Scarrrrrry but Does Anyone Know What It Means

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Maine’s death rate now higher than its birth rate

by Ben Johnson

AUGUSTA, ME, May 20, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The number of deaths in Maine now exceeds the number of births, according to a new report released by the Governor's Office of Policy and Management (OPM).
Last year, there were 103 more deaths than new babies.
The state's birth rate has steadily fallen over the last 23 years, from 14.1 live births per 1,000 women in 1990 to 10.2 per 1,000 women today.

The state's analysis of census data found the state has the nation's highest median age, 43, and is tied with Vermont for the lowest percentage of minors. Only 20.7 percent of the two states' population is composed of people under the age of 18.
Maine's population has the highest percentage of Baby Boomers in the country, 29.4 percent.
“A few aspects of Maine’s demographic picture stand out: an older population with a large number of baby boomers, relatively few children, and low numbers of racial and ethnic minorities,” the report states.” Another report, Population Outlook to 2030, notes a report produced by the Governor's Office of Policy and Management (OPM).

The graying human resources department will have a harmful economic impact on every county in the state.
“Business executives look at workforce availability when making plans for the future. In addition to information about the makeup of their current workforce, they look at how many working-age people will be available in the coming years,” the OPM report states.
 

This gloomy outlook has been confirmed by multiple reports across state departmental lines.
"An aging, slowly growing population and the declining rate of residents participating in the labor force will result in slow labor force growth during the coming years," according to The Maine Labor Force—Aging and Slowly Growing, produced by the state Department of Labor. “No county will escape the demographic challenge posed by the aging work force.”
State law may have to change to make the state more amenable to a higher birthrate.
The state affirms “a woman's exercise of her private decision to terminate a pregnancy before viability,” allowing abortion to remain legal if Roe v. Wade were overturned.
State law also requires all insurance companies that cover prescription drugs to provide contraceptives to policy holders.

Last November, Maine voters narrowly voted to redefine marriage by granting state licenses for same-sex “marriages.”
For those still having children, the top baby names in the state in 2012 were Emma and Mason.

Source: LifeSite News

Horrors

 

“Big Sis” for president? EMILY’s List, Washington Post promote Janet Napolitano in 2016

by Ben Johnson

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 20, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Would the woman most closely associated with the TSA airport stripsearches make a good presidential candidate? The abortion lobbying group EMILY's List and The Washington Post think so.
This month, EMILY's List launched an initiative entitled "Madam President" dedicated to electing the first female president.

The group's president, Stephanie Schriock, said she was not placing all her bets on a Hilary Clinton candidacy.

"If she chooses not to, our options are far from exhausted," she said. "We have a deep bench of women leaders committed to fighting for progressive change who are up to the task of taking their place on the Democratic ticket in 2016 and beyond.”
Among those she listed were Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

Adding to the speculation, The Washington Post named Napolitano “a woman to watch for 2016” in February. The newspaper reports the DHS secretary “is quietly making it known that she is considering the race, and there is reason to take her seriously.”
If she chooses to run, she will have to rehabilitate a deeply negative image.
Napolitano, a former governor of Arizona, has become one of the least popular figures in the administration since overseeing the TSA's invasive screenings at airports, which range from naked body scans to full-body pat-downs.
These and her invitations for Americans to report anything fishy about their fellow citizens – dubbed “See Something? Say Something” – earned her the nickname “Big Sis” from Matt Drudge of The Drudge Report.
In 2010, Rasmussen Reports noted that 47 percent of Americans viewed her unfavorably – 28 percent “very” unfavorable. 

In April 2009, her Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a report on "rightwing extremism" in the U.S. that stated likely offenders "may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.” The report was later withdrawn.
As governor of Arizona, she vetoed a conscience bill that would have allowed pharmacists to deline distributing the abortifacient morning-after pill, as well as a fetal pain bill.
Her successor, Republican Jan Brewer, signed the fetal pain bill, which restricts abortion to the first 20 weeks of pregnancy, as well as banning telemed abortions, improving the state's informed consent laws, and signing the nation's first ban on race- or sex-selective abortions.
Brewer's approval rating spiked 16 percent in two weeks after she signed a restrictive immigration bill.

