Life Links 5/31/12

Was this New York Planned Parenthood employee fired as well for not being smart enough to know she was being tricked? From the intro to this video (where the red dots are placed on the U.S. map), it looks like Live Action has a few more of these videos. How many Planned Parenthood employees were unable to realize that a woman asking for a sex-selection/family balancing abortion was an unusual circumstance?


Michael Hiltzik responds to Alan Trounson's and Jonathan Thomas' response to a Hiltzik's column which noted CIRM's misleading ad campaign by looking at the ads.

So let's look at the record. It may be true that no ads for Proposition 71 used the term "miraculous cures," but then neither did I. What did the ads promise, however? Several of them have been archived by UCLA, and here's what we find.

Reeve taped an ad shortly before he died, in which he observed, "Stem cells have already
cured paralysis in animals. Stem cells are the future of medicine."

Michael J. Fox taped an ad in which he urged, "Vote yes on 71, and save the life of someone you love."

Joan Samuelson, a leading Parkinson's patient advocate, is shown in another ad asserting, "There are more Americans than I think we can count who are sick now, or are going to be sick in the future, whose lives will be saved by Prop. 71." Shortly after the measure passed, Samuelson was appointed to the stem cell program's board.

Do these ads amount to promising "miracles"? Given that the essence of scientific research is that no one can predict the outcome, to assert as fact that "lives will be saved by Prop. 71" is plainly to promise something downwright extraordinary, if not outright miraculous.

Robin Marty needs to open mouth, insert foot. It's amazing how the regular bloggers at RH Reality Check like Marty and Jodi Jacobson have an incorrect understanding of what Roe v. Wade did. They assume it actually protects children/confers rights after viability as opposed to allowing states to pass laws. If the state doesn't have a law on the books, there's no protection.

Marty writes, "In D.C., an abortion post-viability is allowable for the exact same reasons it is allowed under the established criteria in Roe v. Wade: life or health of the mother." Let's stop right there. Marty has just made what used to be known as a "schoolboy error." (Are we still allowed to say that?) She apparently slipped into thinking that Roe v. Wade itself imposed some affirmative limitations on abortion — by which I mean, some limits that are constitutionally required and that therefore, somehow, are in force everywhere.

But that premise is entirely erroneous. I am not aware of any attorney, on any side of the abortion issue, who has ever defended such an assertion.

As far as I know (and I've done some reading on this subject), the U.S. Supreme Court has never held, in Roe v. Wade or any other ruling, that any legislative body is required to adopt a limitation on abortion, at any stage in pregnancy, with respect to any jurisdiction. Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, all other abortion-related Supreme Court decisions deal entirely with what limitations on abortion the Supreme Court will permit state, local governments, or Congress to apply to abortion.

Cassie Farrell responds to a Joyce Arthur piece.

What Choice Joyce and her cronies need to understand is that their lies simply aren't cutting it in Canada anymore. Instead of formulating a sound argument, they attack the legitimacy of the debate. However, the debate is on, and isn't going away until the right to life for all Canadians is acknowledged and ensured.

Planned Parenthood staffer got fired for getting tricked, providing nonjudgmental care

Via the Huffington Post:

A Planned Parenthood spokeswoman told The Huffington Post on Tuesday the staffer in the video "did not follow our protocol" for dealing with "a highly unusual patient scenario."

"Planned Parenthood insists on the highest quality patient care, and if we ever become aware of a staff member not meeting these high standards we take swift action," she said in a written statement. "Within three days of this patient interaction, the staff member's employment was ended and all staff members at this affiliate were immediately scheduled for retraining in managing unusual patient encounters. Today opponents of Planned Parenthood are promoting an edited video of that hoax patient encounter."

This spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Federation of America also told The Huffington Post that the organization condemns seeking abortions on the basis of gender, but its policy is to provide "high quality, confidential, nonjudgmental care to all who come into" its health centers. That means that no Planned Parenthood clinic will deny a woman an abortion based on her reasons for wanting one, except in those states that explicitly prohibit sex-selective abortions (Arizona, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Illinois).

