Life Links 10/1/07

Here's a reason, you'd think abortion advocates would oppose universal health care - women in Ottawa have to wait weeks for an abortion. Abortion advocates in the U.S. get riled up if a state wants a 24-hour waiting period.


Wesley Smith on the chutzpah of some embryonic stem cell research advocates (Mildred Cho and David Magnus) who are now (after an initiative they favored fooled the California public by promising to save lives) talking about therapeutic misconceptions the public may have after they were promised cures from embryonic stem cells. Here's a key paragraph from embryonic stem cell research advocates:

Even CIRM's (California Institute for Regenerative Medicine) strategic plan recognises that it is unlikely that there will be any treatments within the next decade. Women's voluntary donation of oocytes may be critical to research, but it is far too early for women to do so with the expectation that their donation is going to lead to cures anytime soon.

They go on to empathize in their conclusion that research using embryonic stem cells are "experiments." Embryonic stem cell advocates oversold the "potential" and "promise" of embryonic stem cells and now they're backpedaling.


A student in Virginia is suing her school after they prevented her from starting a prolife club.


Dennis Byrne has an editorial in the Chicago Tribune about the Planned Parenthood in Aurora.

In other words, the clinic's cheerleaders believe the clinic can deny to a certain segment of the public information that it has a right to receive. The reason is Planned Parenthood doesn't like to face the tests of a democratic society -- meaning protests, public demonstrations and the constitutional right to petition government.

The Catholic Church in Michigan is working to make sure we're not the next Missouri.

Life Links 9/28/07

Wesley Smith on No Brakes Biotech


A Catholic Church in California has banned a man from attending after he refused to cover up the graphic pictures of aborted on his truck when he attended Mass. I believe graphic photos have their place but I don't think children's Mass is one of them.


The UK's Telegraph has an article on trial at Frenchay hospital using adult stem cells to help treat multiple sclerosis.

Serge on the radio

Serge of the Life Training Institute discusses Judith Jarvis Thompson's Violinist Analogy and other bodily autonomy rights arguments which support legal abortion on Issues, etc.

Adult stem cells helping to treat paralyzed patients - where's the press coverage?

Nowhere that I can find. Here's a press release from PrimeCell™ Therapeutics LLC announcing researchers in Ecuador have used stem cells from bone marrow in patients' hip bones to successfully restore function in paralyzed patients. One patient had been paralyzed for 22 years!

Of the 25 patients who provided more than three months and up to 14 months follow up: 15 gained the ability to stand up, 10 could walk on the parallels with braces, seven could walk without braces and five could walk with crutches. Three patients recovered full bladder control, and 10 patients regained some form of sexual function. No adverse events or abnormal reactions to implantation were observed.

Imagine for a second the press coverage this would get if embryonic stem cells were the cells that were helping paralyzed patients walk with assistance and regain bladder control.

In These Times needs an editor or two

In These Times (a leftwing monthly magazine) has an article by Carrie Kilman on abortion in the South. One of the highlights is when Kilman ignorantly claims that most states in the Deep South "ban abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy."

Does this magazine have a single editor?? Seriously?? Of the states Kilman lists (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina) each has an abortion facility which advertises they do abortion after 12 weeks on their web site. I found the above clinics in a couple of minutes by simply typing "abortion" and the state name in Google.

The rest of the "article" continues by embarrassingly parroting talking points from abortion clinics and pro-choice organizations.

Life Links 9/26/07

Here's another update from Aurora via the Chicago Tribune.

Aurora zoning law requires a special-use permit for a non-profit medical clinic. To acquire such a permit, the applicant must schedule a public hearing, notify property owners within 250 feet of the proposed building and advertise the hearing in a local newspaper, Ergo said.

None of that happened in this case.

Planned Parenthood attempted to avoid these requirements by creating the for-profit Gemini Office Development.


Instead of correcting the long list of health violations at their clinic, Alternatives (an abortion clinic in Atlantic City, New Jersey which has been closed for months) has decided to surrender their license. The numerous violations, "including bloodstained operating tables, expired drugs and the absence of a sterilization sink," were found when the health department visited the clinic for the first time in six years.