EMILY's List did not include Brewer in its list of potential female presidential contenders.
Others notably absent from the List's list were pro-life Republicans such as Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, and New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez.
In 2012, the group contributed $3.8 million to candidates, all Democrats. Its top three recipients were Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri; Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts; and Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, the first openly lesbian U.S. Senator. Montana's Jon Tester received $3,000.
It spent $7.7 million on advertisements in key races, devoting more than three-times as much money to attack ads ($6 million) as it did to ads favoring a candidate ($1.7 million). All but $70,675 of the negative spending was directed against Republicans.

The group did not donate a dollar to any Republican candidate.
The current president of EMILY's List may be interested in testing the presidential waters herself. Stephanie Schriock is considering a run for U.S. Senate in Montana as a Democrat.
In 2012, 44 percent of women voted for Republican Mitt Romney. A Gallup poll conducted during the first week of May shows that the percentage of American women who describe themselves as pro-life is roughly equal to those who call themselves "pro-choice."

LifeSite News

Oxymoron

The oxymoron of “safe” abortions

• by Christina Martin

Liberal blogger Amanda Marcotte wrote a recent piece for USA today titled, ” How to prevent another Gosnell”. In the article, Marcotte seeks to answer the question she believes is lurking on everyone’s mind after his verdict. “How can we prevent future tragedies like this?”

Marcotte is under the impression that Gosnell is the lone bad cowboy on the abortion frontier. We’ve rounded him up, put him in prison and now the world is a much better place. In reality Gosnell is one among many crooked abortionists in our nation. Our latest videos from the “Inhuman” project show the extent doctors and clinic workers will sink to in the name of “reproductive rights”. I hope Marcotte will watch those videos and realize women are being victimized and deceived today. Sadly Marcotte would rather focus on future prevention, which she states can be accomplished by making abortion “safer”.

“Indeed, if we want to prevent future Gosnells, the solution is simple:
Abortion should be regulated, of course, but in the same way that all
other medical practice is regulated, with an eye towards making it
safe, not making it hard to get.”

Safe and legal, the all too familiar rallying cry of those who champion abortion. How easy it is to disregard the fact that it’s legal in some states to abort a 26 wk old in the womb yet Gosnell was convicted of first degree murder for killing children born alive at 24 wks. I guess as long as it’s legal and sanitary, ethical questions need not be raised.

I’m not against clean facilities and good healthcare. It’s clear that Gosnell’s Women’s Health Center was a horrific place. Dirty equipment, blood stained tables, cat feces on the floor. By now most of us have read the details and there stomach turning. Marcotte wants women in sterile environments where they can terminate their child with little risk to their own heath and well-being. I’ll admit I can see how that certainly sounds better than being in a clinic where baby feet are held in jars. Yet does a clean room, decorated walls and a certified OB-GYN constitute a safe abortion?
A Planned Parenthood question and answer page has this question posed:

How Safe Are In-Clinic Abortion Procedures?
“Safety is an important and common concern for women. In-clinic abortion procedures are very safe. But there are risks with any medical procedure.”

• an allergic reaction
• blood clots in the uterus
• incomplete abortion — part of the pregnancy is left inside the uterus
• failure to end the pregnancy
• infection
• injury to the cervix or other organs
• undetected ectopic pregnancy
• very heavy bleeding

“Most often, these complications are simple to treat with medicine or other treatments”.
In a paragraph below Planned Parenthood admit’s this fact:
“Even though in-clinic abortion procedures are generally very safe, in extremely rare cases, serious complications may be fatal”.
In reality even one of these risks is much more problematic than this simple list tells. Just ask any women whose had an “incomplete abortion” if she thought having a doctor inform her a piece of her baby was left inside was a “simple complication.”
As for extremely rare cases of death, we know of two women in the past year alone who suffered that fate. Tonya Reaves who was left bleeding to death for five hours in a Chicago Planned Parenthood and kindergarten teacher Jennifer Morbelli who died days after her late-term abortion with Leroy Carhart.

