Life Links 7/20/10

A minister in North Carolina named Ronnie Wallace was recently arrested for preaching on a ladder outside an abortion clinic.

Wallace, 67, of Charlotte, N.C., was arrested on July 17 after beginning to preach from atop a ladder to several people waiting outside the Family Reproductive Health Abortion Clinic in Charlotte.

Wallace begin preaching in the parking lot across the street from the clinic about eight years ago and said he never had any trouble until he added racism to his teachings.

"I get there about 7:30 a.m. every Saturday, and the police are already there waiting for me, but I started speaking about racism and how it is coming back to this country, and I guess the police didn't like to hear that," Wallace said.

A man in Great Britain wants the state to give his wife permission to kill him. Tony Nicklinson has locked-in syndrome and communicates by blinking his eyes and nodding his head.

Coccola conceded universities should welcome free speech, but insisted there are limits.

"There are ways of phrasing messages that don't come across as negative to people," he said.

Previously, prosecutors in England issued guidelines stating that individuals who help assist in suicides won't be prosecuted if they were motivated by compassion and the victim clearly wanted to die. The guidelines didn't include euthanasia.


In a victory for prolife student clubs in Canada, the University of Victoria's Youth Protecting Youth settled a lawsuit they had filed against their university after they were denied funding and lost their club standing.

Under the agreement, the anti-abortion group received more than $700 it should have been paid over the last two years. Youth Protecting Youth was also formally reinstated as a club, and the students' society revised its policies to expunge the sections that targeted anti-abortion groups.

The group had its funding cut after posting what I believe were some Feminists for Life posters (shocking, I know) and hosting a debate. Weak-minded pro-choicers complained and the student society declared the debate harassment. James Coccola, the student society chair, wouldn't admit any wrongdoing and he shows that he has no understanding of free speech.

Coccola conceded universities should welcome free speech, but insisted there are limits.

"There are ways of phrasing messages that don't come across as negative to people," he said.

There are pro-choicers who are mad about the Obama administration's decision on high risk insurance and then there's Rebecca Sive. She's really mad.

Life Links 7/19/10

At First Things, Mary Rose Somarriba dissects Emily Bazelon's "The New Abortion Providers" article and discusses how abortion will always be in the back alley of public life.

They embody the single biggest indicator of delusion, which is this: In order to see things working out their way, they have to imagine the world different than it is. Bazelon describes one Planned Parenthood director who "looked out the window, at all the people who she wished could feel the urgency she does, and pointed out that change in medicine comes slowly."

And abortion supporters need this to keep going—they need to keep looking forward to the vision they have in mind. But what they lose along the way is a deeper understanding of why abortion isn't accepted in public and medical life. Rather than trying to understand why support for abortion dwindles, they turn away, they cover up, they try to hide the discomforting part of abortion from patients, from nurses, from themselves.....

Somewhere in these women's stories lies the reason why abortion still causes hesitation for much of the American public; the reason why many women who support the availability of abortion in the abstract say they wouldn't do it themselves; the reason why many doctors who support abortion in polls don't perform them in their offices. But abortion supporters, like those quoted in Bazelon's article, find it hard to look closer to understand these reasons and grapple with them.

The Associated Press has an article on the now-apparently-removed abortion coverage from states' high risk plans.

Douglas Johnson, legislative director for National Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, acknowledged that his side had won a round.

"If they now do what they say they are going to do, that would be good," Johnson said of the Obama administration. "But in our view they are doing it because the spotlight has been put on them and we blew the whistle."

Unions in Michigan plan on spending millions of dollars on advertisements to inform the public that one Democratic candidate for governor is opposed to abortion.


Here's the latest on induced pluripotent stem cells.

A study by Hochedlinger published in the journal Nature in April found that in most mouse iPS cells, a cluster of genes known to be important in development was not activated. In the most stringent test, those iPS cells did not perform as well as embryonic stem cells. But he also found a small portion of iPS cells in which those genes were active, and the cells had the full development potential of embryonic stem cells.

He is now repeating the experiment using human cells, and says his work suggests that it may be possible to optimize the reprogramming process or to use the genetic differences to sort good iPS cells from bad.

A bus driver in Texas is suing his employer after he was fired for refusing to pick up a woman and take her to Planned Parenthood.

Friday Baby Blogging

Chowing down

"Can you turn the screen away, please?"

The magazine Elle has a piece by Bettina Paige entitled. "Fertility Treatments: Would You Get Selective Reduction" in which the author discusses her and husband's decision to abort one of their twins after using artificial insemination to become pregnant. It's amazingly honest for the most part, Paige knows her "selective reduction" decision was completely selfish. Her reasons for deciding to kill one of her twin children could easily have been used to rationalize killing both children (small apartment, don't want to move, don't have the money, limited career advancement etc.). She recognizes that the child she decided to have killed had "an identity," "could be a life" and that the "selective reduction" terminology is Orwellian. Yet she does it anyway after her husband responds negatively to the news they had twins.

During my weekly visits to Dr. H.’s office over the next month, I watched the two little sacs on the sonogram darken and grow, develop heartbeats and vaguely human outlines. “Can you turn the screen away, please?” I asked, tears pooling in the corners of my eyes. “I don’t want to get attached.”

Dr. H. turned it toward me and said sternly: “Start getting attached.”

I’d already asked him about selective reduction. A colleague of his had told me that many women do it, and that it was no more dangerous than amniocentesis. But Dr. H. contradicted her: The odds of losing the entire pregnancy were about 10 percent, he said, and he didn’t do reductions himself.

I kept telling myself I should be happy to be pregnant at all: After wanting another child for the better part of two years and trying and failing for 12 months to have one on my own, I’d conceived! But I grew increasingly despondent as the deadline for terminating one of the pregnancies loomed. My husband was convinced that twins would radically change our lives for the worse. We’d have to leave our beloved neighborhood for a place with cheaper rents and better public schools—there was no way we could afford private education for three kids. We’d kiss goodbye any hope of career advancement, at least for the foreseeable future. To his list, I added the loss of my income, necessary to meet our expenses. I couldn’t see how I’d be able to resume working after the birth since we could never afford full-time help, and—no matter how well they napped—two infants wouldn’t leave much time for anything else.

Reported Abortions in Michigan down in 2009 to record low

The number of reported abortions performed in Michigan dropped 13.9% in 2009 to 22,357. This is the lowest number of reported abortions since the state required abortionists to file reports.

I am concerned that the actual drop in Michigan's abortions isn't as large and this large drop of reported abortions has more to do with an abortionist (or abortionists) failing to follow state law and deciding not to report all their abortions. The number of abortions performed in Macomb county dropped dramatically (over 30%) while abortions performed in neighboring counties Oakland and Wayne didn't increase dramatically. The majority of counties where abortions occur saw drops in the number of abortions performed but nothing resembling Macomb's huge reduction. I think it would take the closing of a rather large abortion mill to see the kind of location specific decrease that Macomb county saw and I'm not aware of a large abortion mill which closed up shop in Macomb county during 2009.

Abortion organizations peeved at Obama, want high risk insurance plans to cover abortion

In response to National Right to Life showing that the federally subsidized high risk insurance plans in both Pennsylvania and New Mexico would cover elective abortions, Health and Human Services Department spokeswoman Jenny Backus tried to squelch the fire.

"In all our PCIP plans, abortions will not be covered except in the cases of rape, incest or where the life of the mother would be endangered," said Jenny Backus. The department is working on guidance to make those restrictions explicit to states and insurance plans.

This hasn't made Planned Parenthood and NARAL happy campers. Planned Parenthood issued a press release statement from President Cecile Richards stating,

“Based on the Obama administration’s statement, we are deeply disappointed that the administration has voluntarily and unnecessarily decided to impose limits on private funds used to purchase health insurance coverage for abortion care in the new high-risk insurance pools....

This decision has no basis in the law and flies in the face of the intent of the high-risk pools that were meant to meet the medical needs of some of the most vulnerable women in this country."

