Crime

 

First pro-lifers are blamed for Colorado Springs murders, now hints that yesterday’s violence in San Bernardino may have a connection to local Planned Parenthood clinic

By Dave Andrusko

The purple dot is where the shooting took place. The red dot is Planned Parenthood.

Like many of you, my wife and I sat transfixed last night, hour after hour, as we watched non-stop coverage of the brutal massacre that had killed 14 people and wounded 21 others at the Inland Regional Center, a facility in San Bernardino, California, that provides social services for many clients including those with disabilities.

Hats off to a number of sites, including the Daily Caller, for documenting what, I suppose, was inevitable: an hare-brained attempt to somehow connect these brutal murders with the proximity of a Planned Parenthood clinic and (by the most dubious of extension) to pro-lifers.
As Blake Neff notes, the Planned Parenthood clinic is roughly a mile away “with a river, golf course, and dozens of buildings in the way.” Hard to talk yourself into believing that clinic was the real target, or another target, unless you desperately want to.

Aside from the fact that last night it took hours and hours even to identify the husband and wife team that was killed in a shootout with police, no one had a clue what their motive was or who they might be connected to, if anyone.
Here are some of the key paragraphs from Neff’s story:

CNN, for instance, quickly speculated on the air that Planned Parenthood might be the target, even after acknowledging the shooting didn’t happen there.’

“San Bernardino’s Planned Parenthood is about one mile south of the 1300 block of South Waterman,” mentions Marketwatch, for no clear reason.

Raw Story similarly makes a throwaway mention to Planned Parenthood’s proximity.

RT’s write-up mentions in its first paragraph the shooting’s location is “around the corner” from a Planned Parenthood.

Alan Colmes, a former Fox News contributor and host of the Alan Colmes Show on radio, saw fit to make an entire blog post about the Planned Parenthood’s proximity to the shooting, even though he explicitly notes the shooting didn’t happen there.

Dozens of random Twitter users and minor news sources ran with the narrative, suggesting the shooting could be a copycat attack despite the lack of any real evidence:

So consider, for lack of a better word, the logic. It starts from awful and grows worse.
It’s perfectly okay for many media outlets and countless editorial writers to breezily (or heatedly) link the crazed killer who murdered three people and wounded nine others at a Planned Parenthood clinic to pro-lifers/the Pro-Life Movement/pro-life Republican presidential candidates, based on four words in an interview Robert Dear gave to police.

So, if that rush to judgment is okay–indeed, is to be congratulated–why not an absolutely unsubstantiated linkage between Syed Rizwan Farook’s and Tashfeen Mali’s murderous assault and the nearness of a Planned Parenthood clinic?

We’ve already written about this , so I won’t belabor the point. There is nothing more important to the Abortion Industry–even more important than the billions of federal and state dollars that pour into their coffers–than muzzling our Movement. Nothing.
You’ve heard or read the super-heated language criticizing pro-lifers for (get this) “inflammatory” language. But that’s just a ruse, or, better put, a means to an end.
Ramesh Ponnuru put it perfectly .(Officer Garrett Swasey is a pro-life Christian whom Robert Dear killed at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado):

Pro-life rhetoric isn’t the real issue for pro-choicers anyway. The bedrock pro-life view — which, if you haven’t figured it out already, I share — is that abortion is the unjust killing of living human beings. Any expression of that view, any political action taken to advance it, is going to offend many pro-choicers, and could lead some people to violent acts. Pro-choicers who want pro-lifers to stop saying that abortion kills unborn children aren’t objecting to the pro-life movement’s rhetoric; they’re objecting to its existence.

And they’re trying to score political points by associating the vast majority of pro-lifers with a tiny violent fringe. What should, but will not, give them pause is the example of the man who died trying to defend the victims in Colorado. Few people — pro-life, pro-choice or in between — are as courageous as Officer Garrett Swasey. But if you want an example of pro-life principles in action during this crime, look at him and not his killer.

Source: NRLC News

Clinton and Abortion

 

 

Past abortion comments from Bill Clinton may surprise you

  Calvin Freiburger 

From the Washington Free Beacon come a pair of abortion-related statements by former President Bill Clinton that are each eye-opening in very different ways. They come from audio recordings made by respected biographer and longtime Clinton friend Taylor Branch, after interviews he had with the president for his book The Clinton Tapes.
Branch says that in 1996 Clinton expressed belief in a bizarre conspiracy theory about pro-life ex-Senator Rick Santorum – as well as ambivalence about late-term abortion…

“[Clinton] said something cryptic about Santorum,” Branch said in the tape. “He said, ‘Their child died a few hours after delivery.’ Then he said, ‘One day he’ll be found out.’”

Branch initially thought that Clinton was saying that Santorum “would be found out as an airhead,” but later came to the conclusion that Clinton’s comment was much darker.