So in other words, this staffer wasn't fired for not providing a high standard of care. She was fired because she didn't follow Planned Parenthood protocols which attempt to avoid employees being caught on camera by Live Action actors ("highly unusual patient scenario") doing what Planned Parenthood is proud of doing (providing nonjudgmental care to all women who want abortions regardless of their reason).

That's a tough situation to put an employee in. Basically, if they aren't smart enough to realize they're getting taped by Live Action, then they get fired.

Live Action was pretty clever with their scenario. At the end of the video, the PP worker notes she hopes the actor gets her family and the actor says, "Yes. My boy and my girl." This leads me to believe the actor started the conversation by noting that she already has a girl child but wants to "family balance" and have one boy and one girl. This probably comes off as more normal/less unusual than wanting to abort a girl because you dislike girls or don't want to pay a dowry.

Some IVF clinics offer "family balancing" via pre-implantation genetic diagnosis because some couples want the "perfect family" with one boy and one girl. So - if you're Planned Parenthood employee is that a "highly unusual patient scenario?" Maybe. But to some people (especially those nonjudgmental types at PP) attempting to balance your family isn't unusual at all, but just another innocuous personal preference choice in the long line of reproductive choices.

I guess we should have known this was coming since Planned Parenthood basically admitted in their press release in April that staff had been fired.

Planned Parenthood has extensive guidelines and training requirements for all staff who may encounter difficult or unusual questions, such as those posed by the hoax patients. If a health center learns of an instance where a staff member has not fully followed policies or procedures, swift action is taken to remedy the situation.

How many more PP staffers got fired because they weren't quick to know they were being taped?

Get it right AP: Angel Shuai died as a baby not a fetus

Really Associated Press? Is it really too much to accurately describe a child named Angel Shuai, who was delivered at 33 weeks gestation and lived for 3 days as a baby? Do you still employ editors? Or does the AP style book require writers like Charles Wilson to describe any child whose life was ended prematurely as a fetus.

Unfortunately, FOXNews, ABC News, the Washington Post and numerous other media outlets don't understand that a child who survives her mother's suicide attempt and dies three days later isn't a "fetus."

It's almost like a mother's desire to kill her child supernaturally makes the child a "fetus" regardless of whether the child survives birth or not. As far as I can remember, the AP doesn't typically use "fetus" language to describe premature infants who die, at least as long as the child was wanted.

Life Links 5/24/12

Abortion advocates are attempting to find the bright side of the record low (41%) percentage of people who self-identified as pro-choice in a recent Gallup poll. Abortion Gang member KushielsMoon and NY Times Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal play a similar note.

Rosenthal:

But only 20 percent of Americans say they think abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. A majority, 52 percent, think it should be legal under certain circumstances, and 25 percent say it should be legal in any circumstance. In other words, there are more pro-choice absolutists than pro-life absolutists, and far more people who take a middle position than absolutists on either side.

KushielsMoon:

Now, this might sound like a serious problem to some pro-choice advocates. However, one needs to look further into the polling to see the real situation.

52% of Americans believe that abortion should be legal under some circumstances. An additional 25% believe it should be legal under any circumstances. Together, that means a whole 77% of Americans support abortion being legal. In contrast, only 20% believe abortion should always be illegal (and that's down 2% from last year!).

Obviously, this is a case of people not understanding what "pro-choice" and "pro-life" really mean.

Or maybe it's a case of you not actually reading the complete poll results as Ramesh Ponnuru explains.

Here are the latest numbers: As of May 3–6, 20 percent of Americans think abortion should be "illegal in all circumstances," 39 percent say it should be "legal only in a few circumstances," 13 percent say it should be "legal under most circumstances," and 25 percent say it should be "legal under all circumstances."

The vast majority of opponents of legalized abortion have been willing to bestow the "pro-life" label on politicians who do not take the position that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. George W. Bush, for example, favored exceptions to a ban for cases where pregnancies threatened the mother's life or resulted from rape or incest. One might say, then, that his position amounted to thinking that abortion should be legal "only in a few circumstances." The two relatively life-protective positions get a combined 59 percent, the two less-protective positions get 38 percent.

