Detectives described finding remains of aborted child

The New Republic has a story on The Rise of DIY Abortions which features Jennie Linn McCormack and the story of how she aborted her 5-month-old using abortion pills she ordered online.

The last page includes quotes from the detectives who found the body:

Before I left Pocatello, I met two detectives who participated in the McCormack investigation. They work just a wall away from the evidence locker where the remains of the fetus are still stored; because the legal proceedings are ongoing, they cannot be released. “We see dead bodies, daily, weekly, in all different stages,” Detective Brian McClure told me. “But seeing a recognizable baby in a garbage bag, frozen, outside, in a garbage pile, decomposing ...”

“I wouldn’t wish anyone to that scene or investigation,” says Detective Val Wadsworth, a father of four. “We unwrapped it and released it to the funeral home, and the next day was the autopsy. The funeral director who was there said it was the worst smell he’d smelled in his thirty-five years of the funeral home. ... I can’t imagine what it did to her, to have that baby right underneath you for so long, trying to sleep with it there. When they had it thawed out and laying on the table, it was just sad. Sad feeling. Sad little pathetic face. It was just terrible.”

Abortion clinic escort has no clue what a 12-week fetus looks like

Everysaturdaymorning is a blog authored by abortion clinic escorts who volunteer at an abortion clinic in Louisville. In a recent post, Servalbear made fun of abortion protestors and sidewalk counselors for using fetal models and shows a complete lack of knowledge regarding fetal development.

The plastic toys are supposed to be 12-week fetuses. They do not resemble a fetus to me. This is a photo I found of them for sale on Etsy so you can judge for yourself.

Servalbear then posts a picture of a plastic fetal model which appears to be identical to the ones sold by Heritage House.

Apparently, out of ignorance Servalbear believes these models don't resemble a fetus when that's nearly exactly what 10 - 12 week human fetuses look like.

Life Links 12/27/12

The Hill reports Nancy Keenan will step down as the leader of NARAL.

She plans to stay on at NARAL through the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade — which happens to fall just a day after Inauguration Day. The organization hasn't picked a successor yet.

Planned Parenthood of Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma lost a WIC contract.

Terry J. Bryce, chief of the WIC program for the Health Department, said he recommended termination because the organization had a large decrease in clients, had a higher per-client cost for services and was unresponsive to repeated requests for information from his agency......

Without a preliminary injunction in place, Planned Parenthood will be forced to stop WIC services on Dec. 31, meaning six full-time staff members will be eliminated and the group may close its west Tulsa health center.

The Akron Beacon Journal has an article on how Planned Parenthood staff and an abortion protestor helped another protestor who was hit by a truck.

"[The other protester] was actually sitting in a canvas chair and this happened so fast … she wasn't able to get out of the way," he said. "A big pickup truck was driving up and the guy was doing his best to stop and she got hit and flung."

She had a broken vertebrae.

"It could have been worse but by the grace of God," Wilson said.

The Planned Parenthood employees sprung into action.

Someone called 911. Nurses came out and helped the woman avoid shock until an ambulance could arrive. One of the Planned Parenthood employees walked down the street to inform the victim's husband who was visiting another business.

For a moment, people with profound disagreements were united.

UK woman paid 62,000 pounds after hospital kills unborn son

From the story:

A mum unaware she was pregnant has been awarded £62,000 compensation by a hospital which aborted her unborn baby son.

Hospital staff failed to realise Suzanne Doherty was 14 weeks’ pregnant when she went in for a hysterectomy and it was too late to save the baby.

Suzanne, who has three daughters, said: “Knowing we could have had a son was devastating.

“I was told the operation had been a success, but a foetus had been discovered and terminated.

“It shouldn’t happen in this day and age. There are so many checks. It shouldn’t get to the point where a pregnancy was missed.”

“The money will never bring my son back.”

Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro admitted liability and a “catalogue of errors”.

Abortion advocates Angi Becker Stevens and Emily Kellogg Magner ignorant about the prolife legislation they so vehemently oppose

It never ceases to amaze how little abortion advocates in Michigan know about prolife legislation.

Here's Angi Becker Stevens at RH Reality Check:

Now, in Michigan, many women are also being denied any possibility of private insurance coverage for abortion.

First, Angi seems to think legislation to deny private insurance coverage for abortion in part of HB5711.  She's wrong on a couple counts.  The abortion insurance opt out legislation isn't part of HB5711.  It was originally SB 612 whose language was added into a bill to allow Blue Cross to be a nonprofit insurer.  Second, the bill doesn't "any possibility" of private insurance coverage.  It allows women to buy a separate rider to cover abortion. 

And HB 5711, when signed into law, will place a multitude of burdens on women who are in precarious economic circumstances. Its ban on the tele-medicine prescription of medical abortion will primarily impact women living in rural areas, many of whom are poor and live a great distance from abortion clinics; for these women to incur travel expenses, as well as the necessary time away from work if they're employed, is a great burden that will make abortion significantly more difficult, if not impossible, to obtain.

She claims HB5711's ban on telemed abortions will make abortion "significantly more difficult, if not impossible, to obtain."  Except that no abortion provider in Michigan is currently using telemed abortions so it's rather hard to claim abortion will be more difficult to obtain in the future than now because the state is banning something no abortionist is currently doing. 

And because HB 5711 will also impose a number of costly regulations on abortion clinics and providers, it is likely that even women in many suburban and even urban areas will find themselves without an easily accessible clinic to which to turn. At clinics that do manage to keep their doors open under the new guidelines, it can be expected that abortion costs will be driven even higher.

Angi provides no information on what the costly regulations are.  If preparing a clinic for inspection is such a financial burden for the state's numerous abortion clinics then maybe they shouldn't be in operation.


Here's blogger Emily Kellogg Magner's take:

On November 28th a group of social work students and myself woke up at 3:30 am, drove on unplowed and unsalted roads to talk to our representatives about HB 5711.

We studied and analyzed this 60+ page bill and found that it would regulate women's health centers out of existence, limit abortion access for women in rural areas, prevent private insurance companies from covering any abortion services, give a tax credit for fetuses (but not for children), and it would allow  medical providers to deny any health care service they deem objectionable.

After careful analysis we believed this bill to be nothing but harmful to Michigan women, families, and communities.

There's so much wrong here it's tough to know where to start. 

HB 5711 didn't prevent private insurance companies from covering abortions (again that would be SB 612 which was included in the Blues bill) or give a tax credit for fetuses (that would be HB 5684 and HB 5685) or allow medical providers to deny any health care service they deem objectionable (that would SB 975).  That Emily thinks all this was part of HB5711 seems to indicate Emily never read HB 5711 or carefully analyzed it like she claims.  Surprise!

So if Emily hadn't read HB 5711, why would she claim she had?  So she can act indignant over the fact that her state senator hadn't read the legislation.

Howard Walker looked at us blankly. He glanced at his watch. He fussed with his phone.

We went on to talk specifically about how this bill will harm Michigan women, disproportionately women living in rural areas like ours. After we brought up a few of these points he put up his hands and said that he couldn't really speak to those topics … he had not read the bill.

In front of him was a one paragraph synopsis I assume was from the Right to Life special interest organization who drafted the bill.

Howard Walker had not even bothered to read it.

We spoke with him for 20 minutes, the whole time he was dismissive, misinformed, and rude.

Emily also claims HB 5711 will " regulate women's health centers out of existence."  Wrong again (I'll assume she means abortion clinics since the bill doesn't effect centers which don't provide abortions) as 4 clinics in state are already licensed and meet the regulations. 

Here's a tip for abortion advocates who want to be taken seriously about their opinion on prolife legislation: Actually, take the time to know what you're talking about.  This means reading the legislation and not just Planned Parenthood's talking points. 

Unintentionally hilarious pro-choice quote of the week

Goes to RH RealityCheck's Robin Marty for her comment regarding prolife legislation in Michigan which passed the Michigan Senate yesterday by an overwhelming 27-10 vote.

The fact that the final vote was only 27 to 10 is perhaps the best indicator of exactly how overreaching the super bill is.

This is a little like saying: "The fact that the Seattle Seahawks beat the Arizona Cardinals last Sunday by a score of only 58-0 is perhaps the best indicator of exactly how great a team the Cardinals are right now. "

But Robin at least tries to make an argument. 

A small number of legislators who don't identify as pro-choice rejected the bill, considering it far too extreme.

