Overheard: Abortioneer says she instinctively protects her children

From an Abortioneers' blog post dealing with issues that arise for children whose parents work in the abortion industry.

My instinct is to be very protective of my children. I prefer to be very, very cautious about my work and have only outted myself to one teacher. I have chosen to protect my children by rarely outing myself.

Life Links 4/29/11

I saw the below ad on television a couple of nights ago and wondered a few seconds in, "What prolife organization is behind this ad?"



The Alliance Defense Fund has a press release on Planned Parenthood's lawsuit settlement.

In December 2010, the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas determined that Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio Region violated state law when it failed to meet with the 14-year-old girl at least 24 hours prior to giving her the abortion. Following this, a psychologist found that the abortion had caused her to suffer significant psychological harm, including post-traumatic stress disorder. The case was “resolved and dismissed” shortly thereafter.

In Indiana, all eyes are on Governor Mitch Daniels to see if he will sign a bill to take away state funding from Planned Parenthood.


Nieshia Johnson has been charged with killing her aunt's unborn child.

"Nieshia became angrier and began to punch Tieshia multiple times in her arms and head," according to the reports. "Tieshia put her arms around Nieshia's waist to get her to stop punching her ... Nieshia kneed Tieshia multiple times in her stomach area. Tieshia said she was punched at least five times and kneed in the stomach more than five times."
.....
About an hour after police left the apartment, Lewis went to the hospital to get checked. She was considered to be a high-risk pregnancy.

At the hospital, Lewis was told her water bag was falling out of her uterus, according to the police reports. On Nov. 14, 2010, she had surgery to put everything back into place.

Lewis was released from the hospital on Nov. 16, 2010. The next morning her water broke and she went back to the hospital.

"They told her she was in labor and the only thing keeping her from giving birth was the stitches from the surgery they performed," according to the police reports. "They told her that she had to give birth or her life would be in danger."

"The doctors told her the baby would not survive outside the uterus (at 16 and a half weeks old)."

On Nov. 18, Lewis had a miscarriage and the fetus was sent to the San Bernardino County Coroner's Office, according to the police reports. Lewis named her son Daylan Troy Lewis.

The coroner conducted an autopsy on Nov. 22 and the cause of death was determined to be premature delivery of the fetus, due to blunt force trauma.

Man pleads guilty for attempted murder of unborn child

From the Columbus Dispatch:

Holt-Reid, 28, was arrested Oct. 6 after police say he pointed a handgun at Yolanda Burgess and drove her to an East Side abortion clinic for a scheduled appointment after she told him she didn't want to go through with the procedure.....

Officers said they found Holt-Reid in the parking lot with a 45-caliber handgun in his waistband.

The child has since been born and is doing well, Assistant Prosecutor Jennifer Rausch said. Burgess and Holt-Reid already had a son together, state birth records show.

Prosecutor Ron O'Brien said he is unaware of another case in Ohio in which someone has been charged or convicted of attempted murder for trying to force someone to have an abortion......

The attempted-murder conviction carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

I'm guessing pro-choicers don't feel it's proper to charge a man with attempted murder for trying to kill his unborn child.

Life Links 4/28/11

Free of Kathleen Sebelius' veto, the Kansas legislature is passing prolife bill after prolife bill. This one will require that abortion clinics be inspected at least twice a year, one of the visits being unannounced. It also includes RU-486 abortion regulations.


A former band teacher was arrested after the student he had an affair with published the story of their affair in her college newspaper. The teacher also took her to get an abortion.

"The sound of the vacuum still rings in my ears almost three years later," she wrote. "He had taken me to Greensboro because he was scared of someone from school or anyone catching us together at the abortion clinic — didn't want anyone 'getting the wrong idea.'"

The teacher, Terry Lamar Jones, now 28, turned himself in on Monday and was charged with 64 felony counts of sex with a student, each one punishable by 15 months in prison. He was jailed on $500,000 bail.

It looks like a Planned Parenthood in Ohio paid up to settle a lawsuit in which they failed to notify parents about a 14-year-old's abortion. They allowed the girl's 21-year-old soccer coach (who was the father of the child) to give consent.

Parties say they have resolved a lawsuit accusing a Planned Parenthood clinic in Ohio of failing to get legally required consents before performing an abortion on a 14-year-old girl impregnated by her youth soccer coach boyfriend.

Chief Executive Becki Brenner of the southwest Ohio region Planned Parenthood and Steven Aden, a lawyer for the family, said Wednesday the case has been "resolved and dismissed." Aden says it was dismissed April 15 in Hamilton County, but that he cannot characterize the settlement because of a confidentiality order.

The suit claimed the clinic broke the law by not informing the girl of risks and alternatives, failing to get parental consent and not reporting suspected child abuse.

Pro-choice tolerance on college campuses is alive and well.


Tricia Fraser, the mother of a girl featured in a prolife billboard, is suing the prolife group Life Always claiming the use of her daughter's picture in the billboard was defamatory. Fraser previously made the news when she complained the prolife group didn't apologize for using the image the bought and Fraser allowed to be a stock image.

The billboards featured a larger-than-life picture of Anissa Fraser, an African-American child who was then 4, and the words: "The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb."
......
In the complaint, filed Tuesday in New York Supreme Court, Anissa's mother Tricia Fraser said she was never warned about the controversial ads or the websites where her daughter's picture also appeared.

The child's visage became part of a "racist, controversial advertising campaign" organized by defendant Life Always and its affiliate Majella Cares, doing business as Heroic Media, the suit says.

Life Links 4/26/11

The Washington Post has a short story on how the Maryland Board of Physicians is investigating late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart.


At the National Review, Chairmaine Yoest provides 5 truths about Planned Parenthood.

The latest annual report for the affiliate Ms. Coleman headed before she assumed her current post, Planned Parenthood of Mid-Hudson Valley (PPMHV), seems to corroborate Mrs. Johnson’s claim that Planned Parenthood is increasing abortion services with an eye toward increased revenue. PPMHV is relocating its consolidated clinics to open larger and more “modern” facilities, which, notably, have “the addition of surgical abortion services.” The PPMHV report “anticipates” that these new centers will lead to “increasing our revenue and sustainability.”

A Texas bus driver who was fired after refusing to take a woman to Planned Planned was paid $21,000 by The Capital Area Rural Transportation System to settle his lawsuit against them.

System board members said they agreed to settle after determining that the cost of defending the suit could exceed the settlement amount......

After Graning was dispatched to take the women to Planned Parenthood in January 2010, he called his supervisor "and told her that, in good conscience, he could not take someone to have an abortion," his lawsuit said.

Various El Paso news outlets are covering the discovery of aborted child body parts in the parking lot of an El Paso abortion clinic.

Life Links 4/25/11

Here's a Live Action press release detailing the discovery of body parts of an aborted child in the parking lot of an abortion clinic in El Paso, Texas. It includes pictures of the body parts.

