Doula for Abortion

 

The Atlantic’s Abortion Doula: ‘Grief is Celebratory’

By Katie Yoder

Mary Mahoney and Lauren Mitchell of The Doula Project
(Photo credit: Jackie Snow)

Normally, a “doula” is a woman who assists other women with birth. But Roc Morin, writing for The Atlantic, found a “full-spectrum doula.” “On Being an Abortion Doula” was about Annie Robinson, and explored the “range of emotions involved in helping women terminate pregnancies.” Robinson told Morin that “the grief is celebratory” and that “some of the connections [with women aborting] are really joyful, and funny, and loving.”
To explain her attraction to her work, Robinson detailed how “I’m really interested in loss and grief.” She acknowledged that “Even if the grief is celebratory, it still is grief and it still is loss.” She argued that birth isn’t that much different: “There’s something lost with birth too—loss of pregnancy, loss of the in-utero experience.”

Robinson volunteers for The Doula Project, an “organization that provides free compassionate care and emotional, physical, and informational support to people across the spectrum of pregnancy.” The organization began in 2007 to aid women undergoing abortions by offering doulas who “commit themselves fully to the women they serve and to supporting each other through challenging, beautiful, and emotionally overwhelming moments.”
Morin asked Robinson, “Why is the work of The Doula Project important?” Robinson responded, “when you’re going through something that’s morally and physically exhausting and confusing, it’s so important to be seen—to have your emotions and your physical being recognized and acknowledged.”

At Morin’s prompting, Robinson stressed how emotions flow from her patients to her. “I feel a heaviness. I feel saturated sometimes. I feel lit up and glowing,” she began. “Often I feel like I’m glowing from being there in such a real moment. Some of the connections are really joyful, and funny, and loving. It’s not just a gloomy dreary period of time that we spend together.”
Morin then asked Robinson a series of strange questions, as though wondering about some rumored but seldom glimpsed primitive tribe. “How aware are you of your opposition, the pro-life movement?” “How do you relate to those people?” “How do you think they came to their perspective?”Robinson’s answers don’t matter – suffice it to say she thinks anti-abortion activists are misinformed. What matters is the fact that Morin treats the pro-life half of the U.S. population like some sort of cargo cult, and does so in a magazine that calls itself a “source of opinion, commentary, and analysis for America’s most influential individuals who wish to be challenged, informed, and entertained.”

So abortion can be included in a list of life’s “challenging, beautiful, and emotionally overwhelming moments,” but Morin can’t imagine how pro-lifers came to their conclusions? God save us from America’s most influential individuals.
Editor’s note. This appeared at http://newsbusters.org/blogs/katie-yoder/2014/03/27/atlantic-s-abortion-doula-grief-celebratory

Source: NRLC News

ObamaCare

 

Support for ObamaCare at 26%, lowest ever

By Dave Andrusko
Let’s take time to see if we can reconcile the two halves of this sentence. (It’s the lead from a story from the Associated Press.)

“Despite a late surge in sign-ups, support for President Barack Obama’s health care law is languishing at its lowest level since passage of the landmark legislation four years ago, according to a new poll.”

(That “lowest level” of support is a near rock-bottom 26%. More about that momentarily.)
One explanation is that people are so frightened by the uncertainty that is Obamacare, including a series of bogus “deadlines,” they are actually signing up.
Another more likely explanation is (as Tom Blumer suggests) that the latest “surge” is more camouflage.

The Obama Administration knows what you and I know: that “sign-ups” is not the same as paying the first premium. And “even though there is strong reason to believe that they are available or easily obtainable,” in Blumer’s words, there’s been a “virtual blackout on official figures relating to who has actually paid.”

If you are an Obama supporter—and especially if you are a Democrat who favors ObamaCare, let alone voted for it–the latest AP-Gfk survey numbers are truly scary.
But before take a peak at the numbers, there’s this amusing (attempted) caveat from AP. “The poll was taken before Thursday’s announcement by the White House that new health insurance markets have surpassed the goal of 6 million sign-ups, so it did not register the potential impact of that news on public opinion.”
All I can say is, if you believe that– after unyielding public opposition from Day One to ObamaCare– you’ll believe anything.
Okay, back to the numbers.
It’s not just that support is far outdistanced by opposition (43% to 26%), it’s the famous intensity factor.
The 26% approval is split exactly in half. 13% somewhat support and 13% strongly support.
By contrast of the 43% in opposition, only 12% somewhat oppose ObamaCare compared to 31% who strongly oppose.

