Ireland

 

 

Irish President signs abortion into law: pro-lifers vow legal challenges

by Hilary White

DUBLIN, July 30, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Irish President today signed into law the bill that allows direct killing of unborn children, up to the point of full gestation, in cases where the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother, including if she threatens suicide.

Pro-life activists have said that not only does the law violate the Constitution's protections for the unborn, but the suicide provision is wide open to abuse and could pave the way for effective abortion on demand. During government hearings into the bill psychiatric professionals had specifically denounced the suicide provision, saying abortion can never be considered treatment for mental illness.

While President Michael D. Higgins had the power to send the Protection of Life in Pregnancy Act 2013 to the country’s Supreme Court to determine whether it violated the country’s constitutional guarantee of the right to life for the unborn, he chose instead to sign without a legal review.

Tens of thousands have shown up for massive rallies opposing the new law, which would legalize direct abortion in Ireland for the first time.

This legislation was the final result of the Irish Supreme Court judgment in the 1992 X Case and the subsequent decision of the European Court of Human Rights in the A, B and C case. Pro-life advocates have vowed both to defeat the Fine Gael party, which formed a coalition government with the Labour Party, after promising during the campaign never to legislate for abortion.

Niamh Uí Bhriain of Dublin’s Life Institute, who was in the forefront of the fight against the bill, said that the immediate task is to launch a legal challenge to the law. She told LifeSiteNews.com that there are also plans afoot for a pro-life party.
 
“The challenges that then face the pro-life movement include ensuring that a pro-life political alternative arises from this travesty, which has seen our government defy the media, ignore the medical experts and allow bullying and bribery to force passage of this legislation,” she said.
Rebecca Roughneen of Youth Defence wrote that the act has set a historical precedent for Ireland in establishing in law that “some of us are worth less than others; so much so that it is now within legality to deliberately destroy a human life … A tiny, helpless, voiceless life.”

She said the act is in violation not only of the Constitution, but of the Irish tradition of “cherishing the children of the nation equally” and opposing the death penalty.

“What happened to our country that rose from the ashes of an oppressed nation, which vowed to uphold the rights of and protect its citizens from those that sought to oppress them?”
Liam Gibson, the Belfast, Northern Ireland representative of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), told LSN that various groups, including SPUC, had predicted that this would be the outcome of the A,B&C decision. Legalization of abortion in the Republic, he said, is going to have repercussions throughout the island, and abroad. Among the avenues open to the pro-life movement now are the “serious doubts” about the act’s constitutionality.

But Gibson warned that the pro-life cause “will always be vulnerable while we place too much trust in the democratic process.”
“Abortion in Ireland could not have been legalised without the betrayal of politicians who, prior to being elected, pledged to protect the rights of unborn children. Of course those politicians must be held accountable at the next election but first pro-lifers must work to gradually win over the ordinary people in all walks of life who at present simply don't care.

“At the same time we need to organise resistance to the implementation of the new law especially by strengthening the resolve of medical personnel not to co-operate with the culture of death.”
Gibson also called for greater and more muscular resolve among some elements in the pro-life movement in Ireland. They “must remain resolute in defence of the right to life of every unborn child, without exception, without apology and even in hard cases.”

“Not every section of the movement is prepared to do this but anything less than this and Ireland could easily go the same way as Canada. That might seem unimaginable but what was unimaginable just five years ago has now happened.”

Pro-life people must not allow themselves to be “intimidated into silence by well-meaning colleagues who believe that the abortion debate must be carried out on terms acceptable to modern secularist culture”.

Source: LifeSite News

Well Worth the Read

 

My so-called spontaneous abortion

• by Kristen Hatten

Proof that my baby existed. And yes, I peed on these, get over it.

So. It’s been a while.
I stopped writing about abortion because I started to feel a little bit overexposed, maybe even repetitive. Hadn’t I said everything I needed to say about abortion? Was it making any difference, anyway? As far as I know, I’ve never converted even a single person from pro-abortion to pro-life. Maybe writing about abortion is not what I’m supposed to do.

I was thinking that way for about a month. I didn’t feel like writing. I felt somewhat disillusioned by the movement, disappointed by in-fighting and egos.
Then I found out I was pregnant.

After I saw those two little lines pop up, I thought I would be inspired to write again. Now that I was carrying a baby, wouldn’t I be motivated to help save some?
But I felt the opposite. I found that I couldn’t stand to see references to abortion or even think about it. It made me recoil instinctively. It was a strong, visceral reaction.

My husband and I tried to conceive for eight months, including one operation on my ovaries and three months of medicated cycles. This baby was a dream come true. I am a worrier anyway, and it was a constant effort to think positively through the anxiety-inducing first trimester. I prayed about 100 times a day. Meanwhile, I was dealing with a physically demanding (for an exhausted pregnant woman) full-time job. I had enough on my plate that I didn’t want to think about babies dying in the womb, and I allowed myself not to.

Then I miscarried.
Since it started happening nearly two weeks ago, I’ve been wanting to share it with all of you, because I think there is a lesson in there somewhere about loving our children before they’re born. About being a mother before your child comes out of you. I don’t know if there’s a moral to this story or not, but I’ve been building up my courage to tell you all, and I think I finally can.
It was the day of my first pre-natal appointment. I was seven weeks pregnant. The doctor told me everything seemed fine and scheduled my ultrasound for one week later. That night, while swimming with my husband, I felt a sharp pain. A few minutes later, getting out of the shower, I suddenly felt vaguely unwell. I actually said to my husband, “I feel like all the energy just went out of my body.”
Looking down, bright red blood on a clean white towel.

I gasped. I said, “No.” I said, “Please no.” I said it over and over. Then there were cramps. Emergency room. In the waiting area, I sobbed and could not stop shaking. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I had never been more terrified and miserable in my life. I cried and shook and prayed that this was a nightmare, that I would wake up and everything would be fine.
The ultrasound I had imagined, with my husband and I looking excitedly at the little flicker on the screen, never happened. Instead I was wheeled into the ultrasound room at the hospital, after midnight, bleeding and hurting. My husband was not allowed in. The procedure hurt badly. I sobbed. The results were inconclusive. There was a sac, but they couldn’t see anything else. They told me it was possible they just couldn’t see it yet. I was sent home, told to take Tylenol and call my doctor.
I saw my obstetrician at 9:00 the next morning. In the elevator on the way up, a woman saw my haggard expression, hospital bracelets, and baggy clothes, and asked me, “Did you just have the baby?” I just said, “No.”

The doctor told me they would test my pregnancy hormones that day and three days later, to see if they were dropping. “I’m cautiously optimistic,” he told me, but he also told me, “At least you know you can get pregnant!”

I would hear that a lot from well-meaning people. In fact, I would even tell myself that sometimes. But the truth was I wanted this baby. I loved this baby. I had prayed constantly for this baby.
Late that night, I noticed that House Bill 2 had passed in Texas. I saw photos of women screaming and holding signs and otherwise demanding their “right” to kill their babies in the womb after 20 weeks gestation, and I felt a sense of disconnect, of unreality, that I occupied the same planet as these people. I prayed and wept and begged God for the life of my seven-week embryo. I knew it was a life. I knew it was God’s. How could these people not know, not recognize that at 20 weeks?
Over the weekend, I tried to be positive but prepare myself for the worst. I felt better physically, with less bleeding. But that afternoon the doctor confirmed that I was miscarrying.
I thought I was prepared to hear that, but I was not.

The nurse asked if I wanted a D&C or if I wanted to “let it happen naturally.” I was tired of needles and hospitals. I said I’d let it happen naturally. Three days later, after hours and hours of excruciating contractions that left me bawling and screaming into a pillow, I called the doctor and said, “I want the D&C.” No one had told me to expect such terrible pain.
In fact, no one had told me what to expect at all. I had no idea a miscarriage meant so much uncertainty, so much physical agony.