Not to mention the fact that there are studies that show potential risks that remain unnamed on Planned Parenthood’s website. Walter Hoye, founder of the Issues for Life Institute has a website with an entire page dedicated to “Medical Studies“. This page contains hundreds of documents from studies and research on abortion and it’s link to issues like breast cancer, premature birth, low birth weight, autism and a host of other issues.

Hoye recently released documents on a study called, ” Abortion’s Impact on Prematurity” by Dr. Martin McCaffrey, M.D. In the study Dr. McCaffery writes, “Once an abortion has occurred it might remain an immutable risk factor for future preterm birth.” Mcaffert is a clinical professor of pediatrics at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine, director of the Perinatal Quality Collaborative of North Carolina and member of the N.C General Assembly Child Fatality Task Force. The full study can be viewed here. 

Those are only the potential physical risks. There are many organizations like “Silent no more” or “Operation Outcry” where thousands of women tell their stories of the great emotional trauma they suffered from abortion.

Along with the physical, emotional, and spiritual consequences of abortion, remains the ethical one. We can’t ignore the morality issue. Abortion allows for the termination of a life. Whether through suction instruments, abortion pills or tools that dismember, a growing fetus is destroyed. Rev. Thomas Berg is a moral theology professor at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers. He told USA Today that there’s a “cultural schizophrenia” in our country when it comes to the status of the unborn.

“On one hand, the federal government and dozens of states recognize the fetus as an unborn child when a crime has been committed and leads to an injury or death. At the same time, the abortion industry co-exists with a health-care system in which fetal surgery is becoming commonplace. There’s very little rationality behind that contrast. How can the abortion industry co-exist within the same culture where we’re performing operations on the fetus, where we’re … bringing legal lawsuits against people who kill” the unborn.”

Former Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson has gone public with her traumatic story of having a medical abortion. She describes her experience of Planned Parenthood workers downplaying the risks of her decision in an article titled, “Planned Parenthood kept me in the dark about my abortion“. Abby writes:

“It was all pills and that seemed really simple.  Everything was done at home.  It was private, on your schedule, under your control and seemed less invasive.  “Nothing worse than a heavy period,” according to Planned Parenthood.  Sounded pretty easy to me.  So, I took the bait.  I made and appointment and got the money together.  The day came and it really felt like any other day.  I wasn’t nervous…I wasn’t having surgery.  This was going to be simple.”

Abby goes on to tell a story that is truly frightening. Something that was supposed to be “simple” ended up being a nightmare. After the first day when she thought she was literally dying followed eight more weeks of blood clots,nausea, excruciating cramps and heavy bleeding.

Later she questioned the Planned Parenthood staff she worked with as to why they didn’t tell women of the risks associated with the abortion pill. Their response was, “We don’t want to scare them.”
Planned Parenthood, writers like Amanda Marcotte and biased liberal media outlets chose to sweep under the rug the reality of abortion. Gosnell’s case gave them an opportunity to view the most heinous side of the abortion industry. Now that the trial is over his case has been spinned as a means to protect abortion rights and fight for “safe” abortions. There is no such thing as a ‘safe’ abortion. The instruments may be clean, the doctor may be credible, a woman may not even regret it later. Nevertheless when two living beings come into a clinic, and only one walks out alive. It’s a deadly and dangerous scenario.