Put these numbers together with what we talked about Thursday (Public’s “Disapproval of Obama’s Job Performance Reaches All-Time High”).
Nearly six in ten (59%) disapprove of Mr. Obama’s job performance, according to an Associated Press/ GFK survey. Just 41% expressed approval. Moreover a majority do not support him personally (51%). Only 42% of the 1,012 people surveyed do.
No wonder Democrats are distancing themselves from Obama.

Source: NRLC News

Cloning

 

Mouse cloning advance raises specter of human cloning

By Wesley J. Smith.
I have long believed and argued that stem cell research is merely the opening stanza of a longer planned biotechnological symphony. What “the scientists” are really after is a reliable way to conduct human cloning.
Without cloning, and you might get effective medical treatments from all kinds of stem cells–both ethical and unethical. With cloning, it is Brave New World time, baby!
Cloning science might have taken a huge step forward with the announcement of a successful mouse experiment in which two-celled embryos were destroyed and each cell subjected to the same cloning process used to make Dolly the sheep (somatic cell nuclear transfer). From the LA Times story:

“In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers said they had successfully generated embryonic stem cells using fertilized mouse embryos — a feat that many scientists had thought was impossible. …

“If successful, the development would allow the use of ‘excess’ human eggs that are retrieved and fertilized during in vitro fertilization treatments, but never used. Senior study author Shoukhrat Mitalipov, a cell biologist at Oregon Health and Science University, says his lab now wants to reproduce their success, ‘first in a monkey and later with human embryos.’”

See, how the media mislead in these issues? The materials used wouldn’t be excess “eggs.” Once eggs are fertilized they aren’t eggs anymore. They would be excess embryos–e.g., nascent human life.
Here’s how the new technique would be performed:

1. Destroy early embryos–either those frozen or made for the purpose;
2. Take the embryonic cells and remove the nuclei;
3. Insert a nucleus taken from cells of the person being cloned into each embryonic cell;
4. That would result in a new cloned embryo(s);
5. Allow the cloned embryo(s) to develop ten days in a dish to the blastocyst stage;
6. Destroy the new cloned embryos for their embryonic stem cells, and/or
7. Implant the embryos in a uterus or substitute therefore and gestate for fetal farming or to birth for reproductive cloning.

This breakthrough could be important because is a potential way to do away with the need for eggs currently required in every cloning attempt–-and given the egg dearth, a resource problem that has materially held back the sector.
We still don’t know if the technique will work in humans. And we don’t know if the technique will be successful on human embryos beyond the two-celled stage, which most frozen embryos are.
But this I do know: The time to outlaw all forms of human cloning is now–not later when it becomes too late!
Editor’s note. This appeared on Wesley’s blog.

Source: NRLC Blog

Victory

 

5th Circuit upholds challenged portions of Texas’ pro-life H.B. 2

By Dave Andrusko

Judge Edith Jones

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit Thursday unanimously upheld provisions of Texas’ H.B. 2 that had been challenged by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and several Texas abortion clinics.
At issue was a requirement that abortionists have admitting privileges to a hospital located within 30 miles of the abortion clinic and how far into pregnancy chemical abortifacients can be administered.
Other provisions of the law went into effect without challenge (the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act), or do not take effect until September (a requirement that abortions clinics meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers). The latter could well be challenged by pro-abortionists.

Judge Catharina Haynes

As NRL News Today reported last October (nrlc.cc/1h3hPmq and nrlc.cc/1h3hwrV), Austin-based U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel declared that “the act’s admitting-privileges provision is without a rational basis and places a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus.”