Early this morning, Live Action Investigator and sidewalk counselor Gaby Federico discovered a dead, dismembered baby in the parking lot of Hilltop Family Planning Clinic, an abortion clinic in El Paso, TX. The Hilltop clinic advertises abortions up to 15 weeks.

Federico and a fellow pro-life sidewalk counselor at the clinic were alerted to the find by a man who lives next door to the clinic. He said the night before, his dog had been sniffing around the parking lot and found the baby's body parts lying on the ground. The man placed the body parts in a plastic bag next to the clinic and alerted Federico this morning. At approximately 9:15 AM, Federico and others found disarticulated tissue, two bloody legs with feet, and a severed hand in the bag.

A German infant named Frieda Mangold who was born at 21 weeks, 5 days, spent Easter at home with her family after spending 5 months in the neo-natal care.

Doctors at the Fulda Children's Clinic say Frieda was born on Nov. 7 weighing just 16 ounces (460 grams). She was released from the hospital on Wednesday weighing 7 pounds, 11 ounces (3.5 kilograms).

The clinic's chief doctor, Reinald Repp, said he saw "no indication that she will not be healthy."

The Daily Mail has additional information.


A jury in Arizona has acquitted Lawrence Egbert of manslaughter after he allegedly helped a woman kill herself.

Dr. Lawrence Egbert, who also is indicted in Georgia on charges that he helped a man with cancer there kill himself, was one of four people charged by Arizona authorities in Jana Van Voorhis' death......

Authorities believe Van Voorhis placed a plastic hood over her head that was hooked up to helium tanks. She was found dead in her Phoenix home on April 15, 2007.

Overheard: Abortion advocate Rebecca Sive on Cecile Richards' inability to defend abortion

From the Huffington Post after Cecile Richards twice dodged a question from Rachel Maddow about the importance of Planned Parenthood's abortion services.

Maddow asked you, in the face of this weak-kneed strategy, whether abortion services are worth fighting for. You dodged her question. Twice. Lucky for you, Maddow likes you, so she didn't pester you. End of interview. End of an opportunity for you to say what really needed to be said: Rachel, yes, of course you're right, as the leader of Planned Parenthood, I will fight as hard as I can for the right of American women to obtain the reproductive healthcare services they need, including abortion at a Planned Parenthood clinic.

Cecile: We're all familiar with that Beltway thing. Keep smiling; keep wearing those pearls and that pretty scarf; keep whispering sweet nothings. But: you? But: you, in these times? But: you, on this morning after? But you, daughter of a mother we revere because she was never afraid to say what time it is? Fact is, as your mother proved, over and over and over again, sometimes you've just got to give it up and be the not-so-nice girl.

Prolife Congressional leaders want info on D.C.'s tax-funded abortions

Here's an interesting letter from Congressmen and Congresswomen to Vincent Gray, the mayor of Washington, D.C. asking for detailed steps to how he will ensure that tax funds are no longer used to pay for abortions. The letter also notes that previous attempts at getting information about tax-funded abortions in D.C. went unanswered.

Pro-choicers noticing Cecile Richards can't defend abortion

At the RH Reality Check, Antoinette Bonsignore provides her thoughts on Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards refusal to defend her organizations abortion services in a recent interview with Rachel Maddow.

During the Cecile Richards interview, I thought there could be a thoughtful discussion about the further de-legitimization of abortion and the onslaught of extreme anti-abortion state legislation around the country. Instead, Richards remained steadfast in her defense of Planned Parenthood's non-abortion related services. The current political climate leaves anyone who is fighting for Planned Parenthood's survival with no other choice but to downplay the abortion services. The GOP has forced pro-choice advocates into an untenable position. Pro-choice organizations must and do defend abortion rights. But how does someone like Richards do that while still protecting the millions of women that seek out Planned Parenthood for vital health care services each year? Sadly, the toxic political climate has made it next to impossible for Planned Parenthood defenders to even discuss abortion rights in any meaningful manner......

During that interview, I noticed that regardless of how much Maddow pressed the issue of the importance of abortion and how this fight over Planned Parenthood was being waged with abortion as the weapon Richards did not and quite frankly could not directly engage in the discussion.

Life Links 4/21/11

Wesley Smith on how Planned Parenthood could stop people from objecting to Planned Parenthood receiving tax dollars:

I find it interesting that whenever PP defunding comes up, defenders bemoan the loss of cancer screenings and contraception dispensing for poor women, and materially downplay the importance of abortion in the overall PP menu of services. Well, there is an easy way out of that conundrum–if they are truly the core of PP's mission: Simply stop performing abortions and many people will stop objecting to its receiving taxpayer dollars.

But as we all know, abortion is the true core of PP's mission so that's not happening anytime soon.


Live Action reports on "Maria Talks" a state funded web site for teens in Massachusetts in which abortion is promoted as "safe and effective," "more common than you think" and easy to get. The site also provides contact information to an organization which can help young girls pay for abortions, to Planned Parenthood to help teens get a judicial waiver instead of parental consent, and a link to NARAL Massachusetts where girls can get a list of abortion providers.


A federal judge has ruled that a letter sent by Angel Dillard to wanna-be abortionist Mila Means wasn't a threat.

A federal judge on Wednesday refused the government's request for a preliminary injunction to order a Kansas anti-abortion activist to stay away from a doctor who plans to offer abortion services in Wichita.

The Justice Department filed a civil complaint against Angel Dillard, 44, after she sent what it alleges was a threatening letter to Dr. Mila Means. In denying the government's request for a preliminary injunction that would have prevented Dillard from coming within 250 feet of the doctor, U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten said that while the letter was clearly meant to intimidate Means, it wasn't a threat.

The British High Court has ruled the British government has to release statistics noting how many British unborn children were aborted past 24 weeks and the reason for the abortion. The government stopped publishing the statistics in 2003 after a report showed a child had been aborted because of cleft palate.


A Pennsylvania man has been sentenced to jail time after beating his girlfriend because she wouldn't have an abortion.

Roderick Douglas Gaines, 28, of East Vine Street, was sentenced in Montgomery County Court to three to six years in a state correctional facility after he pleaded guilty to charges of aggravated assault of an unborn child, simple assault and terroristic threats in connection with a July 2010 altercation with his former girlfriend at a Pottstown residence.....

Court papers indicate the victim reported that Gaines struck her with a closed fist and told her if she screamed during the incident, he would "give her something to scream about." Additionally, the victim told police that Gaines said, "she was forcing him to have this baby and she should respect that he wants her to have an abortion. Since she won't respect his request to have an abortion, he won't respect her."

It appears that Indiana may defund Planned Parenthood.

Sources in Indiana tell PULSE the governor will most likely be forced to swerve away from his long-touted "truce" on social issues when a bill to defund Planned Parenthood and set up new abortion restrictions lands on his desk within the next two weeks. The Indiana State Senate passed the bill this week and groups on both sides of the issue expect the governor to sign off on it.

