Abortion

New ‘family planning’ law in Myanmar will cause forced abortions

  Kristi Burton Brown

Tragic reports constantly coming out of China illustrate the great harm caused by government-enforced “family planning” laws. Many have suffered under China’s One Child Policy. Forced abortions and rampant abuse of women (and the husbands who attempt to defend their wives and children) have been reported again and again.And still, little changes.

Now, one of China’s neighbors – Myanmar – has passed its own dangerous “family planning” law. On May 19, Myanmar President Thein Sein signed a law allowing the government to enforce “‘birth spacing,’ mandating women to wait 36 months between one child birth and the next.”
The Wall Street Journal reports:

It also gives regional governments the authority to adopt population control measures in their respective states, although the legislation doesn’t provide for any punitive measures.
Human rights groups and health monitors say that the government was already enforcing a two-child policy in parts of northern Rakhine state, where the Muslim population outweighs that of the Buddhist one, and fear that the new law will make it easier to enforce abortions and birth control.

(Photo credit: Tranuf on Flickr)

This law is an obvious doorway to rampant forced abortions, forced abortifacient birth control, and possible forced sterilization. In China, the world has seen that such a policy destroys children, women, and entire families. Indeed, the entire societal structure is turned upside down when families are forced to abort and abandon their children at the behest of the government.

News agencies report that President Sein’s signing of the birth spacing law was urged by Buddhist monks who desire greater control over the population. And while the news readily reports that the law will target the Muslim Rohingya tribe, it has forgotten that many Christian tribes will also be greatly affected. Christian families in Myanmar often have large families with many children.
The U.S. Congress has previously condemned Myanmar’s two-child policy that was applied to the Rohingyas. It ought to also condemn this new birth spacing law that will force abortions on Christian mothers as well. Myanmar has a history of vast persecution against Christians that is little-known, and yet, this law is one more evidence of the government’s desire to attack Christian families, too, through the killing of their children.

Chinese village officials have often acted with great violence towards families who refuse to abide by the country’s One Child Policy. Myanmar’s new law, allowing local leaders to choose how to enforce it, opens wide the door to similar violence. One need only look to China to see how this birth spacing law will effect Myanmar if not stopped.
Both pro-choice and pro-life people should be able to agree that forced abortion, wherever it is found, should be roundly condemned and ended

Source: LiveAction News

Real War on Womwn

 

21-year-old dies after taking birth control pill

  Kristi Burton Brown 

Twenty-one-year-old Fallan Kurek died of a pulmonary embolism, caused by a birth control pill – Rigevidon – that she had been taking for less than a month. Tragically, Kurek had been directed by her doctor to take the pill solely for the purpose of regulating her period.
The Daily Mail reports:

She had been taking the medication for just 25 days when she collapsed at home in Tamworth, Staffordshire.

Paramedics rushed to her house after she began vomiting – but minutes later she stopped breathing and turned blue.

…[T]ragically, after three days in intensive care, she was pronounced brain dead.

She passed away just hours later on Thursday May 14, surrounded by her loved ones.

Her cause of death was recorded as pulmonary embolism (blood clot) on her lung.

Kurek’s chest pain had been checked out at a hospital four days prior to her collapse. Sadly, her pain was dismissed and the cause went unrecognized. It seems medical professionals did not ask if Kurek was taking any form of birth control until she was already on a ventilator.

At that point, staff at the hospital realized that she was likely suffering from a blood clot, but the damage had already been done. Kurek’s parents question why they were not informed of the danger of blood clots. This danger is three times higher among women who are on hormonal birth control pills than among women who are not.

Despite this fact, a spokesman from the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency says that “the benefits of any combined hormonal contraceptive far outweigh the risk of serious side effects.” Yet this begs the question of whether a triple risk of possible death is truly worth a regulated period – especially when other options are available, though perhaps not as quick of a “fix.”

Fallan Kurek (from her Facebook profile)

Kurek’s parents hope that telling their daughter’s story can bring attention to the real risks of birth control pills.

Mr and Mrs Kurek also hope that medical professionals will take more time to explain serious side effects to all women, not just those in high risk groups, such as smokers or overweight women.

‘They know the pill can cause blood clots,’ said Mr Kurek. ‘We can’t bring her back, all we can do is maybe save another life.’

Even Cosmopolitan agrees that Kurek’s story is both terribly sad and scary for women:

If you think an unplanned pregnancy or an irregular period is scary, this should put things in perspective: 21-year-old Australian Fallan Kurek recently died from taking birth control pills, which triggered a lung blood clot and heart inflammation, reports Birmingham Mail. She’d only been on the pill for 25 days.

Hannah McCann, another young woman, is speaking out about the dangers of birth control pills after suffering from a blood clot herself:

Hannah McCann said she was the “lucky one” after reading about the death of 21-year-old Fallan Kurek from Staffordshire in England who suffered a fatal blood clot after she was prescribed the same contraceptive pill. …
Hannah, also 21, was prescribed Rigevidon in December to regulate her periods after being diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome in October last year.
Just 21 days after starting to take the contraceptive pill, Hannah fell ill and doctors discovered she had a blood clot on the brain. She said doctors have since told her Rigevidon was the most likely cause of the clot.
Now the East Belfast student is speaking out to warn other women about the possibility of dangerous side effects of the contraceptive pill. …
“If you are going to use it for sex, use a condom instead and if you are going to use it for PCOS or to regulate your periods then take more advice because it has its own problems and it will not just make everything better in a heart beat.”

In January 2014, Vanity Fair released an expose on the Nuva Ring, another non-pill form of hormonal birth control. Devastating results have been discovered in women using the Nuva Ring, too – including death from pulmonary embolisms.
While hormonal birth control is known to act by stripping the lining of a woman’s uterus, sometimes causing early miscarriages, it is also undoubtedly dangerous to women themselves.
It’s high time women were given the complete facts about hormonal birth control (including hormonal and copper IUDs). They need to be aware of what can truly happen: the ending of the lives of their preborn babies as well as damage and destruction to their own bodies.

Source: LiveAction News

Miracles

 

Woman gives birth to rare identical triplets

  Nancy Flanders  

 

 

A couple in Texas welcomed three baby girls this month— identical triplets— a one in a million occurrence.
Catalina, Ximena, and Scarlett were born at 34 weeks gestation via C-section. The babies are doing well, although Scarlett and Ximena are conjoined at the pelvis – a one in 50 million occurrence.  Their parents, Silvia Hernandez and Raul Torres, also have a two-year-old son.



The parents were expecting twins, and were shocked to learn in April that they were actually having triplets.
Torres told Kiii TV News, “We’re going to love them no matter how they look and how they come out.”

The girls were each born weighing 4 pounds, 11 ounces. Their father called the triplets a gift from God, saying God chose him and his wife to be their parents for a reason. The parents vow to take care of this “big blessing.”

While Scarlett had difficulty breathing and was placed on oxygen, she has improved. Scarlett and Ximena will need to do a bit of growing before they can be separated, which doctors hope will happen when the girls are six months old.
The family set up a Facebook page to update friends and relatives on the triplets.

Source: LiveAction News

New Poll

 

 

Gallup Poll: 55% of Americans Want All or Most Abortions Made Illegal

 

  Steven Ertelt     

 

A new Gallup poll finds a majority of Americans oppose all or most abortions even though some Americans who technically take a pro-life position opposing abortion wrongly think they are “pro-choice” on abortion.