HB 2 also requires that the abortionist be in the same room as the woman receiving the chemical abortifacients (which is not the case with so-called ‘web-cam” abortions) and that abortionists follow the protocol approved by the FDA for the use of the two-drug “RU-486” abortion technique.
Yeakel held that it was not an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to abort for Texas to require that abortionists use the FDA protocol that limits the technique to the first 49 days [seven weeks], but would be in special cases where the pregnancy fell between 50-63 days [eight to nine weeks].
Three days after Yeakel issued his ruling, a different 5th Circuit panel allowed Texas to enforce the law while it was being appealed. Plaintiffs quickly asked the Supreme Court for a stay, but on November 28 the Supreme Court Supreme Court voted not to block (“stay”) the appeals court’s action allowing the law to be enforced.

Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod

In their 34-page opinion, Judges Edith Jones, Catharina Haynes, and Jennifer Walker Elrod carefully outlined why the provisions are not an “undue burden” on the right to abortion. Their explanations were typically reduced to a sentence or two in most news stories which missed altogether how the judges came to the conclusions they did.

For example, you would get the impression that there are virtually never any complications from an abortion. Jones, who wrote the opinion, noted that “Planned Parenthood conceded that at least 210 women in Texas annually must be hospitalized after seeking an abortion.”
“Witnesses on both sides further testified that some of the women who are hospitalized after an abortion have complications that require an OB/GYN specialist’s treatment,” Jones added. “Against Planned Parenthood’s claims that these women can be adequately treated without the admitting-privileges requirement, the state showed that many hospitals lack an Ob/Gyn on call for emergencies.”

Continuity of care was one of the key reasons the law intends that the abortionist be able to go with the woman to the hospital if there is a complication. Testimony pointed to studies that concluded that “80 percent of serious medical errors involve miscommunication between caregivers when patients are transferred or handed-off.”

Jones noted that the state of Texas had articulated a rational basis for the law and that the plaintiffs had not attacked the State’s purposes “at all.” But, she explained, plaintiffs could still prevail “if the effect of the law substantially burdened women’s access to abortions in Texas.” The three-judge panel found the law did not do so.

“Although some clinics may be required to shut their doors there is no showing whatsoever that a woman will lack reasonable access to a clinic in Texas,” Jones wrote.
For example, “In a number of areas in Texas, physicians who are performing abortion already have admitting privileges.” With respect to the difficulty one abortion clinic owner said she had in recruiting new abortionists, Jones noted that “all told” only one of the physicians she had contacted “declined to provide abortions in Texas as a consequence of H.R. 2.”
Jones concluded

“The evidence presented to the district court [to Judge Yeakel] demonstrates that if the admitting-privileges regulation burdens abortion access by diminishing the number of doctors who will perform abortions and requiring women to travel farther, the burden does not fall on the vast majority of Texas women seeking abortions. Put otherwise, the regulation will not affect a significant (much less ‘large’) fraction of such women [women seeking abortions in a given area of Texas], and it imposes on other women in Texas less of a burden than the waiting-period provisions upheld” in the Supreme Court’s “Casey” decision.

The panel also reversed Judge Yeakel, who disagreed with H.B. 2’s requirement that chemical abortions (“medication abortions”) be limited to the first seven weeks [49 days] of pregnancy.
H.B. 2 “merely shortens the window during which a woman may elect to have a medication abortion, leaving open the possibility for any woman to have a medication abortion up to forty-nine days LMP (Last Menstrual Period],” Jones explained.
Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards told reporters, “This is a terrible court ruling that will severely limit a woman’s access to safe and legal abortion in Texas.”
By contrast, “This unanimous decision is a vindication of the careful deliberation by the Texas Legislature to craft a law to protect the health and safety of Texas women,” said Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, whose office defended the law in court.

Source: NRLC News

Terrible

 

University exhibit touts abortion as “Life-Sustaining Act”

By Dave Andrusko
Well…. it’s not as though the University of Michigan’s Program for Sexual Rights and Reproductive Justice, the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design has us in mind when they put together the “4000 Years for Choice: A Graphic Guide to Reproductive Justice” exhibit.
But even so, wow!
Let’s amble over the Women’s Study page and learn about the exhibition which runs through May 29:

“Heather Ault is a visual artist, pro-choice activist, and independent scholar creating artwork to shift conversations about reproductive rights and justice. Her work has been exhibited throughout the country. In 2011 she won the Vision Award from the Abortion Care Network for her innovative work.”