Life Links 4/20/11

Politico has an article on the reason why pro-choice organizations aren't challenging fetal pain laws banning abortion after 20 weeks.

Republican legislatures across the country are passing tough new anti-abortion laws — and while abortion rights advocates believe the new laws are unconstitutional, they’re not rushing to court to stop them.

The reason: There’s a decent chance they’d lose......

The Center for Reproductive Rights, a stalwart defender of abortion rights, says that the law ranks lower down in its priorities since it only regulates a small number of procedures that occur later in the pregnancy.

Strange, they didn't have that problem when it came to partial-birth abortion.

Dahlia Lithwick's column in Slate has more information into "scared of what Justice Kennedy could do" thinking inside the leadership at pro-choice organizations. It's also noteworthy that this thinking doesn't seem to go over well with the pro-choice ground troops.


Here's a new prolife commercial featuring Abby Johnson.



A sheriff's office in North Carolina is investigating a former high school teacher after a college student's personal essay describes having an affair with a teacher and him taking her to an out-of-town abortion clinic.

Life Links 4/19/11

Fact-checkers at the New York Times - they're not that good. From a pro-Planned Parenthood piece today by Luisita Lopez Torregrosa which was originally published in International Herald Tribune:

Planned Parenthood is not all that big. It receives about $363 million in federal government grants, according to its 2008-9 report. Not a cent of federal aid can be legally used for abortions, which make up only 3 percent of the organization’s services — which also include prescribing contraceptives and offering birth control advice, cancer screenings like mammograms and tests for sexually transmitted diseases.

Two Delaware abortion clinics associated with abortionist Kermit Gosnell will likely remain closed.

James Liguori, who is representing Panzy Myrie -- the owner and sole shareholder of Atlantic Women's Medical Services -- said Monday that the clinic's Wilmington location has been put up for sale and the owner and operators of the clinics "want to move on."

"They don't want to start over," he said.

The Tennessee Senate passed a resolution to change the state's constitution to overturn a 2000 Tennessee Supreme Court ruling which prevented a variety of abortion restrictions. The article doesn't note if the state house has enough votes to pass it (2/3 are needed).

Why can't Cecile Richards defend Planned Parenthood's abortion services

At the Live Action blog, Paul Pauker comments on a recent interview Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards did on the Rachel Maddow show. Here's the video and here's the transcript.

Pauker notes how even on a friendly show with a friendly host and a friendly question, it's like Richards has been barred from talking about how important Planned Parenthood thinks access to abortion is. Maddow clearly wants Richards to talk about how important access to abortion is and all Richards wants to talk about is the non-abortion services.

That can't be good news to abortion advocates.

Remember after the 2008 elections when some abortion advocates hoped that the Democrats would push for an overturning of the Hyde Amendment? Now the most fervent of pro-choice politicians bring up the Hyde Amendment to defend funding Planned Parenthood. They almost treat the Hyde Amendment as if it has been set in stone and shouldn't be overturned.

Here's the pertinent part of the transcript.

MADDOW: Because so much of the criticism of your organization during this whole fight has been not true, weird distortion and exaggeration ala Glenn Beck and Jon Kyl, a couple things are developing among your defenders. They‘re saying, no, really abortion is only a tiny fraction of what Planned Parenthood does, and they‘re saying, no, they don‘t use any taxpayer money for abortion. Those things, of course, are true.

The thing that no one really seems to be saying is, hey, it‘s also really important that Planned Parenthood is able to provide access to abortion. Do you think that is emerging as a political problem here, that people—there aren‘t enough people standing up specifically for the abortion rights side of this fight?

RICHARDS: Well, I think folks are very familiar with Planned Parenthood that we provide full reproductive health care in America. And that‘s really important.

But I think what is important, too, Rachel, that folks understand that literally what the House of Representatives and what Speaker Boehner are trying to do is not end abortion services. They are trying to eliminate birth control and cancer screenings for women. I just think that‘s—that shows how extreme these measures are.

And I actually think—I have to say, I think even Senator Kyl‘s statement the other day has done more to educate people about the array of services available at Planned Parenthood health centers than anything we ever could have done. It‘s—but it‘s these kinds of misstatements that I think have really galvanized people across the country in defense of Planned Parenthood, in defense of women‘s reproductive health care.

MADDOW: On that specific issue of abortion, though, specifically really with that issue in the states I guess rather than at the federal government because we got the Hyde Amendment at the federal level, do you expect this fight to morph into a, frankly, Democratic Party-based defense of access to abortion. Right now, Democrats are not mounting a very stiff resistance to what Republicans are doing in the state, specifically on access to abortion services.

RICHARDS: Well, I think we‘re seeing in state legislatures across the country, as you mentioned earlier, very extreme legislation being proposed, again, I think by very extreme elements of the Republican Party. I have actually been encouraged at the federal level to see not only Democratic senators coming to the defense of Planned Parenthood but also Republican senators who are saying, look, this is a basic health care provider to 3 million people every year, one in five women in America have been to a Planned Parenthood health center, and we need more access to, frankly, affordable, quality health care, not less.

So, I am hoping we‘re beginning to see Republicans and Democrats come together in defense of women‘s reproductive health care.

Maddow's first question is basically on invitation for Richards' to say how important abortion services are and Richards' completely ignores the question. The president of an organization which performs more than 25% of America's abortions, performs abortions on 12% of the people who walk through their doors and wants every single one of their affiliates to perform abortions won't defend abortion.

Raising kids isn't cheap, but come on

The RH Reality Check's Robin Marty has a piece out on how much it costs for her and her husband to care for their infant child. Marty uses these costs to finger-wag at prolifers since apparently CPCs don't do enough to help women.

Is every "sidewalk counselor" and anti-abortion politician ready to really take on the financial commitment that an infant represents? Or do they want to continue saying a car sear, a jug of formula and a box of Pampers is all a woman really needs?

One, this is an obvious strawman. I'm not aware of any CPC which believes poor women only need those 3 items. Second, Marty has no actual clue to how much help CPCs are willing to give because she hasn't asked any for help. Three, if prolifers aren't willing to pay for all the costs of raising children, does that mean it should be legal to kill them? There are numerous other human beings (the severely disabled, etc.) who cost much more than infants to care for. If prolifers won't bear the cost of caring for them, does that mean it should be legal to kill them as well?

Since my wife recently had our second child, I was perplexed by the rather large costs Marty put on nearly every item a parent buys for their child. She claims a box of diapers costs $40 and lasts a week. Really? Which diapers are those? I can get a big box of diapers at Wal-Mart for under $15 and that lasts multiple weeks.

Marty also claims that parents will supposedly do laundry every day (which will cost $50 per month) because for some reason they won't have enough baby clothes to last through more than 1 day.