Nancy Keenan and NARAL were also upset that elective abortion apparently now won't be included.

Abortion is the most common surgical procedure women receive," Keenan said. "At a time when the country is on the cusp of implementing nationwide health-insurance coverage, it is unacceptable to treat abortion care differently in the new high-risk pools.

Life Links 7/15/10

The New York Times has a long article by Emily Bazelon on abortion providers and efforts to make abortion more mainstream in the medical community. Efforts to provide medical schools with seed money for abortion training are being funded by Warren Buffett.

The tax records also show that most of the foundation’s spending goes to abortion and contraception advocacy and research. According to Access Philanthropy, a research institute that focuses on the giving preferences of foundations and corporate donors, family planning is one of the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation’s main purposes. The foundation’s nonprofit 990 tax form shows that in 2008, Planned Parenthood and its affiliates in the U.S. received about $45 million; the international arm of the organization got about $8 million. There is no line item for the Ryan program or the Family Planning Fellowship. But the foundation paid out around $50 million to universities with one or both of the programs.

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon has allowed an ultrasound bill in Missouri to become law without his signature.

Missouri abortion clinics will face new mandates to offer women ultrasound images and heartbeats of their fetuses as a result of legislation allowed to become law Wednesday by Gov. Jay Nixon.

The Democratic governor, facing his first decision on an abortion bill, sidestepped a direct endorsement of the new requirements by citing a Missouri constitutional provision allowing bills to become law without the governor's signature.

Police in Manilla are investigating how abortion pills are being smuggled into the Philippines from another country.


Jesse Reynolds (a proponent of embryonic stem cell research) comments on the ridiculousness that is Robert Klein's boostering of CIRM.

But Klein's arguments ring hollow. First, he cites an economic study that concludes the program has generated significant tax revenue. But that study's conclusions were controversial, and in any case $100 million is far less than the billion dollars the CIRM has already spent. The program is certainly not paying for itself, as he suggests now and as he claimed before the vote on Proposition 71.

Second, Klein cites reduced health care costs. He goes so far as to say, "First of all, we're saving lives." While I sincerely hope that embryonic stem cell research leads to therapies, that is not yet the case. Clinical trials are yet to begin. (Maybe next year? (1, 2)) Until there are genuine therapies, such savings remain hypothetical.

What's an Obama executive order on abortion worth?

Probably less than the change I can find in my couch.

While promising that Obamacare funds wouldn't be used to cover abortion, the Department of Health and Human Services has already approved Pennsylvania's and New Mexico's high risk insurance pool plans, both of which cover abortion.

Nebraska abortion screening law blocked

Via the AP:

U.S. District Judge Laurie Smith Camp on Wednesday granted Planned Parenthood of the Heartland's request for a preliminary injunction against the law, which was supposed to take effect Thursday. The injunction keeps the law from being enforced while the lawsuit is decided.

Life Links 7/14/10

U.S. District Judge Laurie Smith Camp will issue a ruling today on Nebraska's abortion screening law. Another story about the case has this quote from Jill June, President of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland:

There was no evidence whatsoever that there's any inadequacy in the existing informed consent law. As a matter of fact, I think it's widely understood that Nebraska has a very sound informed consent law in place protecting the citizens," June said.

That's interesting considering that abortion proponents are typically opposed to informed consent laws like Nebraska's. For example, here's NARAL's web page on Nebraska's "biased counseling and mandatory delay" law.


A group of Canadian prolifers recently displayed pictures of aborted children on the streets of Guelph and received some news coverage.

Connell, who started Show the Truth’s Canadian movement 11 years ago, said she understands why some people find the images offensive, but she thinks they’re necessary to get across the reality of the act.

“There are no pretty pictures of abortion,” she said. “They’re realistic. They show little, decapitated mutilated babies because that’s what it is.”

Researchers at Oxford with take skin cells from Parkinson's patients and create induced pluripotent cells from them in the hopes of turning them into nerve cells to learn more about how Parkinson's effects these nerve cells.


Another group of British researchers will use adult stem cells and cartilage cells to try to treat patients with arthritic knees.

Life Links 7/12/10

Another day, more bad reporting on stem cell research. Katie Worth has an article in the San Francisco Examiner about the spending habits of CIRM, California's stem cell agency. Unfortunately, she didn't do her research. She writes,

It was approved at a time when President George W. Bush had banned federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, and universities and other research institutions were forced to carefully separate their federally funded adult stem cell research from their privately funded embryonic stem cell research.

I wonder what textbooks in 50 years will say about Bush's 2001 decision to limit the federal funding of embryonic stem cells to embryonic stem cell lines created before August of 2001.


The New York Times has a piece about a last week'sFriday Night Lights episode in which one of the characters has an abortion.


The LiveAction blog embeds a video of young Lia Mills explaining how abortion isn't a personal preference issue.



Abortion advocate Joyce Arthur attempted to respond to Andrea Mrozek and Rebecca Walberg's piece about the incredible amount of guesswork and estimations involved in worldwide illegal abortion statistics. Here's a portion of Mrozek's and Walberg's response to Arthur response.

Citing surveys of schoolchildren about whether they know someone who's had post-abortion complications, as Ms. Arthur did in her piece, is baffling. We feel sure that a sizeable number of Canadian schoolchildren might claim to know a friend of a cousin whose stomach exploded after combining Coke and Pop Rocks. Shall we launch a worldwide campaign against junk food on the strength of those numbers?

Is it me or are the results of Planned Parenthood of California's 2 year undercover operation to expose CPCs incredibly weak.

* CPCs tell women, incorrectly, that abortion leads to serious immediate and long-term complications including mental disorders, breast cancer, and future infertility.
* Over half of the CPCs investigated highlighted mortality as a claimed complication from abortion.

Here's the entire report.

Life Links 7/9/10

Wesley Smith on a case where an Australian woman is traveling to Thailand to have a sex-selection IVF procedure to ensure she has a girl.

Increasingly, IVF is not about treating infertility, but about reducing reproduction to a crass consumer activity akin to choosing a breed of dog or model of flat screen television. This is objectification pure and simple. When we believe we are entitled not just to a child but to the kind of child we want, it strikes a body blow against unconditional love–because by definition, it isn’t.

An Abortion Gang member thinks the best argument against abortion restrictions and in favor of taxpayer funding for abortion is that the less restrictions and the more government funding women get for abortions, the sooner they'll have them.

This is where the “trust women” phrase comes into play. You, me, the government, everybody, needs to trust that women will do the right thing. Women who want abortions will get one done as soon as possible. Unfortunately, in the US, a woman will often have to pay for an abortion out of pocket. This means she has to spend time raising money, which can lead to her being later in the pregnancy at the time of the procedure. In Canada, where most abortions are covered by health insurance, many women are able to have an abortion as soon as possible, since they don’t have to spend time raising money towards the cost of the procedure. This means that more Canadian women have abortions in the first trimester. That is the best argument for why abortions should be publicly funded.

Besides not understanding what a good argument is, Not Guilty also might want to check out U.S. abortion stats which show that some states with numerous abortion restrictions have low percentages of late term abortions while other states with zero or limited abortion restrictions and the government funding of abortion have higher percentages of late-term abortions.


Traveling abortionist George Klopfer has contacted the FBI after receiving a death threat at his unpublished home phone number. Klopfer believes the individual who threatened him discovered his information after he filed a lawsuit against the Fort Wayne-Allen County Department of Health. Klopfer is fighting a local ordinance which requires non-local physicians who don't have admitting privileges to "provide contact information to area emergency rooms and the local health department."

Keep your beliefs to yourself while I tell you what to do

At the Abortioneers blog, Sparky has a post in which she tries to equate "hands" in the saying, "keep your hands to yourself" to "beleifs(sic), morals, and laws."