So what will we see?

“An exhibition of posters about the age-old practices of abortion and contraception as a means to reclaim reproductive freedom as a deeply personal and life-sustaining act existing throughout all of human history. The ‘Reproductive Roots’ series shines a bright light on the many voices from the abortion care and reproductive justice movements using vividly designed social media graphics and notecards to inspire conversations from a breadth of perspectives.”

Hmm. Okay. If we click on the project website (4000yearsforchoice.com), we learn about some very old stuff (an ancient abortifacient comprised of “crocodile feces, mixed with fermented dough, and placed in the vagina”). and very new (a collection of Wendy Davis-inspired “Apparel: Tees, Hoodies, and Totes”).

What about the notecards? Here’s one. “I didn’t see it as killing a Baby—I was simply giving the life within me back to God to protect and hold onto until the right time.” And, presumably, if “Kristin” becomes pregnant again (at the wrong time), she’ll place some other hapless baby in a kind of New Age holding pen.

In the same vein, we read, “Abortion is a gift from God”; “I had an abortion last year and it was the best decision of my life” (“Isha”): and “We really need to get over this love affair with the fetus and start worrying about children”—the [in]famous quote from Dr. Joyce Elders, who was President Bill Clinton’s Surgeon General for a year.

One reviewer (from “Journey of Young Women Facebook Community”) said this:

“4000 Years for Choice makes my heart sing. I am so grateful. It is an opportunity to look at the big picture, the historical picture, even the spiritual picture ~ all of which unambiguously show that women’s choice is inalienable and life–serving.”

Only in the morally anachronistic backwaters of the zealot’s mind could something as brutal, as vicious, and as painful as abortion “make my heart sing.”

Source: NRLC News

Assisted Suicide

 

“Team Oz” Helps Woman Starve to Death

By Wesley J. Smith

Dorothy Conlon in Dubrovnik, Croatia in 2009.

I remember early in my anti-euthanasia activism being approached by a Hemlock Society member after a speech. “How do you envision your death, Mr. Smith?” she asked sweetly. I could only shake my head. “Ma’am,” I replied. “I’m trying to envision my life. My death will take care of itself.”
That experience taught me that some believers of assisted suicide are obsessed with dying. More evidence: A healthy elderly woman named Dorothy Conlon–a member of the Hemlock Society Compassion and Choices and devotee of assisted suicide–decided she wanted to die by self-starvation because she could no longer travel the world and worried about being in a nursing home.
A decent response would be to get help for the woman to live! But no: A group of “friends” decided to help her starve to death. From the Sarasota Herald Tribune story, entitled as so many such articles are, “Dorothy’s Choice:”

Conlon began to formalize what she called her “G2G” (“Good to Go”) plan, and to assemble volunteers who would become her “Team Oz.” (“Get it?” she would say gleefully. “Oz? Dorothy? Somewhere over the rainbow?”)

Eventually the team consisted of four women: Helen, who had met Dorothy through the church in 1989 though she was no longer a member; Susan, nearing 70, a former psychotherapist and Conlon’s massage and Reiki therapist; Heather, 53, a member of the meditation group Conlon regularly participated in; and Carmen, a longtime neighbor and friend of 25 years, who was already established as Conlon’s health care surrogate.

None considered themselves intimate friends, but all fulfilled her essential requirements: They approved of her right to make the decision and promised to help her accomplish it, while pledging to refrain from pursuing any medical intervention.

I’m sorry–-actually, I’m not–-but what kind of people would agree to participate and assist in such a horrible endeavor? Why not just pull out the chair to help her hang herself or close the garage door after she started her car?
Look how they romanticized what they thought would happen:

Susan had presumed she would quietly and calmly perform Reiki or massage. Heather anticipated her friend might open up at last and talk about her sons and her marriage. Helen, with whom Conlon had shared more intimate conversations, figured she would just “hang out” and keep her friend company. And Carmen, who would be on an out-of-town trip for the first 10 days of the process, secretly hoped that Conlon might pass peacefully before she returned

It wasn’t pretty:

As the days went on, “Team Oz” frayed. Not quite two weeks into the process, Conlon was increasingly agitated and her caretakers debilitated, drained and overwhelmed emotionally and physically. At least one team member felt an urge to call 911, but squelched the impulse after one of the others acknowledged it was too late to restore Conlon to health.