The price Marty lists for formula also seems high. Maybe she should switch to Parent's Choice.

Besides inflating costs, Marty makes overly broad claims about CPCs.

I've never seen a center ask for cloth diaper donations, and the initial expense of purchasing is out of reach for a woman who is considering abortion for financial reasons.

How hard have you looked?

You never see a pregnancy center ask for people to donate breast pumps, pads or storage bottles and bags.

Yep. Never.

Life Links 4/18/11

The Washington Post has more about T.J. Atchison, the young man who received the first injection of cells created from embryonic stem cells. This is rather sad.

Raised Baptist in a small town where the main road has more churches than fast-food restaurants, Atchison nonetheless has no moral qualms about helping to launch the first U.S. government-sanctioned attempt to study a treatment using embryonic stem cells in people. The cells implanted into his spine were obtained from embryos being discarded at fertility clinics, he said.

"It's not life. It's not like they're coming from an aborted fetus or anything like that. They were going to be thrown away," he said. "Once they explained to me where the stem cells were coming from, once I learned that, I was okay with it."

Even a local Pentecostal pastor Troy Bailey who befriended Atkinson has a misguided view on what human embryos are.

"I am adamantly against abortion in any form. It did cause me some searching and researching biblically what is the proper answer," he said. "I don't really see a baby's life was destroyed for this to take place."

A Korean institute wants to use non-frozen embryos to obtain embryonic stem cells.


Here's another case of a mother being killed for her child.

Kathy Michelle Coy's twisted plot came to light after she arrived at the Bowling Green Medical Center Wednesday with a newborn boy, authorities said.

Coy, 33, claimed the boy was hers, but hospital staff quickly deemed the case a "suspicious birth" and called police.

The next day, investigators found the body of 21-year-old Jamie Stice in a wooded area off a highway in Oakland, Kentucky, the Bowling Green Daily News reported.

Delaware officials continue to investigate the abortion clinic where abortionist Kermit Gosnell worked. Abortionist Alberto Dworkin's emergency license suspension has been lifted.

Krauthammer on Obama's budget cuts

From his most recent column

The president’s speech was a prose poem to higher taxes — with every allusion to spending cuts guarded by a phalanx of impenetrable caveats.

Life Links 4/15/11

U.S. Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia (who signed prolife legislation as West Virginia's governor) is looking for a way to explain his vote against defunding Planned Parenthood. Prolife groups aren't buying it.

Manchin said he offered the so-called “Title X Transparency and Verification Act” as a means of raising public scrutiny of family planning funding and guaranteeing money spent under the program is reported to the public....

In Morgantown, West Virginians for Life’s communications director, Mary Anne Buchanan, said the Manchin proposal wouldn’t do anything.

“The bill that Sen. Manchin wants to put forth really is irrelevant,” she said.

“It’s just a cover. We really feel that he doesn’t want to defund Planned Parenthood. He just put this up as his means of saying, ‘I want to do something to take care of this problem when really it’s not going to help at all.’ Planned Parenthood are the abortion giant in this country. One-third of their revenue comes from abortions. They perform about 27 percent of all the abortions in this country. One out of every eight people who walks into a Planned Parenthood clinic comes out with an abortion.”

At the Weekly Standard, John McCormack notes how taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood helps them subsidize their abortion activities. Take note of Cecile Richards' supposed total hours of work per week.

While pro-choice advocates argue that the law already prohibits Planned Parenthood from paying for abortions with tax dollars, the law actually does nothing to prevent tax dollars from subsidizing abortionists. "Separation of Title X from abortion activities does not require separate grantees or even a separate health facility," according to the regulation issued by the Clinton administration. The regulation allows Title X programs and abortion clinics to even share the same staff.

In addition to underwriting abortion facilities and staff, federal dollars free up funds to pay for Planned Parenthood's political activities and lavish salaries. During the 2004-2005 fiscal year, Planned Parenthood president Gloria Feldt raked in over $900,000 as the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the tax-exempt "non-profit" organization with a billion dollars in assets. That same year, Feldt earned about $24,000 as the president of Planned Parenthood's political arm, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, an operation that takes in around $10 million per year in order to defeat pro-life Republicans, parental consent laws, and other pro-life measures.

Planned Parenthood's current president Cecile Richards makes about $340,000 per year--double the salary of a U.S. senator--for working 32 hours a week for Planned Parenthood's nonprofit arm, according to the organization's tax forms. She takes in about $37,000 annually for working 40 hours per week for the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. So, taxpayers subsidize Planned Parenthood's abortion-performing arm, which in turn subsidizes Planned Parenthood's political operation.

Speaking of how our tax dollars subsidize Planned Parenthood's abortion business, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland has announced plans to build 12 new clinics in Iowa and Nebraska over 5 years after getting commitments of $7 million dollars. They will also begin performing abortion in Omaha.


Wesley Smith writes on a proposal in Switzerland to legalize assisted suicide in nursing homes.

Friday Baby Blogging

Over the weekend my wife delivered our second child. Both mom and baby are doing well.

Life Links 4/14/11

I knew that from the District of Columbia statistic which claimed the District spent on $62,300 on tax-funded abortions since August was baloney. The evidence comes from Planned Parenthood itself. According to TPD's Amanda Hess and the DCist, 28 women were scheduled for abortion today at one Planned Parenthood abortion clinic but they were told last night the District of Columbia could no longer pay for their abortions. 28 in one day at one D.C. abortion clinic. If you used $450 as a conservative guess for average cost of an abortion that would mean that D.C. would have spent $12,600 on tax-funded abortions in one day at one clinic. The National Abortion Federation lists 2 additional clinics in D.C. A report by TBD's Amanda Hess claims there were 8 abortion providers in D.C. in 2008.


David Klinghoffer has a piece at National Review Online on the stem cell research.

An enduring liberal myth, that of the Republican "war on science," got a subtle rebuke this week when the first and only patient to receive FDA-approved embryonic-stem-cell therapy publicly revealed his identity. Timothy J. Atchison, a 21-year-old nursing student, had been partially paralyzed in a car crash. Six months ago, scientists at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta sought to test on him the safety of a drug concocted from stem cells of the kind derived by destroying a human embryo.

Are you surprised to learn that this was the very first such clinical test of embryonic-stem-cell research (ESCR)? The news story about Timothy Atchison reminds us that unlike therapies from morally unobjectionable adult stem cells, embryonic stem cells so far have not cured anyone of anything.

The Philadelphia Department of Health has set up a web site where individuals between the ages of 11 and 19 can request free condoms be mailed to them. "Statutory rape? What's that? Here's a condom."


The University of Delaware paid a woman $50,000 to write on a play where a character playing Jesus "accompan(ies) Alice (the main character) a road trip to Connecticut — with Big Gulps in hand — to evade Delaware's parental consent laws on abortion."