It seems so simple when I tell a 3 year old to keep their hands to their self, yet somehow people are unable to transfer this very simple concept to broader arenas such as laws and beleifs. All we ask is that people remember one simple lesson: Keep your hands to yourself. In the world at large your hands might include your beleifs, morals, and laws. Regardless of what you call it, please keep them to your self. When you pray to your God, I would never try to stop you. So please just let us live our lives as we see fit.

It seems Sparky also has a problem keeping her hands/beliefs to herself and she doesn't even see it. She believes (supposedly because she thinks people should keep their beliefs to themselves) that prolifers shouldn't share their beliefs but she has no problem sharing her belief that prolifers should be quiet about their beliefs.

Maybe somebody is a little touchy-feely.

Life Links 7/7/10

Pro-choice blogger Jessica Valenti calls her unborn child "a baby" during a post about how some people can do annoying things (like touching bellies without permission) to pregnant women.

I am an interesting person outside of carrying this baby – I promise!

Rebecca Taylor points out how a Presbyterian columnist at the National Catholic Register named Bill Tammeus seems to be been completely fooled about what human cloning is and what somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) creates. He says this in an aptly named column entitled, "It's easy to be misled on stem cell research." Below is great quote from someone who thinks SCNT therapies are still in development (amazing considering scientists haven't yet extracted embryonic stem cells from cloned human embryos) and doesn't think a cloned human embryo is a human being.

I also know it's easy to be misled on stem cell research if you don't name and understand things properly.

The Washington Post has published a personal story piece by Gillian St. Lawrence about how her and husband have used IVF to create and freeze embryos, which they may implant if they decide they want children at some point in the future. Both are perfectly fertile.

First, I looked online for clinics that did embryo freezing. Then I called them up and said, "I am 30 and my husband is 32, and we don't have any fertility problems, but we are wondering if your clinic would do IVF for us so we can create embryos and just freeze them; just skip the part where you transfer the fresh embryo into the uterus. We don't want to use any of them right now, but we want to save them for later."

Some doctors seemed to think I was crazy. ("Why don't you just wait a couple years and get pregnant at 32?" one said.).....

Our five frozen embryos, which we call our baby blastocysts, will remain in storage until we are ready to use them. Since study after study has indicated that the age of the uterus at the time the embryo is implanted is almost irrelevant to the success rate of achieving a healthy baby, we can wait 10 or 15 years: The chief consideration may well be how old I want to be when I'm raising a teenager

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has signed prolife legislation.

Women getting abortions in Louisiana will be required to get ultrasounds, and doctors who perform elective abortions won’t be covered under medical malpractice laws under bills Gov. Bobby Jindal signed Tuesday.

Also signed by Jindal was a ban on coverage for elective abortions in the insurance purchasing pools set up by the federal health overhaul legislation.

At BioEdge, Michael Cook notes that George Daley, a former embryonic stem cell researcher and proponent has focused his attention on induced pluripotent stem cells. Cook does get something wrong though, Daley certainly didn't "immediately" stop campaigning for embryonic stem cells once iPS cells were created. Daley continued making a variety of silly claims for a while after iPS cells were created.

Life Links 7/6/10

Slate's William Saletan believes the biggest lesson from the Kagan/partial-birth abortion controversy is that the courts should stop treating position papers from medical organizations as if they somehow less politicized than papers from other organizations.

But the larger problem is the credence subsequently given to ACOG's statement by courts, including the Supreme Court. Judges have put too much faith in statements from scientific organizations. This credulity must stop....

All of us should be embarrassed that a sentence written by a White House aide now stands enshrined in the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, erroneously credited with scientific authorship and rigor. Kagan should be most chastened of all. She fooled the nation's highest judges. As one of them, she had better make sure they aren't fooled again.

In Omaha, a woman is suing her former employer because she claims the company's CEO said her unborn child was projecting a negative energy and creating a hostile work environment.


The New York Daily News reports that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy doesn't plan on retiring until after 2012.

Life Links 7/2/10

Spain's conservative Popular Party is suing to prevent the implementation of Spain's new liberal abortion law.

In challenging the 14-week clause as unconstitutional, the Popular Party cited a 1985 ruling from the Constitutional Court that said a woman's rights could not automatically take precedence over those of an unborn child, but rather only in cases of rape, fetal malformation or when the mother's health is in jeopardy.

To establish a period for unrestricted abortion "violates the balance between the rights of the mother and the rights of the unborn," Popular Party lawmaker Sandra Moneo said.

Planned Parenthood affiliates in New Jersey could suffer a huge blow if Governor Christie vetoes a family planning provision.

Clinics in Englewood, Hackensack, Garfield, Paterson, Passaic and Pompton Lakes will be affected if the cuts are implemented. Two Planned Parenthood chapters with a total of 16 clinics in northern New Jersey face the loss of a combined $2.4 million, and the North Hudson Community Action Corp., with eight sites providing family planning, will lose $550,000.

Planned Parenthood's clinics in Englewood and Hackensack could face closure or cutbacks. "I've got two centers in one county," said Triste Brooks, head of Planned Parenthood of Greater Northern New Jersey. "Can I make do with one?"

Abortionist Malachy DeHenre's appeal for a mistrial has been rejected by the Mississippi Supreme Court. In 2008, DeHenre was convicted for manslaughter in his wife's 1997 death. During the trial, a prospective juror called him an "abortionist" during jury selection.

"Despite the incendiary nature of abortion, we cannot say that the isolated comment with respect to DeHenre being an abortionist was so irreparably prejudicial as to warrant a mistrial," the court said in its written opinion.

Induced pluripotent stem cells have been created from frozen blood samples.

These iPS cells have in the past been made from plugs of skin, but blood is much easier to take from people and to store, the researchers reported in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

"Blood is the easiest, most accessible source of cells, because you'd rather have 20 milliliters of blood drawn than have a punch biopsy taken to get skin cells," Judith Staerk of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Massachusetts, who worked on the study, said in a statement.

Killing for feminism

Yesterday's UK Times had an editorial by Antonia Senior entitled, "Yes, Abortion is Killing" in which Senior admits that the unborn are alive yet argues that the approximately 200,000 abortions a year in Great Britain are the "lesser evil" when compared to not allowing women to control their fertility. The article is filled with a dose of honesty that abortion proponents in the US rarely come close to. I guess when you aren't fearful of your country restricting abortion in the near future, it becomes easier to say things like this:

What seems increasingly clear to me is that, in the absence of an objective definition, a foetus is a life by any subjective measure. My daughter was formed at conception, and all the barely understood alchemy that turned the happy accident of that particular sperm meeting that particular egg into my darling, personality-packed toddler took place at that moment. She is so unmistakably herself, her own person — forged in my womb, not by my mothering.

Any other conclusion is a convenient lie that we on the pro-choice side of the debate tell ourselves to make us feel better about the action of taking a life. That little seahorse shape floating in a willing womb is a growing miracle of life. In a resentful womb it is not a life, but a foetus — and thus killable.

Despite recognizing that the unborn are living human beings, Antonia believes killing them is the lesser evil because she believes abortion plays a central role in the liberation of women.

But you cannot separate women’s rights from their right to fertility control. The single biggest factor in women’s liberation was our newly found ability to impose our will on our biology. Abortion would have been legal for millennia had it been men whose prospects and careers were put on sudden hold by an unexpected pregnancy. The mystery pondered on many a girls’ night out is how on earth men, bless them, managed to hang on to political and cultural hegemony for so long. The only answer is that they are not in hock to their biology as much as we are. Look at a map of the world and the right to abortion on request correlates pretty exactly with the expectation of a life unburdened by misogyny.

As ever, when an issue we thought was black and white becomes more nuanced, the answer lies in choosing the lesser evil. The nearly 200,000 aborted babies in the UK each year are the lesser evil, no matter how you define life, or death, for that matter. If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too.

Besides the sexist idea that women aren't able to succeed in their careers without being able to kill their unborn children, the obvious problem with this line of thinking is:

If abortion is simply a lesser evil then why isn't infanticide a lesser evil as well? What if a woman who has a 3-year-old decides she wants to start a business but thinks her daughter will prevent her from being successful? Should she be able to kill for her dream? If not, why not?