That small number would be 2 since she claims only 8 Michigan senators openly refer to themselves as pro-choice.  But these 2 legislators aren't prolife legislators.  They're Democrat pro-choice legislators with pro-choice voting records who apparently (Robin provides no evidence except citing "Michigan activists" and doesn't even name the legislators) don't identify themselves as pro-choice.

So a piece of legislation which passes 27-10 is overreaching because two Democrat senators with pro-choice voting records who don't openly refer to themselves as "pro-choice" voted against it.   

Life Links 12/12/12

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin is challenging the state's RU-486 abortion law which led them to stop performing RU-486 chemical abortions in April.

The suit in U.S. District Court in Madison challenges the law, which requires doctors and patients to take a series of steps before a woman can receive a so-called "pill abortion." Doctors who fail to follow some of the requirements can be subjected to criminal charges, civil penalties or disciplinary actions, the lawsuit said.

Texas will apparently be moving to ban abortions after 20 weeks according to Governor Perry.

"Let me be clear, my goal — and the goal of many of those joining me here today — is to make abortion at any stage a thing of the past," Perry said. "But while Roe vs. Wade prohibits us from taking that step, it does allow us, the states, to do some things to protect life if they can show there is a compelling state interest. I don't think there's any issue that better fits the definition of a compelling state interest than preventing the suffering of our state's unborn."

The Wall Street Journal has a long article on the abortion clinic in Mississippi suing to stay open after their main abortionist was unable to get admitting privileges at any of the local hospitals.


A sitting judge in Michigan attempted to convince his girlfriend (whom he met when she was a plaintiff in his courtroom) to get an abortion after his wife found out about the child.

So it was supposed to be happily ever after until she says McCree got cold feet. According to the text sent from McCree's phone, his wife found out about the baby and wouldn't grant him the divorce unless Mott aborted it.

McCree: YEAH LET'S TALK!!! I WANT (AND SO DOES LAVERNE) THIS TERMINATION. U'LL GET WHATEVER U WANT 4 IT! I'VE BEEN CLEAR ON IT FROM THE GET GO!!! WHATEVER U WANT, YOU SHALL HAVE!!!

Mott: O NO... U ACT LIKE I'M HOLDING THIS OVER U... YOU ASKED ME 2 GET THE ABORTION 2 HELP YOU IN YOUR DIVORCE CASE.

I asked her what she believes people will think of her when they see this story. "I'm sure the same thing I would think watching a news story that she knew what she was getting into messing with a married man. And that's pretty much it. She should've never got involved. She should've known he wasn't going to leave. The typical. And that's why it was a fling, something to do for the summer, and it turned into more.... And, of course, I believed him with everything, you know, his actions, showed me that he was leaving, he filed for divorce. I mean, there was nothing to say that we weren't moving forward," said Mott.

Is she going to keep the child? "Yes. I never wanted to have the abortion in the first place."

Life Links 12/10/12

Here's a study which unsurprisingly finds that if a pro-abortion outfit like the Guttmacher Institute makes a bunch of guessestimates for how many abortions there are, they are often incredibly wrong.

We found significant overestimations of abortion figures in the Federal District of Mexico (up to 10-fold), where elective abortion has been legal since 2007. Significant overestimation of maternal and abortion-related mortality during the last 20 years in the entire Mexican country (up to 35%) was also found. Such overestimations are most likely due to the use of incomplete in-hospital records as well as subjective opinion surveys regarding induced abortion figures....

Here's a press release on the study which will likely not be reported at any of media outlets which so readily report the Guttmacher Institute's guesswork.


U.S. District Court Judge James Fox has ruled that North Carolina's "Choose Life" license plate is unconstitutional.

"...the state's offering of a Choose Life license plate in the absence of a pro-choice plate constitutes viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment," wrote Fox in his ruling.... Republican Rep. Mitch Gillespie of McDowell County sponsored the bill and said he'll encourage Attorney General Roy Cooper to appeal the decision. "As long as I am in the General Assembly, my goal will be to get that passed," he said Monday.

A woman in India was allegedly raped by a doctor who then gave her abortion pills without telling her what they were.

The victim bled incessantly for close to a month after consuming the pills on September 4. She was rushed to state-run JJ Hospital from Nagpada police hospital for treatment by the police. "The MRI reports of the pelvis area suggested that the abortion was incomplete and that remnants of the dead foetus were still in the womb," said a senior doctor from JJ Hospital.

Life Links 11/29/12

Wesley Smith links to a Daily Mail article which discussing how doctors in the UK are dehydrating infants to death.

The LCP was devised by the Marie Curie Palliative Care Institute in Liverpool for care of dying adult patients more than a decade ago. It has since been developed, with paediatric staff at Alder Hey Hospital, to cover children. Parents have to agree to their child going on the death pathway, often being told by doctors it is in the child's ‘best interests' because their survival is ‘futile'.

Bernadette Lloyd, a hospice paediatric nurse, has written to the Cabinet Office and the Department of Health to criticise the use of death pathways for children.
'‘I have also seen children die in terrible thirst because fluids are withdrawn from them until they die'

She said: ‘The parents feel coerced, at a very traumatic time, into agreeing that this is correct for their child whom they are told by doctors has only has a few days to live. It is very difficult to predict death. I have seen a "reasonable" number of children recover after being taken off the pathway.

‘I have also seen children die in terrible thirst because fluids are withdrawn from them until they die.

At Live Action, Rebecca Frazer points out the ridiculousness of Planned Parenthood of Indiana promoting themselves as an adoption referrer.

Yes, you read that right. Planned Parenthood is excited that they have contributed to a whopping twelve adoptions in six years.  If we do some simple math that comes out to an average of two adoptions a year.

Last year alone, Planned Parenthood of Indiana performed 5,250 abortions.

5,250.

That means that if 2011 was an average adoption year, Planned Parenthood helped with one adoption for every 2,625 abortions they performed.  Perhaps they should send their adoption counselors back to job training.

Matthew Hennessy discusses how abortion caused a rift among Down Syndrome advocacy organizations.

"As an advocacy organization, we don't feel it's appropriate to promote the value of those with Down syndrome while at the same time also discussing the possibility of abortion," Tolleson told me.

Notably, he said, this sentiment was given voice within NDSC by so-called self-advocates, adults living with Down syndrome who are participating in ever-greater numbers in the outreach and education efforts of such organizations.

"Our self-advocates told us that it was not appropriate in a pamphlet coming from their advocacy organization to talk about abortion as co-equal to any other option," Tolleson explained. "They did not feel that was respectful to them."

Life Links 11/28/12

Abortionist Willie Parker and other Mississippi abortionists were unable to obtain admitting privileges at any hospital near Jackson, Mississippi so the state's lone abortion clinic has filed suit to prevent the state of Mississippi from enforcing the law which went into effect in July. 

The bill's sponsor, state Rep. Sam Mims, R-McComb, said the clinic has had ample time to comply with the new law. He also denied the clinic's claims that the law hands over control to the hospitals, whose application denials could force its closure.

"The legislature doesn't control what hospitals in the Jackson metro area do," Mims said. "They have their own committees and bylaws set up, and they have to make the best decisions."

Mims said it's up to the judge now.

The clinic's providers already are board-certified ob-gyns, but only one had admitting privileges at the time of the law's passage. That physician provides only limited service at the clinic, Bernyk said. Those who provide the majority of procedures, including Dr. Willie Parker, were denied privleges after a months-long effort by the clinic to obtain them.

Why does Planned Parenthood's Jill June think seeing 4D ultrasound images will shame, coerce or make a woman change her mind about getting an abortion?  It's just a clump of cells, right?

An anti-abortion group wants Nebraska lawmakers to pass legislation that requires four-dimensional ultrasound images of human fetuses to be posted on a state website.

So-called 4-D ultrasounds take images of the fetus from several angles, showing such things as facial features and capturing movement.

Jill June, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, said women should have all the information they need to decide whether to have abortions.

"Such information should support a woman, help her make the best decision for herself, her family and her circumstances, and enable her to take care of her health and well-being. Information should not be provided with the intent of shaming, coercing or making a woman change her mind," she said.

For some reason the editorial board of the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel thinks a poll showing the public favors more restrictions on abortion is a good argument against adding more restrictions to abortion.

Public polling shows that most people in the U.S. favor the idea of legal abortion. A CBS News/New York Times poll in September is typical. It found that 42% thought abortion should be "generally available," while 35% said "available under stricter limits" and 20% said "not permitted."

