Life Links 6/27/12

The Los Angeles Times is reporting the family planning officials who forcibly aborted a woman at 7 months pregnant and then laid the child's body next to hers for a picture have been supposedly punished.

Following the outcry, a municipal government investigation found that forcing the young woman to terminate her pregnancy so late in its term violated her rights, the official Xinhua news agency reported Tuesday. The township also illegally demanded an approximately $6,200 payment for a certificate allowing her to have a second child, which her family did not pay, the report stated.

The investigation found that officials "used crude means to violate her intentions," Xinhua reported.

The head of family planning in Zhenping county has been removed from his post, Xinhua reported. Other township, county and hospital officials were also punished, including another Zhenping family-planning official, who was given "administrative demerits," the news agency reported.

Meanwhile, the family of the woman is allegedly being harassed.

The Chinese father of a forcibly aborted baby whose case prompted an international outcry has been beaten and forced into hiding, while his wife and other family members have been labeled traitors by fellow townspeople, the man's sister said Tuesday.....

Apparently angered over the family's contacts with journalists, the local government has since organized a backlash against the family members, calling them traitors and keeping them under surveillance, Deng Jicai, a sister of the 30-year-old father Deng Jiyuan, said.

The Planned Parenthood in Columbia, Missouri is indefinitely suspending abortions again. This has happened before because of a lack of abortionist.

This isn't the first time Planned Parenthood has suspended abortions at the Columbia clinic while doctors were unavailable. The clinic halted abortions for four months beginning last October after its lone Columbia physician was sent overseas on active military duty.

Part of South Dakota's informed consent law will go into effect on July 1.

Women seeking abortions in South Dakota will be advised about the risk of adverse psychological outcomes and assessed by a doctor for the possibility that she was coerced into getting the procedure, under an agreement between Planned Parenthood and state officials.