Senior's position can provide no reasonable explanation for why killing any child (born or unborn) which is presumed to be in the way should be illegal. If it's justified to kill living unborn human beings because they could get in the way, then women should be just as justified in killing their born children when they get in the way.

Maybe American pro-choice feminists are smart enough to realize this and that's why they so often cling to the belief that the unborn aren't living human beings.

HT: Albert Mohler

Life Links 7/1/10

Shannen Coffin replies to Elena Kagan’s response to questioning about her ACOG statement re-write. It’s amazing how Kagan was able to absorb the opinions of the ACOG experts without meeting with them and then re-write the ACOG statement in such a manner that helped President Clinton and encompassed their unspoken opinions.

As always, the RH Reality Check has a hilarious response to this controversy. Apparently, Kagan has such a big heart, she really didn't want the ACOG to release a statement which didn't contain an opinion she wrote for them because her statement reflected what the experts thought even though she had no contact with them.


Via, Mary Meets Dolly, is news that the book Never Let Me Go has been made into a movie. She's embedded a long trailer. The book is about a group of cloned human beings who eventually have their organs harvested.


The UK's Sun has a piece on a mother who decide to keep her child after she found out her RU-486 abortion failed.

It was there stunned medics dropped a bombshell.

"I thought being sick was a side-effect to the pills," she recalls, "but they gave me a scan.

"And there on the screen, the doctors could see the baby, with his heart still beating strongly.

"In fact, I had morning sickness. For some reason, the pills hadn't worked.

"I was distraught. It had been a very emotional decision to have the abortion in the first place. Now I just felt numb with shock. I couldn't believe it."

And worse was to come.

"I was told to come back the next day for another abortion. But, as the pills hadn't worked, this time I would need an operation under anaesthetic. I was so upset I burst into tears."

Later that night, Lucy realised she could not go through with it.

"Although I hadn't seen my baby on the scan, just knowing his heart was beating made him a baby," she says.

"I began thinking how hard he was fighting to stay alive. And I knew I couldn't go through with it."

Abortion Gang: "It doesn't matter ellaOne kills unborn or not"

At the AbortionGang, NYCprochoiceMD shares his/her thoughts on the possibility that the emergency contraception ellaOne does more than prevent contraception.

We want to ensure that women who have personal views that would lead them not to choose abortion know that the use of post-coital contraceptives is consistent with their beliefs. We want everyone to know as much as possible about all their options. So to counter the myth that emergency contraception is equivalent to an abortion, we scream as loud as we can that it isn’t.

But we have to remember that in the end it doesn’t matter how it works or why. All that matters is what’s in the heart of the woman and if she wants to lend her body to a zygote for the 38 weeks required to gestate a full-term fetus. The rest is just semantics.

So on one hand NYCprochoiceMD can understand that some women may not want to take a pill which would possibly kill their developing child but he/she doesn't really care because whether a human being is killed or not is "just semantics."

Planned Parenthood Rep: Viewing an ultrasound can change a woman's mind on abortion

The State-Journal Register has an article about RU-486 abortions provided at a Planned Parenthood in Springfield, Illinois. The article contains a number of quotes from "nurse practitioner Stephani Cox, Planned Parenthood’s downstate lead clinician."

In some cases, it seems that Ms. Cox goes off Planned Parenthood's usual script.

With regards to abortion protesters:

“They don’t cause any trouble,” Cox said. “We haven’t had a problem, really.”

On contraceptives:

“They’ve never been through this, for the most part,” Cox said. “They feel many things, among them embarrassed for getting in this situation.

“We try to have them not beat themselves up, because it happens, and there’s no method of contraception that’s 100 percent other than abstinence.”

On how viewing an ultrasound can affect a woman's decision:

During a visit that takes several hours, a client undergoes a blood test and a sonogram, Cox said.

The client always is offered a chance to view the sonogram, she said. After looking at the sonogram or going through Planned Parenthood’s required counseling, she said, some women have decided not to proceed with their planned abortions.

Kagan revised ACOG's statement on partial-birth abortion

In the National Review, Shannen Coffin describes how Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan was the author of an often used clause in an American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists statement on partial-birth abortion which was supposed to be from a select group of medical experts.

There is no better example of this distortion of science than the language the United States Supreme Court cited in striking down Nebraska’s ban on partial-birth abortion in 2000. This language purported to come from a “select panel” of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), a supposedly nonpartisan physicians’ group. ACOG declared that the partial-birth-abortion procedure “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.” The Court relied on the ACOG statement as a key example of medical opinion supporting the abortion method.

Years later, when President Bush signed a federal partial-birth-abortion ban (something President Clinton had vetoed), the ACOG official policy statement was front and center in the attack on the legislation. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Kopf, one of the three federal judges that issued orders enjoining the federal ban (later overturned by theSupreme Court), devoted more than 15 pages of his lengthy opinion to ACOG’s policy statement and the integrity of the process that led to it.

Like the Supreme Court majority in the prior dispute over the Nebraska ban, Judge Kopf asserted that the ACOG policy statement was entitled to judicial deference because it was the result of an inscrutable collaborative process among expert medical professionals. “Before and during the task force meeting,” he concluded, “neither ACOG nor the task force members conversed with other individuals or organizations, including congressmen and doctors who provided congressional testimony, concerning the topics addressed” in the ACOG statement.

In other words, what medical science has pronounced, let no court dare question. The problem is that the critical language of the ACOG statement was not drafted by scientists and doctors. Rather, it was inserted into ACOG’spolicy statement at the suggestion of then–Clinton White House policy adviser Elena Kagan.

Instead of believing that parital-birth abortion "may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance" the panel's original statement said they, "could identify no circumstances under which this procedure . . . would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman."

That language by itself (which would have basically destroyed the pro-choice case for partial-birth abortion) didn't sit well with Kagan who thought such a statement "would be a disaster." So she suggested the ACOG add the "may be the best" clause and they did, word for word.

Yuval Levin writes,

What’s described in these memos is easily the most serious and flagrant violation of the boundary between scientific expertise and politics I have ever encountered. A White House official formulating a substantive policy position for a supposedly impartial physicians’ group, and a position at odds with what that group’s own policy committee had actually concluded? You have to wonder where all the defenders of science—those intrepid guardians of the freedom of inquiry who throughout the Bush years wailed about the supposed politicization of scientific research and expertise—are now. If the Bush White House (in which I served as adomestic policy staffer) had ever done anything even close to this it would have been declared a monumental scandal, and rightly so.

This is why I don't trust unverified information from abortion promoting groups like the ACOG. If you don't have a problem with the killing of a human child who is more born than unborn then why would you have a problem with lying?

Life Links 6/29/10

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland is suing to prevent new Nebraska abortion restrictions from taking effect.

The new law would require women wanting abortions to be screened by doctors or other health professionals to determine whether they were pressured into having the procedure. Those women also would have to be screened for risk factors indicating they could have mental or physical problems after an abortion.

Planned Parenthood hasn't disclosed whether they are planning to challenge Nebraska's new fetal pain law which prohibits abortions after 20 weeks.


I didn't think I've ever read something like this in the New York Times Magazine.

At week 24, the fetus is a fully formed baby, weighing over a pound and measuring nearly a foot long. The mother has felt it kicking and seen it in lifelike detail on a screen; were she to go into labor, it would perhaps survive. The procedure to end her pregnancy at that stage takes days, not minutes, and its risks are much higher. Abortion providers who are willing to do it — indeed, who have the stomach for it — are quite rare.

A Milwaukee firefighter named Robert Johnson has been caught preying on a child after the girl became pregnant and he encouraged her to have an abortion to cover his tracks. He has been suspended with pay. I can't find any story which indicates whether the girl had an abortion or not.

British government: Killing babies unborn babies is okay, hurting them is bad

This is one of those stories that boggles my mind.