Either Amy Sullivan can't do a google search or feels she needs to lie about the prolife movement

Amy Sullivan has a post at a TNR blog which claims prolifers aren't happy about and "conveniently ignore" the drop in abortions reported by the CDC. Regarding the drop in reported abortions to the CDC, Sullivan writes:

This should be welcome news for those who oppose abortion and for those who want women to have more control over their reproductive abilities (and for the millions of Americans who fall into both camps). So you might think that abortion opponents would be thrilled about this latest news. You would be wrong.

That's funny because I've read items about this report from National Right to Life, LifeNews, Jill Stanek, Live Action, World Magazine, and National Review.

Amy has no evidence prolifers aren't happy about the drop in abortion so she notes that representatives of two prolife organizations (Charmaine Yoest of AUL and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council) have pointed out the number of women who died from abortion went from 6 in 2007 to 12 in 2008. It is apparently beyond pale for prolifers to note how legal abortion isn't safe for all women.

I should also point out that both Yoest and Perkins mention the 5% drop in abortions (as opposed to ignoring it) in the links Sullivan provides with Yoest saying it was "a real cause for giving thanks."

Apparently, to Sullivan and TNR giving thanks for a drop in abortion equals ignoring it and not being happy about it.  Anything to vilify the prolife movement, huh, Amy? 

Life Links 11/20/12

A Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Pennsylvania has temporarily halted surgical abortions until they can comply with the state regulations for abortion clinics.


Three prolife student groups have been recognized at universities in Australia. For some oh-so-tolerant pro-choicers, this could be dangerous.

The National Union of Students opposes the group, and president Donherra Walmsley said she would be watching closely to see if the movement continued to expand. "Whether it will spread outside NSW is the next big question for us," Ms Walmsley said. "Students should be allowed freedom of expression, but our concern is, despite what they've said, these clubs do appear to be promoting an explicitly pro-life agenda.

Imagine that, a prolife group promoting a prolife agenda. The horror!


Indian researchers are improving on their use of adult stem cells to treat type 2 diabetes.

Improvising upon its study in 2008, PGI which has tried 2 shots of stem cells has found that the rate of success increased from 70% to 80%. Out of 10 patients who were given the shots of .3 billion stem cells from their own body , 9 were off insulin completely.

Overheard: Taranto on Giles

James Taranto comments on Nancy Giles imbecilic theory in which she thinks attempts to ban abortion are about "building up" the white race.  Giles has since pulled a "sorry if" apology and claimed her comments were a "weird joke."

Have you noticed how abortion proponents always seem to come up with amazingly strained theories about opponents' motives--they hate sex, they want to control women, etc.? Abortion opponents say they believe that unborn children are human beings with the right to life. One may disagree, but that belief is an entirely straightforward and reasonable explanation for why someone would take an antiabortion position.

Apparently the pro-abortion side fears if it acknowledged that position is sincerely held, that would be tantamount to acknowledging it may be true.

If you read pro-choice blogs, you'll notice that in recent years they rarely ever make arguments regarding the prolife position and attempt to show how it is wrong or illogical.  Instead, more and more they focus on trying to position prolife individuals, prolife politicians or the prolife movement in a way where they can then claim the only real reason for an opposition to abortion is misogyny. 

You could call it the Marcottization of the pro-choice movement. 

Life Links 11/15/12

I'm amazed at the amount of and the prominence of the coverage over the death of Savita Halappanavar (a pregnant woman living in Ireland whom doctors allegedly refused to induce when she was having a miscarriage until the child's heartbeat stopped) compared to the deaths of women like Tonya Reaves, who die when an abortion is botched. 

Eilis Mulroy provides some basic reasoning to a tragic situation abortion advocates are attempting to parlay into liberalized abortion laws in Ireland.

The question that needs to be asked is: was Ms Halappanavar treated in line with existing obstetrical practice in Ireland? In this kind of situation the baby can be induced early (though is very unlikely to survive). The decision to induce labour early would be fully in compliance with the law and the current guidelines set out for doctors by the Irish Medical Council

Those guidelines allow interventions to treat women where necessary, even if that treatment indirectly results in the death to the baby. If they aren't being followed, laws about abortion won't change that.

The issue then becomes about medical protocols being followed in hospitals and not about the absence of legal abortion in Ireland.

A Nevada judge has decided not to force a woman who is mental impaired to have an abortion. 

The 32-year-old woman's legal guardian told KRNV-TV (http://tinyurl.com/ag7jete) on Wednesday that Judge Egan Walker had agreed that the woman wants to carry the pregnancy to term and that the evidence doesn't show it's medically necessary to abort the baby.

After taking the abortion option off the table, Walker said he plans to hold additional medical evidentiary hearings in the weeks ahead to determine the safest way to proceed.

The Washington Post's Election 2012 Blog writes about the money Planned Parenthood spent on the election.

Combined, the two Planned Parenthood advocacy groups say they spent $15 million on ads, phone calls, events, mail and door-to-door canvassing. In 2008, their campaign spending was about $4 million total.

In large part, Planned Parenthood's success is due to President Obama's victory. Most of the groups' money went towards boosting Obama or attacking Romney. Eighty-seven percent of funds spent by Planned Parenthood Action Fund and 80 percent of spending by Planned Parenthood Votes went toward the presidential race, according to the Sunlight Foundation tallies.

Libby Anne's phony "aha" moment

Libby Anne at Patheos is trying to explain how she, as a supposedly Students for Life president, changed her worldview on abortion over a lunch break based on one article in the New York Times.  She's doing this after I expressed my opinion that her story is a work of fiction in previous comment threads and was then backed up when she revealed she knew nothing about 2nd trimester abortions. 

Her explanation is incredibly weak.  It basically just reasserts what she said earlier and again reads to me like the work of sheltered pro-choicer pretending to have been very involved in the prolife movement. It makes no sense to me that the president of a SFL group wouldn't at least bring her thoughts up to her group, or her family or the local prolife organization before completely changing her worldview.  This comment was also notable.

In contrast, every pro-lifer I knew was politically conservative and in opposition to things like welfare, mandated paid maternity leave, subsidized daycare, and even things like Head Start.

That's how sheltered pro-choicers see pro-lifers.  Every pro-lifer?  Really?  There wasn't a single pro-life person in the SFL group who was okay with Head Start?  Interestingly enough, in my time in the pro-life movement, I probably wouldn't know where the majority of the people I know in the movement stand on those issues.

Why was it that sexually liberal Western Europe, where abortion was legal, had the lowest abortion rate in the world? And why was it that Africa and South America, where abortion was banned in nearly every country, had the highest abortion rates? I realized immediately that these questions were crucially important if one wanted to bring down the abortion rate. It was an epiphany moment. And yet, these were questions I had never heard asked in the pro-life movement.

Then why didn't she ask these questions to her prolife friends, family and other acquaintances?  It's not like she claims she read the article and then challenged other prolifers with her thoughts and they had no response (or maybe that's the next work of fiction blog post).  She just changed her mind based on the guessestimated numbers from organizations she knew were pro-abortion.  Yeah, right.  This story may fool a group of pro-choicers who have certain ideas about prolife movement but nothing about this story rings true to me. 

Nancy Giles needs to do some basic research on abortion

Nancy Giles, a contributor to CBS News Sunday Morning show, was on MSNBC and in one quick statement proved she knows nothing about who gets abortions or the prolife movement and probably proved she shouldn't be working in the news business.  It also gives us another insight into the thinking in major newsrooms.

When talking about election results Giles said,

"You know when you just showed that graph of the decline in the numbers (of white voters)," she continued, "I thought, 'Maybe that's why they're trying to eliminate all these abortions and stuff. They're trying to build up the race."

Giles is apparently completely unaware that minority women have much higher ratios and rates than white women.  From the CDC's abortion surveillance report:

Non-Hispanic white women had the lowest abortion rates (8.7 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15--44 years) and ratios (140 abortions per 1,000 live births), whereas non-Hispanic black women had the highest abortion rates (33.5 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15--44 years) and ratios (472 abortions per 1,000 live births).

So if the prolife movement was really trying to "build up the white race" they wouldn't be trying to stop abortions.  But hey, you wouldn't want truth or knowledge to get in the way of ignorance and bias.

Life Links 11/6/12

A couple in Nevada is fighting to prevent a court from ordering their mentally disabled daughter from being forced to have an abortion.