Source: LiveAction News

Born Alive Dilemma

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‘What could I do? I killed the baby,’ abortionist told nurse about baby born alive

by Sarah Terzo

Note: This is the latest installment in a series of articles detailing cases in which babies were born alive during abortions, and then either left to die or actively killed. To read the other parts click here.
May 21, 2013 (LiveActionNews.org) - By now, most people have heard about the allegations that came out about Dr. Douglas Karpen. Four former clinic workers are alleging that he killed babies that were born alive as often as several times a day. What you may not know is that this is not the first time former clinic workers have come forth with accusations of infanticide.
In taped testimony for the Pro-Life Action League, which can be read in its entirety here, former clinic worker Joy Davis tells a harrowing story of working with former abortionist Dr. Tommy Tucker. Tommy Tucker lost his license after an investigation into the death of a woman at his clinic. Much of Davis’s testimony revolves around how Dr. Tucker had her practicing medicine without a license, drawing blood, administering medication, even doing abortions. She describes the horrible experience of watching a woman bleed to death while Dr. Tucker, after canceling the ambulance Davis called, left her alone with the dying woman and left the clinic.
Davis also reveals what Dr. Tucker told her about an event that happened at one of the clinics he ran, a different clinic from the one where he employed Davis.
According to her testimony:

Then one day, Dr. Tucker came back to Alabama, where I was. He had been working in Mississippi. He said, “I had a real hard time in Mississippi, we had a problem and you need to go out and try to calm down the employees.”
I said, “What happened?”
He said, “There was a girl who came in for an abortion. I thought she was eighteen weeks. She ended up being closer to term. I inserted the laminaria and she went into labor. She went into labor and delivered a live, healthy baby.”
I said, “What did you do?”
He said, “What could I do? I killed the baby. But all the employees are really upset, so you need to go and take care of this.”

Davis flew to the Mississippi clinic where the infanticide allegedly occurred. When she did, she heard clinic workers there corroborate the story. Before leaving for Mississippi, Davis called the attorney general of the state. However, Joy Davis was unable to present the authorities with the body of the baby. Apparently, the body had been disposed of before she got to the clinic. It was never found. Despite the fact that numerous people were willing to testify that the infanticide took place, Tucker was never brought to justice for the murder due to “lack of evidence.” With no baby’s body to autopsy, the case could never be proven.

Source: LifeSite News

Call Now

The Left Exploits Elizabeth Smart to Promote Comprehensive Sex Ed
Written By Laurie Higgins

Editor’s Note:  This bill could be called for a vote this week in the Illinois Senate.
Please take a few minutes to contact your state senator today!

In their relentless effort to rob Illinois communities of the right to choose abstinence-based curricula, the Left once again engages in dishonest, exploitative, and incompetent tactics, tactics that should anger anyone who values truth and sound argumentation.

This time “progressive” promoter of contraceptive-centered sex ed (aka “comprehensive” sex ed), K. Sujata, president and CEO of Chicago Foundation for Women, exploits Elizabeth Smart and  her recent comments about Mormon teaching on rape to promote Illinois’ proposed comprehensive sex ed bill.

Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped from her home at 14 years old and repeatedly raped over the course of nine months, recently spoke at a conference on human trafficking at Johns Hopkins University. Smart shared this:

I remember in school one time I had a teacher who was talking about abstinence and she said “Imagine you’re a stick of gum. And when you engage in sex, that’s like getting chewed. And if you do that lots of times you’re going to become an old piece of gum and who’s going to want you after that?”

Note that Smart did not say that this idiotic comment was part of any abstinencecurriculum. She stated that one time a teacher had made this statement.

And here is Sujata’s odd rendering of Smart’s comment:

As part of her school curriculum, Smart was taught that if she lost her virginity before marriage, she would be considered worthless, like a “piece of chewed gum.” (emphasis added)

It would be generous to say that Sujata misrepresented Smart’s statement.  A less generous observation suggests she lied for her political purposes.

Smart was discussing how the teachings about rape and virginity in her conservative Mormon community contributed to her feelings of worthlessness after being raped. As evidence, she told an anecdote about one feckless and destructive comment one teacher had made. And let’s not forget that this one comment made by one teacher was made during a discussion of abstinence which comprehensive sex ed curricula discuss too.

So, by Sujata’s logic, lawmakers would be justified in robbing all communities of the right to choose “comprehensive” sex ed curricula if someone could find one idiotic and inappropriate statement made by one teacher of a comprehensive sex ed class.