In Britain, the NHS will use tax dollars to pay for abortions. Close to 90% of Britain's abortions are funded by the NHS. So they clearly have no problem killing unborn children.

Yet NICE, another government funded health entity in Britain, has issued guidelines which call for every pregnant woman to receive a carbon monoxide test to see if she's been smoking.

"During pregnancy, smoking puts the health of the women and her unborn baby at great risk both in the short and long-term, and small children who are exposed to second-hand smoke are more likely to suffer from respiratory problems," Professor Mike Kelly, Nice director of the centre of public health excellence, said.

The Telegraph has this quote from the Department of Health:

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "We welcome the publication of these new guidelines. Smoking in pregnancy is a major public health concern posing risks to both mother and baby. We want the NHS to use this guidance to develop the best possible services for pregnant women."

So they have no problem with funding the intentional killing of more than a hundred thousand unborn children every year but are quite concerned about how smoking affects the health of unborn children.

Another IVF clinic blunder

This time a fertility clinic in Connecticut implanted one woman's embryonic children into another woman with the same last name. The clinic then quickly informed the woman who underwent the transfer and she took the morning after pill. The clinic has been fined $3,000.

State records say the lab technician only checked the last name on the container with the embryos, not the medical record number and last four digits of the Social Security number as required.

She discovered the error the next day, but the embryos already had been transferred to the wrong patient. The woman who owned the embryos also was informed of the error. She had not been in treatment since 2006, but had continued to store embryos at the center.

Life Links 6/28/10

National Right to Life has responded to the paper by the UK’s Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists which claimed unborn children can’t feel pain before 24 weeks.

Ironically, the article concedes the evidence that by 20 weeks pain receptors are present throughout the unborn child’s skin, that these are linked by nerves to the thalamus and the subcortal plate, and that these children have coordinated aversive reactions to painful stimuli, and experience increased stress hormones from it.

This article is an effort by acknowledged abortion promoters to mislead the public at-large – and most tragically women considering abortion – about the increasing evidence demonstrating the unborn child’s sensitivity to pain.

The Boston Globe has an editorial criticizing the NIH and NIH director Francis Collins for not allowing federal funds to be used researching human embryonic stem cell lines created by an IVF clinic which used objectionable language on their informed consent papers. It’s a great example of the desire of some to dismiss any regulation which prevents something scientists want.

Collins’ refusal wasn’t without regret. He said it was “frankly rather painful” for his advisory committee to recommend against approval of the cell lines, but that “rigorous guidelines are only meaningful if they are rigorously applied.”

That sentiment is admirable, but in this case a “rigorous’’ application of the consent rules worked against the greater good.

In a new book, University of Illinois historian Leslie Reagan argues that German measles played a large role in the shift of public attitude on abortion.

Where abortion had been illegal and shameful, it became a subject of open public discussion and debate, Reagan said. In the midst of a German measles epidemic, the most "respectable" women - married, middle-class, white mothers - began to openly speak of their pregnancies, their concern about having a child with severe malformations, and their need for abortions, she said.

Joining them with vocal support for reforming the abortion laws was a diverse coalition difficult to imagine today - including, for instance, the PTA, Republicans, unions, medical associations and a long list of Protestant churches.

But that history, like German measles (also known as rubella), has largely been forgotten, according to Reagan, a professor of history, of law and of women's studies.

Life Links 6/25/10

In the National Post, Andrea Mzorek and Rebecca Walberg take apart the World Health Organization's estimates on maternal deaths because of abortion.

It's a tragedy whether 700 or 70,000 women die from abortions. However, the issue is much bigger than the number. The assumptions used to calculate the 70,000 are debatable and the methodology isn't up to scientific standards. In the end, 70,000 is nothing more than a stab in the dark by the World Health Organization's own admission.

The source for the 70,000 lies in a series of reports published by WHO called Unsafe Abortion. There, researchers repeatedly clarify how hard it is to study the issue due to the lack of data. One citation (of many) reads: "As there are no feasible data collection methods that can reliably reflect the overall burden of unsafe abortion, one is left to work with incomplete information on incidence and mortality from community studies or hospitals ... This is then adjusted to correct for misreporting and under-reporting." It's no big surprise that some of the world's poorest or war-torn nations don't keep impeccable abortion statistics. So researchers rely on assumption after assumption.

In the UK, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists have issued a report saying the unborn can't feel pain before 24 weeks because their nerve endings aren't sufficiently formed. The report also claims that past 24 weeks, the unborn are sedated and possibly might not feel pain and anaesthetics shouldn't be required for fetal surgery. In another report they refused to list fetal conditions which would justify an abortion after 24 weeks. In this Telegraph article, it appears the committee didn't pay any attention to the evidence that premature infants feel pain.

Professor Allan Templeton, president of the Royal College, who chaired the review, told The Times that research put forward by anti-abortion campaigners that the human foetus did feel pain at or before 24 weeks was based on evidence from premature babies. This did not apply to the foetus in the womb, he said.

Huh? Well, what if the premature babies were younger than 24 weeks? Wouldn't that kind of destroy the presumption that before 24 weeks the nerve endings aren't sufficiently formed?


Planned Parenthood of the Heartland is planning on opening an abortion clinic in Omaha late this year.


In Iowa, a man who protests at Planned Parenthood had his house vandalized with pro-abortion graffiti.


One wonders if Planned Parenthood would treat a prolife protester like National Right to Life treats Bill Baird?

Mr. Baird, 78, who once ran the nation's first abortion clinic, was among those attending the National Right to Life Convention at the Hyatt Regency Pittsburgh International Airport on Thursday. A regular attendee, his routine for decades has been to picket from 11:30 to noon on behalf of abortion rights, then join his rivals for lunch inside.

"My unborn daughter will only be recognized as a full human being if she can have an abortion"

Below is an interesting quote from someone who thinks it should be legal to kill unborn human beings at virtually any stage of development and has no problem de-humanizing them when they aren’t her own child.

Jessica Valenti (who is apparently pregnant - congratulations) writes,

Putting aside for a moment the fact that this line of reasoning is completely desperate, I have to say that part of the reason Palin and other “feminists” scare me so much is because I’m a happy woman with a family of my own, including a baby on the way. I want my daughter to grow up in a country that sees her as a full human being and has laws and policies that reflect as much – not one where politicians take her rights away and call it feminism.

And seemingly in Jessica’s mind, the central way for her unborn daughter to be seen as full human being in our society is to make sure that the intentional killing of unborn human beings (like her daughter) is legal for mothers who don’t want them.

Would you like a side of french fries with that cognitive dissonance?

Life Links 6/24/10

Researchers in Italy have published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine detailing the long term success of their work in using stem cells to treat patients who were blinded in one eye by chemical burns. From the AP:

In the Italian study, the doctors removed scar tissue over the cornea and glued the laboratory-grown stem cells over the injured eye. In cases where both eyes were damaged by burns, cells were taken from an unaffected part of the limbus.

Researchers followed the patients for an average of three years and some as long as a decade. More than three-quarters regained sight after the transplant. An additional 13 percent were considered a partial success. Though their vision improved, they still had some cloudiness in the cornea.

Patients with superficial damage were able to see within one to two months. Those with more extensive injuries took several months longer.

The Times of India has a piece on a study by Sri Lankan researchers which found abortions tripled the risk of women getting breast cancer later in life. It was a smaller study with 300 women.


A psychiatrist in Oregon is planning on opening a “Death with Dignity house” where individuals can kill themselves.

Weisberg told KGW-TV he felt compelled to act after watching a TV interview with Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who pioneered assisted suicide.

A 14-year-old girl in Texas has been arrested after giving birth at home and then getting an adult neighbor to throw the infant boy’s body in the trash.

Houston police said no adults were present — only another 14-year-old and two 11-year-olds — when the girl gave birth April 16, and the group learned about child birth from the Internet. The newborn was placed on a mattress and was "alive for some time," but died after his head was covered with the amniotic sac, Senior Officer C.P. Abbey said.