The Gallup survey found that half of Americans identify themselves as “pro-choice” on abortion, surpassing the 44% who identify as “pro-life.” Gallup says “This is the first time since 2008 that the pro-choice position has had a statistically significant lead in Americans’ abortion views.”
“For most of the past five years, Americans have been fairly evenly divided in their association with the two abortion labels. The only exception between 2010 and 2014 was in May 2012, when the pro-life position led by 50% to 41%,” the polling firm notes. “Prior to 2009, the pro-choice side almost always predominated, including in the mid-1990s by a substantial margin. While support for the pro-choice position has yet to return to the 53% to 56% level seen at the time, the trend has been moving in that direction since the 2012 reading.”

But do those labels on abortion actually mean Americans are pro-abortion? It turns out the answer is no, as Gallup confirms a majority of Americans oppose all or almost all abortions. When asked when abortion should be legal, 55 percent of Americans oppose all abortions or say abortion should only be legal in a “few circumstances,” typically defined as cases such as rape, incest or if the life of the mother is in danger. Since those cases constitute, at most, 1-2 percent of all abortion cases, Gallup’s numbers confirm 55 percent of Americans oppose 98 percent or more of the 1.1 million abortions that take place annually in the United States.
The poll makes it clear that even 27 percent of those who call themselves “pro-choice” actually take a pro-life position wanting all abortions illegal or abortion legal in only the very rarest cases. Just 9 percent of people who support unlimited abortion wrongly call themselves pro-life.

Today’s poll is consistent with other Gallup surveys, such as its 2013 poll showing 58% of Americans opposed all or most abortions.
Other polling data confirms that, even when a majority of Americans call themselves “pro-choice” on abortion, they strongly support limits on abortions.

“The Knights of Columbus poll found that 47 percent of Americans identify as “pro-life,” which is consistent with the results of recent surveys conducted by Gallup and other opinion research groups. But the poll also found that substantial majorities think that 1) the abortion rate is too high; 2) abortion is morally wrong; and 3) abortion does more harm than good. And when asked about specifics, 59 percent of all respondents said abortion should be allowed only in cases of rape or incest, in cases where it’s necessary to save the life of the mother, or never at all,” political scientist Michael New notes.
A January poll, also by Gallup, confirms Americans don’t support the current policy of unlimited abortions for any reason up to birth in most states. The poll shows that, dating back to 2001, the fewest number of Americans are satisfied with America’s abortion laws which, currently, allow for virtually unlimited abortions in most states.
“In 2015, 34% of Americans say they are satisfied with current U.S. abortion policies. This is the lowest percentage since Gallup first asked the question in 2001,” Gallup noted.
A 2014 CNN poll also confirmed that a majority of Americans want all or most all abortions made illegal.
According to the CNN survey, 20% say abortion should always be illegal and 38% say most abortions should be illegal — making it so 58 percent of Americans oppose all or virtually all abortions. Just 27% of Americans side with Planned Parenthood and President Barack Obama in saying abortions should always be legal. Another 13 percent say abortion should be legal in most cases, making it so only 40 percent of Americans generally favor legalized abortion in most instances.
As CNN notes, “Most Americans have never favored using public funds for abortions for women who cannot afford them. According to the survey, 56% remain opposed, with only 39% favoring public funding for abortions.”
A 2011 CNN national poll of Americans showed 62% of Americans want all or most abortions made illegal.  In April 2009, CNN showed Americans wanted to prohibit most or all abortions by a 64-34 percentage point margin. The margin was 63-36% in November 2008, 61%-37% in June 2008, 62-36% in October 2007, and 64-34 percent in September 2006.

 

It Did Not Take Long

 

On-Line Pharmacy Selling Strawberry, Chocolate, and Marijuana Flavored Abortion Pills

By Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., National Right to Life
In the pharmaceutical industry, as soon as someone makes a widely selling drug, it usually isn’t long before there are lots of companies trying to figure out the formula and sell knockoff generics.
To gain a foothold in a highly competitive market, though, you’ve got to have some gimmick – lower prices, a memorable name, a good marketing programs, free delivery, etc. – to stand out and make a profit.

Cipla, a major pharmaceutical maker and exporter from India, thinks they’ve found a way to distinguish their MTP single pack kits – add popular flavors like strawberry, chocolate… and cannabis.
The “MTP” stands for “medical termination of pregnancy.” Unbelievable at it sounds, Cipla is selling flavored abortion pills.
It is unclear if the motivation is to appeal to a younger crowd, to deal with the bitter, chalky taste of the misoprostol, or just to draw attention to their “product.”

The packets contain a single tablet of mifepristone (RU-486) and four tablets of the prostaglandin misoprostol. The mifepristone acts to block the action of progesterone in the mother’s body, shutting down the small unborn child’s life support system. The misoprostol stimulates powerful uterine contractions to expel the child’s tiny corpse.
The entire process is painful, bloody, and arduous, with side effects alone enough to put some women in the hospital. More than a dozen deaths of chemical abortion patients have been reported worldwide, but there are groups and individuals promoting that women buy the pills online and use them on themselves at home.

Cipla’s own website tells women the mifepristone is to be given to a woman by or under the supervision of a doctor, though not every on-line website selling Cipla’s MTP Kits are as explicit.
Different on-line pharmacies sells the kits for different prices, but the one featuring the flavors sells for about $155.

The packaging indicates the flavoring but does not explain whether this applies to the mifepristone, the misoprostol, or both. Miferpristone is generally taken orally, but different protocols have misoprostol taken buccally (dissolving in the cheek or under the tongue) or vaginally.
As any parent knows, flavors are sometimes added to children’s medicines to make them more palatable, so that a child will be more willing to take his or her medicine and get better.
But these drugs are used to take the lives of innocent children, children who will never grow up to experience the tart sweetness of a fresh strawberry, the delight of chocolate ice cream, or just the love of another human being.
And nothing can sugarcoat that reality.

Source: NRLC News

Abortion - No Do-Overs

 
 

With Abortion, There Are No Do-Overs

By Maria Gallagher, Legislative Director, Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation
The little backward arrow icon on my emails has become one of my best friends.
The official function of the icon is to “undo typing.” But for me, it is often a lifesaver.
I start off going down one conversational path, then realize I need to do an about-face, and that tiny arrow points the way.

I’ve come to believe that one of the horrors of abortion–aside from the fundamental tragedy of a little girl’s or boy’s life being taken–is that it is one of those things in life that cannot be undone. Misunderstandings can be forgotten…bills in the legislature can be rewritten…even the U.S. Constitution can be amended…but there is no “do-over” when it comes to abortion.
The end result of abortion, the death of a defenseless human being, is devastatingly permanent. It is true that a woman can find hope and healing after abortion, but she will never again in this life discover the wonders of her baby–a particular baby with a specific identity and DNA.
This is why informed consent laws are so critically important. They are the “Caution: Danger Ahead” signs which can help women make life-affirming detours.

In Pennsylvania, for instance, back in 1989, the state legislature passed the Abortion Control Act, which requires that women be offered a booklet showing the development of the preborn child and the medical risks of abortion. The law also requires a 24-hour waiting period before an abortion can take place. That pause can give a woman time to talk to friends and family who may be willing to provide much-needed support for her and her baby. In the absence of family support, a caring counselor at one of the hundreds of pregnancy help centers across the state can empower a woman with the material and emotional resources necessary to face her future with hope.

Five years elapsed between the passage of the Abortion Control Act and its implementation, since the abortion lobby tried its best to stop the law. But reason and logic ultimately prevailed and, once the law went into effect, abortion totals plummeted in Pennsylvania.
Abortion advocates often claim that the pro-life movement wants to “turn back the clock.” Actually, the opposite is true. It is abortion proponents who want to go back to the time before protective pro-life laws, when women could be rushed to make a fatal decision that they could regret for the rest of their lives.