“In retrospect, after he said that cryptic remark about his wife, I wondered if what he was saying was that it would be found out that what they said was actually an infant death was instead really an abortion,” said Branch. “That they had an abortion and then said that the baby died shortly after birth as a way of covering it.”

Branch said Clinton was leaving a note to himself with the “cryptic remark” and made sure that the meaning was unclear.

As the Free Beacon’s Brent Scher recounts, “the Santorums aborted their son Gabriel” is an old smear that is occasionally dredged up by particularly extreme and odious partisans for abortion, never mind that even the rabidly pro-abortion Salon debunked it in 2012, interviewing an OB/GYN who concluded that “the word ‘abortion’ probably shouldn’t even be used in this context.”
They give the conspiracy-mongers’ intentions the benefit of the doubt, saying the specifics of Karen Santorum’s condition and the treatment of them would be easy for laymen to get confused, but Branch says Clinton “spewed technical details” like “a medical specialist,” making it harder to give him the same pass.
So in the absence of specific, affirmative evidence that the truth was something other than what Santorum said, what possible reason would there be for Clinton to muse about him being “found out” in relation to how “their child died”? Branch recounts Clinton “roll[ing] his eyes” at Santorum and “scathing of Santorum as a terrible candidate and an idiot.” Is that it? Conjuring up malicious conspiracy theories about someone based solely on personal animus toward him is a deeply ugly characteristic in a President of the United States.
Second, Clinton had some harsh words for his fellow pro-aborts’ extremism:

Clinton said that pro-choice activists “framed the question selfishly by putting it in terms of a woman’s right to do whatever she wanted,” making it seem like they were fighting for a “selfish woman’s right to crush her baby’s skull.”

Clinton saw some of the pro-choice stances as extreme, such as the belief that third-trimester abortion should be legal.

“I believe that if you can’t make up your mind in the first six months, you don’t have the right to have an abortion,” Clinton said according to Branch.

“He said the pro-choice people have essentially allowed their own insensitivities to push them into a losing political situation and make a statesman out of Rick Santorum, which he rolled his eyes at,” said Branch.

That’s all very interesting, considering Clinton vetoed a partial-birth abortion ban, and his wife Hillary defended and voted for partial-birth abortion and opposes banning abortions after five months. So, Mr. President, were you “insensitive,” too? Is your wife fighting for “selfishness”?
The answer is simple: Bill wasn’t speaking from the goodness of his heart, but talking about the political inexpediency of the losing issue the abortion lobby saddled him with. Still, it’s a remarkable admission that the man reporter Nina Burleigh once said she’d give sexual favors to “just to thank him for keeping abortion legal” knew all along that partial-birth abortion “crushed babies’ skulls”…yet was perfectly willing to protect it anyway.

The Free Beacon reports that President Clinton declined to comment on the revelations, which is in his and his wife’s best interest—surely they don’t want the American people thinking about whether vicious lies about political opponents and knowing support for crushing the skulls of innocent children are values they want back in the White House.

Source: LiveAction News

Abortion Stats

 

CDC Report Shows Abortions Drop 4.2% in 2012

By Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., NRL Director of Education and Research