The UK’s Telegraph has an article on a woman who had an abortion after suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum. Prolife advocate Ashli Foshee McCall wrote a book entitled, Beyond Morning Sickness: Battling Hyperemesis Gravidarum, to help women suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum.

Quote of the week

"I’m a Unitarian Universalist with atheistic tendencies."

-by bagpiper2005 in an evidence-free Opposing Views diatribe against prolifers

North Carolina clinic will stop performing abortions

An abortion clinic in North Carolina will stop performing abortions after this Saturday. National Women's Health Organization was owned by Susan Hill, an abortion advocate who died earlier this year.

National Women's Health Organization of Raleigh, which was founded in 1976 by the late women's rights activist Susan Hill, is "in transition," said Ann Rose, a longtime friend of Hill's who has been affiliated with the business.

Rose said the last day of procedures would be Saturday but would not elaborate on that or on what "in transition" means for the clinic's staff and potential patients.

The clinic was widely believed to be for sale after Hill died of breast cancer in February.

In addition to the Raleigh facility on Haworth Drive, Hill owned abortion centers in Columbus, Ga., and Jackson, Miss.

Her brother, Dan Hill of Durham, said he is uncertain about the status of the clinics but said Susan Hill had no children and no heirs to leave the businesses to.

Life Links 6/23/10

A study by University of Iowa researchers has found that women seeking elective abortion experience high rates of partner violence. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland participated in the study and Penny Dickey, their chief operating officer, was a study co-author.

"Women seeking termination of pregnancy comprise a particularly high-risk group for physical or sexual assault," said Audrey Saftlas, UI professor of epidemiology and lead author of the study. "In our study, almost 14 percent of women receiving an abortion reported at least one incident of physical or sexual abuse in the past year....

The study was the first to comprehensively evaluate battering among abortion clients, with 8.4 percent of those in a current relationship screening positive for battering.

Wesley Smith reports that Jack Kevorkian admitted on Larry King that he killed his first victim, Janet Adkins. Smith writes,

So, Kevorkian has admitted he’s a repeat murderer. Technically, since there is no statute of limitations for murder, he could be prosecuted for Atkins’ homicide. Instead, he’ll keep getting high level interviews, movies made about him starring Al Pacino, and $50,000 speaking fees at state funded universities. We sure do have a twisted love for outlaws in this country.

A teenager in Malaysia has died after having an abortion.

Life Links 6/22/10

A Florida man has been found guilty of killing his girlfriend after she had an abortion against his wishes.

Danielle DeAnn Stubbs, 26, was shot twice -once in the head - in her Pineverde Lane home in January 2009.

McMillian testified in the death-penalty case that he fired two shots in a dark bedroom after Stubbs told him she killed his unborn child.

A New York Times blog discusses how NARAL New York is itching for a vote on a bill to codify Roe v. Wade. Leading Democrats are concerned they don't have the votes.


The NIH has denied a request to allow 42 embryonic stem cell lines from an IVF clinic to be placed on the federal stem cell registry. These cells can't be used in research that receives federal funds.

The availability of the lines, which were created by the private infertility clinic Reproductive Genetics Institute in Chicago, had been eagerly awaited because they carry mutations for a wide variety of diseases, including cystic fibrosis, Huntington's disease and muscular dystrophy. Scientists hope studying them will yield a wealth of information about those and other diseases, leading to new treatments.

The lines had been obtained from embryos donated by couples who were undergoing treatment for infertility and had decided not to use them because tests showed the embryos carried genetic defects.

But the advisory panel found that consent forms permitting use of the embryos contained unusually broad language and those who signed the forms gave up all rights to sue the clinic for any reason.

Eleanor Clift writes in Politics Daily about EMILY's List and how the change in leadership also has supposedly changed their endorsement criteria.

Younger women have a more complex view of abortion, and they don't view the issue as passionately as their mothers. "If you ask them if they support abortion rights, they say they don't know or they don't want to answer that question," says Jen Bluestein, Emily's List communications director. For an organization created around the core mission of promoting reproductive choice, that could be a problem, and that's why its new president, 36-year old Stephanie Schriock, a native of Montana with a strong libertarian streak, is forging a new way forward.....

It's the definition of pro-choice that is evolving under Schriock's leadership, and it apparently will be a lot more flexible than was the case when Malcolm was at the helm, reflecting the changing times and the scientific advances that have clouded the issue. The Emily's List candidate questionnaire is not a lengthy document that asks a candidate to pledge support to very precise and extreme positions. It's about commitment to Roe v. Wade, and for most Democrats, men and women, that's an easy threshold to meet.

In the past, to be endorsed by EMILY's List female candidates had to favor tax-funded abortions. I wonder if that's still the case.

Pro-choice group says Supreme Court nominee Kagan believes "the Constitution affords a right to abortion"

The Center for Reproductive Rights posted a press release today in which they point to their legal analysis of Kagan's memos and conclude that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's record suggest that she believes "the Constitution affords a right to abortion." They aren't completely sold on her yet.

In short, Kagan's record suggests that she agrees with the general proposition that the Constitution affords a right to abortion. But her positions on the specific contours of that substantive right are less discernable. In fact, some of her writings raise questions about the depth of her consideration of the significance of reproductive rights to women's health, lives, and equality.

They're troubled by one memo where Kagan notes it "ludicrous" to consider elective abortions part of "needed medical care." According to the CRR, "once a woman decides to terminate her pregnancy, the medical need for an abortion is immediate."

FEED ME!!!

The California Institute of Regenerative Medicine’s (created by California’s embryonic stem cell initiative Prop. 71) appetite for wasting spending state money continues to grow. From the California Stem Cell Report:

The California stem cell agency plans to spend $15.7 million next year for its day-to-day operations, up 28 percent from this year's estimated spending of $12.3 million.

The $3.4 million increase is for the fiscal year that begins in 10 days. The hefty hike in spending comes at a time when the rest of state government is mired in a financial crisis that shows no signs of ending. CIRM's funds are provided, however, from state bonds – money borrowed by the state – and cannot be touched by the governor or the legislature under the terms of Prop. 71, which created the agency.

Because CIRM's budget consists of borrowed cash, the ultimate cost of its operations will be substantially higher than the nominal figures provided by the agency. CIRM has access to $3 billion in bonds. With interest, that translates to roughly a $6 billion bill for the state of California. In other words, the agency's operations will really cost nearly $32 million – not $15.7 million. And the $490,008 salary of CIRM President Alan Trounson will actually cost the people of California something a hair shy of $1 million.....

The biggest increase in the budget is for salaries and benefits – a 22 percent ($1.5 million) increase from about $7 million to $8.5 million. The agency, which now has 45 employees, plans to hire five more persons in the coming year. The budget documents do not discuss hiring scenarios if legislation passes that would remove the 50 person cap at CIRM. Increases in state-mandated benefits amount to $400,000. Assuming an average of 47.5 employees for the year, salaries and benefits will consume $178,589 for each staffer.

Life Links 6/21/10

The apparent ignorance of the regular writers at the RH Reality Check never ceases to amaze me. This time, Robin Marty chastises Cardinal Daniel DiNardo because he calls an embryo an embryo in a letter to the commissioner of the FDA. Marty writes,

Also, the Cardinal seems to have forgotten developmental biology -- an embryo is at least 21 days post-fertilization. Before that, you have a blastocyst or a zygote.

Robin, ....Ummm.... a blastocyst is a name for an embryo at a certain stage of development and your link to a Mayo clinic web page does nothing to prove a pre-implantation embryo isn’t an embryo. Only ignorant people or people attempting to dehumanize human embryos try to act like blastocysts aren’t embryos. Even the National Institutes of Health defines blastocyst as “a preimplantation embryo of about 150 cells produced by cell division following fertilization.”

Also, as an employee of a pro-abortion web site, you might also want to avoid linking to a page whose subheader reads (my emphasis), “Fetal development begins soon after conception. Find out how your baby grows and develops during the first trimester.”

In 2009, the number of reported euthanasia cases rose in the Netherlands by 13%.