While rushing out the door for the hospital a few minutes later, I passed what the abortionists might call “the product of conception.” I left my blueberry-sized embryo in the toilet. I flushed it. I didn’t even think about it. I still have crushing guilt over that. I was in so much pain that I didn’t even think about the fact that the child I prayed for and wanted and was devastated to lose had just been discarded like a used Kleenex.

I was not asleep for the D&C. I felt everything and I remember everything, and it hurt. The whole time I was in the hospital I thought about women having abortions, about their terror and pain. I thought about the doctors who did it over and over everyday.

But it was over. I felt better. My mom was on her way from Texas to take care of me. My lovely and kind nurse wheeled me out, and to get to the exit she had to push me straight towards and past a family lined up against the wall with their cameras and happy, anxious expressions, waiting for a child to be born. They all looked at me curiously, this haggard and disheveled woman being wheeled out of Labor & Delivery with no baby. I looked at my feet.
“I’m sorry I had to bring you this way,” said my nurse. I said it was fine.

The physical pain was not over. I had more contractions and passed more tissue. The antibiotic I was prescribed gave me bad headaches and vertigo. In short, there was a lot of physical pain left, and I was preoccupied enough that I wasn’t grieving yet, not really. Maybe the pain was a blessing in disguise.
You hear this a lot in pro-life circles: “Once you’re pregnant, you’re a mother forever. Abortion just makes you the mother of a dead baby.” So does miscarriage. And it sucks.
After you miscarry, a lot of random inappropriate stuff happens to you. Or, it did to me. I got a robo-call from my doctor’s office asking me to confirm my ultrasound appointment. I cancelled it and cried. Two days later, a nurse called and asked me if I wanted to reschedule. I told her that would probably be unnecessary, since I lost the baby.

Getting flowers is kind of weird, too. Two very nice people sent me some, and as much as I was moved by the kind gesture, I was also struck by the absurdity of giving flowers to someone who lost a baby. “Oh, something died inside you? Here, watch these die.”
Occasionally, you have to laugh.

People expect you to get over a miscarriage quickly. After all, it wasn’t a “real” baby. And it’s so common! It happens all the time! I’m sure it’s even worse for post-abortive mothers. I’m sure you’re expected to feel liberated, free as a bird. But some part of them must know what has happened, that there was a death.

My sister, who has also miscarried, gave me an idea, and I went through the house and gathered up my positive pregnancy tests, my hospital bracelets, my baby books, the sheets and clothes my friend gave me, and more, and put them in the sweet little hand-me-down crib that sits in our dining room. Later, I lost my mind crying for the first time. I festooned my husband’s shirt with mascara and snot. I begged him to leave me and be happy, said I wanted to die about six times, and just generally made an utter ridiculous fool of myself. It was horrible and I’m glad I got it out of my system.
Yesterday was a bad day, but today was a good day. I slept really late. My headache wasn’t bad. I made café au lait. I cooked ribeyes and bacon and eggs for dinner, because why not? I drank some iced tea and read some Harry Potter and watched The Dirty Dozen with my husband.
And I wrote something. Finally. And it helped.

LiveAction News

Planned Parenthood's Clinics

 

More criticism heaped on Planned Parenthood of Delaware’s Wilmington clinic at state senate hearing

 

By Dave Andrusko

Melody Meanor, who managed the clinic’s health center for three months in 2012, called today for justice for women who were treated there by personnel whom she says were poorly trained, working in disorganized conditions and routinely skipping important elements of patient care.

Jennifer Corbett/The News Journal

The bad news for Planned Parenthood of Delaware’s Wilmington clinic continued to accumulate today with harsh testimony delivered at a bipartisan state senate hearing by Melody Meanor who managed the clinic’s health center for three months in 2012.
Meanor reinforced testimony from Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich and Joyce Vasikonis, two former nurses, who were sharply critical, first to the television station and then at an ad hoc hearing called back in May by two Delaware state Senators—one Republican and one Democrat. (See “Delaware files formal complaint against Planned Parenthood abortionist who represents a ‘clear and immediate danger to the public’”)

Meanor “called for justice for women who were treated there by personnel whom she says were poorly trained, working in disorganized conditions and routinely skipping important elements of patient care,” the News Journal reported online today.
“She  urged women treated there to seek outside medical attention to see if they had conditions that went unreported by clinicians at Planned Parenthood of Delaware, putting patients in ‘unnecessary danger,’” Beth Miller and Jonathan Starkey reported today.
In her prepared testimony, Meanor laid the blame squarely at the feet of PPFA management. She told the hearing

“Most of the abuses I observed at Planned Parenthood of Delaware stemmed from the fact that untrained health care assistants were assigned serious medical responsibilities that they were not trained to perform. Within the first few weeks of my employment by Planned Parenthood of Delaware, I suggested implementing a health care assistant comprehensive training program. These suggestions were rejected by management.

“The failure to properly train health care assistants was aggravated by greater demands for services than Planned Parenthood of Delaware was able to meet given the number and quality of the staff.  Because Pennsylvania has much stricter parental consent laws than Delaware, Planned Parenthood of Delaware received many underage patients from Pennsylvania in addition to the Delaware women who received abortions.

“As a result, a great deal of Planned Parenthood of Delaware resources had to be redirected to assist in abortion services. The untrained health care assistants hired to focus on family planning were diverted to help with abortions. Furthermore, newly hired health care assistants were discouraged from asking questions and were confronted with a backlash of verbal abuse.”

What Meanor testified to was eerily reminiscent of Kermit Gosnell’s “House of Horrors” abortion clinic in West Philadelphia. She also addressed an open-secret: “Abortions were a significant source of revenue at Planned Parenthood of Delaware.  And, unfortunately, in several ways, Planned Parenthood of Delaware treated abortion much more as a business transaction than as a service to clients.”

Back in May, the two nurses spoke of how “the Wilmington clinic performed ‘meat-market style assembly line’ abortions, focused most on profit margins, and put patients at risk for infection and other serious medical problems by neglecting proper standards of care.” Mitchell-Werbrich testified that “one abortion would be completed every 8-10 minutes” at the Wilmington PPFA site.
In her prepared statement Vasikonis said, “It would take me the entire afternoon to discuss all the deficiencies I discovered at Planned parenthood of Delaware during the 10 months I worked there.” She listed 22 separate problem areas that included severe management problems and insufficient staff training; outdated (and broken) equipment; “Quality and Risk management policies were not followed or enforced’; an abortionist who did not wear sterile gloves; and sexual and racial harassment.

Mitchell-Werbrich explained in her prepared statement that she had worked only 27 days at the Willingham and Dover sites. “I was forced to resign on August 8, 2012 as the conditions at Planned Parenthood continued to very unsafe and potential life threatening for the patients” despite numerous reports provided to Planned Parenthood administrators and a flock of state health regulatory agencies.”

Mitchell-Werbrich, who resigned after a few weeks on the job and noted that she (like Vasikonis) is not against abortion, said the Wilmington abortion clinic “was an absolute nightmare.”
The Willington clinic came under scrutiny when several abortion protesters noticed an unusual number of ambulances had been called. “Five women required emergency care after procedures,” according to the News Journal.
State officials said they could not substantiate the claims that Mitchell-Werbrich and Vasikonis reported  to the state in 2012.

However “federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited the clinic for several violations, though, and this year the clinic’s primary physician, Dr. Timothy Liveright, surrendered his license to practice medicine in Delaware after regulators pursued claims against him, calling him a ‘clear and immediate danger to the public’ because of unprofessional, incompetent and negligent conduct,” according to Miller and Starkey .