“I think this is a real dilemma that would challenge anybody’s morality,” says Tidewell’s Angsten of responsibility the team members assumed. “Then, to watch someone suffer adds a whole other dimension.” Since calling in medical personnel went against everyone’s vow to respect Conlon’s wishes, Carmen looked elsewhere for support.

Even after death, the terminal nonjudgmentalism is so thick you can eat it with a fork:

At 5:48 a.m. the next morning, Helen and Samantha remember waking abruptly from a deep sleep at their respective homes. Conlon was still warm to the touch when they arrived shortly after. She had one arm raised above her head, as if waving to someone. There was a faint upward curve to her lips. “She looked very peaceful,” said another friend, who assisted with calling a doctor to obtain a death certificate.

“She was entirely in control to the end and ultimately, it was the dignified death she wanted.” And yet, for everyone involved, an unease lingered. “I admire what she did,” the friend concluded. “But I think it was a very hard way to do it.”

At least a few saw the selfishness in Dorothy’s approach, not that it mattered:

No one had a change of mind about their support of Conlon’s choice and her right to make it. But they all agreed they would never again offer to help in a similar circumstance.

“It did not change my views morally, spiritually or ethically at all, but if someone asked me to do this again, I’d tell them I want no part of it,” says Helen. “I’d strongly suggest they look into all the reasons they want to leave — and then that they get some goddamn pills.”

Carmen remembers sitting in her car one day after pulling into her driveway, watching and listening to the rain and thinking how much she valued living. “I don’t think Dorothy ever considered the burden you are putting on people by asking them to help,” she says. “It’s heavy, even just the knowledge of it.

I would not offer to do this again.” Like the others, Heather, who is dealing with a parent suffering from dementia, believes there should be a better option than the one Conlon chose, one that is legal and swiftly accomplished.

Right. Because the death obsession is the all-important point! And the media, as here, is increasingly complicit in pushing suicide memes.
What can I say, folks? This is what we are becoming.

Source: NRLC News

Abortion

 

Why Ipas is wrong to say legalizing abortion worldwide would save lives

By Paul Stark
The international abortion advocacy organization Ipas helped convene a meeting this week calling for governments to “repeal laws that criminalize abortion and remove barriers on women’s and girls’ access to safe abortion services,” making “safe, legal abortion universally available, accessible and affordable for all women and girls.” The conference attendees say abortion must be legalized to “sav[e] women’s lives.”
That is false. Maternal health depends far more on the quality of medical care (and related factors) than on the legal status or availability of abortion. Consider:
Maternal mortality declined dramatically in the developed world as a result of advancements in modern medicine that took place before the widespread legalization of abortion.
Today Ireland, Poland, Malta and Chile significantly restrict or prohibit abortion and yet have very low maternal mortality ratios.

Among the few countries that achieved a 75 percent reduction in their maternal mortality ratios (a target of Millennium Development Goal 5) by 2010, Maldives, Bhutan and the Islamic Republic of Iran did so while generally prohibiting abortion.

After Chile banned abortion in 1989, its maternal mortality ratio continued to decline significantly and at about the same rate, dropping 69.2 percent over the next 14 years, according to a 2012 study by Elard Koch, et al. Even maternal deaths due specifically to abortion declined—from 10.78 abortion deaths per 100,000 live births in 1989 to 0.83 in 2007, a reduction of 92.3 percent after abortion was made illegal.

