Life Links 10/15/12

Another sad development for Democrats for Life of America. They've endorsed Tim Kaine in the U.S. Senate race in Virginia and Steve Pestka in the Congressional race in my district in Michigan. Neither of these candidates call themselves prolife. Kaine's web site says this:

I strongly support the right of women to make their own health and reproductive decisions and, for that reason, will oppose efforts to weaken or subvert the basic holding of Roe v. Wade.

Pestka spent a inordinate amount of money in the primary noting his love for Planned Parenthood because his opponent highlighted an old funding vote which Pestka has now disavowed.

"I am personally opposed to abortion and I would never counsel anyone to have an abortion," Pestka said. "I oppose late-term abortion, but at the end of the day, I don't support making abortion illegal."

Does Democrats for Life have any kind of standard on who they endorse?


Heikal Badrulhisham, a student at the University of Wisconsin, provides probably the worst argument ever against using graphic images as part of an effort to educate people about abortion.

The problem with the use of gruesome images in anti-abortion campaigns is the messages delivered by such images are distinct from the proclaimed rationales of the campaigns. Pictures of aborted fetuses have nothing to do with the moral arguments frequently used against abortion. If the purpose of a campaign is to convince people abortion is disgusting, by all means use the pictures. If not, tear down those repellant posters for the sake of reasonable dialogue.

Huh? How do the images have nothing to do with the moral arguments used by prolifers? What a ridiculously absurd assertion. Maybe Badrullhisham makes this assertion because of an unfamiliarity with prolife arguments as the piece also states, "I am not concerned about the arguments made by these campaigns."


Forbes notes how the FDA has approved a clinical trial which will use umbilical cord blood in an attempt to treat autism.

The 30 children that will participate in the placebo controlled trial, ages 2-7, had umbilical cord blood banked at birth, as part of the Cord Blood Registry, a highly organized and well known stem cell bank. The goal of the trial will be to evaluate whether stem cell therapy has any effect on behavior and language difficulties commonly experienced by children with autism.

If Brooklyn Nets CEO Brett Yormack says, "Just have an abortion and we'll be good," don't believe him.

Reyna Purcell, now 35, got pregnant shortly after she started dating Yormark, according to court filings. Purcell claimed she wanted to keep the baby, but Yormark threatened to break up with her if she did not end the pregnancy. Purcell claimed Yormark promised to stay in the relationship and take her on vacation if she had an abortion, according to the ruling. Purcell had an abortion in February 2011, according to the ruling, and Yormark ended the relationship soon after.

Life Links 10/9/12

A women in California has given birth to quintuplets after being advised to abort one or more of their children.

Meryl Ferraro, 39, and her husband, John, last week welcomed the arrival of their quintuplets, whom they have collectively nicknamed GRACE, for their first name initials: Gabrielle, Riley (a boy), Addison (a girl), Cooper, and Emerson (a girl).....

"After reading all the information, we were horrified," the Ferraro's background page reads. "We decided it was not our place to choose which of our babies would live and which one would die. If God was giving us 5 babies, there was a reason. We made a decision to see them as a precious blessing from God above and not as burdens we needed to eliminate."

Go and read David Lawson's piece in the Independent on abortion politics in the UK.  A taste:

Among Miller's responsibilities in Cabinet are "women" (that's what it says), so her interjection has been seen as monstrously inappropriate; and her accompanying it with the remark that she herself is "a feminist" is seen as bizarre beyond belief. The Guardian's Women's Blog Editor described her position as "astonishing", while in the same paper Tanya Gold levelled the most damning charge of all: "I suspect that Miller is pro-life." Good heavens, let's send round the thought police immediately.

In other UK abortion-related news, singer Lily Allen, who is pregnant, is apparently incapable of making an argument.  She seems to believe that all men shouldn't be allowed to share their position on abortion because some men leave women during pregnancy or after a child is born.

She began a lengthy series of Twitter posts with: 'Can small minded idiot blokes stop telling women whether or not they're entitled to abortions please ? #enoughnow'.

This was followed up by her tweeting: 'The day the number of single father households equal the number of single mother households is the day I start to listen to their views.'

Center for Reproductive Right is struggling to deal with all the prolife legislation on the state level so they've enlisted the help of some pro-abortion celebrities because no one argues better than an actor reading lines someone else wrote for them. 

Does providing free contraceptives lower the abortion rate?