 

“Meanor repeated the nurses’ concerns that hundreds of women were never told that they tested positive for sexually transmitted diseases and others did not receive medication necessary to protect future pregnancies,” the News Journal reported. “She said she was directed to falsify records and alleged that a manager destroyed some records.”

Conditions were so bad that the national PPFA office attempted to distance itself. Last month, PPFA issued a statement in which it said, “Planned Parenthood of Delaware was aware that some staff and contractors did not meet our high standards of care and should have taken action sooner to remove them,” adding, “We are adding an enhanced follow-up protocol to our accreditation process to make sure that issues are addressed quickly when they are identified.”
But “Meanor said the clinic was cited and given ‘conditional’ certification by the Planned Parenthood Federation, which knew of concerns related to unsafe, unsanitary conditions.”

Source: NRLC News


 

Euthanasia

 

World Medical Association Opposes Euthanasia

By Wesley J. Smith

Wesley J. Smith, JD, at 2013 NRLC National Convention

The world’s professional medical associations overwhelmingly oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide. The World Medical Association reiterated its strong such commitment to the ethical practice medicine this year. From the WMO Resolution on Euthanasia:

“Euthanasia, that is the act of deliberately ending the life of a patient, even at the patient’s own request or at the request of close relatives, is unethical. This does not prevent the physician from respecting the desire of a patient to allow the natural process of death to follow its course in the terminal phase of sickness.”

The WMO similarly opposes assisted suicide.

“Physicians-assisted suicide, like euthanasia, is unethical and must be condemned by the medical profession. Where the assistance of the physician is intentionally and deliberately directed at enabling an individual to end his or her own life, the physician acts unethically. However the right to decline medical treatment is a basic right of the patient and the physician does not act unethically even if respecting such a wish results in the death of the patient.”

The next time suicide pushing organizations such as Compassion and Choices pretend that the medical world is in their camp because some small organization supports legalization, show them the WMA statement. And the American Medical Association’s:

“Euthanasia is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks.

And on and on it goes.
Editor’s note. This appeared on Wesley’s blog.

Source: NRLC News

Missing Girls

It’s a girl: The three deadliest words in the world

 

Editor’s note. This first appeared at mercatornet.com.
An estimated 200 million girls are missing. How can the world community stand by and allow gendercide to continue? asks the maker of a documentary film on this scandal.
The United Nations estimates that as many as 200 million girls are missing today, the majority from India and China. What are the cultural patterns and individual stories behind this shocking statistic? Evan Grae Davis, an American who has extensive experience in the developing world, has produced a documentary film that answers this question through the mouths of women immersed in these cultures and activists who are campaigning for them. In this email interview with MercatorNet he explained how he came to make the film and what needs to happen next.
**************************************************
MercatorNet: This is a very harrowing film. How did you come to make it?
Evan Grae Davis: I have spent the last nearly two decades travelling the world capturing stories of human need for humanitarian aid and development NGO’s and non-profits. Throughout this time I witnessed a lot of injustice. I began asking the question, what are the cultural roots and mindsets that allow for human rights violations on the scale seen throughout the world today? I set out to explore this question through a documentary film. I and the team travelled to nine nations capturing stories for this film. One of the nations we visited was India, hoping to understand how the subjugation and devaluation of women could be justified by the deeply established son-preference culture.
What we discovered while filming in India about the epidemic of missing girls and dramatically skewed sex ratios and related abuse and neglect of girls was a game-changer for us. After hearing the UN statistic of as many as 200 million girls missing in the world today as a result of ‘gendercide’ we researched the issue in China, as well, and were completely astonished by how few people seemed to be aware of what appeared to be the greatest human rights issue of our time, and certainly the greatest form of violence against women in the world today. There seemed to be very little out there on the topic. It was then that we determined to dedicate the film project to exposing this untold story and educating and mobilizing a movement to end gendercide in India and China.
What practices contributing to gendercide did you look into?
In the film, we explore the fundamental son-preference mindset that underlies gendercide. In cultures like India and China, the preference for sons is driven by centuries-old traditions that say that boys are more valuable than girls. Only sons carry on the family name and inherit wealth or perform the last rites for parents upon their death. Daughters join their husband’s family once married and are no longer considered a part of their family of origin.


In India, the preference for sons is further influenced by the dowry system, where families often must pay large sums of money or give gold, land and other family assets to the husband’s family when their daughters marry. The cost of securing husbands for daughters becomes prohibitive, so families avoid having more than one or, at most, two daughters.

In China, the One Child Policy has contributed to the elimination of millions of girls over the past few decades. Sons care for their parents in old age, and daughters leave their family to join their husband’s family, as in India. So if a family is only allowed one child, they are determined to identify the sex of each pregnancy and systematically terminate female fetuses until they bear a son.
Perhaps the most shocking testimony in your film comes from an Indian woman who killed eight daughters – and seems matter-of-fact about it. You interviewed this woman personally – did you understand, in the end, how she could do that? What light does her case throw on the whole problem in India?

Finding myself standing at the edge of a field in Southern India, listening to a mother share how she had personally strangled eight of her own newborn daughters in her quest for a son, was by far the most shocking and difficult interview. She shared so matter-of-factly, often smiling or laughing, as she talked about how she couldn’t afford to raise daughters and made statements like, “Women have the power to give life and the power to take it away.”
Later in the interview, she shared a song about her plight as a woman and the pain of being given in an arranged marriage at a young age. She told us how when she was 15, she was excelling in school and had high hopes for her future, when it was decided that she was to be given as a second wife to her sister’s husband because her sister was unable to have children. Her purpose in life was to bear her husband a son.

This was when gendercide took on a whole new meaning for me, because I realized she was simply a product of the culture in which she lives. She was programmed from birth to accept certain traditional views about her value and roles as a woman. These deeply engrained cultural beliefs drive the entire system, and women often find themselves as the perpetrators, visiting the same violence they experienced upon their daughters and daughters-in-law.
Was it difficult to get testimonies from women at the grassroots who confront this problem directly? Who helped you reach them?

As American filmmakers, we couldn’t just show up and ask women to talk about the devaluation of women and killing of girls. So we connected with local, grassroots NGO’s and advocates who had established relationships in their communities. They introduced us to women who were willing to share their stories with us. For instance, the Jesus Mercy Home Association took us to a few communities in Tamil Nadu, including the one where the mother who strangled eight daughters lived. And the team at the Centre for Social Research in Delhi took us to visit several of their community outreach programmes in Delhi and Haryana. Women’s Rights in China helped is with some of the Chinese stories, along with other organizations there. The film would absolutely not have been possible without the work and support of these grassroots organizations and we are immensely grateful for their years of work in the field that enabled such open communication.
All of these field partners were careful about the privacy and safety of the women they work with, and we had to inquire in each case as to whether they were willing to share their stories or not. To our surprise, in India, many of the women and families were open to sharing their stories without shame or embarrassment. This seemed to indicate to us how deeply engrained some of these cultural beliefs were.

The one-child policy in China makes the situation somewhat different there, but do women buy into it to the same extent? Did you find that people accepted the policy, or not?

The impression I have received from talking to activists and those who are working to end gendercide in China is that the coercive and oppressive nature of the One Child Policy makes it extremely unpopular among Chinese women. However, they have very little choice but to silently endure the government’s intrusion into their private lives and have little recourse against the Family Planning officials’ dominance of their reproductive rights. Those who voice dissension or refuse to submit to the policy suffer harsh punishment, along with their family members.

India is a democratic and religious country, whereas China, officially, is not. Does India therefore have a better chance of breaking with this horrendous war on girls?
Religion in India impacts gendercide only in as much as some religious communities like Muslims and Christians do not practice female feticide and infanticide on the same level as Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs. However, the deeply engrained patriarchal son preference culture permeates India and the devaluation of women remains widespread regardless of religious persuasion.