Robin Marty attempts to prove that if abortion is difficult to get, women will go to desperate lengths to end their pregnancy by highlighting a British woman who died after drinking concentrated vinegar in a home abortion attempt. One large problem with this argument is abortion is readily available in Great Britain and paid for by tax dollars. So the example undercuts Marty's argument because it shows that some women, regardless of how much access there is to abortion, will do stupid, dangerous things.


Planned Parenthood is opposed to forced abortion so much that they issued a press release regarding Chen Guangcheng after he already made it safely to the United States. Gee, thanks.


The Daily Mail is reporting that an abortionist in Spain has been ordered to pay child support on a child he failed to kill.

A Spanish judge ordered the unnamed gynecologist to pay £780 a month maintenance to the boy's mum after he bungled a termination at a clinic in Majorca.

She checked in for an abortion in April last year when she was eight weeks pregnant - and returned three months later for another thinking she was carrying a second child.

Tests revealed the gynecologist had misread an ultrasound and the unborn baby thought to have been aborted was still alive.

Doug Kmiec's weak defense of Obama

In a commentary for the National Catholic Reporter, Doug Kmiec again proves something we've known for a while. He's a dupe. While he recognizes the Obama administration has erred with its HHS mandate, he doesn't think Obama's is to blame. In Kmiec's world, President Obama is just a poor schmuck whose underlings have run amok.

Unwittingly, perhaps, the president has allowed his appointees to drift into the secular lane and stay there.....

The noise of opposition could not be hidden from the president any longer, and the president reacted by shifting the obligation of the mandate away from employers to insurers......

Jenkins introduced the president at Notre Dame with a quotation from the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council and their pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes: "Respect and love ought to be extended also to those who think or act differently than we do in social, political and even religious matters. In fact, the more deeply we come to understand their ways of thinking through such courtesy and love, the more easily will we be able to enter into dialogue with them."

For now, I remain convinced Obama takes this seriously. Unfortunately, too many working for him do not.

Kmiec remains convinced based on what? Obama's empty promises? His appointment of the rabidly pro-abort Kathleen Sebelius to head the HHS? The administration's consultations with Planned Parenthood's president regarding the mandate? The fact that Cardinal Timothy Dolan told President Obama directly he was disappointed with the policy? The administration's embarrassing lack of thought, research or knowledge regarding the Constitutional principles in play?

Robert George takes apart another part of the commentary where Kmiec claims Obama isn't pro-abortion, he's just "pro-decision-making by pregnant women."

"Pro-decision-making by pregnant women." So this is how we, as defenders of the lives of children in the womb are to characterize the question of abortion? Someone like President Obama who would protect the lawfulness of deliberate feticide, enact policies to make it as widely available as possible, and support its funding with taxpayer money is not pro-abortion, he is merely "pro-decision-making by pregnant women"? Even when the decision (carefully left undescribed) is, in truth, a decision about whether to kill the child? It's this kind of abuse of language that people seem always to resort to when we want to obscure from view a deep injustice that is being done against our fellow human beings.

Indian abortionist allegedly fed aborted babies to his dogs

An Indian paper is reporting that authorities have arrested abortionist Sundam Munde, who allegedly fed the remains of aborted children to his dogs as a way of disposing of their bodies.

Notably, the doctor, Sundam Munde from Beed was arrested and booked under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act last week. What is more shocking is the fact that Munde's wife was also his partner in the crime.

The Munde couple had four pet dogs and after the abortion they used to feed the foetuses to the pets after performing abortions, report said.

Life Links 5/21/12

Here's another horror story regarding how some people in Asia are using fetal remains. In Bangkok, a man has been arrested after authorities discovered he was trying to the bodies of unborn children which had been roasted and covered in gold leaf.

Police said Taiwan native Chow Hok Kuen, 28, was arrested after police found the fetuses -- from 2- to 8-months-old -- in a suitcase in a hotel room in the Yaorawat area, Bangkok's Chinatown, the Bangkok Post reported.

The man had bought the fetuses several days ago from a Taiwanese man in Thailand for $6,500 and planned to sell them on Taiwanese Web sites for up to six times that amount, police said......

In Thai black magic rituals, the Post said, preserved fetuses are believed to bring good fortune to their owners and are often kept in shrines at homes or businesses.