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the Contraceptive Choice Project have released a study which found that when women were given free contraceptives, the rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion decreased.  Here's how Time describes the women in the study:

The researchers enrolled 9,256 women from the St. Louis region into the Contraceptive Choice Project between August 2007 and September 2011. The women were aged 14 to 45, with an average age of 25, and many were poor and uninsured with low education. Nearly two-thirds had had an unintended pregnancy previously. Participants were either not using a reversible contraception method or willing to switch to a new one.

So we have women who are open to using contraceptives or at least switching which kind they use.  This is obviously a sub-group of women.

And the results:

Over the course of the study, which lasted from 2008 to 2010, women experienced far fewer unintended pregnancies than expected: there were 4.4 to 7.5 abortions per 1,000 women in the study, after adjusting for age and race — much fewer than the national rate of 19.6 abortions per 1,000 women and lower also than the rate in the St. Louis area of 13.4 to 17 abortions per 1,000 women.

But the key point of the study is here:

Researchers provided free, FDA-approved birth control to the women for three years. The women were given their choice of contraception, including oral birth control pills and long-acting reversible contraceptive (LARC) methods like implants and IUDs. The researchers specially briefed the participants on the "superior effectiveness" of LARC methods — the T-shaped IUD, or intrauterine device, has close to 100% effectiveness and can last five to 10 years, for instance — and 75% of women chose those devices over the pill, patch or ring.

So the results don't say that providing women with any kind of free contraceptives reduces unplanned pregnancies but rather that briefing women who are willing to switch contraceptives to (or rather strongly encouraging women to use) long term contraceptive methods which are more effective and getting a large percentage of women to use those methods reduces unplanned pregnancies. 

This is basically like saying implantable contraceptives have higher success rates.  Duh, that's not news.  That's something we already know.  The only novel thing about this study is the high percentage of women (75%) the researchers convinced to go on long-acting implantable contraceptives.  They accomplished this because it was the primary goal of their study ("To promote the use of long-acting reversible contraceptive (LARC) methods"). 

While they accomplished their goal, their research flies in the face of the contraception choices of most American women whose top choices for contraception have been the pill, sterilization (female and male), and condoms.  IUDs are typically chosen by less than 10% of the female population.  To get a 75% of women using contraceptives to use implantable methods, that would take every OB/GYN pushing implantables as if they were used car salespeople.

The Time article (probably based on the study's authors) attempts to act like the reason women don't typically choose to use IUD is the higher up front.

Yet American women use LARC methods at far lower rates than in other countries. In large part, that's because of cost: upfront costs to implant an IUD, which requires a doctor visit, can total $500 to $1,000, for example. Over a decade, however, birth control pills can cost just as much. American doctors also tend not to recommend long-acting birth control to women as often as they do the pill or patch, though IUDs and implants may be up to 20 times more effective.

If this is true, then why does the percentage of women using IUDs barely change based on income (table 11)?  It goes from 5.5% for women in households with incomes ranging from 0-149% of the poverty level, 5.5% for women in the 150%-299% level and 5.9% in the 300%+ group. 

As I've noted over and over again, the cost of contraceptives is not one of the top reasons why women aren't using them (or aren't using them consistently).  

There are still a large number of reasons why most women don't want to use implantable contraceptives. Cost is likely one of them but certainly not something that by itself is going to get anywhere near 75% of women on contraceptives using implantable contraceptives.  

So attempting to take this study and act like it proves Obamacare and it's provision forcing employers to cover contraceptives will dramatically lower the abortion rate simply assumes too much.  It assumes all women of child-bearing age are like the women in this study, it assumes 75% of those women will use implantable contraceptives if provided for free, and it assumes the federal subsidized abortion coverage won't increase abortion numbers. 

Life Links 10/2/12

"Catholics" for Obama willing to blatantly lie about President Obama's record and what Planned Parenthood does?  Why am I not surprised?

On Wednesday Hudson also revealed that a group calling itself Catholics for Obama had been making push poll phone calls in support of the president's re-election bid. Among the questions being asked, he said, was "How can you support a 'Mormon' who does not believe in Jesus Christ?"

The phone banker making the call, which in this case went to a woman Hudson identifies as "the head of a pro-life committee at a parish I know" reportedly also asserted that "President Obama did not support abortion" and that Planned Parenthood "helps children get healthcare and prenatal care and does not promote abortion."

Another instance of pro-choice intolerance in Canada.

Dozens of wooden crosses, displayed on bales of hay at the corner of 188th Street and Fraser Highway, have been smashed to bits.

This is the second time vandals have destroyed this display. The latest attack happened sometime over the weekend.