One would think the democratic nature of India’s government would lead to progress in women’s empowerment. But despite a significant number of women in upper level government positions as well as one third of local government seats being filled by women, violence against women in India is worse than ever.

Government, whether in India or China, will only be a part of the solution if they have the political will to do so, and this is not the case in either nation at this time. When the Chinese government developed the political will to end foot-binding in China, the practice was effectively eliminated within a generation.

Both nations need government action, but in different ways.  China must end its coercive family planning policy, whereas India’s government must be pressured to enforce its existing laws against dowry, sex selection and infanticide.
You have expressed the hope that your film will help inspire a world movement to end gendercide. What specific goals does this movement need to address?
The first goal of the movement is to raise the level of awareness about gendercide throughout the world. We encourage anyone who desires to see value and dignity restored to girls in India and China to spread the word about the issue and our film with your friends and family, through Facebook and Twitter, and by bringing the film to your community through hosting a screening. You may learn more about how to spread the word or host a screening on our website at www.itsagirlmovie.com.
As more people learn about the issue, our hope is to mobilize them to action. There are many ways to get involved, whether by signing our petitions asking world leaders demand an end to gendercide in India and China, or supporting our partners who are working on the ground to save girls and advocate for women’s rights in India and China. Again, those interested can find out more on our action page on the website.

To date we have mobilized nearly half a million people to take action. Imagine if we had tens of millions demanding the governments of India and China provide justice and equality to girls and women suffering gendercide, and demanding world leaders require accountability for this massive human rights violation.

In a BBC programme on this issue an Indian speaker pointed out that the West is deeply implicated in gendercide because of its promotion of population control in India and China – and elsewhere – and acceptance of abortion as a method of birth control. Isn’t this a major obstacle to any positive role Western political pressure might play?

It is true that the gender imbalance in India, China and other nations in Asia was fuelled by pressure from Western governments and NGOs for population control, which in many cases exploited existing cultural preference for sons for the “greater good” of population control. Learn more about this in Mara Hvistendahl’s excellent book, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men.

And although the sex ratios in Western nations are not as extreme as in India or China, gendercide does take place in all countries in the West to a varying degree. In particular, some studies have shown that Asian immigrant communities in the West have similar sex ratios to that of their home nations, indicating that gendercide (and in particular, sex selection) may be happening at a similar rate among immigrant communities. Canada, New Zealand, Australia and most countries in Western Europe prohibit abortion on the basis of a fetus’ gender — the one notable exception being the United States.

These are all relevant questions that, I am sure, do impact on the positive roles the West can have in bringing pressure to bear towards the goal of ending gendercide.
Editor’s note. Evan Grae Davis spent the last nearly two decades traveling the world capturing stories of human need for humanitarian aid and development NGO’s and non-profits. He is the director of the film, It’s a girl. For more information visit www.itsagirlmovie.com
See more at mercatornet.com.

 

Planned Parenthood

 

New Yorker Magazine’s in-kind contribution to Planned Parenthood

By Dave Andrusko

Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood

My thanks go out to the New Yorker which this morning emailed me Jeffrey Toobin’s “Daughters of Texas: The fight for abortion rights” from the current edition. I guess they assumed any publicity (including critical publicity) is good publicity. And, true enough, we are indeed going to talk about the latest in a seemingly endless stream of hyper-laudatory profiles of Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood.

Toobin’s piece is a kind of travel log as Richards lands in Texas just in time for the successful effort by pro-abortionists to extend, in their own way, the eleven-hour filibuster conducted by state Sen. Wendy Davis that temporarily stifled HB 2. The measure passed in a second Special Session and pro-life Gov. Rick Perry signed it into law.

Tobin lauds Richards as “the face of women’s health in the United States.” (You get the sense that Toobin may feel she has little competition, surely not from the “cerebral and careful” President Obama, who is “the undisputed leader of the liberal cause.”)
So what do we learn from “Daughters of Texas”? That there is a “paradox” in Richards seven-year tenure as head of PPFA. They have more much money and, they say, many more members than ever before, yet, Toobin writes, “Since the Republican gains in the 2010 midterm elections, abortion rights—and Planned Parenthood itself—have been under siege in the states.”

It of course goes without saying that Toobin never bothers to probe WHY, beyond the election of pro-life Republicans, so many pro-life measures passed in the state legislatures. If he had, Toobin would have to acknowledge they’ve moved forward because they are built around ideas and positions the public agrees with: ending abortions performed on pain-capable unborn children; making sure (post-Kermit Gosnell) that abortion clinics do not go unlicensed and/or uninspected for decades at a time; bans on sex-selection abortions; and opting out of abortion in the federal insurance “exchanges” established by ObamaCare—to name just four.
Here are five other takeaways:

#1. Richards and her ilk are very popular in Austin, a very liberal pro-abortion city, but Austin is not Texas writ small. Just the opposite: “In short, the interior of the Texas Capitol [where the pro-abortion demonstrators gathered en masse], as opposed to its grounds, is deeply hostile to Richards and her organization.” That is why the other main player in the piece—Davis—may have lots of money but likely very little chance of becoming governor, should she decide to run (as Toobin thinks she might).

#2. PPFA and Obama are as close as two coats of paint. Illustrations are littered all through the piece. That includes the tweet the President put out the night of the mob assault on the capitol: “Something special is happening in Austin tonight” with a link to the live stream posted by the Texas Tribune. And as Toobin put it, “Under the Obama Administration, the capital [Washington, DC] has been a kind of promised land for Planned Parenthood, and that is especially evident in the President’s signature legislative achievement”—ObamaCare.

#3. Apropos both the pro-abortion reluctance ever to utter the “A” word and the rhetorical switch from “pro-choice” to trying to position the nation’s largest abortion provider as “pro individual rights, pro women’s health care and anti-government interference,” the word abortion rarely gets mentioned. One of the cutest lines in the piece is the “assertion” that PPFA performed over 333,000 abortions in 2011. The figure comes from PPFA’s annual report, so if anyone “asserted” it, it was PPFA.

#4. Toobin writes, “When it comes to public opinion about abortion, a great deal depends on how questions are asked.” Well….yes! Toobin manages, once again, to avoid the polling data that demonstrates 60%+ support for a ban on abortions after the 20th week. And finally

#5. There are two sentences which concede that Richards is not necessarily on the right side of history. “Richards is facing formidable political adversaries,” Toobin writes. “Her focus on women’s health can’t obscure the parts of the debate where her advantage is less clear.” Put another way, PPFA and Richards yammer incessantly about how abortion is such a small part of its agenda (“3%”) that it’s almost a rounding error.

But as Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon, NRLC’s director of education, has explained many times, PPFA rakes in a huge amount of money from abortion. As he told NRL News Today earlier this year

“Abortion is a huge profit center for PPFA. At going rates for a standard surgical abortion performed at 10 weeks, the 333,964 abortions Planned Parenthood performed represent an income of at least $150.6 million. And it is no secret that Planned Parenthood advertises and performs more expensive chemical and later surgical abortions, indicating that abortion revenues are likely considerably higher. Collectively, the organization and its affiliates took in nearly $1.2 billion in revenues ($1,199,100,000 to be exact).”

 

We all understand why PPFA minimizes the enormous amount of money it takes in from abortion; why it would prefer to talk about anything other than those 339,964 abortions it performed in 2011 (that’s one lost life every 94 seconds); and most of all the grim truth that about one out of every nine women coming through Planned Parenthood’s door will have an abortion!
But all the misleading talk in the world about “only 3%” of its services can’t obscure the reality that PPFA is the largest abortion provider in the nation and is taking aggressive steps to expand that murderous empire — building central abortion megaclinics, adding chemical abortions to their smaller offices, experimenting with technologies such as “webcam” abortions. This can only mean more victims and higher revenues at the abortion giant for years to come.