Pro-life is another term for progress. Progress which leads to informed decision-making and respect for both mother and child. The pro-abortion mentality has not served women or children and, judging from the throngs of young people who have embraced the pro-life cause, upholding Roe v. Wade makes about as much sense as trying to negotiate cyberspace with a manual typewriter. Roe is that out of touch–and, one can only hope, will soon be out of time.

Source: NRLC News

Religous Liberty and Free Speech

 

‘Bully bill’ requiring pro-life centers to advertise abortion passes CA Assembly

By Susan Michelle
A bill that violates the free speech rights of privately-funded pro-life pregnancy centers in the state of California by forcing them to advertise and promote abortion has now passed the state Assembly and advances to the Senate.
AB 775 passed its last Assembly hurdle Tuesday when it was approved by the members with a straight party-line vote, with Democrats in support of the bill.
The mandated government speech required by AB 775 includes a statement that all pro-life pregnancy centers must post publicly:

“California has public programs that provide immediate free or low-cost access to comprehensive family planning services (including all FDA-approved methods of contraception), prenatal care, and abortion, for eligible women. To determine whether you qualify, contact the county social services office at [insert the telephone number].”

The bill’s authors, David Chiu (D) and Autumn R. Burke (D), found vocal support from NARAL Pro-Choice and Planned Parenthood California, as well as from California’s Democratic attorney general, Kamala Harris, who defended their bill as a righteous cause. As co-author Burke said, “It’s hard to understand how those who claim to care about women find it so threatening to inform them about accessing affordable health care.”

But Burke’s deceitful comment and attitude was already address by Assemblyman James Gallagher (R), who previously asked co-authors Burke and Chiu questions challenging their motives:

“Why doesn’t your notice say, ‘adoption’ in it? ‘Free or low-cost access to comprehensive family planning services, prenatal care, adoption, counseling.’ I don’t see any of those services listed in your notice.

“You’re saying that these private (entities) who receive no funding—no government funding whatsoever—they’re completely private, they have to tell about the government-funded programs that are out there, but the same is not true of the government programs. They don’t have to say, ‘There’s these groups out there who have qualified, licensed people.’”

The obvious answer remains that pro-lifers are being excluded from having full rights, but abortion advocates may continue to focus on abortion without having to promote choosing adoption, or to advertise the variety of options for free prenatal care and support.
Instead, AB 775 strips people of their religious liberties and free exercise of speech by mandating government-mandating speech that requires these private pro-life agencies and their workers speak out against their own moral and religious values or be fined.
The bill, while absurd in its requirements, has been on the fast track to passage, and now advances to the Senate which houses 25 Democrats and 14 Republicans.

All concerned citizens may contact their California State Senators via this link.
Editor’s note. This appeared at liveactionnews.org and is reprinted with permission.

Source: NRLC News

Disabilities

 

 

People Always Say “As Long as the Baby is Healthy.” But if She’s Not, Will You Love Her Less?

    Grace Smith  

“So are you hoping for a boy or a girl?”

“It doesn’t matter as long as the baby is healthy.”
This is the conversation that I listened to as I stood next to my special needs sister. I bet you have heard this line before; or possibly even said it yourself. Most people do not seem to think through this statement, so I am going to bring up a few things that you may have not thought about.
My biggest question for those who say this is, “What if the baby isn’t healthy?”
My sister was born with Trisomy 18.

“Edwards syndrome (also known as trisomy 18 [T18]) is a chromosomal disorder caused by the presence of all, or part of, an extra 18th chromosome. This genetic condition almost always results from nondisjunction during meiosis. It is named after John Hilton Edwards, who first described the syndrome in 1960. It is the second-most common autosomal trisomy, after Down syndrome, that carries to term.
Half of the infants with this condition do not survive beyond the first week of life. The median lifespan is five to 15 days. About 8% of infants survive longer than 1 year. One percent of children live to age 10, typically in less severe cases of the mosaic Edwards syndrome.”

I apologize for the lengthy description, but I thought that it was important to show how serious my sister’s “disability” is, so you don’t think that I am some random person commenting on this topic with little to no personal experience.
And my sister clearly is not what most people consider a “healthy baby.”
I want to explain what I believe is the mindset behind the statement, “…as long as the baby is healthy.” Please keep in mind that this seems to be a society mindset; not necessarily the mindset of every individual.
90% of babies who have Trisomy 18 are aborted. 90 percent!!! Our culture tells us that children who are different and require more help are not worthy of life. In a culture where “normal” people are constantly told to be “unique” and “be yourself” we do not want to accept those whose “normal” is unique.
In my sister’s case, unique meaning 1 in every 5,000 live-births.
Society has told us that if there is a problem just “get rid of it.” That there is no need to “fix” something if you can get a new one with minimum trouble.
“Abortion is an ‘easy’ answer to solving the issue of a special needs child.”
“You do not want to make yourself or the child suffer.”
“You can get pregnant again and it will be a healthy child.”
I have said it before, but I will say it again. I have more compassion, love, understanding, and hope because of my sister than I would ever have without her. She lights up my life, and even when life is rough and it feels like we are going to hit rock bottom that little face will look up at you with the biggest smile and so much admiration in her eyes, for you, that you know all will be well in the end.
It breaks my heart every time someone says, “…as long as the baby is healthy,” mainly because my sister is not.
It hurts so much to hear someone say that, especially when they know that my sister is disabled.
They know that I have a sister, who I love very much by the way, who has special needs, and yet, they say to my face that they do not want a child like her. They basically say that they will take anyone, but a child like her.
I used to get extremely upset over this and it will still hurt sometimes, but I have come to the point where my mindset is, “If they do not get to experience the wonderful love of kids like my sister, they are the ones missing out.”
Please keep in mind that I did not put any of this to condemn anyone but to show them how simple phrases that are used all the time can be hurtful and that there is a stigma that people have against special needs children. Our culture needs to uproot this thought process. It is time to stop being hypocritical about ‘acceptance’ and instead realize that every life matters and has value.

LifeNews Note: Grace Smith is a pro-life 16-year-old who is the daughter of Brad Smith and his wife Jesi. They are Save The 1 (www.savethe1.com) pro-life speakers from Rochester Hills, Michigan. Learn more about Brad and Jesi and their family at www.keepingourfaith.com.

Source: LifeSite News

Great News

   

Alex Schadenberg 

---

Scottish Parliament votes down assisted suicide bill by overwhelming majority

assisted suicide , care not killing , scotland

May 27, 2015 (AlexSchadenberg.BlogSpot.ca) -- The Scottish assisted suicide bill was just defeated in Parliament by a vote of 82 - 36.

The defeat of the assisted suicide bill was predicted by the Care Not Killing Alliance earlier in the week when they announced that 59 MSP's opposed the bill with another 17 MSP's leaning towards opposing the bill.
The day before the vote, Alison Britton, the convener of the Law Society's health and medical law committee in Scotland said that the assisted suicide bill lacked clarity and would be difficult to enforce. Britton stated:

We have said throughout the passage of this Bill that legislation in this area needs to be absolutely clear and those seeking to end their lives, and those who assist them, need a robust and transparent process to be certain under which conditions it would be lawful for assistance to be provided.
We remain concerned over the lack of definition of the key terms, such as 'assistance' and 'life-shortening' and the functions of the licensed facilitator are still uncertain.
Lack of such clarity leads to ambiguity and leaves the legislation open to interpretation.