Ironically, representatives of the group behind the roadside display were going to dismantle it themselves on Sunday morning, but when they arrived all they found was wreckage.

Former abortion clinic owner Terry Lazar is claiming his clinic changing from an abortion clinic to a medical clinic that doesn't provide abortion has nothing to do with prolife protesters despite his quoted comments in the New York Daily News. 

"We closed for economic reasons — not because of protesters," Lazar said. "This is something we've been working on for a long time. We weren't forced to close."

His comments published in the Daily News indicated that the protesters were at least partially behind the economic reasons. 


A federal appeals court has ruled against Planned Parenthood and other abortionists in Ohio who challenged Ohio's law restricting RU-486 abortions to FDA guidelines. 


France's Socialist President Francois Hollande plans on having the full cost of abortions be reimbursed by the government.

The change to full reimbursement was included in the 2013 social security budget unveiled on Monday. In a statement the government said the move was "necessary to ensure all women have equal access to abortion."

The move follows a long campaign by pro-choice organisations and was a manifesto promise by Socialist President Francois Hollande ahead of his election victory in June.

The government also announced that it would increase the amounts clinics are allowed to charge for carrying out abortions to bring them closer into line with their real costs and to facilitate better support for patients.

New York abortion clinic closes because of prolife efforts

From the NY Daily News:

Lazar said the clinic tried to provide both abortions and other types of procedures, but doctors and patients refused to cross the throngs of religious protesters who tried to convince them not to go in.

“You had protesters with signs and banners yelling at people telling them they were baby killers,” Lazar said. “We were trying to do both and it just wasn’t working. We would have gone out of business.”

The new clinic - slated to open as the New York Center for Specialty Surgery under the direction of a California-based medical firm - is undergoing renovations.

So far as many as 20 doctors have expressed interest in working at the new clinic - a stark difference from as recently as a month ago when Lazar struggled to find doctors willing to work there.

Life Links 9/27/12

In Canada, there is much ado over Status of Women minister Rona Ambrose voting in favor of a motion to create a committee to research when life begins. Jonathon Kay has the details.

Globe & Mail columnist Tabatha Southey Tweeted that "Status of Women Minister Rona Ambrose voted Yea on [motion] 312. Now waiting for the Minister of Agriculture to vote against corn." Canadian poet Paul Vermeersch wondered aloud: "After Rona Ambrose votes in Parliament against all Canadian women, will Peter Kent napalm a family of peregrine falcons in solidarity?" And Gail Erlick Robinson, Director of the University Health Network's Women's Mental Health Program, has a letter to the National Post declaring that "As Minister for the Status of Women, [yea-voting] Rona Ambrose should be particularly ashamed."

Ashamed? For what? Voting her conscience on one of the most important bioethical issues facing humanity? For supporting some measure of parliamentary courage in remedying a legislative vacuum that has existed in this country since the Supreme Court of Canada struck down our abortion law a quarter century ago?

Pro-choice militants cast abortion restrictions — at any stage of gestation — as a form of female slavery. And, perversely, they do this despite the fact that sex-selective abortion is eradicating millions of females from the earth every year — including some right here in Canada. Might it not be within the ambit of the Status of Women Minister to investigate whether the extermination of so many girl fetuses — including those viable outside the womb — is consistent with Canadian values?

Kristin Neuhaus, a former abortionist and rubber-stamper for abortionist George Tiller owes $93,000 to the state board for her various attempts to keep her medical license.

Speaking of Tiller and Neuhaus, the leader of a pro-abortion organization in Kansas with ties to Tiller has purchased his former clinic and aims to make it an abortion clinic again.

Burkhart declined to discuss the details of the sale, but property tax records available online list the appraised value of the property as $734,100. Burkhart said she can't say yet exactly when the new clinic will open or how many doctors will work there..... In a recent advertisement circulated by email to abortion-rights supporters, Trust Women said it was looking for medical staff experienced in first and early-second trimester abortions and planned to open its clinic between mid-November and January 2013.

"Pro-choice" but glad about no choice?

Director Penny Marshall talks about her abortion in her new book and says something which undermines her pro-choice position:

She is also vocal about her support for abortion rights after her own experience with unplanned pregnancies. Her first pregnancy with her boyfriend-turned-husband resulted in her daughter, Tracy. Her second, following her second marriage and divorce to Hollywood director Rob Reiner, resulted in an abortion. "I'm pro-choice. But I'm glad that there was no choice back then, because I have a wonderful daughter and three grandchildren," she said.