Source: NRLC News

Life is Beautiful

Picture of Baby With Trisomy 13 Surviving 116 Days Goes Viral

by Steven Ertelt 

Corbin Alfred McHenry was diagnosed in utero with Trisomy 13, a rare genetic disorder. While already battling the harsh label of “incompatible with life” this little miracle blessed the Earth seven weeks early.
His family has created a Facebook page for prayers for him and it has already grown in just a few months to well over 267,000 people. praying for Corbin.
Yesterday, Corbin reached his 116th day and a picture of him went viral — getting 41,966 likes and more than 580 shares. his family wrote in a Twitter post:

Corbin today you turned 116 days old, that number continues to grow! You went outside and toured the hospital again and remained awake the entire time, happy as can be. You smiled as the wind blew your self and with your eyes wide open you had the ability to truly appreciate the beauty of the outside world.
You weigh in now at 8 pounds 4 ounces, gaining gaining gaining. ::) Soon enough we will be home!

Tomorrow mommy will change your trach for the first time and check off some more training. Daddy will do the same this weekend when he’s not working. I think tonight is a cuddle all night kinda night. I love you so much. Happy 116th day of life Corbs.

Corbin’s family posted this yesterday, at 115 days:

Today marks 115 days of life for you sweet boy. Today you weigh in at 8 pounds 1 ounce and 19 3/4 inches long. You’ve come a long way since the day of your birth.

Today you took a bath in a tub for the first time ever! You loved every second of it with a smile so pure. You are so innocent and unaware of everything you have been through and to me that is the beauty of your strength. To know you can still smile over the simple things in life is beautiful.

Today you also went outside for the first time in your wonderful life. You felt the wind blow your hair, the sun hit your face, and heard the noises of the “outside world”. You slept through most of it but for the few periods you were I saw a selfless boy, appreciating the world as he knows it and everything beautiful in that world. You know no hate, no negativity, nothing cruel and now you feel no pain.

You only know love, kindness, warmth, and now the feeling of the sun and breeze hitting your face. The only feelings a child should ever know. I thank God every day for the miracle and child he has blessed me with me. Why was I chosen? Why was I so lucky? How did I get gifted a being so precious, so beautiful and so perfect? Today was one of the happiest days of my life, a memory that will be imprinted in my mind forever.

I am so grateful I was able to see you reach this milestone, a moment that at one point I was not guaranteed to have with you. To me that is the beauty in everything you do. Your life was not promised, so we embrace it. Each smile was not guaranteed, so we cherish them. Each day is a miracle, so we count them. Every moment of your fragile life is yet another moment of God proving miracles and you proving your strength. So to you Corbin, Happy 115th day of showing the world who you are. I love you!

Most children with Trisomy 18 are screened in the womb and not born, and if they are born, they are often denied medical treatment under an ideology that defines them as “incompatible with life” and victimized by abortion

Source: LifeSite News

Post Abortion Syndrome

 

New meta-analysis of post-abortive women and mental illness bolsters case for post-abortion syndrome

by Kirsten Andersen

SIENA, ITALY, July 29, 2013 (LifeSiteNews) – A new metastudy performed by researchers at the University of Siena seems to show a clear link between abortion and subsequent mental illnesses like depression, substance abuse, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), leading the study’s authors to call for additional research dedicated to the issue.

Dr. Carlo V. Bellini and Guiseppe Buonocore analyzed 30 studies of post-abortive women published between 1995 and 2011 to find out whether the data supported a link between abortion and mental illness, especially depression, anxiety disorders, PTSD and substance abuse.

They found that in 13 studies, abortion was found to be a greater risk factor than childbirth for developing at least one of those disorders, while only one study found childbirth to be more likely to lead to later mental problems.  An additional five studies showed no difference in outcome, but among those five studies, at least one included among its post-abortion statistics women who had chosen selective reduction of multiples and whose desired remaining babies survived.

The study also compared post-abortive women to women who had experienced miscarriages, and found that while “short-term anxiety and depression were higher in the miscarriage group … long-term anxiety and depression were present only in the abortion group.”

  “[F]etal loss seems to expose women to a higher risk for mental disorders than childbirth,” the researchers wrote, and “some studies show that abortion can be considered a more relevant risk factor than miscarriage.”
The researchers concluded by saying “more research is needed in this field.”
A similar metastudy conducted in 2011 by Priscilla K. Coleman, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Bowling Green State University, examined 22 studies on post-abortive women and found that women who underwent an abortion experienced an 81% increased risk of mental health problems.

The study also found that almost 10% of all women’s mental health problems are directly linked to abortion.

According to Coleman’s study, abortion was associated with a 34% increased risk for anxiety disorders; 37% greater risk of depression; 110% greater risk of alcohol abuse and 220% greater risk of marijuana use/abuse.  Abortion was also linked with a 155% greater risk of attempting to commit suicide.

Source: LifeSite News

 

Abortion in Ireland

  

Ireland’s abortion bill the result of 40 years of bad moral theology: priest/professor

by Hilary White

DUBLIN, July 26, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The success of the Fine Gael/Labour Party abortion bill is due to the failure of the Catholic Church in Ireland to coherently and robustly present its teachings, a leading Irish moral theologian has said. According to Fr. Vincent Twomey, abortion has been all but legalised in Ireland because in the last 50 years, the Church has failed to articulate a moral and philosophical alternative to the left/liberal political and social agenda.

Fr. Twomey told LifeSiteNews that the result of the abortion debate in Parliament was due to a new kind of moral theology, taught in Irish seminaries since the close of the Second Vatican Council, which is “radically at variance with church teaching.” It is a moral theology that “denies there are any moral actions, even abortion, that are intrinsically wrong.” 

In a recent op-ed in the Irish Times, Fr. Twomey had written that this new kind of moral theology has placed individual conscience above the moral law, “allowing Catholic politicians to put political expedience above their ‘private’ moral convictions.”

Fr. Vincent Twomey

 

In his 2002 book, “The End of Irish Catholicism?” the theologian posed the question of why the Catholic Church in Ireland has been “unable to meet the challenges of the modern age… the onslaught of secularisation, the onslaught of relativism, etc.”
“I said it was because we have no tradition of serious, reflective theological study. The faith had become something you picked up as a child; you took it for granted. That encouraged conformism. And what we’ve done now is simply to exchange one form of conformism for another,” he told LSN.
He closely followed the passage of both the government’s gay “marriage” and abortion bills, and pointed to the same cause ultimate for both. It has been a decades-long work by the liberal faction in the Church, in conjunction with outside elements in the media and the political sphere, “to undermine the moral life of the people.”

“They’ve been working on this for the last 40 years at least,” he said.
“People would never be outright pro-abortion,” he said, but without clear moral teaching, “they’re left not quite sure what they’re against or how to make effective arguments against it.” This has been encouraged by trends among “priests, bishops and moral theologians, to say ‘these are just private issues; they shouldn’t impinge on the public domain.’”

This has come at the same time as a deliberate rejection of the Church as a leading force in society. “What I think has happened in Ireland over the last thirty years, has been an adolescence, a rejecting of the domination of the Church and an attempt to ‘do it our own way’ and to catch up with what all the so-called progressive nations of the world are doing.”

People were worn down by a strategy that started by portraying their moral convictions as “antiquated, outdated, not modern, not progressive.” But most significantly, the push started at the same time as the failure of the Church to vigorously respond to the claims of secular “liberalism,” leaving the people, including politicians, without intellectual defences.
“If you are being constantly barraged with this pro-liberal agenda, it has to affect you eventually,” he said.
 