Photo Credit: March for Life

Figures released last week by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) show that the number of abortions are continuing to drop–by 4.2% in 2012. That means more than 31,000 fewer abortions in just one year’s time.
Abortion rates and ratios, which are very helpful for understanding the background, also continued to show declines. Conclusion? More and more women are rejecting abortion as a solution to unexpected pregnancy.
Relying on reports from 47 state health departments, the CDC reported 699,202 abortions for 2012, the lowest figure the agency has recorded since 1973, the year the Supreme Court first legalized abortion on demand. This figure, however, does not include abortions from California, the nation’s most populous state, or from New Hampshire or Maryland.
By contrast The Guttmacher Institute surveys clinics directly and does have data from all fifty states. Their last report showed more than 219,000 abortions for the three states missing from the CDC’s totals.
Guttmacher’s more aggressive search obtained a figure 1.06 million abortion for 2011. The CDC’s 2012 data is an indication that the national figure has dropped further, but it is difficult to say precisely how much.
In the states that the CDC did survey, it found an abortion rate of 13.2 abortions for every 1,000 women aged 15-44 years. As for the abortion ratio, the CDC found that there were 210 abortions for every thousand live births.
To illustrate how large the drops are consider this. The CDC’s abortion rate was 25 per thousand women in 1980 (almost twice as high as 2012) and the abortion ratio it reported was 364 abortions per thousand live births in 1984.
Down Across the Country
A look at the state-by-state totals confirms not just the depth but the breadth of the decline. Declines were seen in 38 out of the 47 reporting states, some significant.
While abortions dropped 4.2% across the board, declines of 12.2%, 13%, 16.2%, and 39.6% were seen in Virginia, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Maine respectively.
There is no single cause that can explain every drop. During the time frame involved, Virginia debated safety regulations for clinics, New Jersey and Maine both had budget cuts that caused clinics to close, and New Mexico finally saw its high abortion totals, which lagged behind the rest of the country, begin to fall. Long-term educational, legislative and outreach efforts have surely played a role in many states.
Most of the increases in the few states that did see higher numbers were minimal. For example there was an increase of 9 abortions in Nevada, 37 in Delaware, 39 in Wyoming, and 70 in North Dakota.
However even in states where there were larger increases, such as Massachusetts (1,036) and Illinois 1,944), earlier trends or later data indicate these are temporary fluctuations in what are in fact longer-term declines.
Down in All Age Groups
In other encouraging news, abortion rates appear to be down across all age groups, but especially among younger women. The latest CDC figures show declining rates for every age group between 2011 and 2012. Teenagers 15-19 led the way. That demographic experienced a 12.3% drop in just one year, from 10.6 abortions per thousand to 9.3 per thousand.
Women with the highest abortion rate–those ages 20-24— had their rates drop from 25.2 to 23.6 in just a year’s time.
All told, teens 15-19 saw their rates drop 40.4% over the past 10 years measured (2003-2012). The abortion rate for women 20-24 dropped 24.4% and rates for women 25-29 fell 10.1% over the same time period.
And even while women over 40 saw their rates increase 7.7% from 2003 to 2012 (due to the increased prevalence of prenatal testing for conditions like Down syndrome?), even that group saw a decline of 3.4% from 2011 to 2012.
Abortion ratios
Abortion ratios– the number of abortions for every 1,000 live births– was down in all age groups, too. This is very important because it indicates that women who become pregnant are more likely to choose life for their babies than any in the past four decades.
In the past ten years (2003-2012), abortion ratios fell for all groups. The greatest decline was among 15-19 year olds, dropping from 378 abortions for every thousand live births in 2003 to 310 per thousand in 2012.
Those under 15 years old (which have accounted for just half of one percent of the total abortions or less in the U.S. since 2006) still had a high ratio of 817 abortions for every thousand live births. But even their abortion ratio was down 3.9% from the previous year.
More early, more chemical abortions
About two thirds of all abortions (65.8% in the states reporting gestational data) were performed at eight weeks gestation or earlier. [1] More than half of those performed at eight weeks or less, or 38.2% of the total reported by gestation, were performed at six weeks gestation or earlier. This surveillance report shows this as the highest percentage of abortions performed at six weeks or less in the past ten years studied (2003-2012).
Not surprisingly, given the increased percentages of abortions at lower gestations, the numbers and percentages of chemical or “medical” abortions were higher. More than one in five (20.7%) of abortions performed at eight weeks gestation (or earlier] were listed as “medical” abortions by the CDC. (“Medical” is code for chemical.)
These are the highest figures the CDC has reported for this type of abortion since the government allowed the abortifacient mifepristone to go on the market in September of 2000. An additional 1.1% was chemical abortions at greater than eight weeks.
Seven in ten abortions (69.5%) were first trimester “curettage” abortions and an additional 8.7% were curettage abortions performed after 13 weeks. This would include suction aspiration abortions performed up through about 16 weeks and dilation and evacuation or D&E “dismemberment” abortions performed after.
States which did not report gestational age reported nearly 33,000 more curettage abortions and more than 10,500 additional chemical abortions. Only a handful of abortions were performed by intrauterine instillation (146) or hysterectomy/hysterotomy (79) in 2012.
Race and Ethnicity
Getting a handle on the race and ethnicity of aborting women can be difficult. States employ different criteria for measuring each characteristic, so that a single state might report three different numbers for, say, Hispanic abortions in three different charts for the same year.
Add to this that many of the states do not report any racial or ethnic data at all (including not just California and Maryland, listed earlier, but large states such as Florida and Illinois, as well as Washington state, Arizona, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia). Cumulatively this makes identifying “the” number or percentage of abortions to a given group for a given year well nigh impossible, though data exist.
With that caveat, Table 12 of the CDC’s report for 2012 shows a breakdown of 37.6% abortions in 26 states which did include ethnic data were to white, non-Hispanic women, 36.7% to non-Hispanic black women, 7% to “other” non-Hispanic women and 18.7% to Hispanic women. Other tables place the percentage of abortions to black women as high as 40.5% and the percentage to Hispanic as low as 17.4%. But it is clear by any counting that minorities are much over-represented in the statistics relative to their population.
Back in Table 12 again, the abortion rate for Hispanics is nearly twice (15 abortions per thousand women of reproductive age) what it is for whites (7.7 per thousand). The abortion rate for blacks (27.8) is nearly four times that of whites.
Repeat abortions and previous births
Close to half (44.2%) of women having abortions have had at least one previous abortion. Eleven percent report two previous abortions and 8.6% report three abortions or more. What may be more disturbing is that nearly six in ten (59.8%) report having already previously giving live birth to at least one child.
Marriage and Mortality
Married women accounted for just 14.7% of abortions in the 36 states reporting marital status, with 85.3% of aborting women being unmarried.
Mortality statistics are always a year late for the CDC, but this report indicates that two more women are known to have died from legal abortions in 2011. Ten others were known to have died in 2010. All told, the CDC has recorded 424 maternal deaths from legal abortion since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
Despite claims that chemical abortions offered improved safety, maternal abortion deaths appear to have gone up since their approval.
What the numbers tell us
Every life lost to abortion is a tragedy. That there are fewer than there have been for nearly forty years is good news, but that there are still so many is an indication there is much work yet to be done.
The latest statistics from the CDC strongly suggest we have been very successful in reducing the prevalence of abortion among teenagers. This is encouraging, and not just because of the lives saved. Observing data over the long term, this would suggest a generational shift in attitudes and actions surrounding abortion–that is, that a woman will be less likely to abort not only in her teen years, but also as she grows older.
Abortion rates are still uneven when it comes to race and ethnicity. Abortion rates have fallen across the board, but black and Hispanic women are still considerably more likely to abort than their white counterparts. More pro-life outreach clearly needs to be done to these minority communities.
Abortion too often appears to have become very accepted in some quarters, with nearly half of abortions being repeat abortions. Moreover too many mothers to already-born children are turning to abortion rather than giving birth to another child. The availability and awareness of realistic alternatives to abortion are critical to these communities.