Legalizing abortion, the Chilean study’s authors conclude, is demonstrably unnecessary for the improvement of maternal health and the saving of women’s lives.
In fact, legalizing or expanding abortion can be detrimental to the health and safety of pregnant women. Abortion poses physical and psychological risks. These risks include immediate complications such as hemorrhage, infection and death as well as long-term risks such as breast cancer.
A wealth of worldwide research has established that abortion increases the risk of subsequent preterm birth, which can cause death or disability in newborn children. Abortion is also associated with a variety of psychological and social problems, including depression, drug abuse and suicide.
The health risks of abortion are exacerbated in countries where basic health care is lacking. The legalization or expansion of abortion in such countries can increase the incidence of abortion, increasing the number of women subjected to the risks of abortion.
The evidence shows that better maternal health care, not abortion, is the way to save lives.
Editor’s note. Paul Stark is Communications Associate for Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, NRLC’s state affiliate. This appeared at prolifemn.blogspot.com.

Source: NRLC News

ObamaCare

 

WashPost, NYT Uncritically Hail ObamaCare Delay, Omit Sebelius’s Pledge Deadline Wouldn’t Shift

By Ken Shepherd
“More time for health sign-up” cheered the Washington Post front-page headline for Amy Goldstein’s March 26 story on the administration’s latest ObamaCare delay, this time for the individual mandate which requires Americans to be insured so as to avoid paying a “tax” penalty. In an amazing dereliction of her journalistic duty, Goldstein utterly failed to mention that just two weeks earlier HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testified to Congress that, in fact, the March 31 sign-up deadline was not going to move.
Goldstein, of course, was too busy parroting the administration’s talking points and turning to supposedly non-ideological “consumer advocates” who hailed the deadline extension (emphasis mine):

The Obama administration has decided to give extra time to Americans who say that they are unable to enroll in health plans through the federal insurance marketplace by the March 31 deadline.

Federal officials confirmed Tuesday evening that all consumers who have begun to apply for coverage on HealthCare.gov, but who do not finish by Monday, will have until about mid-April to ask for an extension.

Under the new rules, people will be able to qualify for an extension by checking a blue box on HealthCare.gov to indicate that they tried to enroll before the deadline. This method will rely on an honor system; the government will not try to determine whether the person is telling the truth.

The rules, which will apply to the federal exchanges operating in three dozen states, will essentially create a large loophole even as White House officials have repeatedly said that the March 31 deadline was firm. The extra time will not technically alter the deadline but will create a broad new category of people eligible for what’s known as a special enrollment period.

The change, which the administration is scheduled to announce Wednesday, is supported by consumer advocates who want as many people as possible to gain insurance under the 2010 Affordable Care Act. But it’s likely to be criticized by Republicans who oppose the law and have denounced the way the administration is implementing it.

[...]

According to a Health and Human Services official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about decisions that have not been made public, an exact time frame for this extension has not been set, and it will depend in part on how many people request it. Nor have officials decided precisely how long people will have to select a health plan after they get the extra time.

[...]

The constituency that has been most wary of extra sign-up time has been the insurance industry. Insurance firms selling plans in the new marketplace want to minimize the possibility that people might wait to get coverage until they become sick — a practice that would undermine the central idea of keeping costs in check by balancing people who are expensive to insure with those who are healthy and require little medical treatment.

On the other hand, consumer advocates say it is important to give as many people as possible a chance to obtain insurance.

“The whole point of the thing is to get people covered,” said Jon Kingsdale, a health-care consultant and former director of Massachusetts’s insurance exchange, which was the first in the country, opening several years before the federal law set up a similar national marketplace. “In the first year, there has been so much confusion, I think it’s only natural there will be people who just don’t feel as if they fully understood what the law was and what they were supposed to do and that the opportunity would close.”

Nowhere in her piece does Goldstein have any curiosity about what statutory authority the HHS has, if any, to grant this delay, nor does she wonder about the disparate impact which may befall Americans whereby some might be fined for not having obtained coverage by April 1 — because they live in states with state-run exchanges which are adhering to the deadline — and those who live in states lacking a state exchange and hence are given a reprieve thanks to the federal extension.
Over at the New York Times, writer Robert Pear had a similarly obsequious work of stenography with his front-page 16-paragraph story “U.S. to Extend Sign-Up Period for Insurance.”Like the Post’s Goldstein, Pear failed to mention Sebelius’s insistence on March 12 that the March 31 deadline was set in stone, although he did mention that the HHS head “has said repeatedly that the federal website has been repaired and is ready to handle a surge of applications expected just before the deadline.”
But alas, “White House officials and some technology experts working on the exchange began to worry that the website might freeze up if the demand exceeded expectations,” Pear noted, adding later that such website snafus “could create a political fiasco for Mr. Obama and other Democrats, just as they were recovering from the damage done when the site left millions of Americans frustrated in October.”

