even possible?

Planned Parenthood Staffer: If you were writing the support letter, yeah, you could say –

Prostitute: Oh good

Planned Parenthood Staffer: that you take care of them, you support them.

Pimp: Cool!

Planned Parenthood Staffer: But nothing here, like, our patients, we don’t ask for guardian’s signature. Everything is the patient. Like a thirteen-year-old could come in and get the services she needed, by herself.

The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times have already picked up the story.

In the meantime, Planned Parenthood has vowed to retrain their staff regarding reporting dangers to minors in spite of its previous claims that their staff (with the exception of the New Jersey employee) acted professionally and that no training could have prevented the New Jersey incident from happening.

A Planned Parenthood in Virginia may have also lied about reporting the "pimp" visit to police.

Nova said in both the Albemarle and Roanoke cases, police were notified after the man left. He said the Charlottesville Planned Parenthood workers contacted the Albemarle County Police Department and the FBI to report the suspicious man.

Albemarle police Sgt. Darrell Byers said Friday that he knew of no one in his department who received information about the “fake patient.” He said it was possible the workers could have called but that no report was made.

Life Links 2/8/11

The Los Angeles Times reports that unlicensed abortionist Bertha Bugarin could be released early from jail as part of plan to save California money.

Also likely to be released early, (Steve Cooley, a district attorney opposed to the plan) said, is Bertha Bugarin, who was sentenced to three years in prison after performing abortions with no medical training.

Here's a story (with video) about a North Dakota boy with cerebral palsy who was treated with his own stem cells in Germany.

Ethan Radtke’s parents promised him a trip to the Florida theme park if he could walk on crutches after having stem cell treatment in Germany in July for his cerebral palsy.....

The West Fargo boy surprised them, taking his first steps with crutches three weeks ago and steadily improving since then.

A Florida man who killed three adults has also been charged with killing an unborn child after an autopsy was performed on Nichole Cervantez, who was 5-6 months pregnant.

Why have boundaries?

Ann Friedman will probably never have to explain this assertion in a piece about the hierarchy of abortion and her belief any hierarchy is wrong:

All women should be able to choose abortion, for any reason, under any circumstances, within the boundaries set by Roe.

What? Isn't Ann creating her own hierarchy of abortion where abortions provided within the boundaries of Roe are somehow better than abortions which are outside those boundaries?

What's truly amazing about some abortion advocates is how they can (based on absolutist reasoning) look down on other pro-choicers who don't support as many abortions as they do, while at the same time not support some kinds of abortions themselves.

For example, here's Ann passing judgment on a pro-choice friend who thought 3 abortions in a year maybe too many.

A few weeks ago, a pro-choice friend of mine was appalled to learn that an acquaintance had gotten three abortions in one year. He questioned whether the woman was "using abortion as birth control." My answer? I don't know the circumstances, I don't pretend to know them, and frankly, I don't care. I support her choice. All three of them. Once you start passing judgment in such specific incidences, the slope gets pretty slippery.

Yes, it does. Too bad Ann doesn't realize she's on that slope.

Abortioneer A-OK with aiding sex trafficking

Here's an Abortioneer discussing Amy Woodruff, the New Jersey Planned Parenthood employee who was fired after Live Action released a video showing her willingness to aid sex traffickers.

If you were the clinic worker, and a man came into the clinic and was asking questions about how to help minor prostitutes get abortions, what would you do? What would you say? The particular worker in this situation was fired. Maybe she shouldn't have advised this man how to avoid having reports made with CPS because of legal issues. Ultimately her job is to help these girls, right? Help them get abortions. Is it wrong that she was trying to do that? I don't think so.

Here we have another abortion industry worker who thinks the way to help to a pregnant 14-year-old sex slave is to give her an abortion and send her back to her pimp. And pro-choicers wonder why prolifers think people who work in the abortion industry are morally depraved.

She continues,

These anti-abortion activists aren't doing anything for the women and girls they purport to be helping. If they truly cared, they would help women who want to keep their pregnancies. They would help those women get prenatal care and get diapers, clothes, and formula once they're born. Are you doing that Lila Rose? How about you Jill Stanek? If you care, channel your efforts into helping those that are already here and are struggling.