The couple on Friday filed a motion asking the state's highest court to halt the proceedings by Washoe County District Judge Egan Walker, saying he lacks authority to make such a decision for their mentally impaired daughter, who officials say has the mental capacity of a 6-year-old.....

The couple, who have remained anonymous, said that as their daughter's  legal guardians, they have exclusive authority over her healthcare decisions, and that both they and she want the baby carried to term, in line with their Catholic religious beliefs.

At Yahoo! News Liz Goodwin points out a few enduring myths about women voters.

Myth No. 1: Women are more in favor of abortion rights than men are

For the past year, Democrats argued Republicans are waging a "war on women" for wanting to make all abortions illegal, while Republicans  countered that Democrats don't want any restrictions on abortion. Each side is attempting to paint the other as extreme, hoping to pick up on-the-fence women voters in the process.

But, despite how they're sometimes portrayed in the news media and by political candidates, female voters are about as divided on abortion as men are.

"One of the central myths in American politics is that women are more pro-choice than men," Karen Kaufman, an associate professor at the University of Maryland who has researched the gender gap, told Yahoo News.

Arizona's 20 week ban on abortions was argued before the 9th Circuit Court.  Looks like the law may eventually be headed to the Supreme Court.

Even Judge Andrew Kleinfeld, a reliably conservative jurist appointed to the appeals court by former President George H.W. Bush, said Arizona's law appears to wrongly prohibit abortions before "viability," when the fetus can live outside the womb. Viability is generally considered to occur sometime after 23 weeks of pregnancy. The county's seminal Supreme Court 1973 abortion ruling, Roe v. Wade, said states cannot prohibit abortions outright prior to viability.

Abortion protesters win case at Supreme Court

Abortion protester Steven Lefemine won a case at the Supreme Court today. The court ruled a South Carolina county has to reimburse Lefemine's lawyers after officers told him to stop protesting at the corner of a busy intersection.

According to court paper, an officer arrived and told Lefemine he was causing a traffic disturbance and that he must "remove the signs." He did as instructed, but later filed suit against Sheriff Dan Wideman with the help of the National Legal Foundation, a self-described "Christian public interest law firm" in Virginia Beach, Va.

A federal judge in Greenville, S.C. agreed that the 1st Amendment guaranteed Lefemine's right to the "display of graphic signs," so long as he did not cause a traffic disturbance. But the judge also shielded the sheriff and city officials from paying damages in the case.

He also denied attorney's fees to Lefemine. The U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the judge’s decision in March.

Without hearing arguments in the case, the Supreme Court reversed the rulings and said Lefemine was due civil rights fees as the "prevailing party" in his suit against the sheriff.

Life Links 11/2/12

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Bob Kerrey's memory must be going bad.  He also doesn't seem to understand the ban that got overturned was a state ban, not a federal one.

Kerrey acknowledges that his vote against the partial-birth abortion ban was unpopular in some quarters, but he argued it was the right thing to do. He noted that the U.S. Supreme Court later ruled the ban unconstitutional.

"It's an unpopular vote, in part, because it was misunderstood," said Kerrey.

In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a partial-birth abortion ban. However, in 2006, the court upheld a similiar version of the law, which stands today.

Jamie McKay, a 19-year-old who was MTV's 16 and Pregnant has revealed she had an abortion which she regrets.

"Thank you all for the love and support but I want you to know I did not miscarry. I chose abortion. I chose it out of fear. I feel like I made a mistake and I can't take it back," the reality TV star revealed to her followers.

"I have had this in my heart and it has been very hard on me," she continued. "I was afraid to be judged by my family, my mother, even my dad. So I did it before they could find out. I should have looked into my options more but I didn't. Ryan has been supportive through it all in case you all were wondering he is the father of that child too. And he let me make my decisions. I got on birth control right afterwards."

While the 19-year-old teen mom's heartfelt honesty sparked many supportive comments, Jamie also got some vicious attacks after she posted a photo (which has since been taken down) of her ultrasound, with the caption, "Rest in peace little angel. September 17, 2012."

The New York Times has a long article on Charmaine Yoest of Americans United for Life.

Yoest takes pleasure in the idea of being the underdog fighting the liberal orthodoxy. She repeatedly brought up Planned Parenthood and its president, Cecile Richards, comparing A.U.L.'s $4 million budget with Planned Parenthood's $1 billion. "If the pro-choice side got traction, it's because Cecile Richards has the bigger microphone," she would say. Or, "We have to be countercultural — after all, Cecile Richards has the self-appointed duty of defining what's pro-woman these days."

Eric Holder's wife tied to building which houses abortion clinic

No wonder the Justice Department has been working to quell the activities of sidewalk counselors.

This part was hilarious.

“No, absolutely not,” Tuckson said. “I’ve told you the truth: I do not technically own that property. My sister does not technically own that property. And if you say that we do, that is a lie.” 

Asked why she used the word “technically,” Tuckson said, “You need to do your own work and look at the deed. I pulled it up, and I’m looking at it right now. We are not on the deed.”

A Watchdog reporter asked Tuckson how she happened to have a copy of the deed to a piece of property she doesn’t own. After a very long pause, Tuckson replied, “I just pulled it up.”

Why I don't really believe Patheos' Libby Anne's "lost faith in the prolife movement" story

Some pro-choice blogs are abuzz over this post by Libby Anne of Patheos in which she describes how she "Lost Faith in the ‘Pro-life' Movement." Libby Anne says her conversion into being in favor of legal abortion started when she read a NY Times article about a WHO and AGI study regarding abortions worldwide. She claims that as a prolifer, she found this "study" persuasive.

As I have noted numerous times, the studies by the WHO and AGI which attempt to guessestimate how many abortions are performed in developing nations where abortion is illegal are a joke. Anyone who takes the time to actually read the studies and find out where the numbers come from quickly realizes that there is next to no empirical basis for the numbers. Yet somehow Libby Anne (who claims to have been the president of her university's Student for Life group and been to "pro-life banquet after pro-life banquet") had 1.) Never heard about these claims before and was 2.) surprised by claims that pro-choicers believe large number of women die from illegal abortion.

I'm struggling to believe this is a true story. If she was the president of her Students for Life group, she should have come across these claims before. These claims are very popular in the pro-choice movement (the idea that banning abortion won't stop abortion is often the first thing many pro-choice people argue) and prolifers spend a good deal of time combating them. Second, she should have been skeptical of this study as she should have known that the AGI is a pro-choice organization. Third, I would guess most SFL group presidents would ask their local or state prolife group or maybe even fellow group members about such a study and its results before accepting them so trustingly.

Libby Anne then goes on to make a number of generalized, caricatured claims about the prolife movement (which she should know are untrue if she spent so much time in the movement as she claims) and suddenly (during her lunch break!!) adopts the worldview of the pro-choice movement.

Her explanation for her transition also doesn't make any sense. If the AGI study convinced her that birth control is the answer to saving unborn children and is good because of that then why would her beliefs about the value of unborn children be suddenly decreased? Libby Anne's explanation for why she no longer thinks the unborn should be protected is also not very well thought out. She claims she believes the unborn aren't persons because well...well.... she never really says. Someone who was as strongly prolife as Libby Anne claims she was would struggle with this much more. She would have had these conversations with family members, etc. and would have at least some reasoning for why unborn babies (her term) aren't persons. She also now accepts the bodily autonomy argument and sees birth as the "key dividing line."

She then shows she doesn't have basic research skills when she claims that "Obamacare stands to cut abortion rates by 75%" based on a study which shows no such thing. I find it hard to believe that real people actually believe that. Even though birth control is already incredibly accessible in this country and most women who have abortions used birth control in the last month, Obamacare forcing companies to include it on their insurance is going to cut abortion by 75%. Yeah, ok. You have to be the most gullible and uninformed person in the world to believe that.

Libby Anne claims she was dupe for defending the prolife movement. I'd bet anyone who reads this account and thinks they're getting an honest story is a dupe. To me it sounds exactly like what a pro-choice blogger would write if she was writing the fictional account of how she was once prolife but then became pro-choice. Maybe Libby Anne was prolife at one point, but this description of how she became prolife is far from an accurate portrayal of that.

UPDATE 11/1/12:
I'm sure Libby Anne is lying.  This woman is a fraud.  She was never the Students for Life president at a university. Read this comment and try to explain how someone who was so involved in the prolife movement could believe that second trimester abortions are generally "only allowed in case of rape, incest, life of the mother, or fetal abnormality."