Pro-abortion ideologue Amanda Marcotte abandons "trust women" rhetoric when faced with 39 week abortion

In her piece for the American Prospect, Amanda Marcotte can't follow her "abortion is moral," "trust women" and "my body, my choice" rhetoric to it's obvious conclusion when faced with Sarah Catt's near term abortion. Instead, she lamely tries to claim that Catt's action of taking abortion pills to try to kill her child in her womb is somehow vastly different than an abortion.

The problem is that what Catt did doesn't have much relationship to the cluster of medical procedures that get grouped under the common term "abortion"—which is how the British press is describing Catt's actions. Inducing labor with intent to miscarry is a much different thing than procedures designed to prevent birth in the first place.

What? That's absurd. Every year there are numerous abortion procedures which are designed to prevent live birth by killing the unborn before they are born. Like RU 486 abortions (sure the children are smaller but they still end up outside the woman's body). Or like induction abortions. You know, the kind of late-term abortions performed by the late George Tiller or Colorado-based abortionist Warren Hern.

This word choice conflates Catt's actions with ordinary abortions—and does so in a world where a woman's right to have one is hotly contested.

Oh....so only "ordinary abortions" are okay? Why can't a woman decide to have an abortion at 39 weeks? Shouldn't Catt be set free? Her body, her choice, right? Trust women, right? After taking the time to spout off about the rareness of post-24 week abortions, she then hilariously writes this:

Dr. George Tiller, who was assassinated for providing these abortions, had a second physician sign off on all abortions after 24 weeks and was able to repeatedly demonstrate his careful documentation in court.

Yeah, that second physician was Kristin Ann Neuhaus, who lost her license to practice medicine because of her lax medical exams when she signed off for Tiller's abortions.

Of course, the debate on late-term abortion remains unsettled, and there are many reasons women should be allowed to have them. Remember, Catt was convicted because she induced labor, on her own, after her fetus was viable. At 39 weeks, the only real way that Catt could have ended her pregnancy was by going into labor, induced or otherwise. That the baby was stillborn is something the court has taken on faith, and even if true, there's no evidence, especially without a body to autopsy, that the drugs she took to induce labor also killed her baby. Catt's actions fall outside the abortion debate.

Why? What an absurd assertion. Marcotte can't cope with the reality that some women (though obviously not very many) like Sara Catt want abortions very late in pregnancy. The evidence seems to show (though an autopsy of the child's body would be more conclusive) she took drugs designed to kill her child and induced labor. That's an abortion. A very late one but an abortion. How can a woman being prosecuted for an illegal abortion fall outside the abortion debate?

Government must build abortion law around the needs of the one in three women who will get an abortion in her lifetime, not around criminally minded outliers like Sarah Catt.

But according to various pro-choice beliefs shouldn't the British government have protected Catt's inherent right to have a post-24 week abortion? Or is the right to abortion a non-inherent right? If so, doesn't that demolish the whole pro-choice position? Marcotte seems to think she can talk about the elephant in the room without ever talking about the issues the elephant in the room raises for people who base their arguments for abortion on the ideology that women should be able to do as they will with their bodies throughout pregnancy. When someone has an abortion at the end of a term pregnancy, Marcotte seems to think asserting "It's not an abortion" and "It's rare" somehow allows her to escape from defending the precepts of her ideology.

Pro-abort flash mob dance coming to a city near you?

What happens when you lack the inability to make a serious argument against legislation to regulate abortion clinics?

Remake a popular song, insert the word "Vagina" and dance along. Video below (make sure to turn the captions on so you can read the dance instructions - apparently pointing at your nether regions is now a dance called the "Can't Say It"):




A flashmob is scheduled for noon today in Lansing, Michigan. Nice to know this is what the ACLU has been working on as opposed to coming up with real arguments which actually address the legislation they're so against.

Woman sentenced for illegal 40 week abortion in Britain

How will pro-choice bloggers respond to this?

A married British woman who aborted her baby in the final week of her pregnancy was sentenced to eight years in prison Monday — a brutal crime that investigators called “cold and calculating.”

Sarah Catt, 35, of North Yorkshire, England, was accused of using a drug she bought online from a company in India to induce labor past the 24 week limit allowed under law, The Telegraph newspaper reported.

She was 40 weeks when she terminated her pregnancy in May 2010, authorities said.

Catt, who has two children with her husband, said the baby boy was born lifeless and she decided to bury him alone, The Telegraph said. She never told police where she put the body.

Catt believed the baby was the result of a seven-year extramarital affair with a co-worker that eventually ended, the BBC said.