The New Woman All Women abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama will close it's doors after today.

The clinic's owner agreed in April to surrender the facility's license after an investigation by the state Department of Public Health found problems including two instances in which patients were given overdoses of a drug and were transported by ambulance to a hospital.

As part of the agreement, the state ordered the facility to cease performing abortions by May 11 and surrender its license by today unless a new operator could successfully apply for a state license.

In Australia, they've discovered how abortion clinic anesthetist James Peters gave Hepatitis C to numerous women.

He said Dr Peters was using pre-filled syringes of anaesthetic drugs on himself, while his back was turned to other staff or when he was alone.

''The accused has then returned the contaminated syringe to the patient tray and used the contaminated syringe to administer the remaining drug to the patient, thereby infecting the patient with hepatitis C,'' Mr Silbert said.

Dreams of our daughters? Free birth control and abortions?

This commercial from the Obama campaign is horribly unpersuasive. Yes, birth control is commonly used but why does that mean employers who oppose contraceptives should be forced to cover it?

Are regular people really supposed to believe our daughters' dreams are at stake if employers are forced cover contraceptives and Obama isn't allowed to implement his pro-abortion policies?

Life Links 5/18/12

Michael J. Fox is finally curbing his embryonic stem cell enthusiasm while lamely trying to cover his rear.

"It's not so much that [stem cell research has] diminished in its prospects for breakthroughs as much as it's the other avenues of research have grown and multiplied and become as much or more promising. So, an answer may come from stem cell research but it's more than likely to come from another area," he said.

During the interview, Deborah Brooks (co-founder of Fox's foundation) then mentions some of the problems with putting embryonic stem cells into the brains of people with Parkinson's. You know, the same problems prolife people have been noting for years and the same problems that Dr. Oz told Fox about on Oprah like 3 years ago.


Melinda Henneberger wonders why all the "choice" advocates have been so quiet on Chen Guangcheng.

In the United States, much of the support for Chen has come from those who oppose abortion. But where are the abortion rights supporters? There is so much talk about the search for common ground on the abortion issue — sincere talk, I believe. But if the brutal oppression of women robbed of any semblance of "choice" isn't something we can all agree on, I don't know what would be.

A Texas man has been sentenced to 40 years in jail for sexually abusing his daughter over a period of years.

The assaults resulted in a child, a miscarriage and two abortions, Assistant District Attorney Jeff Swain said.

The 48-year-old man pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault. He will have to serve half of his sentence before being eligible for parole, Swain said.

The woman "is certainly happy with the result," Swain said, adding that it is "a deserving sentence."

The daughter, who is in her mid- to late 20s, came forward last July.

"She did not want the same thing to happen to other girls," Swain said.

In New York state, Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino veto an abortion buffer zone law.

Calling it unconstitutional and "harmful," Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino on Friday vetoed legislation that would have prohibited anti-abortion protesters from blocking patients and workers access at health clinics.

Time for a reality check Soraya Chemaly - a baby that lives for 3 days after being born isn't a fetus

UPDATE: Chemaly has corrected her post after I tweeted her. She now notes the child was a newborn.

RHReality Check writers are going all out to defend Bei Bei Shuai, a woman whose suicide attempt ended up killing her child.

Soraya Chemaly even uses the term "fetus" to describe the child.

Last week, the Indiana Supreme Court declined to drop feticide and murder charges against a woman named Bei Bei Shuai, who has been in jail for 14 months and faces 45 years in prison because, after attempting suicide while pregnant, her fetus died.

Actually, if Chemaly examined the article she links to, she would discover a fetus didn't die but a newborn infant (born at 33 weeks) did. Three days after being born.

Shuai's attorneys contend the Chinese immigrant living in Indianapolis ate rat poison in a suicide attempt, not to kill her baby, and that she was suffering from depression. Prosecutors have said she wanted the baby to die. The baby died three days after being born.

Are newborn children who die three days after being born now considered fetuses to the pro-choice movement?

I guess that's the logical extension of abortion arguments. A woman's right to control her body and end her pregnancy how and when she sees fit also includes the right not to be prosecuted if the means of killing's one child results in a living baby who happens to die after birth. As long the decision to kill and effort to do so is made while the child is still inside the mother (or at least partially), when the child dies matters not a wink.