Sujata made yet another ludicrous, dishonest, and unsubstantiated claim. She stated that “the lesson [Smart] was taught has been repeated in Illinois classrooms.” Say what?

Have reporters bothered to ask Sujata to provide evidence for that wild accusation? Has anyone asked her to provide proof from multiple “Illinois classrooms” that they have taught that girls who lose their “virginity before marriage should be considered worthless, like a ‘piece of chewed gum’”?  

Sujata then, in effect, told Illinois lawmakers that her misrepresentation of Smart’s anecdote should lead them to vote for Illinois’ proposed sex ed bill (HB 2675):

As Illinois lawmakers prepare to vote on comprehensive sex education for Illinois’ youth (House Bill 2675), they should consider the experience of a young woman who was victimized twice — once by a rapist and again by the inaccurate, ideologically driven, abstinence-only doctrine passed off as sex education in her classroom.

Sujata’s assertion that the teacher’s comment was part of an abstinence-only “doctrine” is almost as foolish as the teacher’s comment itself.

Sujata claims that “piles of studies prove these negative messages are just plain ineffective when measured against the goal of discouraging teen sex,” and then she cites one. And what did the one study Sujata cited from among the piles of studies find? According to Sujata:

A 2007 study commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that abstinence-only programs have had “no impact on rates of sexual abstinence.” “Emerging Answers 2007: Research Findings on Programs to Reduce Teen Pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted Diseases,” compiled several existing studies and found no strong evidence that abstinence-only-until-marriage programs delay the initiation of sexual intercourse, hasten the return to abstinence or reduce the number of sexual partners.

Here’s what Sujata does not want readers to notice: This study did not prove that comprehensive sex ed is consistently more effective than abstinence-based curricula at reducing STD, STI, or teen pregnancy rates—which are the problems the bill’s sponsors cited as justification for the bill.

In fact, from Sujata’s statement, it doesn’t appear that the study even claimed that abstinence-based curricula are less effective than contraceptive-based ”comprehensive” sex ed at delaying sexual intercourse initiation, hastening the return to abstinence, or reducing the number of sexual partners.

So, if the two types of curricula are roughly equivalent in their effect on abstinence and disease and pregnancy rates, how does the Left justify legally prohibiting only abstinence-based curricula?

It’s important to discuss this issue, but such discussions should be informed by logic, evidence, and truth.  So far, we have Illinois representatives voting for this bill that would legally prohibit a type of curriculum these representatives have never read. We have representatives who voted for this bill without ever seeing any evidence-based research proving conclusively that contraceptive-based “comprehensive” sex ed is consistently more effective at reducing STD, STI, and teen pregnancy rates than abstinence-based curricula. And now we have a promoter of this bill exploiting and misrepresenting the statements of a rape victim in order to get this bill through the Illinois Senate.

Illinoisans from both sides of the aisle should be outraged at the incompetence, ignorance, and dishonesty of those who have promoted and supported this bill.

Source: Illinois Family Institute

Words of Warning

 

Quebec Rally against Euthanasia—“ The proposals under consideration put each of us at risk especially those who are made vulnerable because of a society that views our lives in a devalued way or as having little or no value”

 

Editor’s note. The following are the remarks of Hugh Scher, legal counsel for the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, at the Quebec Springtime March against Euthanasia which took place over the weekend. Organizers described the ”Quebec Rally Against Euthanasia (QRAE) as the “largest mobilization against euthanasia since the Quebec government announced that it was planning to introduce legislation on ‘medical aid in dying.’”

Hugh Scher

I bring best wishes and strong support from the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of Canada, EPC -International and EPC- Europe.

