Brain Death

 

Jahi McMath’s family files federal suit to have her death certificate revoked

By Dave Andrusko

Jahi McMath and mom

We last wrote about Jahi McMath, a remarkable young girl, in October and November.
Jahi, now 15, has been the focus of a tremendous legal battle ever since she suffered cardiac arrest following routine surgery and was soon after declared brain-dead, a diagnosis her family and some very respected physicians adamantly disagree with.

To borrow from bioethicist Wesley J. Smith writing in November, her family had been given the opportunity to file an amended complaint in their medical malpractice action against Oakland Children’s Hospital and one of its physicians “showing that Jahi is alive, with the assurance that if properly pleaded, evidence of life could be brought. She seems to have done just that.”

While I do not know the subsequent ins and the outs, we learn in a recent story in the San Francisco Chronicle that “The family of Oakland teen Jahi McMath has filed a federal lawsuit to get her death certificate revoked after an unsuccessful attempt to do so at the state level, attorneys for the family said.”
Reporter Jenna Lyons explains:

In the suit, Jahi’s current physician claims the 15-year-old has shown brain activity several times in her presence in the past few months.

At a news conference at the law offices of Christopher Dolan in San Francisco, Jahi’s mother, Nailah Winkfield, addressed the media in an online video from New Jersey, insisting her daughter is alive.

“There’s no way in the world I’d be holding onto a dead person,” she said. “I want her to have the same rights any other disabled child has. I definitely believe that God will heal her. I’ll pull a trigger on myself before I pull a plug on her.”

Jahi’s grandmother, Sandra Chatman, said she had visited Jahi and that she was progressing.
“I ask her to give me a thumbs-up, and she does it,” Chatman said, speaking from Dolan’s law office. “She’s just doing awesome. I couldn’t be more proud of Jahi.”
Following December 9, 2013, surgery to remove her tonsils, adenoids, and extra sinus tissue to treat pediatric obstructive sleep apnea, Jahi went into cardiac arrest. Three days later she was diagnosed as brain-dead and a titanic legal battle began in earnest when UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland sought to remove Jahi from a ventilator over the family’s vigorous objections.
Following a series of court hearings, during which the hospital never backed down from its insistence that “This is a deceased young woman,” a deal was brokered during a hearing before Alameda Superior Court Judge Evelio Grillo. It allowed Ms. Winkfield to remove her daughter from the hospital as long as she assumed “full responsibility.”

Bioethicist Wesley J. Smith has followed Jahi’s case closely and NRL News Today has reposted his posts. Probably the most significant fact to date is that “her body has apparently not deteriorated as generally occurs in a brain death situation,” as Wesley Smith wrote
However it is not Jahi’s family alone that believes she is not brain-dead. “Declarations from respected physicians have concluded she exhibits neurological functions that are inconsistent with a deceased person,” Wesley wrote.

Lyons reports that Jahi’s current doctor, Dr. Alieta Eck, has made a declaration in the suit that she believes the teen is alive. This after caring for her for months.
“While Jahi McMath has suffered a serious, and significant brain injury, and exhibits the presentation of one who has suffered serious brain trauma, and exhibits signs and characteristics of serious brain damage, Jahi McMath is not dead,” Eck stated. “She exhibits signs of brain function.”
Editor’s note. If you want to peruse stories all day long, go directly to nationalrighttolifenews.org and/or follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/daveha

Source: NRLC News

Disabilities

 

Parents fighting for daughter’s life: “Why wouldn’t we try?”

By Nancy Flanders
Chris and Natalie McCrone were excited to learn they would be adding twins to their family of four, but at 12 weeks gestation they learned one of the twins had died. They were devastated, and that loss would soon be followed by more heartbreaking news.

At 35 weeks it was discovered that their baby girl, named Cassidy, was not growing properly. According to the family blog, Cassidy’s limbs were not measuring at the right size for a baby her age. Her humerus bones were measuring 18 weeks and her femur bones at 27 weeks.
Doctors warned the McCrones that Cassidy might not survive birth or may need to be on a ventilator to breathe. However, the couple was determined to bring their little girl home, and before they headed to the hospital for a planned C-section, they made sure that their home was ready for the baby’s arrival.
“We just tried to stay positive, we tried not to think that way,” Natalie McCrone told The Daily Record. “What kept me going was the fact she was still moving, still growing. […] It was heartbreaking, and we’d already had the heartbreak of losing one of the twins. We were crumbling inside but had to remain positive, and just hope and pray everything turned out alright.”