Life Links 5/11/12

In response to hearing about a pending piece of prolife legislation in Michigan, a former legislative aide has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against State Representative Lisa Brown, claiming her pregnancy led Brown to fire her.

Ericah Caughey, 30, of Potterville said Wednesday her working relationship with Brown suffered after she told Brown she was pregnant in March 2009. Two months later, Brown had House staff fire her without a reason, according to Caughey.

In a meeting with reporters organized by her state senator, Rick Jones, R-Grand Ledge, Caughey described Brown as being upset Caughey became pregnant shortly after her boyfriend returned home from military service in Iraq.

Caughey said Brown stopped addressing her by her first name and instead dubbed her "preggers." She said Brown also made a crude abortion comment while watching a Michigan Right to Life rally on the Capitol lawn......

Caughey said she recently contacted Jones because of a bill pending in the Legislature that would make it a crime to coerce a woman to having an abortion.

An Indian woman was found alive after being thrown into a river with her arms and legs bound. She was allegedly tortured and thrown in the river after refusing to have an abortion.

The woman had reportedly worked as a domestic help for the Bhubaneswar-based retired district judge, Sameer Ray for five years and had allegedly married his only son, Satyabrat. The marriage was reportedly never accepted by the family. According to the victim, she told the family that she was pregnant when they decided to fix Satyabrat's marriage with someone else. The family then allegedly hired goons to eliminate her.

NARAL's Nancy Keenan is calling it quits in January 2013. From the Washington Post:

NARAL's research, however, suggests it has a ways to go: Young voters do not make abortion rights a priority at the polls. In 2010, the group's poll of 700 young Americans showed a stark "intensity gap" on abortion. Most antiabortion voters under 30 (51 percent) considered it a "very important" voting issue. Among abortion-rights millennials, that number stood at 26 percent.

"There is an intensity gap between our side, being pro-choice, and the other side," Keenan said.

Theodore Shulman, a former frequent commenter at this blog has pled guilty to threatening violence against Father Pavone and Robert George.

Theodore Shulman, 51, faces up to 51 months in prison at his sentencing date on Sept. 12. He has been held without bail since his arrest in February 2011.....

The plea deal includes an agreement that prosecutors would not charge Shulman for possession of cyanide and two other deadly substances at the time of his arrest.

Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell leveled the name "forces of darkness" at people opposed to America's leading abortion provider while speaking at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser.

President Obama admits support for same-sex marriage, ends years of deception

I'm glad President Obama has stopped his obvious deception about his position on same-sex marriage. It's unfortunate that it took a Joe Biden gaffe to get him to actually state his true position.

Life Links 5/9/12

Mercatornet has an interview with Dr. Elard S. Koch who published a study which found that Chile strengthened abortion law didn't increase maternal morbidity.

In this sense, it is a unique natural experiment conducted in a developing country. Thus, a first difference between the data from Chile and data from Poland, Malta and Ireland is that, in the case of Chile, there is a rigorous analysis controlled by multiple confounders. It is not a matter of circumstantial or anecdotal evidence, but a matter of scientific data representing real, vital events whose methodology has been published for the first time in a peer-reviewed scientific journal......

As discussed in our article, according to the most recent report published by Chilean National Institute of Statistics, the maternal mortality ratio for 2009 was 16.9 per 100,000 live births (43 deaths) and the figures for indirect causes (codes O99, O98), gestational hypertension and eclampsia (codes O14, O15), abortion (code O06), and other direct obstetric causes were 18 (41.9%), 11 (25.6%), 1 (2.3%) and 13 (30.2%) respectively.

The Toronto Star has an article on the youthfulness of Canada's prolife movement.

No longer just grey-haired activists holding signs outside abortion clinics, the pro-life movement has undergone a savvy, youthful makeover. Viral video contests, slick marketing campaigns, podcasts and Facebook groups fly in the face of assumptions that all young people lean left and that opposing abortion is antiquated.