We understand the difficult problems that arise from the issue of legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide especially in Quebec at this time.
Our goal today is to express a clear and united message and to put the public, the media and politicians on notice here in Quebec, throughout Canada and around the world with respect to the dangers of euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Our message is common to doctors, seniors and people with disabilities, the groups most vulnerable and directly affected by the proposed changes here in Quebec.
The proposals under consideration put each of us at risk especially those who are made vulnerable because of a society that views our lives in a devalued way or as having little or no value.
We have seen and learned from the dangerous lessons that have come out of the experiences in Holland and Belgium with respect to legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide. These lessons teach us that euthanasia and assisted suicide represent a serious threat to the citizens of Quebec and of Canada.
We are aware that there are “safeguards” in place for the purpose of protecting people in Holland and in Belgium. However these safeguards do not work and put people at risk as a consequence of a culture that views euthanasia as acceptable. This is especially true for those most vulnerable in society.

We understand the problem when 47% of people are killed by euthanasia in Belgium without having those deaths properly reported despite the legal requirement to do so.
We also understand the serious problem that exists when 32% of people who are killed by way of euthanasia or assisted suicide are killed without request. People with disabilities and seniors remain the most vulnerable.

In spite of the existence of safeguards in place to protect people from abuse, these are often ignored.
Consequently, the lives of innocent people, who are deprived of choice and autonomy, are too easily lost without consent. Sadly, the protections that exist at this time are not rigorously applied creating a perilous situation.

It would be extremely dangerous if these same biases and abuses are allowed to happen here in Quebec in the event that the law is changed.
We must work as hard as possible in order to defeat these certain dangers by rejecting euthanasia or assisted suicide in Quebec and throughout Canada.

This threat and these risks require us to rise up and to express a message grave and clear to all, that euthanasia and assisted suicide should never be permitted here in Quebec or in Canada.
Let’s work together to fight against these proposed changes that put all of us at risk and that represent a grave and dangerous threat to our society and most certainly to our most vulnerable citizens.
Thank you all for your efforts and for your presence here today on this historic occasion.
Thank you very much.

Source: NRLC News

The Value of a Life in Our Culture

 

Man confesses to murdering 14-year-old who said she was pregnant; autopsy reveals she was not

 

By Dave Andrusko

Shaniesha Forbes

From the New York Daily News

“He thought she was pregnant – so he killed her, cops say.

“The 20-year-old man accused of smothering 14-year-old Shaniesha Forbes to death, shoving her body in a suitcase and setting it aflame on a Brooklyn beach, told detectives he murdered the teen because she said she was pregnant with his child and refused to get an abortion, police sources said Thursday.

”But the teen wasn’t pregnant, the city’s medical examiner confirmed, leaving her shattered family members railing against the ‘senseless’ crime.”

According to reporter Hannington Dia, Christian Ferdinand confessed to police last Wednesday.
Shaniesha, a freshman at The Academy for Young Writers, was found dead on Gerritsen Beach on January 6, roughly three miles from her home. “She had vanished in January after leaving her Flatlands home, saying she was going to school,” Dia wrote. She had run away from home twice before she disappeared.

Christian Ferdinand

It was not until last month that her death was ruled a homicide by asphyxiation. The city medical examiner’s office in April found that the Shaniesha’s “lungs did not contain soot, proving that she was killed before being burned on her legs, arms and hands,” Dia explained.

“Ferdinand smothered her to death in his cousin’s Nostrand Avenue apartment after she decided against abortion, officials claim,” Dia reported. “He then kept Forbes’ body in a suitcase for two days before dumping it at the beach. Ferdinand tried setting the body ablaze, but the fire

Source: NRLC News

Born Alive

 

Gosnell convicted of murder, abortion clinics shut down, pro-abortion response to litany of horror stories? Attack Crisis Pregnancy Centers

 

By Dave Andrusko

Convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell

Let’s see. Kermit Gosnell has just been sentenced on three counts of first degree murder in the deaths of three unborn babies aborted alive and involuntary manslaughter of a woman who died of a drug overdose during her abortion.  Another abortionist in Texas is reportedly under investigation for Gosnell-like behavior (if not worse).