Well, that makes amending the law by administrative fiat on a whim perfectly kosher then!
Like Goldstein, Pear opted to close his story with a cheerleader for the latest ObamaCare delay, noting one Brian Haile of Jackson Hewitt Tax Service who “said the new special enrollment period was ‘a win for uninsured Americans’” because, apparently, “[t]axpayers are more willing and able to sign up as they receive tax refunds.”
Perhaps the president and his congressional allies should have thought of that when they crafted the deadline in the first place, synchronizing it with April 15, the federal tax filing deadline, rather than falling a fortnight earlier.

At any rate, it’s abundantly clear that both the Times and the Post have little if any interest in holding the Obama administration accountable for its ongoing project of furiously revising the ACA on the fly with ad-hoc rule changes and deadline shifts of dubious legality.
Editor’s note. This appeared at newsbusters.org.

Source: NRLC News

The Meeting

 

Pope Francis, President Obama meet at Vatican

By Dave Andrusko
Not to be overly cynical, but if I was President Obama (with every kind of approval index mired in the high 30s and low 40s), I know I would like to bask in the reflected glow of Pope Francis, whose popularity is double that of the beleaguered President.
So far not a lot has come out about the 52-minute meeting Thursday between Pope Francis and President Obama. Mr. Obama expressed his appreciation for the meeting, the first with Pope Francis and the second the President has had with a Pope. (The first was with Pope Benedict XVI in 2009, “a cordial meeting that nevertheless drew attention to the differences between the church and Obama on abortion,” as Fox News noted.)
“I was grateful to have the opportunity to speak with him about the responsibilities that we all share to care for the least of these, the poor, the excluded,” Obama said today. “And I was extremely moved by his insights about the importance of us all having a moral perspective on world problems and not simply thinking in terms of our own narrow self-interests.”

The Vatican put out a brief statement. “Views were exchanged on some current international themes,” the statement read. “[T]here was a discussion on questions of particular relevance for the Church in that country, such as the exercise of the rights to religious freedom, life and conscientious objection, as well as the issue of immigration reform.”
Other accounts, such as Doyle McManus for the Los Angeles Times and John Allen for the Boston Globe, both read between the lines and reminded readers that there are serious differences between this Administration and Rome.

Allen, for example reminded us that “Aside from the broad clash between Obama’s support for abortion rights and the Catholic church’s opposition,” the meeting at the Vatican comes two days after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two lawsuits challenging the Obama mandate that compels employers to provide health coverage for drugs and procedures , including contraceptives, to which they have moral or religious objections.

“Sharp differences on that score still loom over the administration’s relationship with the church,” Allen reported.
McManus noted that just as Obama gave an interview with a newspaper in Rome prior to the meeting, so, too, did the Vatican media office issue a statement before the Pope and the President met. It noted that the two men were meeting during “a complex phase of the administration’s relations with the Church of the United States, marked, in particular, by controversy on the implementation of health care reform (the ‘Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,’ commonly known as ‘Obamacare’)…”

Of the stories I read, only McManus noted the significance of Pope’s parting gift to the President: “a bound copy of his 2013 letter to the faithful, ‘The Joy of the Gospel’ — the one that became famous for its critique of trickle-down economics.”

McManus wrote that Obama said, “I actually will probably read this in the Oval Office when I’m deeply frustrated,” and added, “I’m sure it will give me strength and calm me down.”
But “If the president actually does read the pontiff’s letter, he’ll find that though it’s joyful, it isn’t always comforting,” McManus observed. “[T]here’s also a strong reminder that the church still believes that there are ‘objective moral norms which are valid for everyone.’ And there’s a full-throated defense of traditional Catholic teaching on abortion, which Francis complains is too often criticized as ‘ideological, obscurantist and conservative.’”