This project has been greatly aided by the media that “adopted that agenda at least 35 years ago, and have been pushing through all these issues, divorce, contraception, euthanasia and ultimately same-sex ‘marriage’.”
The easy passage of abortion legislation, he said, was achieved politically by a combination of factors, including the power of “obfuscation, ambiguity and deception”. “The bill’s wording was very ambiguous and cleverly designed. The word ‘child’ was never mentioned, nor was the word ‘abortion,’ but only ‘termination of pregnancy,’ which could mean direct abortion or indirect. The title of the bill was ‘Protection of Life During Pregnancy’… it was all very Orwellian.”
The confusion all this created allowed the government to convince skeptical TDs that direct abortion was not being legalised. “Representatives of the lower house, whose anti-abortion views were well known, were targeted by the abortion campaigners to convince them that there was no change in the law.”

To this confusion and obfuscation was added the all-important factor of the dominant media consciously campaigning for legalisation. In particular, he said, they used the “tragic case of a beautiful Indian woman,” Savita Halappanavar, who died in a Galway hospital of sepsis while miscarrying. An inquest had found that an abortion would not have saved her life – and indeed that the law already provided for all the medical intervention she could have needed it.

The entire process, Fr. Twomey said, was a “superbly orchestrated ploy to get the bill through,” a “manipulation of politics to achieve a certain end, and totally undemocratic, in my opinion.”
He also laid part of the blame on the failings of the national character, saying that the Irish are “essentially a very pragmatic people.” With their long history of tragedy, famine, foreign domination and extreme poverty, he said, that “when the crunch comes, it is the economic element,” not moral issues, that will take hold of the public’s attention.
“The Irish, because of their history of being browbeaten for centuries by the English… are tolerant even of intolerance. We’re a beaten people, quite frankly. If you bully us sufficiently we give in.”
“People won’t like me saying this but I’m afraid it’s true.”
But he also pointed to strong signs of hope, particularly in the action of the small group of Fine Gael TDs who defied enormous pressure from the party to oppose the abortion bill, “and suffered for it.” At least one of these, he added, has contacted him asking for a public discussion on the role of conscience in political life.
He noted that one of the problems faced by the Irish hoping to turn the tide has been the failure of their Church to establish a “more vibrant” conservative moral alternative to the “dominant” liberal moral theology. This conservative subculture has grown in the US, bolstered by the papacy of Pope John Paul II and his successor, throughout the period following the 1960s social revolutions, but it failed to cross the Atlantic. It is only growing now in an Irish society just beginning to wake up to the consequences of unrestrained “progressivism.”

“We haven’t got that far in Ireland yet, but that will come.”
Overall, the debate on the bill has had some good effects in serving as “a wake-up call” on issues of conscience, he said. “The whole question of a free vote, which is very rare in Ireland, is related to the conscience issue – though they don’t use the term ‘conscience’. Quite a number of highly respected secular commentators have questioned the validity of a party whip on life and death issues, such as abortion,” he said.

Among the hopeful signs in the Church, he said, is the appointment of “half a dozen new bishops in recent months” with a more orthodox approach, as well as strong signs of a genuine renewal in the religious life at the local parish level. These include “new youth movements beginning to spring up, who are enthusiastic about the faith,” “young orthodox theologians,” both clerical and lay, and the admittedly “very few” but “good vocations,” of young men for the priesthood who are aware that they are “swimming against the tide” and who will be “much more effective in the future.”
“So, I’m full of hope for the future. I do believe that despite everything we have a very deep substratum of the faith in Ireland.”

One of his greatest interests, he said, is to try to establish “a dialogue between those who believe and those who are searching for faith.” He described a renewal of interest and openness among those who have never been exposed to religious ideas or whose parents may have rejected their faith.
“There’s a generation coming up now of people who have had no experience of the negative side of the Church. Who have been raised by parents who have lost the faith, who are much more open to truth and faith issues than their parents,” he said.

“In time, once we recover our spiritual heritage, the spiritual richness of the Irish tradition, then we’ll have the future. But there’s a huge amount of work to be done.”

Source: LifeSite News

Abortion in America

 

Abortion access in America: How the abortion industry demands special treatment

• by Susan Michelle Tyrell

In a column Friday, the Guttmacher Institute writes lamenting of the great distances women have to travel to obtain an abortion, noting one-third of women have to travel more than 25 miles for this elective surgery. Reading this is a little like reading about how a rich kid had to get a used Honda instead of a new Mercedes.
The story says:

In 2008, American women traveled an average of 30 miles to access abortion services, according to “How Far Did U.S. Women Travel for Abortion Services in 2008?” by Rachel and Jenna Jerman of the Guttmacher Institute. Sixty-seven percent of abortion patients traveled less than 25 miles, 16% traveled 25–49 miles, 11% traveled 50–100 miles and 6% traveled more than 100 miles.

I don’t live in a rural area, but I do live in an area with some limited services. As a matter a fact, I drive twice the average the article notes simply to do good grocery shopping, since I am a foodie and most of what is local to me is for basic staples.
Okay, you argue, you don’t have to have the fancy groceries to eat well. And while I might argue back, neither do you have to have an abortion when adoption exists, I will give you that one and tell you about my tooth—which does need surgery.
It’s infected. Bad. The dentist says if it spreads before it’s treated it could threaten my life. I was in the middle of months of travel and moving when this was coming to a head. Finally settled, I called both endodontists and oral surgeons. A regular dentist can no longer treat me. There were limited providers in my area, and none of them knew me well enough to hustle me in, since I was not an existing patient. I have insurance, and yet they would not see me without waiting close to a month (longer than my dentist had said my health could stand without treatment). And when they did have an appointment, insurance or not, they would require me to pay the full price up front for the consult and any immediate work—one place quoted me $300 cash—without any permanent treatment—about the price of an abortion, for the record. They didn’t care about my insurance and said I could submit my papers for reimbursement.
In the end I drove three hours to a major metropolitan area where my old dentist is located—that’s three hours one way—to get a new X-ray and more antibiotics, and be sure I wasn’t in too much danger. Then I got a referral from him for an oral surgeon there in his city—who had an opening in late August, which is my next appointment.
And as I read the Guttmacher piece this morning, all I could think was “seriously? Do you not know that this is the way health care works for every human being sometimes?” I mean, I am standing there telling oral surgeons I cannot wait until September because my infection is at risk of spreading—and I have insurance that is supposed to pay for the consult, by golly; can’t they at least file it? Nope. Office policy. But they have a special credit card I can apply for with a 26% interest rate if I don’t want to pay it up front until the insurance kicks in.
I did find one who would do a “patch job surgery”; the surgeon was over 3 hours from my home and when they checked my benefits, they found I would have to pay out of pocket, all before the procedure, $1100 of a $1500 procedure.
My example is only mine, but it’s not that uncommon. The Guttmacher piece cries foul that:

Women who live in rural areas have to travel greater distances for many services, including primary care and even groceries. It is therefore not surprising that 31% of women who lived in rural areas traveled more than 100 miles to access abortion services, and an additional 43% traveled between 50–100 miles. Rural women are underrepresented among abortion patients.

At least there is truth there. According to one study in the Western Journal of Medicine, “Many rural Americans have limited access to health care…. About 20% of the US population—more than 50 million people—live in rural areas, but only 9% of the nation’s physicians practice in rural communities.”
The University of Missouri medical school has instituted a program to help deal with this national crisis. A story last month about its Pipeline program to place more rural physicians says:

“The national physician shortage is growing worse, and that trend becomes more severe when you consider the maldistribution of physicians in rural areas compared to urban areas,” said Kathleen Quinn, PhD, lead author of the article and director of MU’s Rural Track Pipeline Program. “Our physician workforce will need to be reshaped to address this inequity because research shows only 3 percent of medical school matriculants plan to practice in a rural area.”