That's the type of thing only incredibly ignorant, sheltered pro-choice people believe.  1. You have to be ignorant of abortion laws/legislation.  The closest states have come to limiting abortion is 20 weeks.  2. You have to be ignorant of how many second trimester abortions there are and how frequently they are performed.  About 10% of abortions are performed after 12 weeks. That's around 100,000 a year in our country.   

Anyone who has had any interaction with any slightly knowledgeable prolifer would never write something like Libby Anne because they would know how easy it is to shoot down and how stupid and ignorant they would look if they said it. 

UPDATE 4/2/13:
I was wrong.  She's not a fraud.  I've discovered who she is in real life.  She was a Students for Life president for a period of time.  I still doubt aspects of her conversion story.  She's not including any information about a pivotal life event which over time led to her completely changing her worldview and led her to question everything she was taught by her parents.  Her arguments are still poor.  I think this is because while she used to be prolife, my guess is she no longer interacts with people who are prolife.  She went from a conservative, prolife, evangelical bubble into a pro-choice, liberal bubble. 

Life Links 10/26/12

Texas' Women Health Program doesn't need to fund abortion providers and their affiliates after the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals denied an appeal to reconsider their early decision. Planned Parenthood lawyers apparently can't understand that no one is taking away their free speech rights if a state chooses not to fund abortion providers.

In a statement issued Thursday, Gov. Rick Perry said Texas will immediately "defund" the health organization's affiliates. "Today's ruling affirms yet again that in Texas the Women's Health Program has no obligation to fund Planned Parenthood and other organizations that perform or promote abortion. In Texas we choose life, and we will immediately begin defunding all abortion affiliates to honor and uphold that choice."

President Obama lied about Planned Parenthood providing mammograms again on the Tonight Show. He's lied so many times about this, the Washington Post finally fact checked him on it.

The problem here is that Planned Parenthood does not perform mammograms or even possess the necessary equipment to do so. As such, the organization certainly does not "provide" mammograms in the strict sense.

A woman named Rebecca Edmonds is suing the Air Force after her scholarship was revoked because she was pregnant. The Air Force has policy which prohibits single parents from enlisting.

Edmonds said she asked the officer who informed her that she was being ejected from the Air Force, "Had I terminated the pregnancy before my commissioning, would I have been able to commission at that point?" And, according to Edmonds, "He said, 'Well. Technically, yes.' That was the hardest part of all of this. Someone telling me to my face that had I gotten an abortion, then I would be eligible for service."

Authorities in Louisiana have arrested a man who allegedly cut his child out of his pregnant wife. The wife is in critical condition and the child died.

Deputies continued to interview people at the home in Walker a day after they arrested Jeffrey Reynolds, 31. He is accused of slashing his wife's throat and cutting their unborn child out of her abdomen with a kitchen knife. Deputies found the baby dead inside the home with a large laceration to the head. Paula Reynolds, 28, was seven and a half months pregnant. At last check, she was in critical condition.

Life Links 10/23/12

In Iowa, a jury is deciding if liberal, pro-choice members of the University of Iowa law school staff discriminated against and decided not to hire Teresa Wagner because she was prolife.

Wagner's attorney, Steve Fieweger, told jurors that professor Randall Bezanson, a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun who helped draft the Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion in 1973, led the opposition to her hiring during a 2007 faculty meeting. Wagner, a part-time employee of the law school's writing center, had previously worked as a lawyer for the National Right to Life Committee and the Family Research Council, which both oppose abortion rights.... Wagner testified that she thought she would get one of two full-time openings when she was among two finalists. Instead, the faculty decided to recommend the other finalist, Matt Williamson, and not fill the second job at that time. Carroll acknowledged that Williamson was considered a poor teacher and left after one year. "I was very surprised and disappointed, devastated even, that the job could have been given to him," Wagner said. She noted she had prior experience teaching a similar class at George Mason University, had practiced law and gotten more articles published.

In California, a woman has been charged with attempted murder after allegedly trying to kill the unborn child of a woman who testified against her husband, a convicted murderer.


The New York Times covers the abortion debate in Great Britain.

With hindsight, perhaps the most surprising thing is how long abortion has been off the political agenda in Britain. An intensely divisive political issue elsewhere, the subject rarely makes the front pages All that changed this month, as a series of senior Conservative members of Parliament, from the prime minister down, indicated that they supported reducing the period in which abortions are permitted.

Democrats for Life has dropped Tim Kaine from their list of endorsed candidates.

His spokesman and website are is now identifying him as a pro-choice Democrat. DFLA, therefore, cannot endorse Governor Kaine.

Maybe that should be something you examine before making an endorsement, no?

Life Links 10/22/12

This is maybe the weirdest story ever regarding an attempt to raise funds for prolife commercials.  Michael Gardner was sentenced to 13 years in Australia after authorities found that he was using acres of land to grow marijuana.  According to Gardner (who think he should have been sentenced to 20 years and appealed for a longer sentence), he was hoping to use the profits for "a national anti-abortion campaign."  The crop of cannabis was worth nearly $70 million dollars.


Pro-abortion philosopher Peter Singer doesn't have an issue with killing infants but he dislikes Roe v. Wade. 

Singer further surprised me—and showed his meta-commitment to democracy and reason–when he said that he, like Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan, disliked Roe V. Wade. That 1973 Supreme Court decision, Singer felt, provides a flimsy rationale for abortion and has corrupted the process whereby Supreme Court Justices are chosen. Ideally, Singer said, voters rather than unelected judges should determine the legal status of abortion. Singer nonetheless acknowledged that if Roe V. Wade is overturned, some states might outlaw or severely restrict abortion. "I'm torn," he admitted.

I don't believe I've ever read a stupider argument for why abortion is moral than this:

What struck me most was the simple and direct statement made by Dr. Nozer Sheriar, an obstetrician-gynecologist from India, who explained why he supports women who have abortions: "anything 46 million women do every year can't be immoral."

So lying is moral?  Surely, 46 million women a year lie.  Ergo, it can't be immoral.  Pro-abortion logic fail. 

Overheard: In China, working at an abortion clinic one of "the best ways to make an income"

Regarding China's 13 million annual abortions:

And Sheng Keyi, who in her novel “Northern Girls” wrote about the lives of Chinese migrant women seeking jobs in cities like Shenzhen in the south, addressed the issue last year at a book fair in Beijing.

“About 70 or 80 percent of migrant worker girls in Shenzhen have probably had abortions,” she said. “I remember hearing that working in a gynecological hospital in Shenzhen was one of the best ways to make an income, because there was such a regular supply of abortions to be done. Millions and millions. It is very common.”

Life Links 10/16/12

Notice the word that's missing in MoveOn.org's "abortion" ad featuring three Hollywood actresses. Here's a clue - it starts with A.


The Hill has an article on the Planned Parenthood vs. SBA list ad battle in battleground states.

In their ads, Planned Parenthood's political arms argue that Romney jeopardizes healthcare for low-income women when he vows to cut off funding for the group. Romney argues that federal funds need not support a major provider of abortions. The SBA List, meanwhile, paints President Obama as an extremist on abortion, highlighting his opposition as a state legislator to a bill the group says was meant to protect vulnerable infants. Obama has defended his vote, saying the measure would have hurt doctors and undermined Roe v. Wade. Overall, Planned Parenthood's political wing has spent roughly five times more than the SBA List on swing-state ads, which will continue airing next week.

At the New Statesmen, Mehdi Hasan writes about being a self-described "prolife lefty" and then about the response to his piece.

The reaction from left-liberal, 'pro-choice' commenters on Twitter yesterday reminded me that the right may have a point when they object to the left's shrill, one-sided, close-minded response to any attempt to debate certain social and ethical issues.

Life Links 10/15/12

Another sad development for Democrats for Life of America. They've endorsed Tim Kaine in the U.S. Senate race in Virginia and Steve Pestka in the Congressional race in my district in Michigan. Neither of these candidates call themselves prolife. Kaine's web site says this:

I strongly support the right of women to make their own health and reproductive decisions and, for that reason, will oppose efforts to weaken or subvert the basic holding of Roe v. Wade.

Pestka spent a inordinate amount of money in the primary noting his love for Planned Parenthood because his opponent highlighted an old funding vote which Pestka has now disavowed.

"I am personally opposed to abortion and I would never counsel anyone to have an abortion," Pestka said. "I oppose late-term abortion, but at the end of the day, I don't support making abortion illegal."

Does Democrats for Life have any kind of standard on who they endorse?