The week before the vote the Care Not Killing Alliance presented a petition of 15,300 people who oppose the assisted suicide bill.
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition congratulates Dr Gordon Macdonald and all of the members of the Care Not Killing Alliance for effectively defeating this dangerous bill.
Assisted suicide is unethical and unsafe. It is wrong to give doctors, or others, the right in law to assist in causing the death of another person.
Reprinted with permission from Alex Schadenberg's blog.

Post Abortion

 

 

“It feels like a part of me died that day and will never return”

By Dave Andrusko
“Since You Asked,” I gather, is a kind of advice column found salon.com. Since no one would come away thinking this is a home for card-carrying pro-life activists, it is to Cary Tennis’ (and Salon’s) credit that he answered a letter from a deeply unhappy woman under the headline, “My Abortion Traumatized me: The father of my child dropped me at the clinic and disappeared. Every day I mourn.”
Highpoints [actually low points]?

• She wanted the baby but aborted “based my relationship with the baby’s father” [a promise of marriage and kids down the line…if only this one was aborted].
• She continues to have nightmares. “I wake up every morning and it is the best minute of my life before the knowledge of what happened returns to me and the cycle of sadness and regret begins all over again.”
• And “I am a liberal woman and as pro-choice as you can be! Which is even more upsetting.”

Her question? How to move forward and free herself “from this unending cycle of regret?”
Tennis’s final recommendation—that she links up with a pro-abortion “after-abortion counseling talk line”—is unfortunate. But much of everything else he says is helpful to women grieving after having an abortion. I will summarize what he says and then offer three brief comments.
He points out, “You are lucky to be living now. Not too long ago, women suffered in silence after experiences like yours.”

Tennis, again to his credit, addresses the woman as an individual human being. “I don’t want to equate your story with any other story,” he writes. “This battle is yours. It is personal. It is unique.”
And to get better, he advises, “has to do with the difference between knowing and doing. Knowing about medicine won’t help. You have to go see the doctor. Knowing about addiction recovery services won’t help. You have to go to a meeting. And just knowing that there are people out there who will help you get over this traumatic experience won’t help. You have to call them.” Okay…
#1. There is plenty of hurt to be addressed. “A conservative estimate from the best available data is that 20% to 30% of women who undergo an abortion will experience serious and/or prolonged negative consequences,” Priscilla Coleman, Ph.D., who has researched and written extensively on the subject, has said.

#2. Tennis doesn’t write as if the woman is politically incorrect for saying she “feels like a part of me died that day and will never return.” A baby did die that day. And when the reality of a child’s death runs smack into a professed political posture—“and as pro-choice as you can be”—the truth can often win out.

#3. There is hope—as more than one post-abortive woman has put it—in the mourning. Acknowledging that she made a tragically wrong decision is a vital first step toward reconciliation. Reaching out to others who will respond in love can make it possible for a healing shaft of light to penetrate the darkness.

Source: NRLC News

Suicide and Legalizing Assisted Suicide

 

Family-Supported Suicide Risks Others

By Wesley J. Smith
It used to be that families and mental health professionals were the last bastions helping despairing people (for whatever reasons) stay in life. These days, even that bastion is crumbling.

Psychiatrists in the Netherlands and Belgium euthanize patients, and a strong minority of USA mental health professionals support the concept of “rational suicide.”
Families also support their loved ones in self-killing. In Belgium, a joint euthanasia killing of an elderly couple was arranged by their own son because, well care giving would have been difficult.
Brittany Maynard’s widower and mother supported her suicide.

And now, another one of a non-terminally ill cancer patient named Jeffrey Spector flew to a Swiss suicide clinic to be made dead. While the family tried to talk him out of it (according to the Telegraph), they have now issued a statement of 100% support.
From The Journal i.e. story:

Jeffrey contacted Dignitas [suicide clinic] shortly after his diagnosis, as he was absolutely clear in his mind that when the time came he wanted to end his own life with dignity. He was particularly clear that he did not want to live a life in which he was paralysed and reliant on his family to care for him.

Earlier this year, Jeffrey’s condition deteriorated to such an extent that he believed he would soon be permanently and completely paralysed. Accordingly, he made an appointment to go to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland to end his own life. Whilst this was, of course, a difficult and painful time, as a family we supported and respected Jeffrey’s decision 100%.

On Wednesday 20 May 2015, Jeffrey travelled to Zurich for that very purpose and on Friday 22 May 2015, Jeffrey ended his own life in exactly the manner and at exactly the time he wanted. Jeffrey ended his life with dignity and control which was his overwhelming desire.

But this isn’t only about them.
There are others watching–some of them despairing people thinking of suicide–who look at such statements and think, “I should help out my family too by becoming dead.”
Indeed, Spector said that was one of the very reasons he decided to commit suicide, “because it is in my family’s best interests.”
That meme–putting oneself out of the family’s misery–is gaining traction. A San Francisco Chronicle editorial in support of legalizing assisted suicide cites “helping the family” as one of the reasons such a move would be “humane:”

It affords patients an option of controlling their future on their own terms instead of putting themselves and their families through a torturous final path.

When we validate suicide, we tempt others into it.
Editor’s note. This appeared on Wesley’s fine blog.

Source: NRLC News

Sad

 

Preemie survives and thrives but this only makes her mother more supportive of “later abortions”

By Dave Andrusko
From the pro-abortion perspective, if there is a foundational principle, it is that no matter what the outcome, the decision must always rest exclusively in the hands of the mother. Even when the choice is for life (ugh), the proper measuring stick is not that the baby is alive but that the mother alone gave the thumbs up for life or the thumbs down for death.
She chose one but she could have chosen the other. It is the decision maker, not the ethical quality of the decision, that counts.
I had meant to write about “Having a Severely Premature Baby Strengthened My Support for Every Woman’s Right to Choose” by Dallas Schubert when it first appeared. But the conclusion is so counter-intuitive that it’s very much worth discussing even a year later.
Ms. Schubert’s daughter is now a teenager, healthy, happy, and “the joy of my life.” But 17 years ago, her prospects were grim. Schubert does a superb job of laying out the highs and lows of a precarious situation in which she and her husband were given the option of delivering her very, very premature child and doing nothing, or delivering her baby girl and doing everything possible.
Schubert writes of her daughter (who was born “at just under 24 weeks, weighing 590 grams and measuring just 12 inches”)

I couldn’t let her go. Lying there pumped full of magnesium, scared and tired, I couldn’t let go of the idea of that child I had become attached to over those almost six months. I couldn’t let go of my expectations of parenthood. I couldn’t accept the inevitability of grief. And so I said, “Do everything you can.” The NICU team was called, I was whisked to surgery, and we began the next stage of our journey.

It was touch and go, with the odds very much against her baby. But she survived and after 100 days in the hospital, came home. Schubert writes, “We were lucky. We were amazingly, extraordinarily lucky.”

You might ask yourself, how does this beautiful story of courage and commitment and good fortune get transmogrified into even greater support and empathy “for women’s access to later abortions”?
For starters, the intoxicating exercise of power. Her husband, who makes an appearance in the beginning of her account, is (of course) excluded when it’s crunch time.
“The choice regarding my daughter’s care was mine, as it should have been,” Schubert wrote. “It was both my moral right and my responsibility. I was her mother. She was growing in me. The complex decisions about her life were mine to make, and I made them as best I could.”
Of course, once her daughter was delivered, she would no longer “be growing in me.” What would ensue–and her daughter could have faced significant challenges as she grew, a major component of Schubert’s retrospective moral calculus–would happen both to Schubert and her husband.
Apparently it never crossed Schubert’s mind that her husband could just as well have said, “But I was her father.”