She reportedly never told her husband she was pregnant, although he remained supportive of her during her arrest.

Her body, her choice? Trust women?

Life Links 9/18/12

A Pennsylvania man attacked and tried to kill girlfriend after demanding she get an abortion.
From the Express-Times:

Jashua Kinch-Rodriguez, 24, approached Jessenia Rosario about 9 p.m. Friday as she pulled into her apartment in the 100 block of South 12th Street, police said.

Kinch-Rodriguez started arguing with her as she sat in her car's seat, demanding she abort the baby and calling her a "whore," according to court records.

He then punched Rosario in the stomach and genitals with an open fist while screaming at her and threatening to kill her, police said. He also allegedly closed the car door on her legs.

After Kinch-Rodriguez walked away, Rosario got out of the car and started going up the stairs to her second-floor apartment, where four other people were already inside, police said.

Kinch-Rodriguez then produced a gun and started firing several shots into the apartment, nearly striking Rosario, according to court documents.

The NY Times has a long piece on researchers using adult stem cells to create organs.

Implanting such a "bioartificial" organ would be a first-of-its-kind procedure for the field of regenerative medicine, which for decades has been promising a future of ready-made replacement organs — livers, kidneys, even hearts — built in the laboratory.

For the most part that future has remained a science-fiction fantasy. Now, however, researchers like Dr. Macchiarini are building organs with a different approach, using the body's cells and letting the body itself do most of the work......

So far, only a few organs have been made and transplanted, and they are relatively simple, hollow ones — like bladders and Mr. Beyene's windpipe, which was implanted in June 2011. But scientists around the world are using similar techniques with the goal of building more complex organs. At Wake Forest University in North Carolina, for example, where the bladders were developed, researchers are working on kidneys, livers and more. Labs in China and the Netherlands are among many working on blood vessels.

I'm struggling to comprehend how these parents can be some "me" oriented and have such a pathological desire to obtain a daughter. It's sickening how they see their children as products to be bought and discarded if they're not "useable." No details are provided to how many of her daughter's unborn siblings were killed solely because they were male.

Three days after arriving in California, Simpson underwent egg retrieval surgery. Eighteen eggs were retrieved; of these, 11 were mature and were fertilized.

Her husband left after the surgery to return home and take care of their three boys. After resting for five days, Simpson returned to the clinic for her embryo transfer.

She was met with devastating news: all of her embryos were found to be chromosomally abnormal. None were useable.

"I cried. And cried some more," recalled Simpson. "All that money, the drugs, the travel, time off work. The money."

Despite the financial and emotional setbacks, she wanted to try PGD again, soon. Three months later, she was back in Laguna Hills. She had taken out $15,000 on a line of credit to pay for the second attempt.

She went through the whole process again. This time, the embryos were good to go. An ultrasound was used to guide a catheter containing the embryos into her uterus. Six days later, Simpson took a pregnancy test. It was positive.....

After nearly four years and $40,000, Simpson's dreams of being a "girl-mommy" were finally going to come true.

Simpson gave birth to her daughter during a home delivery in her bathtub in 2009. "The moment she was born, I asked if it was still a girl," she recalled.

Simpson had to work six days a week right up until the delivery and months afterward to repay the loan she took.

"My husband and I stared at our daughter for that first year. She was worth every cent. Better than a new car, or a kitchen reno."

Alabama abortion clinic scheme denied license again

Sometimes you wonder how stupid abortion clinic operators think state governments are.

A state hearing officer has ruled against Kelley Rain-Water in her appeal of the state health department’s denial of her license application to reopen the New Woman All Women Health Care.

Rain-Water said she plans to redo the clinic lease that caused concerns at the Department of Public Health and make another application.

“I am very optimistic. I cannot see a reason I would be denied if we have an acceptable lease,” she said.

I wonder why the state would trust a word of a potential new lease after the recently denied lease would have allowed Rain-Water to "run" her friend Diane Derzis' abortion business and funnel all the profits to her friend after her friend lost the clinic's license.

New Woman All Women Health Care had been Alabama’s best known abortion clinic because of a fatal bombing in 1989, but it agreed to shut down in May after being cited by the health department for violations, including two patients being given overdoses of drugs and needing to be taken to a hospital. The health department’s agreement with the operator, Diane Derzis, allowed her to lease it to a new operator that ran it independently of her.

Rain-Water, a friend of Derzis, got a lease, but the health department denied her application for a license. Department attorney Brian Hale said her lease let Derzis or her company, All Women Inc., have a role in determining how much profit the new operation makes and requires that all profit go to Derzis company.