It’s troubling that the abortion industry cries foul repeatedly about abortion access when some Americans have trouble finding access to treat actual diseases. That a journal article would even need to be written about such fringe data is telling of its campaign to increase abortion.
Abortion is not a disease. It’s a choice. It is the only surgery that exists where a random surgeon will perform a life-altering operation on a woman in a non-emergency situation without knowing her, her history, her certainty of the procedure or any other medical background.
I recall elective surgery I had for a uterine problem (a real problem, not a baby). It was relatively minor surgery which would not kill anyone, or risk my own life outside natural surgery risks that happen by nature of the fact its surgery. It took me a month to even get scheduled. I had to have pre-surgery mandatory counseling, simply because it’s surgery, to be sure I knew what I was doing and what I wanted.
But Guttmacher’s Rachel Jones, lead author of the article, insists this is burdensome if one wants an abortion:

Many women travel substantial distances to access abortion services. This can present a barrier, particularly for poor and low-income women, who make up the majority of women seeking abortions, and for women in rural areas…. For women in states with mandatory counseling and waiting periods, the barrier is even greater, and one some women may not be able to overcome.

I am a healthy woman for the most part, but the few times I have needed procedures, they have been drawn out and involved travel of 1-3 hours. This is often normal. Should it be? Maybe not, but it is. The abortion industry’s lamenting over having to drive 25 miles to kill a baby is a pitiful statement of its values. Not only do they want abortion to be legal, but they want it to be on every corner, without waiting and paid for with someone else’s taxes.
If we would take a step back and look at what we’re asking for as a nation, we would be like the people who saw the emperor without clothes. The demands of the abortion industry are medically ludicrous, practically unrealistic, and, quite frankly, discriminatory to all the Americans with real diseases who actually do need a clinic near them to save their life, not take someone else’s.

Source: LiveAction News

Abortion

 

 

 

So what is the real agenda of “What Contributes to a Positive Abortion Experience?” Increase the number of abortions by increasing the number of abortionists

 

By Dave Andrusko

Steph Herold

The headline to Steph Herold’s post at the pro-abortion site RHrealitycheck.org is, “What Contributes to a Positive Abortion Experience?”As is so often the case, once pro-abortionists unfairly and haughtily dispose of pro-life objections, in making their case they reveal much more than they know.
Let’s deal briefly with what Herold calls the “evidence-free” pro-life beliefs that “abortion clinics and even abortions themselves hurt women.” Like Herold, they simply ignore all the contrary evidence that women ARE hurt at abortion clinics, evidence we’ve written about many times.

They quickly slide over to insist that “study after study show[s] abortion is safe, and that the best science of the last several decades proves that abortion does not cause any mental health problems.” That simply isn’t  true, as we’ve discussed here (“Major new study from Denmark reveals significantly higher maternal death rates following abortion compared to normal delivery”) and here (“Worldwide Research Conclusively Demonstrates How Abortion Hurts Women”).
That aside, “What Contributes to a Positive Abortion Experience?” As always, consider the source, in this case a study from the University of California at San Francisco. Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon, NRLC’s director of education, aptly describes UCSF as “the nation’s abortion training academy.“
Herold’s opening statement is unintentionally revealing about the work of Dr. Diana Taylor et al.

“What they found is pretty astounding: Nearly three-quarters of participants reported that their abortion experience was better than they expected.”

Why is this “pretty astounding”? According to Herold

“This speaks to both the high quality of care at abortion clinics and also to the stigmatization of abortion. Other studies show that patients may believe that abortion clinics are unsafe medical establishments, which may be why they rate their quality of care so highly—they were expecting to receive low-quality care.”

Just ask an objective third party this question. Does it really make sense that “stigmatization” largely/wholly explains the women’s anticipated level of care (“unsafe”)? Or is more likely what they heard from other women and/or a sense that this is what they “deserve” because of what they are doing to their unborn babies?

So what were the factors? Herold writes

“The researchers discovered that the main contributors to women’s rating of their abortion care experience were treatment by the clinician performing the abortion, treatment by clinic staff, timeliness of care, and levels of pain during the abortion procedure.”

As she immediately points out this is not unique to abortion.

But, of course. So if this only documents the obvious, why bother to write it at all? Because the study and the story are in service of a different agenda which we encounter at the end of Herold’s post:

“They also found that women’s satisfaction ratings did not change based on the type of clinician providing the abortion. This supports the growing body of evidence that physicians aren’t the only types of clinicians that can and should be performing abortion procedures.”

The “growing body of evidence” is produced largely by the likes of UCSF to  make the case that more and more categories of non-physicians should be able to perform various kinds of first-trimester abortions—with the utterly predictable next step being to include more kinds of first-trimester abortion and more types of non-physicians.

Dr. O’Bannon has debunked this myth on several occasions, most recently here.  It is not safer for women to have non-physicians performing abortions.
Then why? Because what it is trying to accomplish is to reverse the downward trend in the number of abortions.

Remember, for abortion advocates, any day that does not increase the number of dead babies is a lost day.

Source: NRLC News

Abortion Stats

 

Abortion Statistics for the United States: some takeaways

 

Editor’s note. This appeared on the webpage of Right to Life of Michigan, NRLC’s state affiliate.
According to the latest estimates from the Alan Guttmacher Institute, there were 1.21 million abortions performed during 2008 in the United States.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) also monitors abortions in the United States. Since 1997, they have received incomplete results or no abortion statistics from various states including Maryland, California, and New Hampshire. The latest figures from the CDC were 784,507 abortions in 2009.
According to the CDC, at least 44.7% of the women who had abortions in 2009, had obtained an abortion previously in their life. At least 19.5% of women who aborted had at least 2 previous abortions.

In 2009, 35.4% of abortions were performed on African-Americans, who comprise only 13% of the U.S. population.
For further statistics from the CDC, click here [www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6108a1.htm?s_cid=ss6108a1_w].

Abortion Statistics for Michigan
A total of 23,230 induced abortions were reported in Michigan in 2012, which was a 0.59 percent decrease from the total of 23,366 reported in 2011 but a 52.7 percent decrease since 1987 (the year with the largest number of induced abortions).

In 2012, about 49% of the resident women receiving abortions had no previous induced abortions. In general, from 1985 through 2012, a gradual increase has been observed with the proportion of women reporting two or more induced abortions, going from 14.6 percent in 1985 to 25.3 percent in 2012. The proportion of women who had no previous induced abortion has been generally declining, falling from 59.5 percent in 1985 to 49.0 percent in 2012.

The majority of Michigan residents receiving induced abortions (49.3 percent) were under 25 years of age, while 13.5 percent were less than 20 years old. These are much smaller proportions than the 64.6 and 30.6 percent observed, respectively, in 1985. (See Characteristics of Reported Induced Abortions, 1985-2012.)
For further statistics on abortion in Michigan, go to http://www.mdch.state.mi.us/pha/osr/abortion/intro.asp
Abortion Myths

Abortion advocates often use a coat hanger to symbolize the “age of back-alley abortions” where women were forced to seek abortions from “unqualified butchers.” The number of women who died from illegal “back-alley” abortions was often said to be in the thousands. However, according to the U.S. Bureau of Vital Statistics, there were only 39 women who died from illegal abortions in 1972.
To describe illegal abortion providers as unqualified is hardly accurate. Former medical director of Planned Parenthood, Dr. Mary Calderone, described in a 1960 American Journal of Health article that a study in 1958 showed that 84% to 87% of all illegal abortions were performed by licensed physicians in good standing. Dr. Calderone concluded that “90% of all illegal abortions are presently done by physicians.” So it seems that the “back-alley butchers” of January 21, 1973, became “caring doctors who believe in a woman’s right to choose” on January 22, 1973.