She goes on

I made a choice that was born of my hopes, my dreams, the degree of attachment I had to that pregnancy, and my expectations about motherhood. I made a choice to avoid immediate grief and pain. That choice could have condemned her to a more painful death, or a painful life. The consequences of that decision were not just mine to live with; they were hers as well. I believe it is from that very same place that most women make the decision to have an abortion, or any other number of decisions regarding pregnancy and parenting. With the ability to bear children comes the awesome and often difficult power to make decisions about that life.

But she was not carrying a “pregnancy,” Schubert was carrying their–not her–daughter! To justify blanket support for “later abortions,” Schubert draws a parallel between her right not to have actively treated their daughter at birth with the decision to abort a child, presumably facing the possibility of major medical difficulties.
However most babies are aborted late/later in pregnancy not because of “fetal anomalies,” but because their mothers often refuse to acknowledge they are pregnant and/or because they are ambivalent. The assistant to the late abortionist George Tiller said so in an interview just this past weekend, as we reported on yesterday.

“With the ability to bear children,” Schubert writes with pseudo-solemnity, “comes the awesome and often difficult power to make decisions about that life.”

But how about the awesome and difficult responsibility to care for the child–before and after birth?
Schubert ends by contemplating the likelihood that if she had chosen otherwise, she would not have received the many compliments she did: “society” would “not have supported and embraced me.”
This leads to an angry “how dare you?” conclusion: “I can’t imagine what it would have been like to have my choice taken from me, or to have endured shame and stigma from society for it.”
At the risk of stating the obvious, Schubert had already taken the choice to have a role in what happened to their daughter away from her husband.

And to make an equally obvious point, the dire predictions the doctors gave her 17 years ago– that there was “a 25 percent chance of survival if we resuscitated, and that if she survived she had an over 75 percent chance of significant disability and chronic medical need”–provided to be 100% wrong.
Talk about learning all the wrong lessons.

Source: NRLC News

Assisted Suicide

 

 

Suicide advocacy group faces conviction amidst rash of state bills to legalize assisting suicide

By Jennifer Popik, Legislative Counsel, National Right to Life’s Powell Center for Medical Ethics

Barbara Coombs Lee

The suicide advocacy group, Final Exit Network, was recently found guilty of violating Minnesota’s law against assisting suicide. The group has long been known to take brazen actions across the country promoting suicide, by promoting how-to guides for home suicides and sending “caring friends” to those who say they want to take their lives.

According to Reuter’s David Bailey in his May 14, 2015, article, “Minnesota jury convicts Final Exit group of assisting 2007 suicide”

A jury on Thursday found the national right-to-die group Final Exit Network guilty of assisting a Minnesota woman’s suicide in 2007 and interfering with a death scene, prosecutors said. Sentencing has been scheduled for August in the case stemming from the suicide of Doreen Dunn, 57, who authorities said died by helium asphyxiation with two Final Exit group members present in her home.

The deceased woman, Doreen Dunn, said she experienced chronic pain stemming from a heart procedure ten years before her death.

The disturbing self-proclaimed aim of the Final Exit Network is to “offer free service to all who qualify, providing relevant information, home visits if possible and a compassionate presence for individual and family.” Under its sweeping definition of “those who qualify,” the organization has essentially no limits on whom it will advise or encourage to commit suicide.
Its parent organization, The Hemlock Society, after a series of changes from 1980 until 2003, split into two separate organizations: Final Exit Network and Compassion and Choices. According to Final Exit Network’s website, the two groups “essentially share the same belief in death with dignity, but each of these two organizations has a different focus. Compassion and Choices focuses on legislative change. Final Exit Network, however, has taken a very different approach…”
The so-called legislative portion of the euthanasia movement, Compassion and Choices (C&C), is hard at work across the country, having secured introduction of doctor prescribed suicide bills in more than half of U.S. states. While Final Exit Network is correct to say it takes a different approach — actively publishing graphic suicide “how-to” guides, and frequently providing in-person support to suicidal members–the end goals of the two organization are eerily similar: suicide on demand as an answer to any or all suffering.

As a first step, C&C is presently promoting legislation that purports to allow doctor-prescribed suicide for competent terminally ill patients, so long as some illusory “safeguards” are followed.
Evidence that safeguards are not working is available from both Oregon and Washington. There are state-issued reports that provide evidence of non-terminally ill persons receiving lethal prescriptions. (Assisting suicide is legal in Oregon, Washington, and Vermont. Montana courts have found no public policy against the practice, and court action is pending in New Mexico.)
Further, there is nothing in existing Oregon, Washington, or Vermont law that requires doctors to refer patients for evaluation by a psychologist or psychiatrist to screen for depression or mental illness. There is also no such requirement in any current proposal to legalize assisting suicide in any state.

The death-prescribing doctors can make a psychiatric referral, but nearly never do. In fact, according to Oregon’s official state reports, in 17 years of legalized doctor-prescribed suicide, a mere 5.5% of death candidates have been referred for psychological evaluation.
In short, there is evidence that any so-called “safeguards” simply are not working. What is more shocking is that this is exactly what C&C President Barbara Coombs Lee wants.

She would prefer to expand the list of those who can receive lethal drugs to any kind of discomfort a person might believe she or he is suffering from. In the USA Today article, “Half of U.S. states consider right-to-die legislation,” Coombs Lee told reporter Malak Monir, “It’s not as simple as pain. Everyone gets to identify their own definition of suffering.” [Emphasis added]
In another telling remark, Coombs Lee congratulated our close neighbors in Canada on that nation’s astounding Supreme Court decision that allows euthanasia for virtually any reason, and possibly for people whose wishes are unknown. In a press release she wrote, “We are heartened, as availability of aid in dying in Canada will have an impact here, especially in border states like New York and Maine.”

Be on the lookout for these dangerous proposals in your state. These laws will not alleviate pain. In fact pain is not even a top five reason people seek lethal prescriptions (“losing autonomy” and “becoming a burden” are the top 2).

These death-inducing drugs will be given to non-terminally ill people. Profit-driven insurers and cash-strapped state health care plans have encouraged the use of these inexpensive suicide drugs.
It is time to contact your legislators, particularly in California, Massachusetts, Maine, and New Jersey and tell them that these laws are too dangerous!

Source: NRLC News

Assisted Suicide Comes to Movies

 

New film shows the “lighter” side of assisted suicide

By Dave Andrusko
Over the months, I’d read about “The Farewell Party,” which opened this week. The movie is set in a “Jerusalem retirement home in which one resident, an amateur inventor, devises a ‘mercy-killing machine,’” according to the New York Times’ Stephen Holden.

The “joke” is on several levels. Once they “assist” one man to die, word gets out and there is a rush to take advantage of the ‘service.’ And, of course, if you are of a mind, it is easy to poke fun at the behavior of elderly people battling dementia and Alzheimer’s.
The title– “The Farewell Party” — is to suggest that assisting in a suicide is in the end something that “friends” do for one another in a lighthearted sort of way and for the “best” of reasons. Indeed the movie reviewers (at least in the headlines) describe the film, which won four Israeli Academy Awards, as “The Lighter Side of Euthanasia.”

I have no intention of seeing a film. You can see the official trailer on YouTube. From that trailer and several reviews, we can draw, I believe, a few conclusions.
First–and to be honest, I can’t and wouldn’t want to get by this–is the opening of the trailer and, apparently, near the very beginning of the movie.
The key figure is “Yehezkel “ who is, according to a review in The Forward, “a grandfatherly teddy bear of a man whose compassion sometimes runs ahead of his common sense.”
Ezra Glinter continues

In the first scene we see him making a prank call to a neighbor suffering from cancer. With the help of a homemade voice modulator — among other things, Yehezkel is an amateur inventor — he convinces her that he’s God, and although she’s definitely going to heaven, there are actually no vacancies right now, so she should continue with her treatments.