Bioethicist Art Caplan is now off the embryonic stem cell hype truck he was driving

Public Discourse has an interesting interview where Robert George and Art Caplan answer questions regarding the difference between science and ethics. In part of the interview, they discuss embryonic stem cell research and how some individuals hyped it up. Here's Caplan (who favors embryonic stem cell research and its federal funding):

Embryonic stem-cell research was completely overhyped, in terms of its promise. And people knew it at the time. I tried to say so myself at different times myself, even though I support embryonic stem-cell research. But this notion that people would be out of their wheelchairs within a year if we could just get embryonic stem-cell research funded was just ludicrous. Just simply silly.

So Caplan openly admits that embryonic stem cell research was way over-hyped, he knew it, thought about saying something about it but for some reason didn't.

Yet here's Caplan in 2006 advocating killing frozen embryos for embryonic stem cell research:

"You got people in wheelchairs. You got people trying to understand how to cure cancer," Caplan says. "You know, people who want to understand genetic diseases and you have embryos frozen that no one will ever use for any purpose whatsoever. There's a moral equation here, too. And it seems to be to lead toward research, not just perpetual freezing."

Here's a hysterical Caplan column from 2006 after President Bush vetoed legislation to expand the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research:

An administration that has shown itself over and over again to have trouble telling the truth is now telling Americans in wheelchairs, those with damaged hearts, babies who are diabetic and those left immobile by Parkinsonism not to worry. The president, whose grasp of science left him unable to identify creationism as a fundamentally religious idea, and his trusty sidekick Karl Rove, rarely seen in a white lab coat but who knows something about rats, having been in Washington for some time now, claim to know best which medical research is most likely to benefit diseased Americans in the future.......

Not too long after the president's first speech on the subject, the sick and ailing recognized the president was not wise, but rather wacky, and decided to do something about it. With the help of high-profile efforts involving Nancy Reagan, Christopher Reeve, Mary Tyler Moore, Michael J. Fox and a less visible but incredibly committed and hugely influential phalanx of disease advocacy organizations a sound policy about embryonic stem cell research was articulated.

The policy to permit closely monitored federal funding swung hearts and minds in both houses of Congress. Governors and state legislators and, yes, even those in the media began to understand that the only sensible strategy in the battle against disease, infirmity, disability and death is to put the chips of public funding behind all forms of stem cell research — embryonic and adult.....

The president has now told doctors, researchers and patients to drop dead.

When iPS cells were discovered,Caplan warned against abandoning embryonic stem cell research and ended his column by saying, "Too many lives are riding on this to be fooled into taking the wrong detour."

But Caplan was going to speak up about the hype, right? He "tried" to say so but for all the writing and media appearances he did on the subject he just could never find the time to tell the truth. He also could never find the time to call out the various campaigns advocating embryonic stem cell and human cloning on their ridiculous rhetoric. Caplan did, however, find the time to call out Wesley Smith for a column in which Smith notes how some proponents of embryonic stem cell research and human cloning use word games to mislead the public.

Talk about revisionist history!!!

For years, Caplan was one of the leading hype ringleaders on embryonic stem cell research and human cloning. Over and over again, he misled people about President Bush's embryonic stem cell funding policy. He ludicrously claimed that spending $25 million dollars on embryonic stem cell research = banning the research and that proponents of embryonic stem cell research weren't so bad for "partly" hyping embryonic stem cell research. Over and over again, he hyped the importance of human cloning for research, claiming that it would "repair damaged hearts, severed spinal cords or worn out parts of the brain that lead to Parkinson's disease."

But now that President Obama is in office and has expanded the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, Caplan suddenly comes completely clean. Isn't that nice?

Overheard: Joe Carter on abortion, the culture of me and the negation of love

From First Things:

Note that when she says “we weren’t paying attention” she isn't referring to the fact that there may be something immoral about helping women kill what they would refer to as “my baby.” No, what Keyes said the movement wasn't paying attention to was the fact that women were having painful feelings about what they were doing.

Pangs of conscience are, of course, a natural reaction to the taking of an innocent life. But while the Culture of Me can accept an unborn child being ripped from the womb, having hurt feelings about such actions are unacceptable.

The end of the Glamour article closes with a feature called, “Women tell the true story of my abortion.” Unsurprisingly, the women represented are more concerned about their own anguish than they are regretful about their decision to kill another human......

The opposite of love is the frame of mind that declares, “It's good that you not exist; it’s good that you are not in the world!” No matter what words they chose to scribble on a pink paper heart, this was the true message being spoken to the lost unborn children.

These women were informed that abortion was a reasonable choice. What no one told them was that what they were choosing was the negation of love.

Life Links 4/13/11

Politico has an article on National Right to Life's decision not to take a position on the Continuing Resolution. Here is a letter from National Right to Life leaders to U.S. Senators regarding the resolution and upcoming votes on Obamacare and defunding Planned Parenthood.


Archbishop Charles Chaput writes on politics, science, abortion, evil and human dignity.

The moral and political struggle we face today in defending human dignity is becoming more complex. I believe that abortion is the foundational human rights issue of our lifetime. We can’t simultaneously serve the poor and accept the legal killing of unborn children. We can’t build a just society, and at the same time, legally sanctify the destruction of generations of unborn human life. The rights of the poor and the rights of the unborn child flow from exactly the same human dignity guaranteed by the God who created us.

Of course, working to end abortion doesn’t absolve us from our obligations to the poor. It doesn’t excuse us from our duties to the disabled, the elderly and immigrants. In fact, it demands from us a much stronger commitment to materially support women who find themselves in a difficult pregnancy.

All of these obligations are vital. God will hold us accountable if we ignore them. But none of these other duties can obscure the fact that no human rights are secure if the right to life is not. Unfortunately, abortion is no longer the only major bioethical threat to that right in our culture. In fact, the right to life has never, at any time in the past, faced the range of challenges it faces right now, and will face in the coming decades.

Palm Beach Post columnist Frank Cerabino thinks Planned Parenthood has the same goal as prolifers. It's amazing how all these pro-Planned Parenthood columns always include the 3% number but never the 332,278 number. Or the fact that more than 25% of U.S. abortions are performed at Planned Parenthood. They also never note how dramatically Planned Parenthood abortions have risen in the past decade. It's like their column research consists solely of Planned Parenthood press releases.


Legislation has been introduced at the Pittsburgh City Council to pay a prolife protester $10,000 to settle a lawsuit after he was wrongly cited for trespassing.

Abortion advocate: Lying about rape okay to get abortion

From the Abortion Gang:

In a way, Turner isn’t wrong. Women are likely to use this exception to their advantage. What Turner was horribly wrong about is the reason these women will use this exception. These are not women who have gotten to 25-30 weeks and just ‘decide’ they don’t want to be pregnant any more. These are going to be desperate women who cannot, for whatever reason, be pregnant. These are women that, without this exception in the law, will risk their own lives to abort. These are women who should not have to jump through yet another hoop to get the medical care that they have a right to. The fetus doesn’t feel pain until, at earliest, 24 weeks. Even after 24 weeks an abortion is far less painful for the fetus than birth. Women deserve the right to safe, legal abortion at any stage of the pregnancy. Women who are denied this by right-wing religious men & women have every right to use exceptions in the law to their advantage. These women have the right to say they’ve been raped so they can get their required abortion without risking their lives.