Last year a total of 2,636 Dutch people were killed by euthanasia, with 80 per cent of cases involving people dying at home after their doctors administered a lethal dose of drugs.

This compares to 2,331 reported deaths by euthanasia in 2008, which saw a 10 per cent rise on 2007.

The New York Times has a piece on a pro-choice adoption agency which is attempting to encourage abortion providers to be more open to talking to women about adoption.

Now Ms. Lohser, 33, works for Spence-Chapin Adoption Services, a New York adoption agency that supports abortion rights, and has come to regret the lack of information she had been able to provide women in Cleveland. If a client said she didn’t think she could carry a pregnancy to term, then never see the child again, Ms. Lohser’s response was, she recalled, “Yup, check, me either.” She did not realize how much more common open adoptions had become; she knew of no adoption agency that would speak to women with an open mind about abortion.

At ProWomanProLife, Andrea Mzorek posts a Canadian study’s findings on abortion and preterm delivery.

After adjusting for baseline characteristics, women with one previous abortion were 45% more likely to have a premature child at under 32 weeks; 71% more likely at less than 28 weeks; and more than twice as likely at less than 26 weeks. This association was even stronger for those with two or more abortions.

The San Franscisco Chronicle has an article on Shinya Yamanka winning the Kyoto Prize for creating induced pluripotent stem cells. The writer, Chronicle’s Science Editor David Perlman, can’t help himself from deceiving his readers in describing President Bush’s embryonic stem cell funding policy.

Before his discovery, those pluripotent human stem cells could only be harvested from human embryos, a source posing such powerful ethical issues that former President George W. Bush banned virtually all embryonic stem cell research eight years ago. The ban remained in force until President Obama reversed it last year.

Even after the reversal of the policy, reporters across America still have so much trouble honestly describing the policy which limited federal funding on embryonic stem cell research. I understand the goal of lying about the policy while it was still in place but why now? In at least one previous article Perlman shows he can accurately describe the Bush policy so why is he intentionally describing it inaccurately now?

Overheard

Jonah Goldberg on the role of science in policy making:

The most important point isn’t about cheap politics and hypocrisy. It’s about the fundamental misunderstanding of the role of science in policymaking.

Obama once told reporters that “the promise that stem cells hold does not come from any particular ideology; it is the judgment of science, and we deserve a president who will put that judgment first.”

Putting aside the fact that it now appears many scientists were wrong about the promise of stem cells (at least so far), this is morally deranged. If scientists discovered that experimentation on five-year-old children showed huge promise to cure diseases or solve the energy crisis, we wouldn’t say, “Oh, well, scientists say it’s okay.”

.....

Scientists are technicians, not moral philosophers. While they can provide facts that inform good decision-making, they can’t distill morality in a test tube. Politicians shouldn’t abdicate to the guys in white coats their responsibilities to answer moral questions the white-coats can’t answer.

Life Links 6/18/10

Looks like Alaska Governor Sean Parnell was right.

The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services said today that 664 abortions were funded last year through Denali KidCare.

Gov. Sean Parnell recently vetoed money to expand Denali KidCare, the health care program for low income kids and pregnant women, because some of the money funds abortions. Parnell said at the time that the program funded “hundreds” of abortions. Anchorage Democratic Sen. Bettye Davis had disputed that, saying a “very small number” of abortions are funded.

Women on Denali KidCare can have an abortion funded if a physician decides it's "medically necessary." The state doesn't define what is "medically necessary," leaving that to be determined by the treating physician.....

There were 55,754 Alaskans enrolled in Denali KidCare last year, including 7,947 pregnant women.

There were 1,875 abortions performed in Alaska in 2009. It's quite obvious that Alaska abortionists are using their own definition "medically necessary" when around 8% of the pregnant women enrolled in Denali KidCare get "medically necessary" abortions and taxpayer-funded "medically necessary" abortions make up more than a third of the state's abortions.

Alaskans have their Supreme Court to thank for this ridiculous scenario where a fund designed to help children and give prenatal care to pregnant women turns into an abortion fund which funds more than a third of the state's abortions.


World Magazine has a piece on 5 women who chose life after receiving troubling prenatal diagnoses and being advised to have abortions.


Susanne Schultz writes about companies attempting to clone human embryos are weaseling their way around a California law which prevents paying women for eggs destined for research purposes.

The oocytes used by Stemagen for cloning research come from women who are paid $5,000 to $10,000 per egg extraction. These women are recruited by Select Surrogate to sell their eggs to clients waiting in the adjacent IVF units that belong to Reproductive Sciences Center. Payment for eggs for reproductive purposes is legal in the United States.

But the La Jolla group of companies adds a twist. Wood told me that they ask women to agree that if more than 12 eggs are extracted, they will donate some of them, without additional payment, to research. As the Center for Genetics and Society has suggested, this arrangement poses a possible conflict of interest, a concern strengthened by our investigation.

The Food and Drug Administration's panel of reproductive health experts has voted unanimously to endorse ellaOne, a pill taken up to 5 days after intercourse which may have post-fertilization effects.

"The fact is..."

Overheard at Mo Rage in a post entitled, "The fact is, anti-abortion people really don't want abortions to go away."

First there was RU486, the "day after" contraceptive pill and now there is a new one that is reputedly effective up to 120 hours after conception. So, the fact is, we have two different ways to make sure that a true abortion procedure never has to happen again. That's a fact. But the other fact is, the anti-abortion side, the anti-abortion people don't want this issue to go away. They want to keep their "good fight". And it's stupid.

Isn't it great when someone who doesn't know the difference between RU-486 and Plan B, has no clue about the effectiveness rates of emergency contraception, and apparently can't understand why prolifers would be concerned about an emergency contraceptive which might have post-contraceptive effects starts claiming that prolifers don't want abortions to go away.

But prolifers are stupid ones, eh?

Obese women more likely to have abortions, unplanned pregnancies

At least in France they are.

A study of French men and women found that obese women are 4 times more likely to experience unplanned pregnancies and have abortions.

Among women under age 30, researchers noted that obese respondents were four times as likely to report having had an unplanned pregnancy or abortion compared with normal BMI-range peers. They also found that, compared to normal range BMI women, obese women were less likely to have spoken with a doctor in the previous year about options for contraception, were less likely to use the birth control pill or condoms, and were significantly more likely — 8 times more likely, specifically — to report using less effective contraception methods (such as "pulling out").

I'm guessing it's likely that income levels could be an overlying factor.

Life Links 6/15/10

Adam Freedman has a piece in the National Review discussing how Roe v. Wade could be an obstacle to Obamacare.

Because the right to privacy is deemed fundamental, any statute that threatens that right is subject to “strict scrutiny” by the courts. It is difficult to see how the individual mandate would survive such scrutiny. After all, if the right to privacy guarantees our liberty to make “intimate,” “personal” decisions relating to “health,” “dignity,” and “autonomy,” does it not also protect our right not to buy health insurance? If the Constitution prohibits government from dictating decisions that “full adult humans” can otherwise make for themselves, how can the same Constitution authorizeCongress to force adult citizens to enter into particular private contracts?

NARAL hearts Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.

A Democratic source sent HuffPost the talking points being distributed by NARAL Pro-Choice America and used in turn by progressive groups tasked with defending Kagan's record. The bullets cast Obama's choice for the court as decidedly within the mainstream of public opinion on abortion -- which, for NARAL, is a positive. Notably, they cast Kagan as heir to the views held by Republican nominee and former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor....

Ted Miller, a spokesman for NARAL, confirmed the authenticity of the talking points, though he said they should not be interpreted as an endorsement. That would, ostensibly, come after Kagan goes through her hearings. Still, Miller seemed generally pleased with the written record so far, and said eight staff members for the group looked through more than 40,000 documents released last week.

"The writings are consistent with the pro-choice position of the Clinton White House and even Sandra Day O'Connor," Miller said.