Hale said that gave Derzis an active role in the new operation.

It's not like any new lease would be anything but a front for a sham operation that allows Derzis to maintain control of her abortion clinic and its profits.

Inspection report reveals numerous deficiencies in Virginia abortion clinics

The Family Foundation of Virginia used a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the inspection report of Virginia's abortion clinics.

It's not pretty. Including one clinic in which bags of blood and fetal remains were left open in a freezer and spilled on the freezer floor.

This clinic were notified of the inspections beforehand and apparently never thought to clean the blood.

Here's there press release:

An inspection of the Tidewater Women's Health Clinic in Norfolk found:

The freezer which is used to store the collected conception material, had blood and un-bagged conception material frozen to the inner bottom surface. An observation was conducted of the freezer kept in the clean utility room. Staff #3 reported after inspection of the conception material, it was poured into plastic storage bags and the bags are stored in the freezer until the next weekly medical waste pick up. The observation revealed that some of the plastic bags were open and had spilled their contents onto the bottom of the freezer. Approximately three-fourths of the freezer's bottom and shelf was covered with frozen blood and conception material.

An inspection of the A Capital Women's Clinic in Richmond found that the staff doesn't change the MetriWash solution in the sink every time dirty instruments are brought in (instructions for MetriWash say to change the solution every time) and that a sponge used to clean instruments is only changed once per week.

At Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Virginia's clinic in Virginia Beach, the inspector's report states, "Employee #4 was asked how she could tell which of the containers (used to transport/clean instruments) were dirty or clean. Employee #4 stated, ‘I can't. I guess we need to have a different color to put the instruments in once they are clean.'"

Abortion advocates (the same ones who thought inspections were unnecessary) are acting like the numerous deficiencies were no big deal.

“It is not a coincidence that this early data on inspections, which only tells a half story — and a misleading one — is released just two days before the board of Health is to vote on the regulations once again,” the Virginia Coalition to Protect Women’s Health said in a statement.

Life Links 9/12/12

Ramesh Ponnuru discusses a recent "fact check" on Obama's record opposing Born Alive Infant Protection laws.

State Senator Obama understood perfectly well that the bill did not apply within the womb, and never said otherwise. His point, to paraphrase it, was that granting legal protections to a pre-viable child was logically incompatible with Roe. He was wrong to predict the courts would see it that way: No court has struck down the type of legislation Illinois was considering; there is now a federal law on the books that is nearly identical to it. The Court's jurisprudence makes the location of the developing human being — inside or outside the womb — decisive for whether it has a right to life, and not just its stage of development. (That's one reason pro-lifers made partial-birth abortion an issue: to establish that a child partway out of the womb would be protected.)

That's why Obama opposed the bill even when it included a redundant passage noting that by protecting infants born alive, i.e., outside the womb, it did not protect fetuses within the womb. He did not believe that human beings at that stage of development should have legal protection, whether inside or outside the womb.

One of Michael Jackson's recorded songs that didn't make it on his Bad album was about abortion.

In "Abortion Papers," Jackson approaches the matter carefully (and ambiguously): rather than presenting a dogmatic political perspective, he personalizes it through the story of a conflicted girl raised in a deeply religious home and her Bible-admonishing father. In his notes for the track, Jackson wrote, "I have to do it in a way so I don't offend girls who have gotten abortions or bring back guilt trips so it has to be done carefully....I have to really think about it." Jackson narrates the track with a strong, passionate vocal. Ironically, the main drawback of the track is its catchiness. It feels a bit strange wanting to dance and sing along to a song about abortion, but that's exactly what the addictive groove inspires. Kudos to Jackson for attempting to tackle a sensitive issue in a thoughtful manner, though it appears even he wasn't quite sure about how it would play to listeners.

The BBC is coming under fire for asking viewers to vote on whether a couple on a show should abort their unborn child diagnosed with Down Syndrome.

Mother charged with attempted murder of infant after leaving child to die in dryer

Her body, her choice?

A Henrico County woman who authorities say abandoned her newborn baby last month in a dryer had never intended to allow the child to survive after being denied an abortion weeks earlier, a prosecutor said Monday.

Angela Marie Janecka had tried to have the baby aborted but was turned down at clinics because her pregnancy had reached the 20-week stage, Henrico Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Nancy Oglesby said during a bond hearing for Janecka....

