Life Links 1/23/12

The smallest surviving child born in California is going home. Melinda Guido weigh a little more than ½ a pound at birth.

She was born four months premature on Aug. 30 and weighed just more than 9 ounces, making her the second smallest in the United States and one of the world's smallest surviving babies.

Melinda was so tiny she could fit into the palm of her doctor's hand.

Doctors say the baby now weighs 4.5 pounds and has progressed enough to be discharged.

Overhead - Mark Judge on Washington Post writer Dana Milbank's observations about the March for Life:

What makes this so awful is not that Milbank is a liberal. It's the rote belching up of cliches in place of thought, research, or contemplation. It's the making of an idiotic assertion about financial motivation, followed the inability to follow a more interesting assertion he stumbles over to an interesting place. It's the childish impulse, not to mention the moral sclerosis, of the sarcastic quotes around "conscience clause."

Scott Klusendorf and Jay Watts defend incremental prolife legislation.


Casey Martinson, the Director of Public Affairs for Planned Parenthood of the Southern Finger Lakes (PPSFL), writes that the sky is falling on Roe v. Wade.

I'm sorry to say that the sky is falling on Roe v Wade. It's been falling incrementally for the past four decades, and it fell further, faster, in 2011 than in any year before. According to the Guttmacher Institute, state legislatures passed 94 new laws restricting abortion in 2012. Not only is that a new record, but it shatters the previous record of 34 new laws passed in 2005 by a lot.

Interestingly, the director of public affairs doesn't know how old Roe v. Wade is.

So the alarm that defenders of reproductive rights have been sounding at a higher and higher volume is serious business. As we approach the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we have an opportune moment to bring these concerns into focus against the never-ending blur of our modern news cycle. Anti-choice extremists – a fair word for people who equate not just abortion but birth control pills with murder – are gearing up to make their own hay on this issue, and after 38 years of losing ground, pro-choice advocates need maximum effort to turn things around.

Unsurprisingly, avid pro-choicers who spurn debate have no problem interrupting a prolife event at the March for Life to mindlessly spout chants. Jennie Stone has the video and summary.