Ummmm..... they're called CPCs. Prolifers are the people who run the 3,000 or so in the U.S.

Life Links 2/7/11

CNN has a story of another woman who obtained an abortion from Kermit Gosnell. LaToya Ransome had to have open heart surgery a month after her abortion and now she suspects she got an infection from Gosnell's clinic.


NARAL is in a tizzy over conscience rights in the Protect Life Act.

"This new Congress, in just its first month of work, has taken perhaps some of the most radical positions against abortion that I have ever seen," said NARAL policy director Donna Crane.

However, a Pitts spokesman said the bill's language is similar to "conscience rights" protections provided by other abortion legislation, including the 1976 Hyde Amendment and the 2004 Hyde-Weldon Amendment. The Hyde Amendment, which must be approved by Congress each year, bans the use of federal funds to pay for abortion. The Hyde-Weldon Amendment, passed by a Republican-controlled Congress in 2004, ensures that the federal government could not withhold funds from caregivers opposed to providing abortions.

"NARAL and other abortion rights groups have vigorously opposed any conscience protection legislation," Pitts spokesman Andrew Wimer told The Hill. "It is no surprise that they would attack the Protect Life Act with the same old talking points."

David Kahane writes satirically in the National Review on abortionist Kermit Gosnell.

You bet no one put a stop to it. Because if there's one thing we can't have, it's inspectors traipsing around abortion clinics, making sure all the bureaucratic niceties are observed — as if docs have time for stuff like that when there's a world of babies about to be "born," waiting to be scissored to death. Give a provider a break! Oversight would just scare away the poor, often underage, mostly minority women who brave the throngs of screaming hate-filled "pro-lifers" in order to exercise their Right to Choose.

Life Links 2/4/11

Reuters and ABC News are covering the second video in Live Action's sex trafficking sting. The NY Times again has a blurb.

Apparently, Planned Parenthood has no plans on firing the employee in the second video. From the ABC News article,

"The Planned Parenthood staff member reacted professionally to a highly unusual person posing as a patient," said spokesman Stuart Schear in a statement. "After the encounter, the staff member immediately notified her supervisor, who subsequently notified members of Planned Parenthood's national security team, who are working with the FBI, which is investigating these visits."

RedState is claiming the Obama administration is not releasing the CDC's abortion data.

Last year, contrary to the long-established practice, November came and went with no report posted on the CDC’s website. Over the following weeks, multiple visits to the site proved fruitless. The possibility the report was not merely delayed, but had in fact been axed from higher up, had to be considered.

Last week, RedState began investigating by calling those in DC who might have some answers. After several attempts, we finally received confirmation from Rhonda Smith at the CDC’s press office in Atlanta that the report has been buried indefinitely; the CDC “will not have stats available at any time in the near future” and there “are no plans for them to come out any time soon.” This call took place on Jan. 27th, and we asked Ms. Smith for a reason that the report wouldn’t be issued anymore. She promised to check around and find out if there was any reason given and get back to us – as of the date of this posting, we have received no further communication from her office.

A landlord in Kansas is suing to stop Mila Means from performing abortions at the space she leases from him in Wichita.


The Archdiocese of Philadelphia is collecting money in an effort to bury the remains of children found at abortionist Kermit Gosnell's clinic.

Such a burial will have to wait, though, prosecutors say, because the remains are evidence in the case against Dr. Kermit Gosnell......

Soon after the story surfaced, the archdiocese received numerous offers from the public to help, resulting in the creation of the Archdiocesan Infant Memorial Fund, said Cardinal Justin Rigali, the archbishop of Philadelphia.

State health department to investigate New Jersey abortion clinic after undercover videos

The New Jersey state health department will investigate Metropolitan Medical Associates, an abortion clinic in Englewood after an undercover video by Live Action showed a Planned Parenthood employee referring a "pimp" to Metropolitan Medical Associates if girls 14 and under wanted abortions.