"The young people seem to be taking over all the older groups and it's hugely re-energizing," said 23-year-old Jonathon Van Maren, communications director with the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform. "And I think that the older generation is recognizing that new tactics, new ideas, new blood in the movement is really what's going to change it."

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has a story about Australian doctor Foteini Hassiotou who discovered breast milk contains stem cells which have a level of pluripotency to them.

"We've just started transplantation experiments and we've shown that they can differentiate into many different cell types outside the mammary lineage … we've turned them into bone cells, brain, liver, and pancreatic cells that produce insulin.

"I guess the next step would be to see how that would work in vivo, to see how these cells behave when they were injected into the animals."
......
One more radical idea emerges from this work: a new insight into the 'breast is best' debate.

"Since these stem cells are in the milk, and nothing exists without a purpose, I believe that they have a role for the baby. Since these cells can differentiate into all the different cell types, my hypothesis is that they may contribute to the baby's development early on, not only its immunity but also the development of the different tissues and organs."

Life Links 5/7/12

Pro-abortion protesters are back to their usual tricks at an event where Abby Johnson spoke at the University of Washington.

Johnson travels to college campuses across the country to give talks. Last night's was called, "From Pro-choice to Pro-life," more commonly known as, "Do Women Have Too Many Rights?"

But the talk ended early after UWPD officers began to forcefully remove protesters they believed were being disruptive. One woman was arrested and taken into custody but was released after receiving a citation for disorderly conduct. The question-and-answer session that was scheduled after the talk was canceled.

Numerous protestors crowded in the back of the room, holding up their signs of disapproval as Johnson spoke.

"My body my f---ing choice," and "When abortion is illegal women die" were written across two of the signs.

The atmosphere of the room was everything but calm as the audience shouted and raised their signs, interrupting Johnson as she tried to speak.

In Israel, a man and two of his friends allegedly kept his girlfriend jailed for a week in an apartment after she refused to have an abortion. Thankfully, the stupid criminals gave her a cell phone.

A few weeks ago, the young woman told the man she was pregnant and said that she wished them to get married and have the baby. The man refused and insisted she would have an abortion, and threatened her that if she doesn't, he and his friends would do it themselves.

The police chief said that after she refused the ultimatum, , the man and two of his friends confined the young woman to an abandoned apartment in Shfaram. The woman said that one of the suspects brought her food and drinks and sometimes even provided her with a cell phone so she can contact her family and tell them she is still in Shfaram and that they shouldn't be worried.

In Australia, an inquest is hearing how a woman died after having an abortion.

A senior ambulance paramedic has told a coronial inquest, a Hunter woman who died after an abortion was in severe anaphylactic shock when he began treating her.

29-year-old Helen Grainger died at Newcastle's John Hunter Hospital in April 2007.

South Korean authorities finds human fetal remains in pills from China

The Wall Street Journal and ABC are covering the story out of South Korea that pills with human remains were smuggled out of China. The pills are allegedly made using the remains of aborted children and dead infants. This is horrific. From the WSJ:

South Korean customs officials are boosting efforts to stamp out illegal smuggling of drugs that are allegedly coming from China. Reason: The drugs supposedly contain human flesh.

Since August, Korean authorities have discovered nearly 17,500 of the human flesh capsules in the luggage of tourists and in international mail, the state-run Korea Customs service said in a statement Monday.

The pills, disguised as performance enhancement drugs, have been smuggled in by ethnic Koreans living in northern Chinese cities and contain so-called super bacteria that is hazardous to human health, the statement said.

South Korea's crackdown on the drugs began last year after SBS, one of the nation's major television broadcasters, ran a documentary accusing Chinese pharmaceutical companies of collaborating with abortion clinics to make pills allegedly made of human fetuses and the remains of dead infants.

Why would anyone want to take pills made from the bodies of human beings?

Chinese folklore promotes the belief that a human fetus can cure disease and help with circulation and sexual performance.

Life Links 5/4/12

There's been a possible break in the Chen Guangcheng as Chinese authorities claim they will allow Chen to apply to leave the country.

Chinese legal activist Chen Guangcheng has been offered a fellowship at a university in the U.S. and can be accompanied by his wife and two children, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement Friday.