Pretty funny, right? Even funnier when the confused woman “reverse dials ‘God’ and gets Levana [Yeheskel’s wife] instead.” Levana “stumbles for a second before telling her that God is in the bathroom.”

Glinter calls “The Farewell Party” a “black comedy.” Holden prefers to describe the movie as a comedy “about euthanasia [which] steers a careful course between humor and pathos while playing down overtly political and religious arguments for and against assisted suicide.”
Everybody gets in on the “fun,” including a retired police officer who offers tips about how to avoid being prosecuted. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

But in this film which supposedly does not “overtly” make the case for assisted suicide, who should help Yeheskel build the Kevorkian-like machine? Dr. Daniel, “a retired veterinarian and a resident of the retirement home who has put down many animals. He agrees to help Yehezkel perfect the design of a machine that will allow Max to end his own life by pushing a button.”

Get it? Put down a dog, put down an elderly retirement home patient. What’s the dif?
There is only one holdout: Levana. But, not to worry. “Her attitude softens,” Holden tells us, when her early-stage Alzheimer’s worsens and “she realizes to her horror that she is ‘disappearing.’”
The other consideration in this film which does not “overtly” make the case for assisted suicide is very important. “The characters are in a remarkably good situation,” Glinter writes. “Their retirement community is comfortable, with a big sun-lit cafeteria, a swimming pool and a garden.” 
We are to infer that the residents “band together” to take charge of their lives–or, in this case their deaths–because you know how those doctors are: they just you to live and live and live.

But if people in these comfortable settings “need” assisted suicide, how about all those who don’t have such favorable situation, let alone support? Don’t they “need” assistance even more?
Of course, you can’t help thinking of “Obvious Child,” a “romantic comedy” about abortion–about lethal childish irresponsibility dressed up as coming-of-age moment for a morally tone-deaf part-time comic.

The message in both films is if we can laugh at something–helping someone kill themselves or killing helpless babies–how serious should we be taking the whole thing.
The unspoken sentiment. Lighten up. CAN’T YOU TAKE A JOKE?
Sure, I can. But I can’t, and I won’t, take/accept taking lives.

Source: NRLC News

Men and Abortion

 

Post-abortive father reveals his pain in Esquire article

By Sarah Terzo
Among pro-lifers, it is well-known that many women suffer emotionally after their abortions. A previous Live Action article about post-abortion women and suicide mentioned two studies that found that women who aborted had a six to seven times higher suicide rate than women who did not.

There are many support groups and outreaches to women who have had abortions, and their testimonies of loss and regret appear all over the Internet.
But men can also suffer after their partner’s abortions. Through the years, many post-abortion men have spoken out about their pain. In the magazine Esquire, a publication not known for pro-life biases, post-abortion father, Mark Baker, gave an eloquent and poignant testimony. Although the testimony was given years ago, the feelings it expresses are common among men who regret a past abortion.

He says: “I’ve had a hell of a time dealing with it, actually. To this day I still think about it. I’ll go to bed, and I’ll think about it and say to myself, ‘Man, what a terrible thing to do. What a copout. You don’t trade human life for material niceties.’ Which is what I was doing, because I was hoping for a better future, more goods I could buy.”
Despite trying, he was unable to deny his baby’s humanity:

“I don’t have a good rationalization for that either. I’m not one of those people who believes that it’s only potential life. I’ve come to believe more and more that the baby in the womb is just that – a human life. I wish I didn’t. I wish I could make myself believe differently, but I can’t. It would make it easier to deal with mentally. When you have the opposite view and you go through with the abortion anyway, well that’s worse than anything.”

His grief is compounded by the fact that he was the one who convinced his partner to abort. Therefore, he feels mostly responsible:

“So, you see, I’m kind of stuck. She did it for me. I feel that I murdered somebody. I wish I could do it over again. If I could just go back in time and relive those years. If she’d had a child, even if we got married and everything, it wouldn’t have been that bad. I’ve seen other people do it. Reality is such a b- – – – sometimes, you know?”

Baker’s poignant story of regret shows that it’s not only women who suffer after abortions. Previous articles have shown that siblings of aborted babies suffer as well. Abortion hurts men, women, and children.

Source: Mark Baker, “Men on Abortion” Esquire, March 1990.
Editor’s note. This appeared at liveactionnews.org and is reprinted with permission.

Source: NRLC News

Beautiful Story

 

When an Invitation to the Prom Becomes So Much More

By Maria Gallagher, Legislative Director, Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation

Mary and Ben

Ann Marie Lapkowicz is a friend of mine. Her daughter is now an international celebrity.
The story begins when Ann Marie’s daughter Mary was in 4th grade. As PennLive.com reports, her friend Ben Moser worked hard to make sure that Mary was included in the games the other fourth graders would play.

His act of kindness was significant because Mary has Down syndrome. But to Ben, Mary was not a statistic—she was a friend.
Ben informed his mother that, when he was old enough, he would invite Mary to the high school prom.

But Ben and Mary ended up attending different high schools. As fate would have it, their paths crossed one day, and Ben decided to make good on his long-ago promise. As he told PennLive.com, “We got balloons and I wrote ‘prom’ on it. I presented her with the balloons and asked her to go to prom with me.”

But the fairy tale did not end there. News of the quarterback who asked his Down syndrome friend to the prom has gone viral. The pair even appeared on the cable program “Fox & Friends.” Ben told the Fox News anchor, “Mary’s the coolest person ever!” He also said his mother has never been prouder of him.

Mary’s mother, my friend Ann Marie, told me she was wondering if allowing PennLive to publicize the story was the right thing to do. After all, she is protective of her children, and is even reluctant to post pictures of them on Facebook.
But she had heard that such positive stories can save the lives of Down syndrome children (It has been estimated that 90 percent of Down syndrome babies are aborted.). If it could save one life, she figured the discomfort of the spotlight would be worth it.

I have watched Mary grow up into a beautiful young woman. I have known her to rise very early to attend church with her family on weekday mornings. She is a very special girl, and it is heartwarming that the world has come to recognize that through the “prom-promise” made by an equally special young man.

Ben and Mary’s friendship should provide a lesson to us all.

Source: NRLC News

Abortion and China

 

Chinese authorities deny “abortion quotas,” local officials say otherwise

By Dave Andrusko
Four officials from different villages in Lanling county in Shandong Province told Chinese media that they were under an “abortion quota” and resorted to buying the records of women who had already aborted to meet the requirements.
Liu Xin, writing for the Global Times, reported that the quota was “one abortion for every 1,000 villagers, and each of them was assigned a quota of two to eight abortions in April.”
The health authorizes of Linyl, which administers Lanling county, discounted the allegations. They said they have yet to receive any complains about an “abortion quota.” The Lanling government says the report is “inaccurate,” according to thepaper.cn.

A deputy director of the family planning bureau in Lanling tried to finesse the allegations. Identified only as Bao, the official told the Global Times, “We only asked them to take remedial actions to persuade women [breaking the one-child policy] who have been pregnant for less than five months to have an abortion.” 

But a village official in Luozhaung district in Linyl contradicted Bao, telling the Global Times that they had a quota to have a certain number of women get abortions in the village. “More than 70 percent of the quota for May has been met,” said the official who wished to remain anonymous.
Another village official, who used the pseudonym Xiao Xu, told the Global Times that some officials bought the names of women who’d already aborted to meet the quotas.
“Officials who have not met their quota would be punished and in order to meet the quotas, we have to pay the money for doctors or middlemen for the abortion information out of our own pocket,” said Xiao Xu.