Department of Health and Senior Services spokeswoman Donna Leusner said late Wednesday Commissioner Poonam Alaigh was "concerned" the Planned Parenthood of Central Jersey office manager referred anti-abortion activists posing as a pimp and prostitute to Metropolitan Medical Associates if young prostitutes needed to terminate a pregnancy.

"They won't need ID then. … Their protocols aren't as strict as ours and they don't get audited the same way we do," said the office manager of the Perth Amboy Planned Parenthood clinic, identified in the video as Amy Woodruff. Planned Parenthood workers would be expected to ask about the age of a 14-year-old pregnant girl's sex partner, and report it to authorities if workers suspected she was a victim of statutory rape......

The health department's review of Metropolitan Medical Associates will include "an examination of patient medical records, interviews with staff and observations of the facility to ensure that it is complying with all regulations," Leusner said.

Attorney Frank Capece, speaking on behalf of Metropolitan Medical Associates, said, "We don't comment on allegations by a former employee of Planned Parenthood.''

Life Links 1/3/11

Watch Mollie Zeigler Hewingway talk to Amanda Marcotte on bloggingheads.tv about abortion. It's almost unbelievable how ignorant Marcotte is. Her views on Live Action's videos are just off the wall. She thinks the Live Action people posing as young girls looking for abortions or posing as a pimp act "ridiculous" when they're at the Planned Parenthood clinics and that all the Planned Parenthood clinics realized the prolifers were acting (maybe should have waited til the videos came out to comment).

Amanda also acts like "door widths" are a stupid requirement for abortion clinics, apparently unaware that emergency workers had a larger amount of difficulty removing Karnamaya Mongar (who eventually died after getting an abortion from Gosnell) because the size of doors at Gosnell's clinic. I think the most telling part of the move comes at around 12:00 when Mollie asks Amanda if Down Syndrome counts as a valid reason why a woman would "need" a post-24 week abortion. Amanda stumbles around for minutes with numerous "you knows," "likes," and "ummms."


Not Dead Yet's blog discusses how a recent pro-assisted suicide documentary won a prestigious film award.

So, it's not a shocker that a bunch of folks in the film trade would go head over heels for a documentary that sounds an awful lot like a PSA for legalization of assisted suicide. In other words, the award probably tells us more about the judges granting the award than it does about the film itself. I doubt I'd lose any money if I bet that the judges were predisposed to approve of legalized assisted suicide, and when the film preached at them, they didn't recognize it as a sermon.

Viginia Governor Bob McDonnell has proposed a budget amendment which would ban taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research.


Researchers have found that induced pluripotent stem cells retain "memory" of their past.

In a side-by-side comparison of these induced pluripotent stem cells and embryonic stem cells, researchers from the Salk Institute in San Diego found a consistent pattern of reprogramming errors — places where the iPS cells did not revert completely to an embryonic state.....

In some ways the iPS cells were different from one another, suggesting the reprogramming process itself might contribute to aberrations, he added.

That does not mean iPS cells can't be used in medicine, experts said. Improvements in technology could one day erase their epigenetic memory.

Live Action releases tape of Planned Parenthood in Virginia willing to help sex traffickers

Here's their press release and letter to Virginia's attorney general.

Cecile Richards just crapped her pants

Live Action's latest press release notes that the video of a Planned Parenthood employee who was willing to aid undercover prolifers posing as sex traffickers wasn't a one time blip. Lila Rose has more:

“Soon, we will be releasing more evidence to law enforcement officials and the public showing that Planned Parenthood is willing to aid and abet sexual exploitation of minors and young women. As our research and evidence will show, this is not only a problem for one clinic in New Jersey — it is much broader and more endemic,” Rose said.

One wonders how many videos of Planned Parenthood employees aiding sex traffickers it would take for abortion apologists to rethink their support of this organizations and its employees.

Planned Parenthood sting round-up

Central Jersey Planned Parenthood has fired clinic manager Amy Woodruff after reviewing Live Action's tape. Yet instead of thanking Live Action for exposing one of their employees as someone willing to aid sex traffickers, they're condemning the videos because they were edited or because (according to VP Stuart Schear), "Falsely claiming sex trafficking to health professionals to advance a political agenda is an astoundingly cynical form of political activity."