"The Chinese Government has indicated that it will accept Mr. Chen's applications for appropriate travel documents," Nuland said in the statement. "The United States government expects that the Chinese government will expeditiously process his applications for these documents and make accommodations for his current medical condition. The United States government would then give visa requests for him and his immediate family priority attention."

In court, supermodel Linda Evangelista claimed the billionaire father of her 5-year-old child asked her to have an abortion when she was pregnant. Evangelista is currently in court with French billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault looking for child support.

Pinault, 49, who is currently married to actress Salma Hayek, denied that charge but testified he told Evangelista that "if she were to have a child (they) might not have a relationship."

With that a four-month relationship, in which he said the couple only actually saw each other seven days, came to an end.

The newest plastic surgery fad: Stem cell makeovers.

It is a medical claim that sounds like science fiction. Walk into a plastic surgeon's office for a face-lift and walk out roughly four hours later with a whole-body makeover that required no incision and leaves you with no scars......

Kerr, a skin-care specialist from Ohio, underwent a stem-cell makeover in which fat was removed from her waist via liposuction. The fat was then spun in the lab to concentrate its stem cells and, hours later, injected into Kerr's face and breasts.

Price tag? 10-15K for the 4 hour procedure.

Life Links 5/3/12

Time Magazine has a detailed rundown of where things stand with Chen Guangcheng. Chen is allegedly at a Chinese hospital which is surrounded by police and filled with plain clothed undercover agent and U.S. officials have been unable to see him.

The question now is whether the Americans, by either naïveté or otherwise, have left him to an uncertain fate by taking the Chinese at their word in their commitment to his safety and well-being. Will Chen really be allowed to go to university to study law? Will his friends be allowed to see him? What about his family members in Shandong who are still missing? Will he be bundled off by Chinese security agents when Clinton departs? Or will Chen's now desperate pleas for asylum in America somehow be met? There are many questions. And so far, precious few answers, as Chen sits in a hospital with his wife and children, isolated from the world he so hoped to rejoin.

Operation Rescue is claiming it has the records of 86 women who obtained abortions at Aid for Women abortion clinic. They claim the records were improperly disposed of. The abortion clinic is claiming the records were stolen or falsified.


Ross Douthat and Andrew Sullivan discuss religion, politics (including abortion) and Ross' new book. The discussion on abortion starts around the 31:00 mark. It is quite interesting how Sullivan seems to have different categories for how Christian should attempt to influence the public based on what issue they're advocating for. He seems to believe Christian prolifers shouldn't be involved with trying to change laws but simply focus on changing culture and then the laws will follow. As Ross rightly points out, Sullivan doesn't seem to believe the same for advocates of same-sex marriage. Nor would I guess he would have believed the same for the civil rights movement.


Colleen Carol Campbell writes on the double-standard our society often holds when it comes to the killing of people suffering from ailments like Alzheimer's or dementia.

Behind this sympathetic media treatment lurks a troubling double standard: the idea that behavior we would regard as cruel, selfish and criminal under any other circumstance is acceptable, even commendable, when directed to demented elders.

The trend of glorifying murder-suicides among elders worries Donna Cohen, a University of South Florida psychology professor who studies the issue. Cohen told me that these cases, while rare, appear to be on the rise. And contrary to the "mercy killing" label, her research indicates that most women who die this way "are unaware and do not consent" to their deaths.

Life Links 5/2/12

There are differing accounts of how the U.S. and China came to an agreement on Chen Guangcheng being moved from the U.S. Embassy.

On Wednesday, after six days holed up inside the American embassy, he emerged and was taken to a nearby hospital. U.S. officials said they had extracted from the Chinese government a promise that Chen would reunite with his family and be allowed to start a new life in a university town.

Hours later, however, a shaken Chen told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his hospital room that U.S. officials told him the Chinese authorities would have sent his family back to his home province if he remained inside the embassy......

Chen, 40, said he never asked to leave China or for asylum in the U.S. and said American officials reassured him they would accompany him out of the embassy. At the hospital, Chen was reunited with his wife, his daughter and a son he hasn't seen in at least two years. But after they got to his room in Chaoyang Hospital, he said no U.S. officials stayed behind and that the family is now scared and wants to leave the country.