Heikal Badrulhisham, a student at the University of Wisconsin, provides probably the worst argument ever against using graphic images as part of an effort to educate people about abortion.

The problem with the use of gruesome images in anti-abortion campaigns is the messages delivered by such images are distinct from the proclaimed rationales of the campaigns. Pictures of aborted fetuses have nothing to do with the moral arguments frequently used against abortion. If the purpose of a campaign is to convince people abortion is disgusting, by all means use the pictures. If not, tear down those repellant posters for the sake of reasonable dialogue.

Huh? How do the images have nothing to do with the moral arguments used by prolifers? What a ridiculously absurd assertion. Maybe Badrullhisham makes this assertion because of an unfamiliarity with prolife arguments as the piece also states, "I am not concerned about the arguments made by these campaigns."


Forbes notes how the FDA has approved a clinical trial which will use umbilical cord blood in an attempt to treat autism.

The 30 children that will participate in the placebo controlled trial, ages 2-7, had umbilical cord blood banked at birth, as part of the Cord Blood Registry, a highly organized and well known stem cell bank. The goal of the trial will be to evaluate whether stem cell therapy has any effect on behavior and language difficulties commonly experienced by children with autism.

If Brooklyn Nets CEO Brett Yormack says, "Just have an abortion and we'll be good," don't believe him.

Reyna Purcell, now 35, got pregnant shortly after she started dating Yormark, according to court filings. Purcell claimed she wanted to keep the baby, but Yormark threatened to break up with her if she did not end the pregnancy. Purcell claimed Yormark promised to stay in the relationship and take her on vacation if she had an abortion, according to the ruling. Purcell had an abortion in February 2011, according to the ruling, and Yormark ended the relationship soon after.

Life Links 10/9/12

A women in California has given birth to quintuplets after being advised to abort one or more of their children.

Meryl Ferraro, 39, and her husband, John, last week welcomed the arrival of their quintuplets, whom they have collectively nicknamed GRACE, for their first name initials: Gabrielle, Riley (a boy), Addison (a girl), Cooper, and Emerson (a girl).....

"After reading all the information, we were horrified," the Ferraro's background page reads. "We decided it was not our place to choose which of our babies would live and which one would die. If God was giving us 5 babies, there was a reason. We made a decision to see them as a precious blessing from God above and not as burdens we needed to eliminate."

Go and read David Lawson's piece in the Independent on abortion politics in the UK.  A taste:

Among Miller's responsibilities in Cabinet are "women" (that's what it says), so her interjection has been seen as monstrously inappropriate; and her accompanying it with the remark that she herself is "a feminist" is seen as bizarre beyond belief. The Guardian's Women's Blog Editor described her position as "astonishing", while in the same paper Tanya Gold levelled the most damning charge of all: "I suspect that Miller is pro-life." Good heavens, let's send round the thought police immediately.

In other UK abortion-related news, singer Lily Allen, who is pregnant, is apparently incapable of making an argument.  She seems to believe that all men shouldn't be allowed to share their position on abortion because some men leave women during pregnancy or after a child is born.

She began a lengthy series of Twitter posts with: 'Can small minded idiot blokes stop telling women whether or not they're entitled to abortions please ? #enoughnow'.

This was followed up by her tweeting: 'The day the number of single father households equal the number of single mother households is the day I start to listen to their views.'

Center for Reproductive Right is struggling to deal with all the prolife legislation on the state level so they've enlisted the help of some pro-abortion celebrities because no one argues better than an actor reading lines someone else wrote for them. 

Does providing free contraceptives lower the abortion rate?

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the Contraceptive Choice Project have released a study which found that when women were given free contraceptives, the rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion decreased.  Here's how Time describes the women in the study:

The researchers enrolled 9,256 women from the St. Louis region into the Contraceptive Choice Project between August 2007 and September 2011. The women were aged 14 to 45, with an average age of 25, and many were poor and uninsured with low education. Nearly two-thirds had had an unintended pregnancy previously. Participants were either not using a reversible contraception method or willing to switch to a new one.

So we have women who are open to using contraceptives or at least switching which kind they use.  This is obviously a sub-group of women.

And the results:

Over the course of the study, which lasted from 2008 to 2010, women experienced far fewer unintended pregnancies than expected: there were 4.4 to 7.5 abortions per 1,000 women in the study, after adjusting for age and race — much fewer than the national rate of 19.6 abortions per 1,000 women and lower also than the rate in the St. Louis area of 13.4 to 17 abortions per 1,000 women.

But the key point of the study is here:

Researchers provided free, FDA-approved birth control to the women for three years. The women were given their choice of contraception, including oral birth control pills and long-acting reversible contraceptive (LARC) methods like implants and IUDs. The researchers specially briefed the participants on the "superior effectiveness" of LARC methods — the T-shaped IUD, or intrauterine device, has close to 100% effectiveness and can last five to 10 years, for instance — and 75% of women chose those devices over the pill, patch or ring.

So the results don't say that providing women with any kind of free contraceptives reduces unplanned pregnancies but rather that briefing women who are willing to switch contraceptives to (or rather strongly encouraging women to use) long term contraceptive methods which are more effective and getting a large percentage of women to use those methods reduces unplanned pregnancies. 

This is basically like saying implantable contraceptives have higher success rates.  Duh, that's not news.  That's something we already know.  The only novel thing about this study is the high percentage of women (75%) the researchers convinced to go on long-acting implantable contraceptives.  They accomplished this because it was the primary goal of their study ("To promote the use of long-acting reversible contraceptive (LARC) methods"). 

While they accomplished their goal, their research flies in the face of the contraception choices of most American women whose top choices for contraception have been the pill, sterilization (female and male), and condoms.  IUDs are typically chosen by less than 10% of the female population.  To get a 75% of women using contraceptives to use implantable methods, that would take every OB/GYN pushing implantables as if they were used car salespeople.

The Time article (probably based on the study's authors) attempts to act like the reason women don't typically choose to use IUD is the higher up front.

Yet American women use LARC methods at far lower rates than in other countries. In large part, that's because of cost: upfront costs to implant an IUD, which requires a doctor visit, can total $500 to $1,000, for example. Over a decade, however, birth control pills can cost just as much. American doctors also tend not to recommend long-acting birth control to women as often as they do the pill or patch, though IUDs and implants may be up to 20 times more effective.

If this is true, then why does the percentage of women using IUDs barely change based on income (table 11)?  It goes from 5.5% for women in households with incomes ranging from 0-149% of the poverty level, 5.5% for women in the 150%-299% level and 5.9% in the 300%+ group. 

As I've noted over and over again, the cost of contraceptives is not one of the top reasons why women aren't using them (or aren't using them consistently).  

There are still a large number of reasons why most women don't want to use implantable contraceptives. Cost is likely one of them but certainly not something that by itself is going to get anywhere near 75% of women on contraceptives using implantable contraceptives.  

So attempting to take this study and act like it proves Obamacare and it's provision forcing employers to cover contraceptives will dramatically lower the abortion rate simply assumes too much.  It assumes all women of child-bearing age are like the women in this study, it assumes 75% of those women will use implantable contraceptives if provided for free, and it assumes the federal subsidized abortion coverage won't increase abortion numbers. 

Life Links 10/2/12

"Catholics" for Obama willing to blatantly lie about President Obama's record and what Planned Parenthood does?  Why am I not surprised?

On Wednesday Hudson also revealed that a group calling itself Catholics for Obama had been making push poll phone calls in support of the president's re-election bid. Among the questions being asked, he said, was "How can you support a 'Mormon' who does not believe in Jesus Christ?"

The phone banker making the call, which in this case went to a woman Hudson identifies as "the head of a pro-life committee at a parish I know" reportedly also asserted that "President Obama did not support abortion" and that Planned Parenthood "helps children get healthcare and prenatal care and does not promote abortion."

Another instance of pro-choice intolerance in Canada.

Dozens of wooden crosses, displayed on bales of hay at the corner of 188th Street and Fraser Highway, have been smashed to bits.

This is the second time vandals have destroyed this display. The latest attack happened sometime over the weekend.

Ironically, representatives of the group behind the roadside display were going to dismantle it themselves on Sunday morning, but when they arrived all they found was wreckage.

Former abortion clinic owner Terry Lazar is claiming his clinic changing from an abortion clinic to a medical clinic that doesn't provide abortion has nothing to do with prolife protesters despite his quoted comments in the New York Daily News. 

