Life Links 7/12/11

Anglican priest Joanna Jepson writes about the abuse of Britain's Abortion Act.

Last week saw the Department of Health – following a six-year moratorium – make a full disclosure of the provision of abortions since 2002. Their years of resistance, victoriously challenged by the ProLife Alliance, was claimed to be for the sake of protecting the identities of the mothers undergoing late-term abortions, who might be tracked down, exposed and hounded by the press.

While that fear has not been justified, the withholding of statistics has impeded the accountability necessary to observe where the Abortion Act is being abused. The release of this backlog of data suggests that the injustice and double standards surrounding abortion need rigorous attention. Perhaps this is most starkly illustrated by the figures showing that there have been 26 abortions for cleft lip and palate in the past nine years, one of those taking place after the upper legal limit of 24 weeks.

Ramesh Ponnuru lists and corrects numerous inaccuracies in a New Republic article by Christine Stansell. Some of them are so bad, I'm left to wonder if The New Republic still employees editors in these rough economic times.

"Anti-abortion views first entered presidential politics in 1980, seven years after Roe v. Wade, when Ronald Reagan embraced a “family values” agenda to run against Jimmy Carter."

Also, Stansell can't even take the time to get Planned Parenthood's corporate name right. It's Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) not Planned Parenthood of America (PPA).


Planned Parenthood of the Heartland has taken over Planned Parenthood clinics in Oklahoma and Arkansas (they will official merge at the beginning of 2012) and now they're considering performing abortions at clinics in Tulsa and Broken Arrow.


The Bishop of Toledo has banned parishes and Catholic schools in his diocese from raising funds for the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

Bishop Blair, in his letter sent over the weekend to all priests and parishes in the 19-county Toledo diocese, stated that "at present the Komen Foundation does not fund" embryonic stem-cell research.

However, he said, "their policy does not exclude that possibility" and the foundation "may very well fund such research in the future."

A spokesman for the national Komen Foundation acknowledged that if it received a request to fund embryonic stem-cell research, it would be considered.