I wonder what Ann Friedman's rationale for the horrible conditions on the inside of this clinic would be? Maybe the clinic invested so much money on "actual medical care" they weren't able to afford cleaning supplies and a sterilization sink.


Researchers have used bone marrow stem cells to help treat rats with liver failure. This research happened in Massachusetts but the papers which I've seen carry the story are either in the UK or India.

Life Links 9/25/07

Police in Florida have apprehended Andrew Foster, the teacher who allegedly had sexual relations with at least two of his students, one of whom he got pregnant and took for an abortion.


Here's more news on the Missouri law regulating abortion clinics. Judge Ortrie Smith seems to not understand the "undue burden" clause pertains to women seeking abortions not abortion clinics who don't want to keep up with basic safety regulations for surgical facilities.


I watched a segment on Good Morning America this morning on Mike May, a man whose sight was restored with the help of a stem cell transplant and cornea transplant. May made news about four years when the results of his treatment were published in Nature Neuroscience. ABC News has an excerpt of a new book about May's transition from being blind to being able to see.

What not to say to someone who is still dealing with post-abortion feelings

Gosh, this makes me sick. Just Another Alias shares her feelings of being empty and having nothing to say goodbye to and hold onto about 10 months after her abortion. What does her doctor tell her?

Some medical scientists believe that the soul doesn't enter the body until birth, or even many months past birth.

Maybe this doctor should focus on treating his patients and maybe consider trying to find a professional for JAA to talk to instead of jumbling together a bunch of poor pro-choice talking points. I would love to see the reference to the "medical scientists" who believe the soul enters the body when the child emerges from the birth canal. Another quote from the doctor she shares makes me wonder if he should be let anywhere near newborn children.

I wonder if this doctor would say the same kind of thing to a woman who lost a child to miscarriage or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and was still struggling with her feelings 10 months later.

Any comments left on JAA's blog should be made out of love.

Defending "rundown" abortion clinics

It's a daunting task but Ann Friedman is stepping up to defend the general rundownedness of the exteriors of abortion clinics. Apparently, prolifers are the reason some abortionists can't put up a fresh coat of paint.

It's tough to see a run-down abortion clinic, with high concrete walls and peeling paint, next to a sparkling new "crisis-pregnancy center." But the bottom line is that it's really, really expensive to provide actual medical care.

Yeah, assuming that charging $400 to forcibly dilate a cervix and vacuum an unborn child out of a uterus is "actual medical care." I wonder why a plethora of abortionists (including those that aren't involved in lawsuits with Planned Parenthood attorneys) have this problem while other facilities (such as hospitals) which actually provide medical care usually look kept up.

Ann continues,

And it's cheap to run an office-slash-misinformation center. Roll one ultrasound machine in, buy some beige furniture and, bam, you're done. Lots of money left over to spend on the landscaping.

And it's cheap to run an abortion clinic. Roll in an ultrasound machine, some exam tables with stirrups, some recliners for the recovery room, a suction machine, and start aborting children. You can even ignore the state's abortions laws.

At the end of this article,I'm wondering what it would take for a pro-choice blogger to not defend a legal abortion facility. When two clinics in New Jersey got shut down for various health violations, not a peep of disgust for the "blood-stained operating tables." They constantly evoke women dying after illegal abortions but when legal abortions kill women, they look the other way.

Remember this is the same Ann Friedman who attended the Blogs4Life conference, sat next to my 29-year-old wife and I, and claimed

"the majority of anti-choice bloggers, judging by the attendance, are 50-year-old men, several of whom brought their young sons along. Nearly every younger woman I noticed there was attending as a reporter..."

Life Links 9/24/07

There's a new New Atlantis out. It includes a piece by Yuval Levin on ethical alternatives to embryonic stem cells, Cheryl Miller reviews the book Everything Conceivable, and Gilbert Meilaender explores human dignity.


Wesley Smith on Ian Wilmut's most recent cloning claims.


Pastor John Piper's son and daughter-in-law discovered their child, due to be delivered on Sunday, was died in the womb.