Chemical abortions are on the rise, with more women aborting earlier and using chemical methods. Abortion clinics are big boosters of chemical abortifacients because it enables them to expand abortion services at minimal cost and effort. But, as noted, they do not make abortion safer for women and certainly do not make it safer for their unborn children.

That there are hundreds of thousands fewer abortions today than there were ten, twenty years ago is proof that pro-life education, legislation, and outreach make a difference. Keep informed, stay active, and expand the outreach so that more and more lives are saved.
[1] Gestational age is reported according to clinician estimates in some states and calculated according to a woman’s last menstrual period in others.

Source: NRLC News

Abortion is Big Business

 

Former abortionist: ‘Abortion is big business’

By Sarah Terzo
On November 13, I quoted former abortionist Dr. Robert Siudmack,who was featured in a video series called “The Truth about Abortion.” The series was released by Coral Ridge Ministries and was divided into 10 parts.
The sixth video, which you can watch below, addresses the issues of abortion profits and the lack of doctor-patient relationships within abortion facilities.

First, Dr. Siudmack explains how an abortionist only sees a patient on the day of her abortion. He has no ongoing doctor-patient relationship with her. Usually, the abortionist is too busy performing abortions to counsel the patient and does not interact with the woman until her actual abortion procedure. He never lays eyes on her until he walks into the operating room and finds her on the table, her feet in stirrups. Siudmack says:

I would like to believe all doctors share a genuine concern for the health and well-being of their patients. The doctor-patient relationship is unique one that is started on the first visit and develops over the course of time. In an abortion clinic, there is no doctor-patient relationship. The doctor enters the room, there’s a brief introduction. The patient is already on the table ready to have the procedure done. There is no sort of opportunity for any sort of meaningful relationship to develop.

This lack of communication between doctor and patient could make it harder for the abortionist to view the woman as a unique, valuable person. Without any previous introduction, the abortionist walks in and sees the woman in a vulnerable position, her legs splayed open and her private parts exposed. It could be easy to see the woman not as a person, but as an object. Abortionists who go from room to room, doing abortions as if on an assembly line, barely even see the faces of the women they are operating on.
Other abortionists have commented on the lack of contact with patients. According to abortionist Eugene Fox:

They would put up these clinics and then they would bring in doctors, and the game was, how many can you do in an afternoon?… You didn’t get a chance to know the patients ahead of time… We were like cogs in the wheel. (1)

According to abortionist Edward Allred, who owns a chain of abortion facilities called Family Planning Associates:

We’re trying to be as cost-effective as possible and speed is important… We try to use the physician for his technical skill and reduce the one-to-one relationship with the patient. We usually see the patient for the first time on the operation table and then not again. More contact is just not efficient.

(Incidentally, at least a dozen women have died from botched abortions at Family Planning Associates abortion clinics. You can read more about that here.)
After commenting about the lack of doctor-patient interaction, Dr. Siudmack then talks about how making money was a huge motivation for his fellow workers in the abortion business:

I worked at the [Planned Parenthood] Margaret Sanger Center in downtown Manhattan for about a year before moving to South Florida, and it was all about the money, and how many abortions we could do in a short period of time. There was a set price, and obviously the more abortions one did, the more money they would make…. Abortion is big business.

Another article I wrote back in October 2014 presented 10 quotes from abortion providers about how profitable abortion is for doctors who perform them and for those who own abortion facilities. While some abortion workers may genuinely want to help women, the abortion industry is first and foremost a moneymaking industry. No facility performs abortions for free (unlike pro-life crisis pregnancy centers, which have all kinds of free services for pregnant women).
The abortion industry has a long history of cutting corners and endangering women’s lives in order to increase profits.

1. Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 175.
Editor’s note. This appeared at liveactionnews.org and is reprinted with permission.

Source: NRLC News

China

 

China’s family planning officials: The world’s sixth largest army

By Reggie Littlejohn, President, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers
Editor’s note. This is excerpted from the third in a four-part series of opinion pieces by Ms. Littlejohn on the reasons that the Chinese Communist Party will never abandon coercive population control.
…If China’s Family Planning Officials were an official army, they would tie with North Korea as the sixth largest in the world.
This “army” can be turned in any direction to crush dissent of any sort. Does the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] regard this as necessary to maintain control in a tinder-box situation?
Officials employ a “vast system” of control and intimidation to enforce their policies, as blind Chinese activist lawyer Chen Guangcheng, himself a former torture victim at their hands, told U.S. officials this spring.
When China announced its new Two-Child Policy, Chen was not impressed. He tweeted:

This is nothing to be happy about. First the #CCP would kill any baby after one. Now they will kill any baby after two. #ChinaOneChildPolicy

Government officials, he told the U.S. Congress, routinely form large groups that “[act] like bandits” to enforce its policies at any cost, usually with no accountability to the law.
Chen cited signs posted by officials in various provinces to terrorize citizens into compliance with child limitation policies. For example, in Yunnan: “All villagers will be sterilized once a single villager violates the birth quota.”

In Sichuan: “Anyone avoiding sterilization must be punished by bulldozing their house; anyone avoiding abortion shall surrender their cattle and house.”
In Jiangsu: “We’d rather see a river of blood than a single baby born alive.”
Clearly, it’s in China’s interest to keep such an experienced, and brutal, force on hand as the country continues to destabilize. The million-strong army of Family Planning Officials fits the bill perfectly.
Other examples of Family Planning Official thuggery include:

•           In September of 2013, Shandong Province Family Planning Officials kidnapped Liu Xinwen, who was illegally six months pregnant, after breaking   down the door and dragging the 33-year-old out of her bed. She was forced to undergo an injection that killed her unborn child.

•           Similarly, 23-year-old Feng Jianmei, whose photograph with her murdered baby became famous in 2012, had been blindfolded, forced into a van, and told to sign a document she couldn’t see before her unborn girl was killed by two injections.

The spirit of the Cultural Revolution lives on in the Family Planning Police, who brutalize people with impunity with a fervor reminiscent of the Red Guard. These ubiquitous, barbarous brigades appear indispensible in maintaining order at a time of growing social unrest – another, compelling reason that the Chinese Communist Party will never abandon coercive population control.

Source: NRLC News

Abortion News

 

A withering dissent demonstrates why an admitting-privilege requirement is sound law

By Dave Andrusko

Judge Daniel Manion

Last week NRL News Today wrote about a split 7th Circuit Court of Appeals panel decision that overturned Wisconsin’s law requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the abortion clinic.

I’d like to revisit the 2-1 decision for two important reasons.
Such a requirement is part of the Texas law the Supreme Court has agreed to hear. Thus the decision will be one the justices will carefully read.
In addition, the 7th Circuit majority opinion written by Judge Richard Posner, is being heralded as some sort of definitive, last-word pronouncement that is so astonishingly brilliant proponents ought to just beat their legal swords into plowshares and retire to their homes.
In fact, Posner’s argument is extremely weak as the withering dissent by Judge Daniel Manion makes abundantly clear. The 25-page dissent, which starts on page 30, should be read in its entirety; it’s that good.
In lieu of that, let we highlight some of the many crucial distinctions Judge Manion makes which the Supreme Court should heed as it considers Texas’ H.B. 2.
First, as Judge Manion highlights repeatedly, Judge Posner misreads the legal standard by which Wisconsin’s Act 37 ought to be judged.

Under well-established Supreme Court precedent, the state may constitutionally regulate abortion so long as it has a rational basis to act and does not impose an undue burden. …

Rather than shift the burden to the state to provide reasons it was justified to enact the law at issue, we are obligated to uphold a law that regulates abortion where there is a rational basis to act so long as the law does not have the effect of imposing an undue burden on a woman’s ability to make the decision to chose abortion. Here, the court [majority] sets this burden of proof exactly backwards. …Under rational basis review, courts must presume that the law in question is valid and uphold it so long as the law is rationally related to a legitimate state interest.