"We closed for economic reasons — not because of protesters," Lazar said. "This is something we've been working on for a long time. We weren't forced to close."

His comments published in the Daily News indicated that the protesters were at least partially behind the economic reasons. 


A federal appeals court has ruled against Planned Parenthood and other abortionists in Ohio who challenged Ohio's law restricting RU-486 abortions to FDA guidelines. 


France's Socialist President Francois Hollande plans on having the full cost of abortions be reimbursed by the government.

The change to full reimbursement was included in the 2013 social security budget unveiled on Monday. In a statement the government said the move was "necessary to ensure all women have equal access to abortion."

The move follows a long campaign by pro-choice organisations and was a manifesto promise by Socialist President Francois Hollande ahead of his election victory in June.

The government also announced that it would increase the amounts clinics are allowed to charge for carrying out abortions to bring them closer into line with their real costs and to facilitate better support for patients.

New York abortion clinic closes because of prolife efforts

From the NY Daily News:

Lazar said the clinic tried to provide both abortions and other types of procedures, but doctors and patients refused to cross the throngs of religious protesters who tried to convince them not to go in.

“You had protesters with signs and banners yelling at people telling them they were baby killers,” Lazar said. “We were trying to do both and it just wasn’t working. We would have gone out of business.”

The new clinic - slated to open as the New York Center for Specialty Surgery under the direction of a California-based medical firm - is undergoing renovations.

So far as many as 20 doctors have expressed interest in working at the new clinic - a stark difference from as recently as a month ago when Lazar struggled to find doctors willing to work there.

Life Links 9/27/12

In Canada, there is much ado over Status of Women minister Rona Ambrose voting in favor of a motion to create a committee to research when life begins. Jonathon Kay has the details.

Globe & Mail columnist Tabatha Southey Tweeted that "Status of Women Minister Rona Ambrose voted Yea on [motion] 312. Now waiting for the Minister of Agriculture to vote against corn." Canadian poet Paul Vermeersch wondered aloud: "After Rona Ambrose votes in Parliament against all Canadian women, will Peter Kent napalm a family of peregrine falcons in solidarity?" And Gail Erlick Robinson, Director of the University Health Network's Women's Mental Health Program, has a letter to the National Post declaring that "As Minister for the Status of Women, [yea-voting] Rona Ambrose should be particularly ashamed."

Ashamed? For what? Voting her conscience on one of the most important bioethical issues facing humanity? For supporting some measure of parliamentary courage in remedying a legislative vacuum that has existed in this country since the Supreme Court of Canada struck down our abortion law a quarter century ago?

Pro-choice militants cast abortion restrictions — at any stage of gestation — as a form of female slavery. And, perversely, they do this despite the fact that sex-selective abortion is eradicating millions of females from the earth every year — including some right here in Canada. Might it not be within the ambit of the Status of Women Minister to investigate whether the extermination of so many girl fetuses — including those viable outside the womb — is consistent with Canadian values?

Kristin Neuhaus, a former abortionist and rubber-stamper for abortionist George Tiller owes $93,000 to the state board for her various attempts to keep her medical license.

Speaking of Tiller and Neuhaus, the leader of a pro-abortion organization in Kansas with ties to Tiller has purchased his former clinic and aims to make it an abortion clinic again.

Burkhart declined to discuss the details of the sale, but property tax records available online list the appraised value of the property as $734,100. Burkhart said she can't say yet exactly when the new clinic will open or how many doctors will work there..... In a recent advertisement circulated by email to abortion-rights supporters, Trust Women said it was looking for medical staff experienced in first and early-second trimester abortions and planned to open its clinic between mid-November and January 2013.

"Pro-choice" but glad about no choice?

Director Penny Marshall talks about her abortion in her new book and says something which undermines her pro-choice position:

She is also vocal about her support for abortion rights after her own experience with unplanned pregnancies. Her first pregnancy with her boyfriend-turned-husband resulted in her daughter, Tracy. Her second, following her second marriage and divorce to Hollywood director Rob Reiner, resulted in an abortion. "I'm pro-choice. But I'm glad that there was no choice back then, because I have a wonderful daughter and three grandchildren," she said.

Pro-abortion ideologue Amanda Marcotte abandons "trust women" rhetoric when faced with 39 week abortion

In her piece for the American Prospect, Amanda Marcotte can't follow her "abortion is moral," "trust women" and "my body, my choice" rhetoric to it's obvious conclusion when faced with Sarah Catt's near term abortion. Instead, she lamely tries to claim that Catt's action of taking abortion pills to try to kill her child in her womb is somehow vastly different than an abortion.

The problem is that what Catt did doesn't have much relationship to the cluster of medical procedures that get grouped under the common term "abortion"—which is how the British press is describing Catt's actions. Inducing labor with intent to miscarry is a much different thing than procedures designed to prevent birth in the first place.

What? That's absurd. Every year there are numerous abortion procedures which are designed to prevent live birth by killing the unborn before they are born. Like RU 486 abortions (sure the children are smaller but they still end up outside the woman's body). Or like induction abortions. You know, the kind of late-term abortions performed by the late George Tiller or Colorado-based abortionist Warren Hern.

This word choice conflates Catt's actions with ordinary abortions—and does so in a world where a woman's right to have one is hotly contested.

Oh....so only "ordinary abortions" are okay? Why can't a woman decide to have an abortion at 39 weeks? Shouldn't Catt be set free? Her body, her choice, right? Trust women, right? After taking the time to spout off about the rareness of post-24 week abortions, she then hilariously writes this:

Dr. George Tiller, who was assassinated for providing these abortions, had a second physician sign off on all abortions after 24 weeks and was able to repeatedly demonstrate his careful documentation in court.

Yeah, that second physician was Kristin Ann Neuhaus, who lost her license to practice medicine because of her lax medical exams when she signed off for Tiller's abortions.

Of course, the debate on late-term abortion remains unsettled, and there are many reasons women should be allowed to have them. Remember, Catt was convicted because she induced labor, on her own, after her fetus was viable. At 39 weeks, the only real way that Catt could have ended her pregnancy was by going into labor, induced or otherwise. That the baby was stillborn is something the court has taken on faith, and even if true, there's no evidence, especially without a body to autopsy, that the drugs she took to induce labor also killed her baby. Catt's actions fall outside the abortion debate.

Why? What an absurd assertion. Marcotte can't cope with the reality that some women (though obviously not very many) like Sara Catt want abortions very late in pregnancy. The evidence seems to show (though an autopsy of the child's body would be more conclusive) she took drugs designed to kill her child and induced labor. That's an abortion. A very late one but an abortion. How can a woman being prosecuted for an illegal abortion fall outside the abortion debate?

Government must build abortion law around the needs of the one in three women who will get an abortion in her lifetime, not around criminally minded outliers like Sarah Catt.

But according to various pro-choice beliefs shouldn't the British government have protected Catt's inherent right to have a post-24 week abortion? Or is the right to abortion a non-inherent right? If so, doesn't that demolish the whole pro-choice position? Marcotte seems to think she can talk about the elephant in the room without ever talking about the issues the elephant in the room raises for people who base their arguments for abortion on the ideology that women should be able to do as they will with their bodies throughout pregnancy. When someone has an abortion at the end of a term pregnancy, Marcotte seems to think asserting "It's not an abortion" and "It's rare" somehow allows her to escape from defending the precepts of her ideology.

Pro-abort flash mob dance coming to a city near you?

What happens when you lack the inability to make a serious argument against legislation to regulate abortion clinics?

Remake a popular song, insert the word "Vagina" and dance along. Video below (make sure to turn the captions on so you can read the dance instructions - apparently pointing at your nether regions is now a dance called the "Can't Say It"):




A flashmob is scheduled for noon today in Lansing, Michigan. Nice to know this is what the ACLU has been working on as opposed to coming up with real arguments which actually address the legislation they're so against.

Woman sentenced for illegal 40 week abortion in Britain

How will pro-choice bloggers respond to this?

A married British woman who aborted her baby in the final week of her pregnancy was sentenced to eight years in prison Monday — a brutal crime that investigators called “cold and calculating.”

Sarah Catt, 35, of North Yorkshire, England, was accused of using a drug she bought online from a company in India to induce labor past the 24 week limit allowed under law, The Telegraph newspaper reported.

She was 40 weeks when she terminated her pregnancy in May 2010, authorities said.

Catt, who has two children with her husband, said the baby boy was born lifeless and she decided to bury him alone, The Telegraph said. She never told police where she put the body.