How insane do you have to be to think that third trimester abortions are less painful for a post-24 week child than birth?

There is certainly a concern when a woman falsely claims she was raped as a tool get an abortion, but we certainly shouldn’t be judging her.

Yes, because judging women is the worst thing that could ever happen. And if women lie about rape, well then it's the government's fault and they would, of course, only do it to save their lives.

We must support these women who falsely claim rape because they are doing so to save their lives. We cannot demonize them because they are only doing what the state has forced them to do by making medical decision best left to a woman and her doctor. We must look at the government and say it was their fault this woman lied about being raped because they were the ones that made medical decision best left to a doctor!

The party of abortion?

The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto discusses how Democratic leadership was willing to shut down the government over funding America's biggest abortion provider.

A news story in Saturday's New York Times begins by observing that "the emergence of abortion as the last and most contentious of the issues" in the budget dispute "highlighted the enduring influence of social conservatives within the Republican Party." It seems to us that this gets it backward.

The Times, of course, views "social conservatives" as deviants and their opponents as normal--note how they're seldom even termed "social liberals." But if you look at the question from a more neutral point of view, there's no escaping the conclusion that Democrats are more dogmatically pro-abortion than Republicans are antiabortion. It was the Democrats, not the Republicans, who were willing to shut down the government over subsidies to Planned Parenthood.

Life Links 4/12/11

The Miami Herald has a long AP story on the lack of written reports by doctors at the University of Pennsylvania Health System regarding abortion complications on women who received abortions at Kermit Gosnell's clinic.

The health system - in apparent contradiction of the grand jury report - released a statement saying that it had "provided reports to the authorities regarding patients of Dr. Gosnell who sought additional care at our hospitals" starting in 1999.

But the system's attorneys could only produce a single report for the grand jury. That involved 22-year-old Semika Shaw, who died at the university hospital of internal bleeding and sepsis after a botched abortion in 2000. Gosnell's insurers ultimately paid out a $900,000 settlement in that case.

Health system spokeswoman Susan Phillips later clarified the statement, saying "we have staff who specifically recall making oral reports" to state officials about Gosnell.

"Unfortunately, we have not been able to find additional written reports from these past years," she wrote in an email.

The article then lists various women who were injured by Gosnell and whose cases were never reported.


Pro-aborts in D.C. are mad their tax dollars won't be paying for abortions as a result of the budget negotiations.

Elective abortions for poor women in the District of Columbia — a central bargaining chip in the deal — have cost the city $62,300 since August, city officials say......

“It looks to me that we were easy enough to throw under a bus, and that’s where we landed,” said Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington’s delegate in Congress.

I'm very skeptical of the number above. If it's $62,300 for abortions from August to the end of March that would mean D.C. spends approximately 100K per year on tax-funded abortions. That would mean only about 200 abortions a year would be paid for with tax dollars which seems quite low for a city with a historical high abortion rate (remember the Dick Durbin scuffle with Sam Brownback?) which has dropped in recent years though that's at least somewhat because reporting isn't mandatory.

Washington D.C.'s mayor even got arrested along with six city council members protesting the budget restrictions. From the article:

The fact that Congress will likely re-impose the ban on abortion funding wasn't a shock to Tiffany Reed, the president of D.C. Abortion Fund, a non-profit organization that makes grants to poor women to pay for abortions, which can cost $300 to $500 or more. Reed said her group, which helped pay for more than 300 abortions a year, had expected the ban to be re-imposed, but she was angry Congress had stepped in again to local affairs just as the lifting of the ban was beginning to take effect.

"It gives me a lot of rage quite frankly," she said. "I'm really disappointed in our pro-choice president that he allowed this to happen."

In an incredibly superficial post on Planned Parenthood's services, Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein notes he thinks Planned Parenthood's services are needed because supporting poor people's children is costly.

It’s somewhat cold to put it in these terms, but taxpayers end up bearing a lot of the expense for unintended pregnancies among people without the means to care for their children.

Abortion organizations are claiming their supporters are becoming more active since the Planned Parenthood budget fight began.

Online gifts to Planned Parenthood have surged by 500 percent since Republicans passed a budget amendment stripping the group of its federal funding.

NARAL Pro-Choice America’s email activist list grew by 1,000 subscribers per day at the height of the budget debate.....

Planned Parenthood’s Facebook fans surged 992 percent after the House approved the budget amendment to defund the group in mid-February. More than 810,000 supporters signed its petition denouncing the amendment — more than half of them new users who had never been active with Planned Parenthood prior to the budget debate. The social media activity also drove Planned Parenthood’s surge in online donations.

I think Cecile Richards is wrong on this point.

Planned Parenthood’s Richards believes her organization has emerged from the budget battle stronger, with a slew of publicity for the preventive services it provides. Many news accounts have reported that abortion makes up 3 percent of the group’s services.

Many news accounts also informed readers and viewers that Planned Parenthood was America's largest abortion provider. Prolifers could have spent millions on ad campaigns linking Planned Parenthood to abortion and would have never got anywhere near the publicity we got by fighting to defund them. I think public knowledge regarding Planned Parenthood's abortion activities is likely higher than it has ever been. That's not good Planned Parenthood in the long run.

Deal reached, DC abortion funding out, PP not defunded but there will be a Senate vote

From the Washington Examiner:

The bill does not include a Republican provision to de-fund Planned Parenthood, which provides health care services for women, including abortion. The Planned Parenthood provision was one of the main sticking points during the negotiations, with the GOP insisting it remain in the bill.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, agreed to remove the Planned Parenthood provision in exchange for an agreement that would allow Congress to take up the funding issue separately.The Republicans also won inclusion of a provision that will require the Senate to vote on a bill to de-fund the health care reform law.

Another provision won by Republicans would prohibit the District of Columbia from spending local or federal funds on abortion services.

Life Links 4/8/11

Politico notes that John Boehner seems to be putting a large emphasis on defunding Planned Parenthood.

But all signs are that Speaker John Boehner is making the Planned Parenthood funding cutoff a higher priority in the negotiations than the nine House-passed riders that defund all or part of the health care law. It’s not that he has given up on the defunding riders — it’s just that Planned Parenthood seems to be higher on his list.

Jake Tapper also notes that Planned Parenthood funding seems to be the major sticking point in budget negotiations.

Democratic sources tell ABC News that things “feel better now” in terms of a deal being cut, but the major sticking point remains the GOP rider prohibiting any federal funding to Planned Parenthood or any of its affiliates.