There is a rational basis for the admitting-privileges requirement, as Judge Manion patiently explains in great detail, and by no means does Act 37 impose an undue burden.
Manion begins by observing that at least 19 women who’d sought abortions at Planned Parenthood clinics in Wisconsin “subsequently received hospital treatment for abortion-related complications” between 2009 and 2013. “Safety is not a negligible concern in any field of healthcare,” Manion writes. “Abortion–which is subject to less regulatory oversight than almost any other area of medicine–bears no exception.”
He goes on to cite Supreme Court decision after Supreme Court decision in which the justices recognize that a state has a “legitimate interest in seeing to it that abortion, like any other medical procedure, is performed under circumstances that insure maximum safety for the patient.”
Manion then systematically illustrates why the admitting privileges requirement furthers Wisconsin’s interest in patient (women’s) safety. He starts by hoisting the opposition of various medical authorities to Act 37 on their own petard.
In 2003, The American College of Surgeons (joined by the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) issued a statement listing several “core principles.” One of those was admitting privileges at a nearby hospital for physicians performing office-based surgery.
Manion keenly observes

Perplexingly, in this case, the AMA and ACOG have joined a joint amicus brief arguing that Wisconsin’s admitting-privileges law is unconstitutional. Yet their brief makes no mention of their 2003 statement or their sudden, yet convenient, disavowal of one of their ‘core principles’ related to patient safety. It appears from the trial testimony that plaintiff-doctors have simply decided that admitting privileges are only desirable insofar as they do not cause members of their guild to become ineligible to perform abortions.

He offers many other reasons why the admitting-privilege requirement bolsters women’s safety, including continuity of care (which pro-abortionists airily dismiss) and (quoting another circuit panel’s decision) “credentialing of physicians beyond initial licensing and periodic license renewal.”
But does Act 37 constitute an “undue burden”? Here Manion is absolutely devastating. Most abortionists plying their trade in Wisconsin’s PPFA were able to secure admitting privileges.
So what is the “undue burden”? That two abortionists at another abortion clinic, which performs late abortions, were not able to. Thus a greater “burden” on PPFA and, by extension, women seeking abortions.
Manion touches on something that is part of other court challenges to similar state laws: the notion that if there is not an intra-state abortion clinic convenient to the woman, it represents an undue burden.
He drily summarizes how haphazardly two abortionists from Affiliated Medical Services (AMS) in Milwaukee had tried to secure admitting privileges. Not exactly a full-court press
Manion notes that AMS has four abortion clinics in Wisconsin, two in Milwaukee. Even if AMS closed, approximately 98. % of women in Wisconsin seeking abortions (pre-18.6 weeks) would need to travel “a mere 1.3 miles” to reach PPFA’s Milwaukee clinic.
How about obtaining a late-term abortion?
Manion writes, “Turning toward distance rather than towards the governor’s mansion, Chicago is approximately 93 miles from Milwaukee–or a one hour and forty minute drive.” Other circuit courts, Manion observes, found that much greater distances did not constitute an “undue burden.”
Judge Manion’s conclusion says it all:

I regret that today’s decision marks the latest chapter in our circuit’s continued misapplication of the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence. By a majority of one, the court has eliminated a measure that Wisconsin’s elected officials have enacted to protect the health and safety of women who choose to incur an abortion. There is no question that Wisconsin’s admitting-privileges requirement furthers the legitimate, rational basis of protecting women’s health and welfare. Among other benefits, the requirement promotes continuity of care and helps to ensure that abortionists are properly credentialed and qualified. It also works in tandem with Wisconsin’s ultrasound requirement to facilitate informed decision-making on the parts of doctor and patient alike. Nor is there any indication that the requirement would pose a substantial obstacle to women’s ability to access abortion providers in their area. As Planned Parenthood’s successful applications for admitting privileges demonstrate, the hospitals of Wisconsin are perfectly willing to grant admitting privileges to qualified physicians who perform abortions in their state. Because Wisconsin’s admitting-privileges requirement has the rational basis of promoting the health and safety of pregnant women who have decided to incur an abortion, and because it does not impose an undue burden under Casey, I dissent.

Source: NRLC News

Euthanasia

 

A scandal in the euthanasia archives

By Ian Dowbiggin
Imagine for a moment that reporters broke the news that the Vatican had destroyed the bulk of its archival records. Researchers around the world justifiably might accuse the Roman Catholic Church of a deliberate cover-up.
Well, the Vatican has done no such thing. But it appears as if the right-to-die movement has. If so, one might well ask; why did people in the movement do it? Are they trying to hide something about their past?
One thing is clear: if the euthanasia movement’s records have indeed been destroyed, a lot of history has vanished, Orwell-like, down a cavernous memory hole. And with it, information the right-to-die movement doesn’t want you to know.

I should know, because I saw these records and I know what was in them. I wrote up my findings in my 2003 book on the history of the movement, published by Oxford University Press.
The story of my involvement in these valuable records begins about fifteen years ago when I was given permission to explore the archives of what used to be called Partnerships for Caring, Inc. PFC was a successor organization to the defunct Euthanasia Society of America (ESA). The ESA records, housed in a law firm in Baltimore, consisted of 15 large cardboard boxes holding correspondence, financial records, press releases, published materials and minutes of meetings, much of it uncatalogued.