In 1978, the “American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology” stated the legalization of abortion “has had no major impact on the number of women dying from abortion” since the results of a study they completed showed that over 90% of all illegal abortions were performed by licensed physicians.
Abortion advocates will also claim that a million American women each year were undergoing illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade. Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control show that these statements are highly misleading. The CDC reports that after abortion was legalized in January of 1973, there were 615,831 legal abortions. In 1976 when there were 988,267 abortions. There weren’t over a million legal abortions a year in the United States until the end of 1977, five years after abortion was made legal in all states.

Abortion was legal in a handful of states (New York, Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, New Jersey, Vermont, and California) before Roe v. Wade and the CDC reports that there were 586,760 legal abortions in 1972.
Consequences of Abortion

Advocates of abortion claimed that if abortion became legal, child abuse would become less frequent. The National Incidence Study from the National Clearing House estimates that 1,553,800 children in the United States were abused or neglected under the Harm Standard in 1993. This same study estimated that in 1980 there were 625,100 abused or neglected children. This is an increase of more than 148%.

Numerous published scientific studies have found that women who abort a child, especially their first child, have a greater risk of getting breast cancer.
One study found that at least 19 percent of women who abort suffer from diagnosable post-traumatic stress disorder (Barnhard, C., “The Long-Term Psychological Effects of Abortion,” 1990).
In a 1996 study published in the “British Medical Journal,” researchers found that women who had an abortion were 3 times more likely than the general population and 6 times more likely than women who gave birth, to commit suicide in the following year.

Source: NRLC News

Hope and Prayer as Opposed to Abortion

Pro-Life Congresswoman’s “miracle baby” survives birth and “we have every expectation that she will lead a full and healthy life”

By Dave Andrusko

United States Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler’s daughter is considered by doctors to be the first baby to survive Potter’s Syndrome.

CROSBY-VOLMER INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS

My goodness, what an amazing post today on pro-life Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler’s Facebook account. The baby (her first) whom she told us in June had been diagnosed with a condition “incompatible with life,” has survived two weeks.

Here is her post after which we’ll add a few additional details:

With great joy, gratitude and hope, we are pleased to share with you the news of the birth of our daughter, Abigail Rose Beutler, on Monday, July 15 at 3:13 AM at Emanuel Legacy hospital in Portland. She weighed two pounds, twelve ounces and was only 28 weeks along. She is every bit a miracle.

A few weeks ago, we shared the news of her diagnosis of Potter’s Sequence. In Abigail’s case, Potter’s was caused by bilateral renal agenesis. The condition caused a complete absence of amniotic fluid, critical for lung development in the womb. Multiple doctors explained that based on medical evidence her condition was incompatible with life and that, if she survived to term, she would be unable to breathe and live only moments after birth. We were also told that dialysis or transplant were not possible. The options we were offered were termination or “expectant management,” that is, waiting for her to die. Instead, we chose to pray earnestly for a miracle. Many of you joined us.

Through the outreach of a parent who had faced a similar situation, we found a group of courageous and hopeful doctors at Johns Hopkins who were willing to try a simple, but unproven treatment by amnioinfusion. Every week for five weeks, doctors injected saline into the womb to give Abigail’s lungs a chance to develop. With each infusion we watched via ultrasound as Abigail responded to the fluid by moving, swallowing and “practice breathing.” The initial lack of fluid in the womb caused pressure on her head and chest, but over the course of the treatment we were able to watch them reform to their proper size and shape. Her feet, which were clubbed in early ultrasounds, straightened. There was no way to know if this treatment would be effective or to track lung development, but with hearts full of hope, we put our trust in the Lord and continued to pray for a miracle.

A day after the fifth infusion, Jaime went in to pre-term labor. After four days of trying to prevent pre-term delivery, Abigail prevailed and arrived. The doctors and nurses were prepared for the worst – but immediately after she was born, she drew a breath and cried! After a few minutes, it was clear that her lungs were very well developed for a baby born so early. The infusions had stopped the Potter’s Sequence. The next challenge was to address her lack of kidney function.

 

The first doctors we encountered told us that dialysis or transplant were not possible. No local hospital was prepared to perform the procedure necessary – peritoneal dialysis – on a baby so small. Johns Hopkins was willing, but too far to transport. After a day of searching, we found a team at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital who were “happy to have her.” At sixteen hours old, she made her first trip to California, had surgery the next day and began dialysis immediately after. She is active, stable and breathing on her own.

As far as every doctor we’ve spoken with knows, Abigail is the first baby with bilateral renal agenesis to breathe sustainably on her own.

Abigail is making new friends in the NICU from all walks of life receiving exceptional care. Although Abigail will need ongoing care after she comes home, we have every expectation that she will lead a full and healthy life.

We are grateful to the doctors and nurses in Baltimore, Vancouver, Portland, and California who, like us, were not willing to accept the fatal diagnosis, but were willing to fight for the impossible. We owe a special thanks to Dr. Jessica Bienstock at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Fred Coleman at Legacy Salmon Creek Hospital, Dr. Anya Bailis at Legacy Clinic Maternal Fetal Medicine, and the entire team at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. We are grateful to the thousands who joined us in praying for a miracle. But most of all, we are grateful to God for answering those prayers.

As for mom, she is doing well, caring for her precious little daughter and recovering.

We feel called to share with you the details of this wonderful story of God’s work and the remarkable doctors who helped us in the near future. At the moment, our focus is, of course, on our beautiful fourteen day old daughter.

Just by way of summary, Congresswoman Herrera Beutler (R-Wa.) and her husband, Daniel Beutler, rejected the “only” two options. They chose instead to pray for a miracle and to try amnioinfusion where saline solution is injected into the womb in the place of amniotic fluid and which gave the baby’s lungs a chance to develop. The infusions stopped the Potter’s Sequence. Abigail has since undergone peritoneal dialysis and will eventually need a kidney transplant.

Dr. Louis Halamek, a neonatologist at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in California, “said they are cautiously optimistic about the future of the baby, born after a 28-week pregnancy,” the Daily Journal reported. “’Despite Abigail’s prematurity, small size and life-threatening disease, she is doing well,’ Halamek said.”

Source: NRLC News

Late Term Abortion

 

Mercy is for Losers

 

By Dave Andrusko

Donna Crane, vice president for policy at NARAL Pro-Choice America

Last week, NRL News Today carried a post entitled, “New Washington Post/ABC News poll shows overwhelming support for ban on abortions after 20 weeks.”  There were a couple of loose ends that I’d like to tie up.
Just a quick reminder of what we explained….. there was actually a two-thirds support for a ban on abortions past 20 weeks, not what the Post reported as 56%. There were also other flagrantly biased questions, the result of which was to tilt the results.
But somehow I read so fast that I missed a quote near the end in the story written by Juliet Eilperin and Scott Clement. Although only just two words, it speak volumes about the kind of people we do battle with.
“Donna Crane, vice president for policy at NARAL Pro-Choice America, said poll respondents might have given an ‘emotional response’ when they expressed support for limiting abortion at 20 weeks.”
I’m sure Crane is thinking, “what a bunch of sniveling, bleeding heart liberals.” No, on second thought, that’s probably not what she meant to convey.

 

What Crane was really saying is that it is irrational to limit abortion to any point in pregnancy—that only those thinking with their hearts instead of their heads would be stopped cold in their tracks over something so trivial as the prospect of pulling apart huge unborn babies, limb from limb.
I mean, after all, hasn’t the public learned ANYTHING? Well, yes, Ms. Crane—increasingly so when it comes to the unborn child. But Crane is right that the average American hasn’t learned the following.

That to pro-abortionists, you could propose a ban at 30 weeks—or 40 weeks–and they’d still say anyone who is in favor doesn’t understand the “science.”
That “choice” trumps every human value up to and including a gut-level abhorrence at tearing apart human beings capable of experiencing nightmarish pain.
That cruelty is a small price to pay to ensure that women’s “autonomy” is honored.
That mercy is for losers.

Source: NRLC News