A federal lawsuit has been filed against Angel Dillard for allegedly sending a threatening letter to Mila Means. Means is attempting to open an abortion business in Wichita. Here's a PDF of the letter. Here's a portion of the documentary, "What's the Matter with Kansas" featuring Dillard.


Megan Fox has a list of "10 Planned Parenthood Lies Every Pro-Choice Person Should Condemn."

"I've had enough"....of prolifers telling the truth

Charli, a member of the Feministing community, is mad because prolifers are telling the truth about Planned Parenthood.

If I hear one more person call Planned Parenthood the “nations largest abortion provider,” I’m gonna lose it. According to the Guttmacher Institute there were approximatly 1.3 million abortions performed throughout the USA in 2009.

Actually, it's closer to 1.2 million.

Planned Parenthood performed approximatly 300,000 abortion in 2009.

Actually, it was 332,278. Hmmmm.... why is Charli raising the number of total abortions and lowering the abortions provided at Planned Parenthood?

Lets to the math together: 300,000 divided by 1.3 million = 0.2307. This means that Planned Parenthood is responsible for 23% of the abortions performed annually in the USA. HELLO?! Thats less than a quarter!

If we put in the non-edited Charli numbers (332,278 divided by 1,212,400) we get 27.4%. HELLO? That's more than a quarter!

This means that there are a lot of abortions happening in places other than Planned Parenthood.

Really? I never knew that if an organization or company was the largest provider of widgets that meant there couldn't be other organizations that provide widgets. I guess we can't say Subway is the largest fast food chain in the U.S. because there are a lot of other fast food chains.

However, they can get away with calling them the “largest abortion provider” because, as an organization, they provide more abortions than any other single organization.

So prolifers can get away with calling Planned Parenthood the nation's largest abortion provider because it happens to be true.

Basically, these politicians are doing what they do best: manipulating the truth for their benefit.

Or telling the truth at Planned Parenthood's expense.

Overheard - Abortion advocate calls unborn "tiny cell"

One thing that may never change about the pro-choice movement is the propensity to dehumanize unborn children. Here's part of an Abortion Gang guest by Ellen Ramona:

That there is a question of choice at all says only one thing: a woman’s body is not hers to own. This message is saturated throughout our culture, where the objectification of women seeks to separate women from their bodies, while simultaneously suggesting that a woman is little more than her body. And once a fetus enters the picture, the woman nearly vanishes altogether, serving almost solely as a transportation vessel for some tiny cell.

Life Links 4/7/11

The Hill has an editorial by Abby Johnson regarding Planned Parenthood and then a response from Planned Parenthood's medical director Deborah L. Nucatola. Nucatola doesn't really say anything new (her whole piece is assertions without evidence) except asserting that Abby Johnson is lying about "Planned Parenthood count(ing) a 12-month supply of birth control pills as 12 visits." What's really crazy is that some commenter named Josh still thinks Planned Parenthood doesn't provide abortions despite their medical director saying they do.

PP doesn't offer abortions period. No federal funding can go towards abortions the Hyde amendment Assures that. Planned parenthood is a pre pregnancy health service and once a woman is diagnosed as pregnant they only offer information of what there potential options are and refer women to other prenatal care that is more equipped to help these women. This why I'm and so utterly confused by this. They don't actually perform abortions.

Kathryn Jean Lopez has a long piece on Planned Parenthood in the National Review.


Really? How pathetic is it that Planned Parenthood has to pay for activists who will appear to be doing the same things prolifers volunteer to do?


The first Geron spinal cord patient to receive human embryonic stem cells has revealed himself. It doesn't sound like the stem cells have magically healed him yet.


The Economic Observer has an interesting piece on proposed legislation in China's Guangxi Province which appears to be aimed at reducing sex-selection abortions.

The new law included two items of note: the first, included provisions that ensured that only medical agencies approved by the health department are authorized to provide gender checks to unborn fetuses; secondly, women who are old enough to give birth, who conceived under "lawful conditions" and have been pregnant for over 14 weeks are not allowed to have an abortion, unless they can provide proof as to why they need one. That is to say, women have no choice but to carry their pregnancy to term.

At first glance, this news reminded the author of America where the issue of abortion has been a topic of constant debate. Aside from religious concerns, American laws seek to balance the right to life of the fetus and women's right to choose. In recent years, the issue has been highly politicalized and an individual's attitude toward abortion has become an indicator of political-orientation.

But unlike America, the abortion ban in China respects neither the right to life of the fetus nor the rights of pregnant women. It has only one goal: adjusting the country's skewed sex ratio.

I found this to be an interesting example of how the internet can really spread information. Tom Bessinger wrote a long prolife letter to the editor of the Muskegon Chronicle in response to another letter. In that letter, he notes research from the Alan Guttmacher Institute which found that 54 percent of women who have abortions were on some form of contraceptive in the last month. New York-based Alan Guttmacher employee and abortion researcher Lawrence Finer responds with his own letter. Bessinger then responded to Finer's letter.

"Trust Women" or just some women?

At the RH Reality Check, Angi Becker Stevens attempts to attack Arizona's new law which prohibits abortions sought based on the sex and race of the child and the race of a parent of the child. Though she's opposed to outlawing sex-selection abortion in the U.S., she seems to have a problem with sex-selection while understanding that this can be a "thorny" issue for pro-choicers.

How does one criticize the rampant abortion of girls while still defending abortion in general as a perfectly valid choice? There is no simple answer, but it is vital to recognize that abortion itself is not the problem.

Stevens is right. There is no simple answer for pro-choicers because there is no valid answer. If you accept the ideology that women should have complete bodily autonomy and you live by the slogan "Trust Women" then there's no weaseling in a "well....I'm in favor of bodily autonomy for women whose decisions aren't effected by cultural differences" or a "Trust Women.... whose choices I agree with."

Picture from Wikipedia

The millisecond bodily autonomy pro-choicers start criticizing the decisions of women who abort girls simply because they're girls then the facade of "Trust Women" comes tumbling down like a Jenga tower.

It reveals that some pro-choicers actually only "trust women" to make choices they agree with. "The Trust" is there if you want to abort because you're poor or young or just don't feel ready to care for a child. But the trustyness factor gets a little foggy when you want to abort because you desire a male child over a female one.

Life Links 4/6/11

Democratic leaders say the Republicans' proposed one-week CR will be rejected because of the prohibition to D.C. abortion funding and the budget cuts.


Here’s a new one: “Diseased goo” is how Darrell Dawsey describes human embryos with genetic diseases who were recently killed at the University of Michigan for their stem cells.

Discarding diseased goo isn't murder. And what could possibly be nobler than turning that discarded goo into a tool for studying and curing debilitating diseases and injuries?

At Slate Taffy Brodesser-Atkins has an interesting piece in which she discusses how her best friend is a prolife Republican.