Daily Herald columnist Joni Hirschman Blackmun is comparing abortion to tobacco. She says tobacco kills (which, of course, isn't really true since it's typically the long term use of tobacco which can lead to various types of cancer which can kill) but she doesn't harass stores which sell tobacco products so, in the same way, opponents of abortion shouldn't be protesting the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Aurora. It's an incredibly weak analogy but she at least seems to recognize that abortion kills.


Scott Klusendorf posts the notes to his speech for being a prolife pastor in the 21st Century.

I'll tell you how some churches I know respond: They give the local crisis pregnancy center (CPC) director five minute each year--on 'Sanctity of Human Life Sunday'--to briefly discuss her ministry to women in need, followed by a vague sermon that says little about abortion per se, but rather discusses our need to be 'pro-life' in all areas like caring for the poor, feeding the homeless, stopping spousal abuse, etc. Now, there's nothing wrong with a discussion of these topics or with giving the CPC director time to highlight her work (indeed, we should give her much more time than that!), but is a tepid pro-life Sunday once each year going to equip lay people to persuasively respond to these assaults on human dignity? What's needed is pastoral leadership that preaches truth and equips lay-persons to engage the culture with a robust, but graciously communicated, biblical worldview.

We live in a broken world

If you don't want to ruin your weekend, don't read this story. Seriously.

Life Links 9/20/07

The Chicago Sun-Times has an editorial in favor of letting the Planned Parenthood in Aurora open. It's bad. The two sentences below makes me wonder if anyone on their editorial page board has done any research about this situation.

Aurora officials, incredibly, say they didn't know what type of health-care facility was proposed when they voted to grant the $7.5 million, 22,000-square-foot clinic an occupancy permit. They claim Gemini Office Development, the developer representing Planned Parenthood, misled them about the type of medical facility it intended to open.

Incredibly? Were the Aurora officials supposed to know nefarious motives of Gemini Office Development? Were they supposed to assume the 22,000-square-foot facility was going to be an abortion clinic?

There's more stupidity to follow.

The city and some Aurora residents wonder if Gemini Office Development was a cover for Planned Parenthood.

Wonder? Planned Parenthood has admitted as much.

Without the clinic, many pregnant women in Aurora will lack access to birth control, prenatal care, cancer screening and treatment for fibroids and sexually transmitted diseases.

Is there any evidence the women of Aurora lack these things now and the hospitals and physicians currently in Aurora can't provide them?


An immigration judge in New York named Noel Ferris has been taken off a case by Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan after mistreating a man seeking asylum because of China's one-child policy.

Mr. Sun said that he began living with the woman who later became his wife when she was 22 (the law did not allow her to marry until the age of 23). When she became pregnant, the principal at the school where she worked in Fujian Province notified the authorities, who dragged her away for an abortion and beat up Mr. Sun when he tried to stop them, he said. During her second pregnancy, he testified, family planning officers issued an order for his arrest after he resisted sterilization.

Based only on "improper assumptions," "conjecture," or "her personal views," the appeals court said, the judge rejected this account as implausible.

The Globe and Mail covers research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association about genetic screening, abortion, and how counseling can help parents choose life.

This strikes somewhat close to home. My wife and I were asked by her Ob/Gyn if we wanted genetic screening. It was unsettling to me as he is a Christian and went to the same Christian college as I did. I assumed this is something he routinely offers to patients as a way of providing his practice with additional income but that didn't make me feel much more comfortable. I guess for the majority of patients a negative result on a genetic screening test offers some kind of relief or assurance and for some a positive result would help them prepare for a child which may have special needs. But what about those who receive a positive result and then decide to have an abortion? What about false positives? Is it responsible for a Christian physician to offer a test which may lead his patients to have an abortion?

How can adult stem cell research get more press coverage?

When researchers obtain them from a male reproductive organ.

Some headline writers had fun with this story:

Testes new source of stem cells?

Using testicles to fix the brain, heart and blood

New ballgame for stem cells

Pro-choice blogger can't find time to do basic research

Oliver Willis is claiming that Fred Thompson has joined Mitt Romney and John McCain in "saying that women should be jailed for having abortions."