There were literally thousands of items in these boxes documenting the entire 20th century history of the U.S. and non-American activists who advocated the legalization of various forms of euthanasia. The ESA archive contained materials relating to the careers of noteworthy social activists such as Derek Humphry, the founder of the Hemlock Society (now called Compassion and Choices), Joseph Fletcher, the founder of “situation ethics,” Alan Guttmacher (after whom the population-control Guttmacher Institute in New York City is named), and the birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger who, unbeknownst to all her biographers, was also a vocal proponent of legalized euthanasia.

Not only did these activists urge governments to permit voluntary mercy-killing and physician-assisted suicide, many also supported the involuntary mercy-killing of handicapped people. For example, despite his knowledge of widespread Nazi murder of people with disabilities, in 1943 the ESA’s president thought it was a good idea to legalize euthanasia in time for returning veterans who suffered from mental and physical wounds.

As recently as 2000, Derek Humphry proclaimed that because of escalating health care costs the elderly had a “duty to die.”

There was a good deal else in my book which would cause eye brows to arch in this day and age. The picture that emerged from my account was of a movement which harbored many people like the infamous “Dr. Death,” Jack Kevorkian, whose views on end-of-life care included the beliefs that experiments should be performed on dying persons and the mercy-killing of individuals whether or not they requested it was perfectly ethical.

The overlap between the eugenics and euthanasia movements was
particularly eye-opening. For much of the twentieth century the same people who urged governments to permit mercy-killing and physician-assisted suicide typically applauded the courts and elected officials when they legalized the forced sterilization of people with disabilities.
My research did not always go smoothly. One right-to-die activist warned me that if I included anything he said to me over the phone he would sue me and my publisher. Clearly, the right-to-die movement did not like the contents of my book. Some in the movement must have regretted that I had gained access to their archives in the first place.

But the story did not end there. About five years after the book’s publication, I was contacted by a US graduate student researching the history of euthanasia. She told me that in trying to track down the ESA records she had been informed that the collection had been intentionally destroyed.
Just this year another US graduate student got in touch with me, also trying to locate the ESA archives. She too has been told the records no longer exist, although she is still investigating.
Of course, it might be that the ESA records are sitting somewhere safe and sound. Yet why do groups like Compassion and Choices ignore my own requests for information? Why, when a published scholar in the history of medicine enquires about the whereabouts of this important archive, is there a resounding silence?
Yet, if, as is highly likely, this magnificent archive is gone forever, one is perfectly entitled to call the right-to-die movement to account. What are they afraid of? The historical truth?
As a researcher, I am saddened and angry that such a treasure trove is likely gone forever. The scholarly community rightly protests when a similar destruction of historical records occurs. It’s time that its outrage was directed against the people who today tell us mercy-killing and doctor-assisted suicide are the latest “freedoms” you and I ought to enjoy.

In light of the disappearance of the ESA archives, can they be trusted?
Ian Dowbiggin, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, teaches history at the University of Prince Edward Island. He is the author of A Merciful End: The Euthanasia Movement in Modern America (2003) and A Concise History of Euthanasia (2006).

Editor’s note. This appeared at princearthurherald.com and is reprinted with the author’s permission.

Source: NRLC News

Ireland and Abortion

 

New Poll Shows Slipping Support for a repeal of Ireland’s pro-life 8th Amendment

A new poll released this week in the Sunday Independent revealed that the percentage of voters supporting a referendum to repeal the 8th amendment of the constitution has fallen significantly, down from 66% in June to 56% in the current poll.
The poll also showed that the public’s view on abortion for babies with severe disabilities have dramatically changed in recent times, with a huge fall in the percentage of people supporting abortion where babies may not live for long after birth.
Polls published three years ago showed more than 80% of the public agreeing with abortion in these cases, since misinformation from the media had led to major public misunderstanding of the issue. However a poll for the Sunday Independent in June showed that support for abortion for so-called ‘fatal fetal abnormalities’ had slipped to 63% and this new poll shows that support falling further to 55%.
It is very likely that this significant shift in public opinion has a great deal to do with the work of groups like “Every Life Counts” and the parents of babies diagnosed with life limiting conditions bravely speaking out about their own experiences. Bringing these personal stories to the public’s attention has done much to make the Irish public recognize the humanity of these babies and of the need to provide better care rather than abortion. They have addressed much of the misinformation that was causing so much confusion and the results can be seen in the public’s response.
The Sunday Independent also reported that levels of support for abortion have decreased on all fronts.
The paper commented

“There has also been a sizeable drop in support for granting terminations in cases of fatal foetal abnormalities, while fewer people now believe a rape victim should be allowed to access abortion services. But the percentage of voters who say they are opposed to the Government calling a referendum has reached its highest point in over a year.”