Linyl’s family planning bureau has employed highly controversial tactics in the past. “In December 2014, local media reported that officials seized a 10-month-old baby in an effort to pressure the parents to pay the penalty for having a child outside the family planning rules,” Xin reported.
With very limited exceptions, Chinese women are limited to one child. The policy is brutally enforced, as we have reported many times in this space

Source: NRLC News

Marketing Abortion

 

Newest in the abortion-marketing bag of tricks: abortion “navigators”

By TEXAS RIGHT TO LIFE
An email released by abortion chain Whole Woman’s Health (WWH) reveals that conscience may be the biggest obstacle women face in deciding to abort a preborn child. In the email, Whole Woman’s Health inadvertently revealed that, when marketing abortion to their clients over the phone through their “abortion navigator,” the main barricade standing between a mother and an abortion appointment is not necessarily lack of money or restrictive legislation, but rather her conscience. Of course, WWH did not use that terminology. But consider what they did say:

We really go above and beyond… For example, if they’re Catholic and having trouble reconciling that we’ll give them the information for Faith Aloud or Catholics for Choice, I like to think of us like a web.

So, a pregnant, Catholic woman calls WWH. Her upbringing (and arguably her humanity) has rooted within her the conviction that murder is wrong – even sinful. But she is desperate and does not know what resources besides abortion are available to her. The abortion navigator will encourage her to contact Catholics for Choice, a group of people who – for reasons unfathomable to any actual Catholic – have committed their time and resources to promoting the utterly irreconcilable ideals that one can be a Catholic who believes the Ten Commandments are optional practices. With conscience dulled, the woman proceeds to WWH to fork over her cash and her innocent preborn child.
WWH continued:

We’re more than just a call center because we can talk through feelings, questions, concerns. It’s more than just setting up appointments. It’s beyond that. It’s more holistic. We may be speaking on the phone, but we’re developing personal connections…

So the abortion navigator is basically trained to make the appointment at any cost. These women are not counselors, but any good marketing agent is trained to appeal to the individual – and successful abortion businesses are no different. They appeal to mothers on a personal level and form a connection, so that when a woman opens up about her conscience and objections to abortion, they will be able to swoop in with their talking points designed to “de-stigmatize” abortion, putting her troubled mind at ease. How? In short: by lying.

The most meaningful conversations I have are with the people who have all the myths in their mind. They’ve only heard the anti-choice language, but they find themselves in need of our services, so I get to take the time and explain how abortion actually works – that this is actually a very safe, non-invasive procedure.

This is the part where we find out that Whole Woman’s Health is not really unique, after all. The tactic begins with calling any frightening side-effect of abortion, any logical objection to abortion or any scientific proof of Life from the moment of conception a “myth.” In one fell swoop, the abortion navigator has undercut the credibility of any Pro-Life (“anti-choice”) objection to abortion with which the woman may identify.
Perhaps the woman is concerned that she will have a perforated uterus, a badly botched abortion, or develop an amniotic fluid embolism and die, like other women she has read about. The abortion navigator just needs to assure the woman that abortion is a “very safe, non-invasive” procedure. We don’t know about you, but electively reaching into the depths of a woman’s body to rip her live child out from her womb doesn’t sound “very safe” or “non-invasive” to us.

The abortion industry is good at marketing – very good. They know how to make a sale. They know how to feign concern until the money is paid and the baby is killed.
But make no mistake: once the transaction is complete, the abortion industry’s true colors show every time.
Source: NRLC News

Down Syndrome

 

Dad’s Amazing Photos of Son with Down Syndrome Are Touching Hearts

By Andrew Bair
Editor’s note. This appeared in the May online edition of National Right to Life News. This story, as can all the stories, editorials, and president’s column, can be read at nrlc.org/uploads/NRLNews/NRLNewsMay2015.pdf. Please forward these stories using your social media outlets. That makes a big difference.
We already knew that children with Down syndrome are spectacular. But one Utah dad is using his photography skills to drive home the message that there is no limit to what people with Down syndrome can accomplish. Alan Lawrence’s photo series features his 18-month old son Wil in a variety of settings flying through the air like a superhero.
Here are some examples!
As reported by Buzzfeed, “’Lawrence said that he and his wife Nikki didn’t know their son had Down syndrome before he was born. While his wife handled the news ‘really, really well,’ Lawrence said he struggled with it at first. ‘I was a little more selfish about it,’ he said.”
“However, Lawrence said he quickly grew to understand what a blessing Wil was to his family. ‘Wil is going to be able to do anything he took his mind to,’ he said.”
Lawrence says the idea came from Wil’s unique crawl that made him look like he was about to take off in flight. It grew from there once Lawrence realized the broader impact the photos could have.
In an interview with Buzzfeed, Lawrence noted that the message he hopes viewers, especially parents expecting children with Down syndrome, will take from the photos is “A child with Down syndrome can be a blessing to your family.”
More photos can be viewed on Lawrence’s Instagram.
Raising a child with Down syndrome is not easy but along with great challenges comes great joy.
Leticia Velazquez, co-founder of KIDS (Keep Infants with Down Syndrome), writes this about raising a daughter with Down syndrome, “This is a priceless gift. Each one of us is grateful that living with Christina has made us more tolerant of diversity in others, more patient with their weakness, and more able to give of ourselves in response. Christina has increased our compassion and our joy.”

As pro-life advocates, we know that unborn children who prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome face a tragically high abortion rate. It is vitally important that parents receive the information they need to make a life-affirming decision. Hopefully, efforts like Alan Lawrence’s photo series will touch people’s hearts and help pave the way for a society that fully embraces people with disabilities, before and after birth. An unborn child should not be denied her right to live because she has an extra chromosome.

Source:NRLC News

Crime and Punishment

 

British nurse sentenced to life for killing two patients and poisoning 20 more

By Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director – Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Tracey Arden, Derek Weaver and Grant Misell

A British nurse was sentenced to life in prison for killing two people and poisoning 20 others.
Victorino Chua, a nurse from Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport UK, was convicted on Tuesday of killing Tracey Arden (44) and Derek Weaver (83) and poisoning 20 more people by intentionally putting lethal amounts of insulin into Saline bags to poison patients.
Grant Misell, who was one of the poisoned patients who survived, was brain damaged from the insulin poisoning.

“In all, Chua was convicted of two murders, 22 counts of attempted grievous bodily harm, one count of grievous bodily harm, seven attempts of administering poison and one count of administering poison,” according to Martin Evans of the Daily Telegraph.
Investigators also learned that Chua was not a qualified nurse.

According to the Evans [www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11614593/Stepping-Hill-killer-nurse-Victorino-Chua-jailed-for-life.html], Justice Openshaw stated in sentencing Chau that:

“It is a striking, sinister and truly wicked feature of the case, he did not personally administer contaminated products directly to most of these patients but having left saline bags contaminated with insulin he did not know which nurse would unwittingly collect them and still less to which patient the nurse would then unwittingly administer the poison.

“It is as if he left it to fate to decide who would be the victim.”

The euthanasia lobby claims that legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide decreases the number of deaths without request by physicians. The facts do not back up their claim.
Cases where a doctor or a nurse intentionally causes the death of a patient is not uncommon.
A recent NEJM study on the practice of euthanasia in the Flanders region of Belgium found that 1.7% of all deaths (more than 1,000 deaths) were hastened without explicit request in 2013.
The Lancet study analyzing the Netherlands euthanasia experience found that there were 310 hastened deaths without explicit consent in 2010.