His evidence for the Thompson claim? A blog post by Feministing which links to a LA Times article which says,

A day after touting his "100% record against abortion," Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson said Friday that women should face no criminal penalties for having one during the first three months of pregnancy.

Authorities "can do whatever they want to with abortion doctors, as far as I'm concerned," the former Tennessee senator said. But "if it comes down to giving criminal sanctions to a 19-year-old girl and her mama, I'm against that."

I guess one could take that to mean Thompson is in favor of jailing women for having abortions after the first trimester but it certainly doesn't specifically say that and there's no direct quote from Thompson about time frame much less a quote indicating that he'd been in favor of prosecuting women for having abortions after 3 months.

Willis' evidence for the Romney and McCain claim? An article stating that they would have signed the South Dakota law banning abortion. Unfortunately, Willis hasn't taken the time to read the South Dakota law in question. If he did, he would have know the law explicitly states,

"Nothing in this Act may be construed to subject the pregnant mother upon whom any abortion is performed or attempted to any criminal conviction and penalty.

Michigan native charged with infanticide

A college student from Michigan who was going to school in Pennsylvania has been charged in the death of her infant daughter. Before giving birth to and allegedly killing her child, Teri Rhodes supposedly performed internet searches using the following criteria: "what can kill a fetus," "alternative methods of ending pregnancy," "herbal abortion techniques" and "pregnancy termination."

The child was found dead "in a white plastic bag inside the bathtub" of Rhodes' campus apartment.

This television story notes, "Rhodes hid her pregnancy from every one, from her volleyball coaches, friends, and even medical staff" and says, "investigators allege Rhodes delivered her baby girl in the shower. They say she then put her in a plastic bag, and then took a shower, while here baby laid in the bag, at the bottom of the tub."

Standing up for women abortionists

There are few things that aggravate me more than feminist bloggers who claim to stand up for women but when a women is lied to by a physician who performs abortions they stand beside an abortionist who allegedly told a woman, "Don't be stupid, it's only blood." The "it" being an unborn child. They don't even make an attempt to defend those comments or claim Sheldon Turkish didn't make them. I doubt Amanda and Jessica are ignorant enough to believe the unborn child at 6 to 8 weeks is "only blood" or "just tissue at this time" as Turkish has admitted to probably saying. So why can't they at least admit the abortionist deceived his client? Don't they have a problem with this? Why aren't they in the least bit upset that this man intentionally lied to his female client? Is this where unmitigated support for abortion takes someone?

It's almost like they have this belief that when it comes to abortion, an abortionist can say whatever he or she pleases to a woman who has questions about fetal development. Also notice how neither of them makes any attempt to prove the unborn aren't human beings.

The latter link to a piece by Amanda has to be one of the most intellectually dishonest, strawman-filled pieces of commentary I've ever read. Every time I read something she writes, I believe I would think less and less of John Edwards if it were possible.

Life Links 9/18/07

Scott Klusendorf on Fred Thompson, Terri Schiavo and intrinsic dignity

True, they may come out of it. But that kind of thinking puts in place a premise that it's okay to kill people who don't improve. Truth is, Terri had no duty to get better. Her life had value as it was. Remember: The pro-life argument is that humans have intrinsic dignity simply because they are human, meaning Terri shouldn't have to get better to avoid being killed.

I missed the pro-embryonic stem cell research editorial by Nicole Reslock (nurse whose son has juvenile diabetes) that was printed in the Lansing State Journal on Sunday. Proponents of killing human embryos for research in Michigan have changed their rhetoric slightly. In the past, editorials typically claimed embryonic stem cell research was banned in Michigan. Now, Reslock claims "Michigan law prohibits embryonic stem cell research procedures." Those "embryonic stem cell research procedures" being killing human embryos for research and using the cloning technique somatic cell nuclear transfer to create cloned human embryos. Neither of these is an actual "stem cell research procedure." No research is actually being done on the stem cells when they are removed from a human embryo or when scientists attempt to create human embryos via cloning.