The Washington Post has an article on video and the New York Times has a blurb. From the Post article,

Planned Parenthood Federation of America officials say that the heavily edited video does not tell the whole story and that Live Action has for years tried unsuccessfully to smear the abortion provider's reputation with its undercover operations.

Well, then what's the whole story?

Remember which clinic Woodruff is willing to refer the "pimp" and his girls to? Metropolitan Medical Associates. That's the same Metropolitan Medical Associates which was temporarily shut down by the state of New Jersey in 2007 for numerous violations including "forceps encrusted in brownish blood-like residues." They also paid out $1.9 million to a woman named Rasheedah Dinkins who was in a coma for a nearly month after they botched her abortion. MMA is no longer listed as a NAF clinic.

RH Reality Check's Amie Newman shows that there's no one more loyal than an abortion advocate by parroting the Media Matters line calling the video a "hoax." Amie includes a quote from Media Matters being skeptical about the video because it's edited. Uno problemo.....Live Action released the unedited video.

Politico covers the launch of new web site: ExposePlannedParenthood.org

Planned Parenthood employee caught on video assisting undercover 'pimp/sex trafficker'

Well, now its rather clear why Cecile Richards went running to FBI week ago: A pathetic attempt at preemptive damage control.

Prolife bloggers are all over Live Action's recent video release.

Jill Stanek describes what the video shows:

In the video the clinic manager of PP Central New Jersey’s Perth Amboy mill, LPN Amy Woodruff, tells “Joe” and “Gia” how to get abortions, STD treatment, and contraceptives for their brothel of adolescents as young as 14, some here illegally.

Woodruff coaches the pair on how to have the younger girls lie about their age. She gives them the name of a mill that is apparently schlockier than hers, Metropolitan Medical Associates, that will do abortions with fewer questions asked.

Secular Prolife's blog:

Well, every now and then, life imitates the speculative ravings of a pro-abortion idealogue.

Bryan Kemper:

I can promise you that this video will make you more angry than you have been in a long time; in fact you may want to punch something after watching it. Lila Rose and Live Action have once again uncovered the ugly truth that Planned Parenthood does not care one bit about women.

Joe Carter:

Since the videos went viral on YouTube and were seen by millions of people, you’d think that the organization would be more cautious about what they said in the future. But the workers at Planned Parenthood apparently aren’t that bright.

If Planned Parenthood had an ounce of integrity, wouldn't you think they would have come out, apologize and admit some kind of culpability? Maybe they didn't originally because they didn't have all the details but now after they've realized at least one (who knows how many videos Live Action has) of their employee wanted to help sex traffickers?

Questions: Is Woodruff still employed at Planned Parenthood? If not, when did her employment end and under what circumstances? Were other employees let go based on the sex trafficking sting?

Life Links 2/1/11

A federal judge has struck down a Baltimore city ordinance which required crisis pregnancy centers to post signs saying they don't perform abortions.

In a decision issued Friday, U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis wrote that the requirement violates the centers' constitutional right to free speech. Ruling in a lawsuit brought against the city by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore and a counseling center it supports, he declared the ordinance "unenforceable."

"Whether a provider of pregnancy-related services is 'pro-life' or 'pro-choice,' it is for the provider — not the government — to decide when and how to discuss abortion and birth-control method," Garbis wrote. "The Government cannot, consistent with the First Amendment, require a 'pro-life' pregnancy-related service center to post a sign."

The Center for Reproductive Rights is planning to appeal.


The Delaware Family Policy Council is calling on U.S. Attorney Charles Oberly to launch a federal investigation into the Delaware abortion clinics which were recently dropped as members of the National Abortion Federation.

Council President Nicole Theis said Dr. Arturo Apolinario -- whose listed phone number on several medical websites is the same as that for Atlantic's Wilmington clinic -- has let his controlled-substances license expire, meaning he could be in violation of federal drug laws if he has prescribed or administered any of the drugs since June 2009....

Theis added that Apolinario is the only doctor other than Gosnell who her organization knows is associated with the Atlantic clinics.

In Canada, the Carleton University student association has upheld its decision to ban the university's prolife club.