Several cases have been reported in the media in the past such as the death of David Gray, in which the doctor received a nine month suspended sentence for negligence causing death.
Several medical professionals have intentionally killed patients, such as: Dr. Harold Shipman, Charles Cullen, Dr Virginia Soares de Souza, Aino Nykopp-Koski, and Dr. Michael Swango.
Editor’s note. This appeared at alexschadenberg.blogspot.com

Source: NRLC News

Fooling the Public

 

Embryonic Stem Cell Hypers Opened Door for Stem Cell Fraud

By Wesley J. Smith

Embryonic stem cell hypers have themselves to blame for the apparent proliferation of stem cell fraud.
You see, in order to win the ESCR political debate, harm President Bush’s popularity, and gain billions in research dollars, universities, scientists, bioethicists, sector advocacy groups, and Big Biotech PR departments–amplified by an in the tank media–pushed imminent CURES! CURES! CURES! that would soon have children leaping out of wheelchairs and Uncle Al dancing a jig after his Parkinson’s abated.

Except it mostly was blown smoke–certainly within the time frame implied or promised by the ESCR hypers.

Still, with movie stars testifying before Congress, a president’s son speaking at the Democrat Convention, and celebrity advocacy ads, the message that stem cells are magic imbedded deeply in the collective consciousness. And now, stem cell fraud suckers people all over the world with false promise of stem cell miracles.

From the MedCity News story, “Stem Cell Clinics Peddle Snake Oil–but the Market’s Growing Fast:

“There’s a lot of snake oil in stem cells.” That’s the mantra of Dr. Larry Goldstein, director of the Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center at University of California, San Diego, who always cautions that selling hope with false promises is big business among stem cell clinics.

He’s bullish on the therapeutic potential of stem cells, but consistently urges skepticism. If it’s too good to be true, it invariably is.

A duo of new Associated Press articles highlight this concept, as does a recent Los Angeles Times piece on how a Malibu psychiatrist with a revoked medical license is still peddling stem cell cures – abroad, and with little repercussion.

So, when assorted stem cell experts look down their collective nose at the suckers buying into stem cell quackery (I am not including Goldstein) they should look into the mirror. People were sold a bill of goods and they are still buying.
Editor’s note. This appeared on Wesley’s great blog.

Source:NRLC News

Planned Parenthood

 

Shamelessly, Planned Parenthood touts itself as “safe haven” for newborn babies

By Dave Andrusko
Why could/would/should it surprise you that Planned Parenthood, which corrupts everything it touches, also leads the galaxy in hypocrisy?

When you read that Planned Parenthood of Northern New England is announcing that it is now a “safe haven” for newborn babies up to one month old, you wonder if you’re just having a particularly bizarre dream.

Safe Havens are a life-affirming alternative to lethal abandonment of babies, and thus a good thing. Allowing Planned Parenthood–the same “provider” of 330,000+ abortions each and every year–to polish its credentials with faux concern is not a good thing.
With complete indifference to its affiliation with the largest abortion provider in the world, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England posted on its Facebook page that Vermont has a new Safe Haven law and–hard as this is to believe–Planned Parenthood is considered a safe place for mothers to place their babies with complete anonymity and without fear of prosecution. (Presumably, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England participates because its Vermont “health centers” fall under the “health care facilities” designation.)

As the attached screen shot illustrates, we are told

Vermont has a new safe haven law. This means that rather than abandoning your newborn, you can bring your baby to a safe place where he or she will be carried for. All Planned Parenthood health centers in Vermont are safe places to bring an infant up to 30 days old. And you won’t face any legal charges if your baby has not been abused or neglected. We can help you with medical care, counseling referrals and more. We can help your baby to get necessary care and be placed with parents who are able to adopt and care for your child.”

Planned Parenthood is the most aggressive seller, promoter, and exporter of abortions anywhere in the world. It is quite willing to abuse unborn babies up to the last possible moment–the very same babies who are capable of feeling excruciating pain as they are killed.
Bring those babies to firehouses, police stations, churches and synagogues, and adoption agencies. None of these facilities would have taken that very same baby’s life just a short while before.
Tip of the hat to LifeNews.

Source: NRLC News

Assisted Suicide

 

California Medical Association De-professionalizes Medicine, Puts Patients at Risk by taking “neutral stance” on physician-assisted suicide

Editor’s note. The following was provided by The American Academy of Medical Ethics.
Bristol, TN—The American Academy of Medical Ethics denounces the California Medical Association’s decision to take a “neutral stand” on the legalization of physician-assisted suicide in their state.
“Physician-assisted suicide is not about giving patients the right to die, but about giving doctors the right to kill,” said Executive Director for the American Academy of Medical Ethics David Stevens, MD, MA (Ethics).
This week’s decision by the California Medical Association may have been met with elation by pro-suicide groups, but it is angering many of its own members, many of whom are also members of the American Academy of Medical Ethics.
“Suicide is tragic, but not illegal, in California,” said Dr. Stevens. “But physician-assisted suicide is just wrong. Taking this step only further de-professionalizes the practice of medicine, and it doesn’t protect our patients.”
In the past in states where medical societies have adopted a neutral stance, physician-assisted suicide was quickly legalized.
“For more than 2,500 years, the foundation of the doctor-patient relationship has been trust—a trust that physicians would not take the lives of their patients or help their patients kill themselves,” said Dr. Stevens. “Without that commitment to ‘do no harm,’ physicians are no longer professionals but untrustworthy technocrats.”
A bill to legalize physician-assisted suicide on the rationale of relieving suffering is currently making its way through California’s legislative system. However, so-called “safeguards” in bills like this protect the doctor, not the patient. And once legalized, it won’t stop with just alleviating suffering.
“Suffering is subjective, so how can you deny this new ‘right’ to a terminally ill patient who can’t swallow?” said Dr. Stevens. “And what about patients who suffer with chronic diseases or newborns with disabilities or mental suffering? Don’t they merit release? Where does it stop? In every country in Europe where physician-assisted suicide is legal, physicians give lethal injections to these groups of people, not simply just terminally ill patients.”
Legalizing physician-assisted suicide is dangerous for physicians. It takes no skill and is the “easy solution” for dealing with difficult patients. Plus, it gives doctors the power to be judge, jury and assistant executioner.

It is also dangerous for families who won’t be informed their loved one is about to kill themselves and it will cause dissension and sadness among those left behind.
It is dangerous for patients. The right to die will quickly become the duty to die to avoid depleting inheritances or being a burden. It will cause more elder abuse. Terminal patients desire suicide because they are depressed, but only 5 percent of patients killing themselves in Oregon get an expert evaluation.

And it is dangerous for society. The cheapest form of treatment for disease is a handful of lethal pills costing less than $100.

“That is scary in a healthcare system whose greatest challenge is high cost,” said Dr. Stevens.
“Even the American Medical Association’s code of ethics says that physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as a healer,” said Dr. Stevens. “This decision by the California Medical Association to take a neutral stand is like releasing a cobra in your house to eliminate your rat problem. Yes, it is a ‘solution,’ but it is a solution that is much more dangerous than the problem needing to be solved.”

The better alternative to physician-assisted suicide is to: train more palliative care physicians; modify laws to allow adequate pain/symptom control at the end of life; encourage better identification and treatment of depression; promote hospice; and mobilize communities to provide emotional and relational end-of-life support to struggling patients and families.
The American Academy of Medical Ethics and its members across the country stand opposed to the legalization of physician-assisted suicide.

Source: NRLC News

Source: NRLC News