The St. Petersburg Times has a long piece on the experiences of some young women who were part of Scientology's Sea Org and claim they were pushed into having abortions.


Linda Hirschman is so enraptured with abortion she apparently can't see how female prolife candidates may think working to limit a procedure which kills more than half a million females annually is making "it easier for the young ones coming along next."

Fiorina and Palin's pitches reveal graphically how selfish their brand of feminism is. With the addition of a hefty dose of good luck, and, in Fiorina's case, the value of a privileged family background, they made it. So their public policy is not to make it any easier for any woman who comes after them with, say, control of her reproduction or health care separate from her husband's job. Somehow the brilliant light of their narcissism is supposed to blind voters to the fact that there's another response to making it. Here's what real—not grizzly—mothers do: Make it easier for the young ones coming along next.

A legislator in Michigan has introduced a bill to modify Michigan's ultrasound law to force abortionists to use the most advanced equipment in their abortion clinic when giving women the option of viewing their ultrasound.

Republican Sen. Wayne Kuipers of Holland says he introduced the new legislation because some facilities have used outdated equipment that intentionally produced grainy images instead of using their newest technology.

“We are all terminal”

According to Jack Kevorkian, that is. CNN has Sanjay Gupta’s report on a recent interview he did with Dr. Death. It has some of the usual crazy Kevorkian ramblings (he is now calling his assisted suicide work “patholysis”) but it also clearly illustrates that Kevorkian didn’t give a hoot if the people he helped kill had any kind of physical ailment.

It was about an hour into the interview when I realized Kevorkian was trying to make a broader point. It started when I cited a study about the people he had "patholysed."

"It says here that in at least five of the people, there was no evidence of any disease on autopsy."

I let that hang in the air for a second. He seemed a little stunned that I had found this study. He shook his head slightly, and looked again at his lawyer, with no intention of addressing the point I had just made.

"Recently, I had three former CEOs of companies -- perfectly healthy -- who called me up and told me they wish to die." He let that sink in.

It was my turn to be stunned. "So... what did you do? What did you tell them?" I asked gently.

"No, nothing," he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I didn't do anything, but people have their rights."

.....

His second mission is to educate people about patholysis. "They just don't get it in Oregon, " he said. "Or in Washington state or Montana, the other states," where assisted suicide has been legalized. In those states, a person has to be considered terminal in order to qualify for assisted suicide.

"What difference does it make if someone is terminal?" he said. "We are all terminal."

Alabama abortion clinic shuts down after numerous violations

A local NBC affiliate has posted a PDF of a Alabama Department of Public Health report on an abortion clinic which the ADPH is forcing to close. An article sums up the Beacon Women’s Center’s various violations:

The 68 page ADPH includes detailed information on violations such as failure to inspect medical equipment, the inability to conduct a controlled drug count during procedures and failure to follow administrative guidelines informing patients of their rights.

During one visit by surveyors, the report indicates that the Registered Nurse on duty was unable to get into the controlled medical cabinet because the Medical Director left the only key in his Selma office. Seventeen patients who were scheduled to have procedures that day were given the option of rescheduling their appointment or going ahead without the use of sedation. All of the patients chose to go ahead with their procedures without sedation.

Expired drugs, lack of emergency medical equipment such as oxygen tanks and failure to document testing of key equipment such as defibrillators were also cited on one visit.

The report indicated that surveyors requested several times to see the clinic's written policy on parental consent for minors and suspected abuse or neglect of a child in accordance with law. The investigation found no written policies. In an interview, the Medical Director was asked if he reported minors who sought an abortion. His response: "Oh yeah. I ask them, but they (the minor patients) lie to you..." He questioned officials on whether he had to report minors even if "nothing comes up", to which the reply was "yes."

In another violation, documents showed that many patients filled out forms indicating they'd been offered an ultrasound or the chance to watch a video called 'Did You Know'. Some employees admitted they never offered patients the opportunity, while one said the video was offered on the first counseling session. Further inspection showed the room where the video was to be watched had no video player.

They are no longer allowed to perform abortions and are open until the 18th just to see women for follow-up exams.

Apparently, the abortionist wasn't very familiar with Alabama's reporting law. From the report,

EI # 7 asked the surveyor if minors had to be reported even if the father of the child was a minor. EI # 7 asked the surveyor, "So if mom is 12 and father is 15 then it will still have to be reported?" The surveyor responded that
this was correct.

UPDATED: Beacon Women's Center is affiliated with the National Abortion Federation and is listed as on their web site.

Life Links 6/14/10

Ramesh Ponnuru has an editorial in the New York Times on prolife women running for office.

The number of pro-life women running for office has increased, perhaps paradoxically, because of the social changes of the last few decades. The first generation of women to become active in politics strongly identified as feminist and considered abortion rights central to their feminism. Pro-life women were more likely to be full-time homemakers. Their invisibility on the public stage contributed to an impression that the vast majority of women were pro-choice.

These days socially conservative women are likely to have careers, too. The growing number of Americans who consider themselves pro-life suggests that fewer people, of either sex, consider access to abortion to be crucial to women’s economic success. The pro-life stance generally wins Republicans votes in general elections, because pro-lifers are more likely to vote on the issue than pro-choicers are.

That advantage is likely to be more pronounced for pro-life women running for office. Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster, says that her surveys have found that voters respond more positively to the pro-life message when it comes from women. Pro-life women won’t be suspected, or credibly accused, of opposing abortion because they want to keep women in their place; they can therefore talk about the issue less defensively than male pro-lifers sometimes do.

At the Abortion Gang blog, Shayna attempts to argue that prolifers know fetuses aren’t the same as children because they haven’t (to the best of her knowledge) pushed for tax exemptions for unborn children and stillborns. The argument is obviously logically flawed for a number of reasons but Shayna is also unaware that prolifers in at least one state have successfully passed legislation to give families who experience a stillbirth after 20 weeks a one-time tax exemption. The legislation passed unanimously.

Open mouth, insert foot.


A man in Connecticut named Arturo Rojas has been arrested for repeatedly hitting his pregnant girlfriend in the stomach because she wouldn’t get an abortion.

According to police, Rojas came back to the woman’s apartment while they were investigating and told them: “Yeah, I (messed) that (woman) up. She is stupid and won’t get an abortion.”

Governor Charlie Crist vetoed Florida’s ultrasound legislation on Friday.

"Such measures do not change hearts, which is the only true and effective way to ensure that a new life coming into the world is loved, cherished and receives the care that is deserved," Crist wrote.....

GOP reaction was so swift that the House Republican office issued a news release decrying the veto seven minutes before the governor's office announced it.

"This is just another example of Charlie Crist saying something publicly one day and then doing the opposite the next," said House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Delray Beach. "Charlie Crist is becoming easy to predict: disregarding principle, previous statements or public assurances, he will switch his positions to whatever he thinks will get him the most votes.'

The Washington Post has an article on ella, a new emergency “contraceptive” which may act to prevent implantation.

Ella works as a contraceptive by blocking progesterone's activity, which delays the ovaries from producing an egg. RU-486, too, blocks the action of progesterone, which is also needed to prepare the womb to accept a fertilized egg and to nurture a developing embryo. That's how RU-486 can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting and dislodge growing embryos. Ella's chemical similarity raises the possibility that it might do the same thing, perhaps if taken at elevated doses. But no one knows for sure because the drug has never been tested that way. Opponents of the drug are convinced it will. "It kills embryos, just like the abortion pill," said Donna Harrison, president of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists....

They also fear some women will try to use ella to abort a fetus, putting themselves at risk for potentially life-threatening complications that have been reported among a small number of women using RU-486, and possibly damage their developing child if it doesn't work.

Proponents dismiss those concerns, saying that ella has been tested only within five days of unprotected sex and there is no evidence that it works as anything other than a contraceptive. Ella appears to be about twice as effective as Plan B in preventing pregnancy, and its effectiveness remains constant for at least 120 hours. Plan B begins to lose its effectiveness almost immediately and becomes ineffective after 72 hours.