There are reports of abortion clinics, such as the one in Muskegon, Michigan, which shut down after police investigating a broken rear door at the abortion clinic “reported unsanitary conditions throughout the clinic including used hypodermic needles in unsecured containers, ‘blood on the floor and walls in multiple locations’ as well as dripping from a sink trap in a patient room, and ‘uncovered buckets containing unknown fluids’ in the operating room.” And subsequent allegations that abortionist Robert Alexander, including one where fortunately, the child survived. As we subsequently explained, the number, tragically, is now up to three.

A Planned Parenthood lobbyist tells a Florida House subcommittee that it opposes legislation to require that infants born alive during an abortion be given care pending transportation to the nearest emergency medical facility for immediate treatment.  And, of course, the Abortion Industry sat on its hands, even when it learned of Gosnell’s track record.  And on and on and on.
So what is the pro-abortion congressional response to this litany of horror stories. Well, according to The Hill Newspaper, “Dems look to crack down on anti-abortion ‘crisis pregnancy centers.’” Yes, that is their response, which is applauded by the likes of (surprise, surprise) NARAL Pro-Choice America and the National Abortion Federation (NAF).

This, by the way, the same NARAL that managed to pretend to condemn Gosnell’s “atrocities” but never once mention the thousands of babies who were aborted over the course of 31 years and the untold number of whom were late abortions.

And the same NAF which said not word one to authorities after turning down Gosnell’s request to become a member? Why? Because his Women’s Medical Society was “beyond redemption.”
Talk about misplaced priorities….

Source: NRLC News

Jury Reflects Interesting Thoughts

 

The Gosnell Jury Reflects back on the proceedings

By Dave Andrusko
Kermit Gosnell has begun serving his three consecutive life prison terms plus 2-1/2 to 5 years in jail. Attention will shift elsewhere both because the sentence represents a kind of “closure” (to borrow an awful cliché) to the larger public and because, unfortunately, the trail of atrocities personified by Gosnell is not limited to one clinic in West Philadelphia.
Mensah M. Dean wrote a column that appeared Saturday in the Philadelphia Daily News that is worth reading.

Sarah Glinski, a juror in the Dr. Kermit Gosnell abortion murder trial, is at the microphone talking with the press after Gosnell was sentenced May 15, 2013. (CLEM MURRAY / Staff Photographer)

Very briefly two points. First, how/why/what motivated Gosnell to perform these ghastly abortions which were not only unbelievably violent but well after the legal limit in Pennsylvania–and, in the process, often evading the state’s informed consent requirement? According to the jury, greed.
“Most of us felt that the doctor, he probably started out good helping the community,” Joseph Carroll said in a news conference after Gosnell cut a deal. “But eventually, most of us thought it came down to a greed factor. The services were just like a machine.” As NRL News has reported, when he was arrested police found nearly $250,000 stashed in his West Philadelphia home. Gosnell owned multiple properties at the time of his 2011 arrest, which didn’t prevent him from initially asking for a public defender before hiring a very high-priced attorney.

Second, the jury, according to Carroll, only envisioned a prison sentence for the 72-year-old Gosnell.
Dean’s story ends with a quote from the jury foreman, David Misko.
“I served with 11 very intelligent people. I’m very proud of the people that I worked with and I’m very proud of the decisions that we made as a group. I don’t feel regret whatsoever.”

Source: NRLC News

Results of Euthanasia When Legalized

 

How legal euthanasia changed Belgium for ever

 

The ideology of absolute self-determination has become sacred and unquestionable.

By Tom Mortier and Steven Bieseman
In 2002, Belgium became the second country in the world after its neighbour, The Netherlands, to legalise euthanasia. Over the next decade our country has become a living laboratory for radical social change. With many other countries debating legalisation at the moment, now is a good moment to stand back and take a good long look at the results.

In 2002 Belgium was governed by a coalition of Liberals and Social Democrats. The slightly more conservative Christian Democrats had been excluded. With blue as the colour of the Liberals and red of the left-leaning Social Democrats, the press dubbed it the Purple coalition.
The Christian Democrats took a dim view of euthanasia, but they were in opposition. The Purple coalition was free to pass an euthanasia law based on the view that an individual should always have a “free choice” to end his life. In absolutizing individual self-determination the left and the right found common ground.