Oglesby, as she did last week, reiterated how Janecka's husband came home to help clean up after the birth, having been told by his wife that a doctor came to the home to assist with the delivery and took the stillborn infant away in a bag.

But Oglesby, describing the physician as "a mystery doctor," added that Janecka had at first asked that her husband not return home, a request he rejected. He later discovered the infant in the dryer, placed inside a plastic bag and pillow case, as he transferred some clothes from the washer. Police said he thought a moaning sound he heard was the family cat.

Thankfully, baby Meghan survived and is doing well.

I wonder how proponents of the bodily autonomy argument would deal with this situation. Should Janecka be punished for exercising her bodily autonomy and placing the newborn child in a dryer instead of caring for her? If so, doesn't that undermine the bodily autonomy argument?

Life Links 9/5/12

An abortionist in Ghana has been caught on video talking a woman into having sex with him in the middle of her abortion. He has apparently done this thousands of times. A documentary of his arrest and operations will be shown on television there.

A medical professional at a quintessentially clean, calm and quiet clinic at Madina in Accra has been arrested for performing illegal abortions and sleeping with thousands of women who have come under his knife.

'Dr. Joshua Drah' initially denied any charges made against him by the police but was visibly shocked when he was shown a video of his operations.

The Daily Beast has a long story on Karen Handel book about the Planned Parenthood-Komen controversy.

Handel says Komen had "ongoing discussions with Planned Parenthood" about the issue, even exchanging proposed public statements. She says the presidents of both Planned Parenthood and Komen made an agreement not to take the issue to the press. Cecile Richards, the Planned Parenthood president, broke the deal, she says, going to the press before Komen had made a public statement and launching "an unprecedented, premeditated assault on a women's health organization, while at the same time claiming to be a women's health organization." (Planned Parenthood has denied going to the press.)........

Handel also points to an important internal glitch at Komen after the decision was made, but before an official statement was released. She says a call came in from the Associated Press asking about the Planned Parenthood grant, as the news had apparently been leaked. Handel says Komen's head of communications didn't stick to the planned script—namely, that Komen was simply restructuring its grants. "We had no intention of ever making 'investigations' the public narrative or mentioning it with the press," Handel writes in the book. "Unfortunately, someone would eventually do so—Komen's own communications vice president, Leslie Aun."

Of all places, the New York Times highlights a new study which notes how abortion (especially having multiple abortions) increases a woman's risk of very preterm birth for later pregnancies.

After controlling for smoking, a history of miscarriage, socioeconomic level and other factors, the investigators found that the risk for very preterm birth — that is, birth at 28 or fewer weeks of gestation — increased with the number of previous abortions a woman had had: a 19 percent increase after one abortion, 69 percent for two, and 278 percent for three.

Kevin Williamson notes overhearing a conversation of the staff of a mainstream media outlet at the DNC convention who believe images of aborted children are fake.

So the geniuses in the tent next door were declaring that these images are somehow fake or exaggerated (what do you think a baby a few months away from birth looks like chopped up), and were complaining that the pro-lifer protesters should not be allowed to bring their children along. Specifically, one lady said, "That's child abuse!"

It takes a special kind of moral illiteracy to look at that poster of a small person butchered and then to conclude that bringing your kids along to protest that state-sanctioned violence is the child abuse.

Joe Biden channels Austin Powers

Who knew the Vice-President could do such a good Austin Powers impression?

Joe Biden: "America is better off today than they left us when they left."



Austin Danger Powers: "Allow myself to introduce....myself."

Life Links 9/4/12

Meghan Clyne in the Weekly Standard on the "War on Women" rhetoric.

In the meantime, a perceptive observer may notice a curious thing about this "war on women." It is based entirely on one set of policies: those pertaining to women's reproductive systems. By the Democrats' logic, to oppose abortion on demand and taxpayer-funded contraception is to be "anti-woman." Womanhood is thus defined by the desire for unrestricted abortion and free birth control; women themselves are reducible to ovaries.

It was once permissible in American politics to view women as incapable of concerns beyond childbearing—but not in this century. And in addition to insulting women's intelligence, this approach may well backfire. American women are active, thoughtful citizens; their political concerns are focused on the future of their nation, not the cheapest and easiest way to shut down their reproductive tracts.

Politico on Dems abortion strategy: Win the abortion debate by never mentioning abortion.

Democrats think they've figured out how to win the abortion debate: Don't make it about abortion.....

But don't expect them to focus on abortion — or even necessarily use the word. Instead, they'll defend President Barack Obama's record on reproductive health and reproductive rights. And, as they have before, they'll accuse GOP nominee Mitt Romney and his party of waging a "war on women."