Reslock labels human embryos as "the cells" "doomed to be destroyed" and claims the beliefs of those opposed to killing human embryos for research are "jeopardiz(ing) the lives of so many innocent children."


Doctors in Germany claim to have successfully treated a man who suffered a severe heart attack with his own stem cells. Before the stem cell treatment, "the man spent seven weeks in the intensive care unit with no sign of improvement." The article also discusses Germany's law on killing embryos for research though I believe they mean "embryos" not "pre-existing stem cell lines."

Life Links 9/17/07

Here's some coverage of another large protest at the Planned Parenthood in Aurora.


There's also an article in the LA Times about George Tiller and his recent legal troubles. It includes this paragraph (emphasis mine).

Tiller also accepts some late-term patients with healthy fetuses. Among them, he has said, have been girls as young as 10, rape victims, alcoholics, drug addicts, and women who were suicidal or depressed or who feared their relatives would harm them if they continued the pregnancy. Tiller has said a few of his patients were just a week or two from their due dates.

An Indiana paper has an incredibly sad story about a foster parent who impregnated a 15-year-old girl who was living with him and his wife and then tried to convince his wife to take the girl for an abortion. Darrin Reid was somehow allowed to be a foster parent even though the state restricted the time he could spend with his own children.


Let's seek cures that don't involve killing or cloning. Indeed.

The editorial page board of the Kansas City Star is an embarrassment

What a bunch of clowns. The gall of these people to just flat out lie to their readers. Either that or they've done no actual research about a subject which has been at the forefront of Missouri politics for a couple of years.

Amendment 2, passed by Missouri voters in November, protects all scientific research allowed by federal law and clearly bans human cloning.

But a newly formed group is pushing for a constitutional amendment that would ban a form of stem-cell research called somatic cell nuclear transfer. It involves creating new cells in a lab dish, and using them to study diseases and potentially develop cures.

It clearly bans human cloning but not the cloning technique known as somatic cell nuclear transfer. Okay? It's amazing how these editors seem to believe their readers are unable to go to Google and type in "somatic cell nuclear transfer."

The editorial's "cells in a lab dish" language mirrors the "cells in a lab dish" language on the web site of Missouri's pro-cloning organization named the Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures. You'd think these professional editors would be able to come up with an editorial on this topic without cribbing talking points nearly word for word from their state's pro-cloning group. If you read the page linked above you'll likely notice a couple of other points of congruence between the Kansas City Star's editorial and the web page of the Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures (for example - the word "clearly").

What I think I love more than anything is the labeling of somatic cell nuclear transfer as a "form of stem cell research." SCNT has been unable to create a single human embryo from whom stem cells have been successfully extracted. Not one. No human stem cell lines from SCNT yet these jokers claim it's a form of stem cell research.

Tags: kansas city star, stem cell, cloning

Life Links 9/14/07

Walter Weber comments on the New Jersey Supreme Court's recent ruling in An Abortionist's Right to Deceive Women.


What happens when Planned Parenthood doesn't get their way? They sue. I don't know why but I'm continually amazed at the nerve of this organization. To actually state, "The City of Aurora's fig leaf argument that it was 'misled' about the nature of the services that Planned Parenthood intends to provide at its facility is neither factually nor legally persuasive" when they intentionally lied on application forms, would beyond belief for nearly anyone but Planned Parenthood.


Eric Johnston believes Rudy Giuliani would be the "most effective advocate for the pro-life cause" because he's pro-choice and not that religious.

Only a constitutionalist who supports abortion rights can create an anti-Roe majority by explaining that the end of Roe means letting the people decide, state by state, about abortion.

Huh? That's just not true. Why can't a prolife constitutionalist correctly explain what overturning Roe would do? Hasn't Fred Thompson done that?

Pro-lifers care about many important policy questions related to abortion, and Mr. Giuliani consistently stands with us.

Really? Please provide some examples besides his recent flip-flop on the Hyde Amendment. Like maybe... the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research? The Mexico City policy?


Here's an article on Dr. Denise Faustman and her work to cure diabetes without embryonic stem cells.


Cornell researchers are growing human ovaries and human eggs in lab mice.