"The embassy told me that they would have someone accompany me the whole time," he said. "But today when I got to the ward, I found that there was not a single embassy official here, and so I was very unsatisfied. I felt they did not tell me the truth on this issue."

Jonathan Kay on forced abortions in China.

Canadians in particular might want to pay close attention. Here at home, liberals are hyper-sensitive to the passage of any abortion law, on the exaggerated fear that the prohibition of, say, third- or second-trimester abortions might set us down a slippery slope to a world in which abortion is outlawed completely, at any point in gestation. On such slippery-slope logic do we remain the only developed nation in the world where it is entirely legal to abort a fetus at any stage of development and viability, for any reason whatsoever — or no reason at all.

The Linyi example shows us that the slippery-slope argument works the other way, too: Once abortion becomes widely available, commonly practiced, and state-sanctioned, citizens and government officials become jaded to the human reality of birth and procreation. Instead, the fetus is seen as an inanimate prop of social policy, to be terminated according to whim and expedience.

Even a blind man could see that this is an evil path.

A pro-choice candidate in Connecticut has gotten in trouble with NARAL as he highlighted the absurdity of his own seemingly "personally prolife, poltically pro-choice" position by calling abortion "repugnant."

Andrew Roraback was invited to a Connecticut NARAL event Sunday, but language he used during a 5th District Republican debate may have gotten him uninvited.

Roraback has said, and repeated during a Monday debate, that while he finds abortion "personally repugnant," he remains pro-choice, and does not believe that the government should make that choice for women.....

"I've been standing up for a woman's right to choose for 18 years and I will continue to do so as a member of congress," Roraback said in response. "The fact that the procedure and what it entails is something that I would never wish to be a party to doesn't diminish my conviction."

Life Links 5/1/12

The State of Alabama has shot down abortion clinic owner Diane Derzis' laughable attempt to stay on as de facto owner.

Lease documents submitted to the state in support of Ochata Management's application indicated that the clinic's current operator, Diane Derzis, would serve as landlord to the applicant, and would be paid the difference between the clinic's overhead and income each month in lieu of rent. That arrangement would clearly violate the terms of the consent decree, Dr. W.T. Geary Jr., director of the Bureau of Health Provider Standards, wrote in a letter rejecting the application.

"It is clear that this arrangement would allow Ms. Derzis to remain involved in the center's financial affairs and to be entitled to all the profits from the continued operation of the center; it does not allow for the proposed new operator to independently operate the center," Geary wrote.

Judge Lee Yeakel has stayed a Texas law to prevent the funding of Planned Parenthood.

U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel in Austin ruled there is sufficient evidence that a law banning Planned Parenthood from the state's Women's Health Program is unconstitutional. He imposed an injunction against enforcing it until he can hear full arguments. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott appealed Judge Yeakel's decision to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, asking that it remove the injunction.

But Judge Jerry Smith just recently stayed Yeakel's ruling so Texas won't have to fund Planned Parenthood at this point.

The ruling, by Judge Jerry Smith of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, reversed a lower court ruling Monday in favor of the family planning organization. The decision on Tuesday means the state is free for now to enforce a new rule banning Planned Parenthood from the Women's Health Program, Texas officials said.

Minnesota's Governor Mark Dayton vetoed another prolife bill.

Gov. Mark Dayton on Monday, April 30, vetoed bills requiring doctors to be present when abortion-inducing drugs are administered and creating a health care compact.

The governor said he vetoed the abortion bill because it's another attempt to place a regulatory burden on certain health procedures, existing options are safe and it intrudes on federal medicine and medical safety practices.

Authorities in South Carolina are waiting on autopsy results to determine what additional charges to file against Aris Nichols after he stabbed his pregnant girlfriend in the neck.

Brittney Jordan, 21, was several months pregnant when she was stabbed in the neck, police say.

Aris Nichols, 39, is being held without bond in the Chester County jail on a single count of criminal domestic violence of a high and aggravated nature. Chester Police Chief Andre Williams said more charges are expected in the death of the unborn child......

The unborn child, a boy, was named Tavaris Jordan, according to an obituary in Monday's Herald. A graveside service is planned for today.