When you live, say, on a coast or in a very blue state, you grow accustomed to being surrounded by people who believe like you do. You get to thinking that the only people who would dare contradict you are ignoramuses.....

And yet, I think having a Republican friend is making me a better liberal. We need friends who differ from us. It's easy to watch Republican extremism and think, "Wow, they're crazy." But when someone is sitting face to face with us, when someone we admire and respect is telling us they believe differently, it is at this fine point that we find nuance, and we begin to understand exactly how we got to this point in history. We lose something critical when we surround ourselves with people who agree with us all the time. We lose out on the wisdom of seeing the other side.

I read something like this and I understand why the arguments of many feminist pro-choice bloggers don't seem to be very well thought out.


Michael Lisk has been sentenced to 21-41 years in prison after raping a 12-year-old girl and then burying the body of the child she aborted with a lead pencil.

The diabetic girl was at home and on the phone with Lisk when she risked her life by using a lead pencil to abort the baby, which fell into the toilet, authorities said.

The girl was rushed to the hospital after the abortion in June 2010 and told hospital staff and then police what happened.

Police later found the aborted fetus buried in a wooded area in Polk Township and charged Lisk.

Police said Lisk initially lied, claiming to be just a neighbor helping the girl get rid of a baby that wasn't his.

Life Links 4/5/11

Researchers at the University of Michigan are patting themselves on the back for killing more human embryos. This time the human embryos had genes with inherited genetic disorders.


The Susan B. Anthony List has a list of potential Republican presidential candidates and their positions on defunding Planned Parenthood.


The Life Education Counsel is suing CBS Outdoor for refusing to display their prolife billboards.

This time CBS said that the picture needed to go because abortion "is a potentially emotional topic that might be unduly disturbing to young women who may have made the kinds of choices that the displays deal with," according to the complaint.

A message from the company to Counsel board member Betty LaRosa stated that CBS could not accept "images which might be deemed shocking, unsettling or even manipulative," the complaint states.

LaRosa says she protested and "emphasized that CBS's censorship was diluting and effectively changing her message."

CBS "insisted that if LEC would just get rid of the baby picture, the advertisement may run," the plaintiffs says.

Pearl Gosnell, wife of infamous abortion Kermit Gosnell, was granted bail but will still be under house arrest.

Then what was it?

In a post titled, "But It Wasn't," One in One Thousand responds to my posting of her quote which noted she thought the unborn child, which she eventually aborted, looked like a baby.

The pro-lifers believe that life starts at conception. I appreciate and respect that belief, though I do not agree with it.

I can understand how a pro-life blog might balk that I saw an ultrasound that looked like a baby and that I could still make the choice to terminate the pregnancy. I appreciate that opinion, though I do not agree with it and I do not respect any individual who believes they are worthy of judging me or my decision......

Yes, seeing that ultrasound hurt then and it still hurts now, but I made the choice that was right for me. Ultimately, it looked like a baby, but it wasn't.

I wonder when One in One Thousand believes human life begins and what evidence she has to back up that view. As far as I can see, her post provides no evidence or reasoning for why she believes life begins at some other point than conception or why she believes that her second-trimester unborn child was merely "potential life."

She says she "read endlessly" on fetal development so I wonder how she thinks that something which was growing and developing wasn't alive.

Life Links 4/4/11

Some groups with pro-choice positions want murder and attempted feticide charges against Bei Bei Shuai dropped. Shuai took rat poison while she was pregnant in an attempt to kill herself. She survived but her child died shortly after being born. Notice in the video how Dr. David Orentlicher calls Angel Shuai, the child who died after birth, a "fetus."


Ed Brayton joins the chorus of pro-choicers who apparently have such a small view of women they think women are unable to pursue future dreams if they have children.


John Piper passes on something from the January issue of First Things regarding Incan child sacrifice:

The findings lend credence to the accounts of Spanish conquistadors that described how children were selected for sacrifice from all across the empire, based on their physical perfection. We shudder at such brutal backwardness.

Today, using prenatal screening, we scour the empire for children with physical imperfections and sacrifice them to ourselves.

Sixteen unborn children, mostly female, aged 4-6 months were recently found in India in jars.

Life Links 4/1/11

The Philadelphia City Paper's cover story for yesterday's edition was on how abortionist Steve Brigham is still in business, despite losing his license in numerous states and having employees complain to the state about his practices.

Fifteen clinics were issued "notices of deficiencies," mostly regarding relatively minor infractions. But one case among still-open facilities stood out: Six pages of violation notices were issued to a single abortion clinic — violations that have not yet been reported by the press — connected to a man named Steven Brigham.

Brigham, like Gosnell, has overseen abortion procedures in Pennsylvania for decades. Like Gosnell, he's run afoul of the law — throughout his career, in fact. And, as was the case with Gosnell, abortion providers and women's health advocates say they've alerted the state repeatedly to concerns over Brigham's clinics.

One big difference, however: These clinics are still open.

In the Richmond Times-Dispatch, A. Barton Hinkle notes some of the pro-choice movement's cognitive dissonance.

Pro-choice activists contend a woman has the right to choose what to do with her own body and the government should not overrule her. This is a very appealing argument — and if you agree with it then it settles the abortion question (so long as you also agree that the fetus is part of the woman's body and not a distinct being with rights of its own).

But not many people agree with it. Not even many abortion-rights advocates agree with it. Take Karen Finney, who recently excoriated "The War on Women" in The Hill. "Here in Washington," she wrote, "we're fighting the 'let women die' provision, which says a doctor can refuse to treat a pregnant woman, even if an abortion is the only way to save her life."

But wait. Allowing a doctor to refuse to treat someone is allowing that doctor to decide what to do with his or her own body. The "let women die" act just as easily could be called the "let doctors decide whom they will treat without government interference" act.

The Wisconsin library which at one point canceled the showing of a prolife film will now let 40 Days for Life show the film.

Marathon County Corporation Counsel Scott Corbett said county officials conferred with an attorney for their insurance company and determined that there was not enough evidence that protests would lead to a "civil disturbance" to cancel the event.

Arron Harrison's first parole hearing for attempted killing of an unborn child (the child was unharmed) didn't go so well after trying to sell a really bad story to the parole hearing officer.

On May 20, 2009, Harrison encountered a distraught 17-year-old girl as he walked down the street. The pair struck up a conversation, the girl later told police, and she asked Harrison to help her end her pregnancy, promising to pay him $150 in return.

The girl said she and Harrison went to a home where she lay down on a bed and covered her face with a pillow while he punched her five times in the abdomen. Harrison also bit the teen on the neck and slapped her in the face, said the girl, who was charged in juvenile court with criminal solicitation to commit murder....

Harrison said Tuesday he had no idea the girl was pregnant and disputed that she'd ever been in his bedroom. Instead, he said, the pair was sitting in the front yard of the home where he lived, having a debate about abortion, when he became enraged.