He then quotes from what Pope Francis wrote in “The Joy of the Gospel”:
“This defense of unborn life is closely linked to the defense of each and every other human right,” the pope argues. “Once this conviction disappears, so do solid and lasting foundations for the defense of human rights, which would always be subject to the passing whims of the powers that be.”

Source: NRLC News

Down Syndrome

 

Unmasking the push to terminate children with Down syndrome

By Nancy Flanders
In Australia, much like the United States, only 5.3% of people diagnosed in the womb with Down syndrome are actually born. About 95% of people with Down syndrome are never given the chance to live their lives. That means 95% of parents who receive such a diagnosis for their child have given in to their fears and now live everyday with the pain of having ended their child’s life.
News.com.au asks, “Is this the beginning of the end for Down syndrome?”  And it very well could be.
In the article, which first appeared in QWeekend Magazine, the author visits with families of children and adults with Down syndrome. Each admitted to having initially struggled with the diagnosis, whether it came during the pregnancy or at birth. But none regretted their child, each boasting about their child’s accomplishments – from the five-year-old little girl learning to write to the adult who participates in international competitive swimming. Each of their stories leaves you wondering, what’s the big societal problem with people with Down syndrome?
There isn’t one.
Our society is overall supportive of everyone with any type of disability or health condition. From inclusive education to Special Olympics, the majority of us now treat people with different abilities with respect and kindness. Unless of course, those people are still in their mother’s womb.
It’s the common “out of sight, out of mind” mentality. If I can’t see it, it isn’t really happening.
But these are real people we’re talking about. Actual lives that are being ended because they have Down syndrome. There is no other reason. And just as society discriminated against people with Down syndrome in the past by labeling them “idiots” and placing them in institutions, society today discriminates against them by telling their parents to kill them. Despite the fact that there are new medical technologies to help them live healthier and longer lives. Despite the fact that there are numerous programs to help them lead more fulfilling lives. And despite the fact that families of people with Down syndrome and people with Down syndrome themselves report being happy with their lives.
Despite all of these advances and improved life outcomes, we no longer institutionalize people with Down syndrome, we actually kill them.

And it’s all thanks to pre-natal testing. And the less invasive and expensive it gets, the more people will die. Isn’t that the opposite of what medical advances are meant to do?
Instead of doctors informing parents of all the resources available to them and their child, they tell them only of the stereotypical negatives that are often associated with the condition. And they advise the parents to abort. One mother, Angela, says that her doctors were brilliant, however there was “overwhelmingly negative” advice being thrown at her and her husband. She was even told to leave her daughter behind and just walk away.

Parents, lost momentarily in their fears and mourning for the child they had planned on, can be too emotionally distraught to make a clear decision about their child’s life, and most end up aborting. Many will carry that pain with them through the rest of their lives.
We have to ask ourselves, are the medical field and society doing parents a disservice when we talk about abortion in cases of fetal abnormalities? Are we denying parents and entire families the joys that come with parenting, the triumphs that come with struggles, and the pride that comes with watching your child succeed when no one thought they would? By denying people with Down syndrome their very lives, are we denying ourselves happiness? Are we denying the evolution of a compassionate society? Are we headed backwards in our quest for diversity, inclusion and acceptance?

If the only words a doctor can offer her patients who receive the news of a pre-natal Down syndrome diagnosis are, “I’m sorry” and “You can terminate,” than yes, the medical community is causing emotional and mental harm to parents. And society is backing it up by repeatedly arguing for the right to allow abortion especially in the cases of humans with disabilities.
Call it bullying. Call it misguided intentions. But in the end, there’s a human being who has been denied his or her life and two parents who are suffering with the guilt. And this is only on track to continue until there is no longer a single person with Down syndrome on the planet. So much for inclusion and acceptance.

Editor’s note. Nancy is a work at home mom who writes about parenting, special needs children, and the right to life. She is the lucky mother of three spirited little girls, one who has cystic fibrosis, and she spends any free moment she can find fundraising for a cure for CF. This appeared at liveactionnews.org.

Source: NRLC News