Cassidy was born on March 25, 2015, and did very well, surprising doctors by breathing on her own. At four weeks old she was finally diagnosed with rhizomelic chondrodysplasia punctata (RCDP), a rare genetic condition which most people die from within the first year of life.
“She’d been in four weeks before it came back that she had Rhizomelic CDP, which is the worst type,” Natalie McCrone told the Daily Record. “It’s the most fatal and life limiting. We looked into it some more but everything we found on Google was horrendous, saying 60 percent of people didn’t survive the first year. Then we found a website called Rhizo Kids, and that told us a wee bit more about it.”

There are 57 people in the world currently living with RCDP. Cassidy is the only person with the condition in Scotland, and her doctors had never had a patient with the condition before, which meant the McCrones were teaching the doctors what they were learning.
“Sometimes they would even ask us to explain what our knowledge was, and that was quite hard for us because they were caring for our daughter,” she explained. “We expected them to have the answers.”
Since her birth, Cassidy has done well, surviving longer than expected and having surgery to correct cataracts. She has also been fitted with a hearing aid.
The McCrones got into contact with other families and learned of a clinical trial happening in the United States. They are currently raising money to cover the high cost of getting Cassidy into the trial and moving the family to the US for at least six months. It could be Cassidy’s only hope of surviving longer.

“It’s a chance we have got to take, we’ve got to try,” said Natalie McCrone. “You can’t go through life thinking ‘what if’. Right now she doesn’t even stand a chance so why wouldn’t we try?”
The trial is set to begin in July.

Euthanasia

 

Archbishop forces showdown over Belgian euthanasia law and right of conscience

By Paul Russell, Founder, HOPE Australia

Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, Jozef De Kesel

Over recent weeks the issue of conscientious objection, or the “conscience clause” in the Belgian euthanasia law has been brought into the spotlight by the assertion by the new Catholic Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, Jozef De Kesel, that he has the right to refuse Catholic hospitals and aged care facilities to co-operate with euthanasia.

Euthanasia advocates both in academia and in the medical profession have bristled at the suggestion that institutions could say “Non” with many displaying a distinct and disturbing lack of understanding about the status of the 14 year old statute that allows doctors to kill their patients.
The Belgian law clearly provides a conscientious “out” for doctors and others assisting in a euthanasia but it is silent about institutions. Some suggest that the extension of a right of conscientious objection to institutions such as churches is implied while others suggest, dubiously to my thinking, that silence suggests otherwise.

The unexpected intransigence has brought to light a subtle, but important, distinction in the euthanasia law. In spite of the rhetoric, euthanasia is not legal in Belgium. The 2002 statute simply creates a defense in law for doctors who commit an act of euthanasia when they fulfill certain conditions. Fernand Keuleneer, a lawyer and alternate member of the Euthanasia Evaluation Commission for 10 years agrees, He told the media: “It is wrong to argue that the law requires Catholic hospitals to apply euthanasia. The law does not create a subjective, let alone fundamental right to euthanasia, but is limited to non-criminalization of doctors who perform euthanasia in legal terms.”
Initially all this seemed like an academic exercise with no one expecting the new bishop to force a showdown. But a showdown was already in the making.
Belgian news outlets have reported that a Catholic nursing home has refused to allow a doctor onto its premises to perform euthanasia. According to reports, his 74-year-old female patient was terminally ill with metastatic cancer and was living in the St. Augustine residential care centre in Diest.
The process of requesting euthanasia began in 2011 and progressed for six months before St. Augustine’s management refused access, supposedly only days before the euthanasia was to take place. The various stories do not say whether or not the facility was formally aware of the process. However the family says that, after initially believing that the matter was simply a misunderstanding, they arranged for the woman to be transported to a private residence where the death took place. The family is claiming that the facility caused additional psychological and physical suffering for their mother.
The matter is listed to be heard in a civic court in Leuven in April – more than four years after the woman’s death and after the matter had already been postponed twice before — why, we are not told.
I smell a rat.
This issue precedes the current controversy over the Archbishop’s refusal to allow euthanasia to take place in Catholic nursing homes. It does not take a cynic to ask why a matter that has twice been suspended over a death that took place over four years ago where the woman got what she wanted, is suddenly before the media and the courts?