Catt believed the baby was the result of a seven-year extramarital affair with a co-worker that eventually ended, the BBC said.

She reportedly never told her husband she was pregnant, although he remained supportive of her during her arrest.

Her body, her choice? Trust women?

Life Links 9/18/12

A Pennsylvania man attacked and tried to kill girlfriend after demanding she get an abortion.
From the Express-Times:

Jashua Kinch-Rodriguez, 24, approached Jessenia Rosario about 9 p.m. Friday as she pulled into her apartment in the 100 block of South 12th Street, police said.

Kinch-Rodriguez started arguing with her as she sat in her car's seat, demanding she abort the baby and calling her a "whore," according to court records.

He then punched Rosario in the stomach and genitals with an open fist while screaming at her and threatening to kill her, police said. He also allegedly closed the car door on her legs.

After Kinch-Rodriguez walked away, Rosario got out of the car and started going up the stairs to her second-floor apartment, where four other people were already inside, police said.

Kinch-Rodriguez then produced a gun and started firing several shots into the apartment, nearly striking Rosario, according to court documents.

The NY Times has a long piece on researchers using adult stem cells to create organs.

Implanting such a "bioartificial" organ would be a first-of-its-kind procedure for the field of regenerative medicine, which for decades has been promising a future of ready-made replacement organs — livers, kidneys, even hearts — built in the laboratory.

For the most part that future has remained a science-fiction fantasy. Now, however, researchers like Dr. Macchiarini are building organs with a different approach, using the body's cells and letting the body itself do most of the work......

So far, only a few organs have been made and transplanted, and they are relatively simple, hollow ones — like bladders and Mr. Beyene's windpipe, which was implanted in June 2011. But scientists around the world are using similar techniques with the goal of building more complex organs. At Wake Forest University in North Carolina, for example, where the bladders were developed, researchers are working on kidneys, livers and more. Labs in China and the Netherlands are among many working on blood vessels.

I'm struggling to comprehend how these parents can be some "me" oriented and have such a pathological desire to obtain a daughter. It's sickening how they see their children as products to be bought and discarded if they're not "useable." No details are provided to how many of her daughter's unborn siblings were killed solely because they were male.

Three days after arriving in California, Simpson underwent egg retrieval surgery. Eighteen eggs were retrieved; of these, 11 were mature and were fertilized.

Her husband left after the surgery to return home and take care of their three boys. After resting for five days, Simpson returned to the clinic for her embryo transfer.

She was met with devastating news: all of her embryos were found to be chromosomally abnormal. None were useable.

"I cried. And cried some more," recalled Simpson. "All that money, the drugs, the travel, time off work. The money."

Despite the financial and emotional setbacks, she wanted to try PGD again, soon. Three months later, she was back in Laguna Hills. She had taken out $15,000 on a line of credit to pay for the second attempt.

She went through the whole process again. This time, the embryos were good to go. An ultrasound was used to guide a catheter containing the embryos into her uterus. Six days later, Simpson took a pregnancy test. It was positive.....

After nearly four years and $40,000, Simpson's dreams of being a "girl-mommy" were finally going to come true.

Simpson gave birth to her daughter during a home delivery in her bathtub in 2009. "The moment she was born, I asked if it was still a girl," she recalled.

Simpson had to work six days a week right up until the delivery and months afterward to repay the loan she took.

"My husband and I stared at our daughter for that first year. She was worth every cent. Better than a new car, or a kitchen reno."

Alabama abortion clinic scheme denied license again

Sometimes you wonder how stupid abortion clinic operators think state governments are.

A state hearing officer has ruled against Kelley Rain-Water in her appeal of the state health department’s denial of her license application to reopen the New Woman All Women Health Care.

Rain-Water said she plans to redo the clinic lease that caused concerns at the Department of Public Health and make another application.

“I am very optimistic. I cannot see a reason I would be denied if we have an acceptable lease,” she said.

I wonder why the state would trust a word of a potential new lease after the recently denied lease would have allowed Rain-Water to "run" her friend Diane Derzis' abortion business and funnel all the profits to her friend after her friend lost the clinic's license.

New Woman All Women Health Care had been Alabama’s best known abortion clinic because of a fatal bombing in 1989, but it agreed to shut down in May after being cited by the health department for violations, including two patients being given overdoses of drugs and needing to be taken to a hospital. The health department’s agreement with the operator, Diane Derzis, allowed her to lease it to a new operator that ran it independently of her.

Rain-Water, a friend of Derzis, got a lease, but the health department denied her application for a license. Department attorney Brian Hale said her lease let Derzis or her company, All Women Inc., have a role in determining how much profit the new operation makes and requires that all profit go to Derzis company.

Hale said that gave Derzis an active role in the new operation.

It's not like any new lease would be anything but a front for a sham operation that allows Derzis to maintain control of her abortion clinic and its profits.

Inspection report reveals numerous deficiencies in Virginia abortion clinics

The Family Foundation of Virginia used a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the inspection report of Virginia's abortion clinics.

It's not pretty. Including one clinic in which bags of blood and fetal remains were left open in a freezer and spilled on the freezer floor.

This clinic were notified of the inspections beforehand and apparently never thought to clean the blood.

Here's there press release:

An inspection of the Tidewater Women's Health Clinic in Norfolk found:

The freezer which is used to store the collected conception material, had blood and un-bagged conception material frozen to the inner bottom surface. An observation was conducted of the freezer kept in the clean utility room. Staff #3 reported after inspection of the conception material, it was poured into plastic storage bags and the bags are stored in the freezer until the next weekly medical waste pick up. The observation revealed that some of the plastic bags were open and had spilled their contents onto the bottom of the freezer. Approximately three-fourths of the freezer's bottom and shelf was covered with frozen blood and conception material.

An inspection of the A Capital Women's Clinic in Richmond found that the staff doesn't change the MetriWash solution in the sink every time dirty instruments are brought in (instructions for MetriWash say to change the solution every time) and that a sponge used to clean instruments is only changed once per week.

At Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Virginia's clinic in Virginia Beach, the inspector's report states, "Employee #4 was asked how she could tell which of the containers (used to transport/clean instruments) were dirty or clean. Employee #4 stated, ‘I can't. I guess we need to have a different color to put the instruments in once they are clean.'"

Abortion advocates (the same ones who thought inspections were unnecessary) are acting like the numerous deficiencies were no big deal.

“It is not a coincidence that this early data on inspections, which only tells a half story — and a misleading one — is released just two days before the board of Health is to vote on the regulations once again,” the Virginia Coalition to Protect Women’s Health said in a statement.

Life Links 9/12/12

Ramesh Ponnuru discusses a recent "fact check" on Obama's record opposing Born Alive Infant Protection laws.

State Senator Obama understood perfectly well that the bill did not apply within the womb, and never said otherwise. His point, to paraphrase it, was that granting legal protections to a pre-viable child was logically incompatible with Roe. He was wrong to predict the courts would see it that way: No court has struck down the type of legislation Illinois was considering; there is now a federal law on the books that is nearly identical to it. The Court's jurisprudence makes the location of the developing human being — inside or outside the womb — decisive for whether it has a right to life, and not just its stage of development. (That's one reason pro-lifers made partial-birth abortion an issue: to establish that a child partway out of the womb would be protected.)

That's why Obama opposed the bill even when it included a redundant passage noting that by protecting infants born alive, i.e., outside the womb, it did not protect fetuses within the womb. He did not believe that human beings at that stage of development should have legal protection, whether inside or outside the womb.

One of Michael Jackson's recorded songs that didn't make it on his Bad album was about abortion.

In "Abortion Papers," Jackson approaches the matter carefully (and ambiguously): rather than presenting a dogmatic political perspective, he personalizes it through the story of a conflicted girl raised in a deeply religious home and her Bible-admonishing father. In his notes for the track, Jackson wrote, "I have to do it in a way so I don't offend girls who have gotten abortions or bring back guilt trips so it has to be done carefully....I have to really think about it." Jackson narrates the track with a strong, passionate vocal. Ironically, the main drawback of the track is its catchiness. It feels a bit strange wanting to dance and sing along to a song about abortion, but that's exactly what the addictive groove inspires. Kudos to Jackson for attempting to tackle a sensitive issue in a thoughtful manner, though it appears even he wasn't quite sure about how it would play to listeners.

The BBC is coming under fire for asking viewers to vote on whether a couple on a show should abort their unborn child diagnosed with Down Syndrome.