Here's another retired abortionist who isn't making any sense. New Jersey's The Record has an article in which retired abortion Robert Livingston speaks up about his history of performing illegal abortion and then ridiculously claims he is now uncomfortable talking about abortion (as he is giving an interview to a paper about abortion and his history as an abortionist) because of the stigma and ominous environment. The Akin controversy magically left him bursting to talk.


In Great Britain, a man has been arrested for killing his former girlfriend after he found out she had an abortion and was seeing another man.

It was alleged that the day before her death, Mr Lowe - who used Facebook under the name Ian 'Boom Boom' Lowe - wrote on the social networking site: "Need a weapon out of the armoury to shoot the bitch."

Then, on the day of her killing, the jury was told that he posted another message saying: "Just to let everybody know, Leanne has aborted the baby.

"She did not tell me or even give me a say in the matter."

Can we end the media created "abortion is so important to all pro-choice women" myth?

Watching the Today Show this morning as Matt Lauer interviewed Jeb Bush regarding the convention, Lauer asked a question which contains an assumption I've heard or read over and over again. Transcript from Newsbusters:

"Governor Romney has chipped away at the gender gap....But some people worry that the addition of Paul Ryan to this ticket, and bringing with him his staunchly conservative views on topics like abortion, will slow that momentum? Do you share that fear?"

Over and over again I've heard this belief that there are millions upon millions of women who vote solely or mostly based on abortion or there are women who like Mitt Romney but are so turned off by the Republican Party's position on abortion that they'll vote for Obama. This is a myth.

Also, who are these "some people" that worry?

Abortion is a huge issue for a small percentage of the electorate. For example, here's the results of a January 2012 NY Times/CBS poll asking about most important issues.

3. In deciding who you would like to see elected President this year, which one of thefollowing issues will be most important to you: 1. Abortion, or 2. The federal budget deficit, or 3. The economy, or 4. Health care, or 5. Illegal immigration, or 6. Something else? IF SOMETHING ELSE, ASK: What is that? ISSUES WERE ROTATED.

1/12-17/12
Abortion 3
Federal budget deficit 15
Economy 56
Health care 14
Illegal immigration 5
Something else 6
DK/NA 2

3% says abortion is the most important issue for them. Guess what? If they're pro-choice, they're not voting for Romney regardless of who his running mate is.

An ABC exit poll from the 2010 elections for people who voted for Congressional candidates shows that what someone thinks on abortion hardly budges voting for the vast majority of voters.

Which comes closest to your position? Abortion should be: (2,772 respondents)

Voted For Democrat (D) Voted For Republican (R)

Legal in all cases
19% of Respondents 51% 49%
Legal in most cases
23% of Respondents 45% 55%
Illegal in most cases
25% of Respondents 46% 54%
Illegal in all cases
28% of Respondents 50% 50%

See that? For people at the ends of the spectrum of abortion positions, they still voted half the time for Republicans and half the time for Democrats despite the huge difference in the position's of the Congressional candidates.

National Right to Life and the SBA List have results from other exit polls which show that for the small percentage of voters who view abortion as a top or top-ish election issues, the large majority are prolifers.

So regardless of what the producers of all the political news shows believe, it is simply not true that being prolife hurts candidates in national elections. There isn't some army of suburban women ready to flee the Republican party and vote for Democrats because Paul Ryan doesn't have exceptions for rape and incest. If you're ready to vote for Barack Obama because of Paul Ryan's position on abortion, then guess what? You were never planning on voting for Mitt Romney anyway and most likely you're one of the phony Republicans the Democrats always find.

In reality, the percentage of people who vote mainly/solely based on abortion policies is small and it appears the large majority of them are prolife.

Florida woman to be charged after putting baby in dumpster

A Florida woman named Alexandria Sladon-Marler appears to have given birth in a hotel room and then dumped her son in the trash. The child was found dead. Police say they will charge her with homicide when she's realized from the hospital.

A Fort Lauderdale woman is under investigation in connection to a newborn found dead in the trash, police said Monday.

"Officers arrived at the hotel and subsequently located an infant's body in an exterior dumpster," Fort Lauderdale Police Det. DeAnna Garcia said.

Someone wrapped the child in a towel and placed him in a pillow case before dumping him with the trash, Det. Garcia explained.....

Detectives said doctors found Sladon-Marler still had an umbilical cord attached when she was treated. According to physicians, the manner in which it was severed matches the umbilical cord found attached to the child.