Niamh Uí Bhriain of the Life Institute said that the Life Canvass, a major national campaign aiming to reach the electorate with a personal conversation on abortion was changing hearts and minds every day.
“We’re going to see improvements in the polls as more and more people are canvassed and their questions answered,” she said. “The media and government are underestimating the public’s concern regarding the liberalization of the abortion laws and the commitment of the pro-life movement to reaching the public on this issue.”

Source: NRLC News

A Great but Sad Story

 

 

Newborn buried alive miraculously saved in Los Angeles

By Dave Andrusko

Newborn was found under asphalt along popular Compton walking path

Police in the Los Angeles area are still searching for the mother of a newborn baby who miraculously survived being buried alive beneath shards of asphalt and rubble near a bike path in Compton, a city in South Central Los Angeles.

Found Friday by two sisters who were walking, the baby was estimated to be no more than 36-48 hours old.

CNN reported that the sheriff’s office said the baby girl was “cold to the touch” and wrapped in what appeared to be a hospital blanket.

“There’s indications that the child was born at a medical facility or at a hospital…because of the blanket,” LA Sheriff’s Dept. Sgt. Marvin Jaramilla told journalists on Saturday. “”We do know that if the child had spent the night there in those conditions the baby wouldn’t have survived.”
Angelica Blount was walking when her sister, Evangelina McCrary, pointed to a sound she had heard.
“She told me, ‘Can you hear the baby crying?'” Blount told CNN affiliate KABC. “And I said, ‘I don’t know; it might be a cat.’ And my sister said, ‘No, it’s a baby crying.'”
They called 911.

“As they searched, deputies heard a baby’s muffled cry and located a newborn baby girl buried alive under pieces of asphalt and rubble inside a crevice located along the bike path,” according to a statement from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. “Deputies removed the pieces of asphalt and debris and rescued the baby from the crevice. The baby was wrapped in a blanket and cold to the touch. They checked her vital signs and called for paramedics.”
The baby was whisked to a hospital where her condition is listed as stable.
“They could have done the right thing, and instead they came and dumped it here,” said Angel Flores, a nearby resident told NBC Los Angeles. “I don’t know the situation they have or what’s going on, but this is not right. This is not human.”

California has a “safe-haven law,” the Washington Post reported. “Over the past 13 years, 685 newborns have been surrendered in the state — including 73 last year — according to data from California’s Department of Social Services.”

Source: NRLC News

Ireland

 

Belfast High Court abortion ruling opens the “flood gates”

By Dave Andrusko
Pro-life groups universally decried a decision Monday by The Belfast High Court that would make abortion legal in Northern Ireland in cases of rape and incest and “fatal” fetal abnormality.
The pro-abortion Irish Times reported

Mr. Justice Mark Horner held that abortion legislation in Northern Ireland breached Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) by failing to provide an exception to the prohibition of abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormality at any time during pregnancy or where the pregnancy is the result of sexual crime – up to the date when the foetus is capable of existing independently of the mother.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) described the decision as “a truly tragic day for Northern Ireland’s unborn children and their mothers.”

Liam Gibson, SPUC’s development officer in Northern Ireland, explained, “The ruling by Judge Mark Horner is dangerously flawed. The judge misrepresented the protection of children before birth in case law and statute law in Northern Ireland. He also confused the separate legal issues of viability and the capacity to be born alive.”
Earlier this year the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission applied for a judicial review of the law. The Commission claimed that the law violates the European Convention on Human Rights.
But “Not one universal human rights treaty recognises a right to abortion,” according to Gibson. “However, the right to life is shared by all members of the human family. The Declaration on the Rights of the Child (DRC) acknowledges that ‘the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth’. The DRC explicitly states that the need for such special safeguards is ‘recognised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’.”

Another prominent pro-life group, The Life Institute, welcomed the decision of John Larkin, the Northern Ireland Attorney General, to appeal today’s abortion ruling. At the same time, it criticized Justice Horner for “attempting to justify his decision to allow abortion for ‘fatal-fetal abnormalities’ by comparing children with life-limiting conditions to other ‘seriously malformed fetuses’, arguing that the former are unable to ‘enjoy life.’” Such has “no basis in law or ethics,” the group said.
Niamh Uí Bhriain, a spokeswoman for The Life Institute, said the decision “furthered ‘lethal discrimination’ against children with severe disabilities.”
“On what highly-subjective basis can any judge decide who is enjoying life and who isn’t,’ said Ms. Uí Bhriain.

She was also critical of the language used by the judge who said babies with severe disabilities were ‘doomed’ and did not have a life worth protecting. “It is extraordinary to see a High Court judge use such cruel and thoughtless languages which will have been enormously hurtful to the majority of parents who carry their sick babies to term and who cherish every moment with their babies, most of whom do live beyond birth, ” she said.

While the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission said that it is “delighted” with the “historic” result, Bernadette Smyth, with Precious Life, called the decision “undemocratic” and said “it will clearly see, long term, the opening of the floodgates.”

Source: NRLC News