The law states that doctors can help patients to die when they freely express a wish to die because they are suffering intractable and unbearable pain. The patient needs to consult a second independent doctor; for non-terminal illnesses an independent psychiatrist must approve. In practice, however, this independence is irrelevant. Belgium is a small country and compliant doctors are easy to find.
A string of recent cases leaves no doubt that the euthanasia law has fundamentally and drastically changed Belgian society. Last year 45-year-old deaf identical twin brothers who couldn’t bear the thought of going blind were granted euthanasia.Doctors granted their request because they “had nothing to live for” anyway.According to the doctor who gave the lethal injection it was not “such a big deal”.
In another case, a 44-year-old woman with chronic anorexia nervosa was euthanased. Then a 64-year-old woman suffering from chronic depression was euthanased without informing her relatives. The doctors defended their decisions by explaining that these extreme and exceptional cases were legitimate because all legal conditions were met.

Euthanasia is hardening from a medical option into an ideology. Belgium’s euthanasia doctors even believe they are being humane because they are liberating people from their misery. Fundamentalist humanists go further and describe euthanasia as the ultimate act of self-determination. The opinion of the patient’s family has no weight whatsoever. A doctor is entitled to give the mother of a family a lethal injection without offering any explanation to her children. Euthanasia is being promoted as a “beautiful” and positive way to die. Doctors are transplanting organs from patients who die in the operation. (This is said to make their lives meaningful.) The law may soon allow children and patients with dementia to be euthanased.

Since 2002 opponents of the law (like us) have been marginalised as rigid and heartless conservatives who feel ill at ease in a post-modern, pluralistic and progressive society like Belgium. (1) The Christian Democrats have repudiated their traditional values and support the law. Questioning it has become taboo because the absolute right of the individual might be violated.

There are still some significant critics, apart from the Catholic Church. The Belgian philosopher Herman De Dijn is an outspoken opponent. He describes Belgium as a “sentimentalist society” in which traditional values have been drastically minimized and replaced by subjective preferences. (2) A sentimentalist society no longer subscribes to ethical values other than those which are related to the search for individual happiness (autonomy and no-harm). Communal responsibilities and moral institutions are being discarded in the search for purely individual well-being; interdependence and connectedness are ignored.

De Dijn feels that this is the nub of the problem. A human being is not a bundle of individual feelings, opinions and preferences, but part of a species, a member of mankind, a vital link in the moral ecology where every individual has a unique symbolic value. Respect for human dignity includes not only respect for personal choices but also for connectedness to loved ones and society.
Supporters of the euthanasia regime repudiate this secular critique. (3) However, their ideology of absolute self-determination has become so strong that it is morphing into a theology, a quasi-religious fanaticism. They have invented comforting symbols and rituals to express their beliefs. A self-determination card describes a patient’s final wishes so that the social services know what to do in a terminal illness. There are centres where people can ask questions about how euthanasia can be performed. There is indoctrination in self-determination for doctors and volunteers who wear their euthanasia enabler certificates as badges of honour.

Nonetheless, we are hopeful. Surely it must be possible to convince the Belgian public that something is terribly, terribly wrong when politicians are debating whether parents can legally have their children put down. It is not humane and it is not scientific. There is no scientific scale of unbearable suffering. With advances in pain relief, euthanasia is not even needed.

The key insight of the green movement is that all living beings are interconnected – even us humans. Especially us humans. The job of politicians is to protect this connectedness. Otherwise, why should parents care for their dependent children? Why should children care for dependent parents? Once we lose the sense that each of us is bound to one another with invisible cords of fellowship, we will end by killing all those who are burdens on society. And at some stage, all of us are going to be burdens.
Instead of standing strong, arms linked together as brothers and sisters, the dogma of self-determination separates us, places us in bubbles of isolation, and then offers to kill us – if we want. In today’s Belgium all of us are at risk.

Source: NRLC News