If that were not enough for conspiracy theorists, the lawyer for the woman’s family, Sylvie Tack, has a longstanding professional relationship with Belgium’s euthanasia supremo, Dr. Wim Distelmans, and his Life Ending Information Network (LEIF) as a lecturer, speaker and member of their peer review panel.
It may be that Archbishop De Kesel was aware of this pending case when he made his pre-Christmas declaration. If so, full marks to him! As we observed earlier, it seems likely now that the courts may well determine the interpretation of Article 14 of Belgium’s euthanasia law.

It does not seem likely that the complaint by the woman’s family is principally about her treatment or any recompense or restitution for “suffering or loss”. As their lawyer told De Morgen: “The new Act states that doctors and staff who are involved in the euthanasia, can have conscientious objection. But the health care institution itself should not interfere with it themselves.”

Make no mistake: if ever there was going to be a test case, this is it. Rightly or wrongly, Belgian’s euthanasia supremos have always seen the Catholic Church and its influence as the last bulwark standing against them. I have heard them say as much personally. Perhaps, ironically, they also see Catholicism as the last voice of conscience – to which they clearly object.

Editor’s note. This appeared at noeuthanasia.org.au.

Source: NRLC News

Roe V Wade

 

One historian’s sympathetic interpretation of the Pro-Life Movement prior to Roe v. Wade

By Dave Andrusko
I try not to go overboard, making comments that require more than a review or two of a new book, but Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-life Movement before Roe v. Wade by Daniel K. Williams appears to offer a lot both to “novice” pro-lifers and those of us who have been around literally for decades.

Oddly enough, I became aware of the book because I ran across an excerpt posted at TIME magazine, not exactly a hotbed of pro-life sentiment. The headline read, What You Don’t Know About the Abortion Fight Before Roe v. Wade.

Perhaps Prof. Williams is as unfamiliar to you as he was to me. He is an Associate Professor of History at the University of West Georgia. Then I realized I had read a piece he had written previously for The Public Discourse, some of which I agreed with, some of which I most decidedly did not.

But for our purposes today–and again having not read the book–here are some important insights we can glean from some reviews of Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-life Movement before Roe v. Wade and the excerpt in TIME magazine.

It is very helpful for people new to the Movement to realize that a pro-life movement existed prior to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Likewise, as Williams notes, prior to Roe. “the divisions did not fall neatly along partisan or ideological lines.”
There were many, many pro-life Democrats, especially in the states, and lots of pro-abortion Republicans. How the debate over life became largely pro-life Republicans versus pro-abortion Democrats is something we’ve written about before and no doubt is a major component of Prof. Williams’ book.

In addition, there is always a back and forth over how the abortion debate would have evolved had the Supreme Court not stomped on the abortion laws of all 50 states.
Pro-abortion Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg represents the persuasion that Roe gave pro-lifers a rallying point and had the Court not jumped in prematurely, inevitably (I think that is a fair characterization of her view) the states would have fallen in line with her preferred public policy. Williams–and many others–respond that by 1972 the abortion “reform” movement had stalled.
For example, “In 1971, twenty-five states considered abortion legalization bills,” Williams writes. “Every one of them failed to pass.”
In addition

When Michigan and North Dakota introduced voter initiatives to legalize abortion in 1972, pro-lifers defeated both measures by wide margins. By the end of 1972, pro-lifers thought that they were probably within only one year of repealing New York’s permissive abortion law, and the director of Planned Parenthood’s Western Region division worried that pro-lifers would soon make abortion illegal in California too. “In the West we view ’73 as a difficult year for abortion,” he confided to a colleague in the summer of 1972.

I am not a historian but my educated hunch is that Prof. Williams’ reading of New York and California is overly optimistic. That having been said, it is no less true that the pro-life movement had dug its heels in and fended off the next wave of pro-abortion laws.
As they say, it is no accident pro-abortionists turned to the courts to win what they were increasingly unable to win in the legislative branch.

One other quick point. It is undoubtedly true that in the very early days of the Movement, Catholics predominated overwhelmingly. But as Williams notes, more and more Protestants gradually assumed significant roles at the same time that the leadership of our Movement increasingly came to be led by women.

That diversity is even more obvious today, which is why (in addition to winning the battle among younger people) pro-lifers are very optimistic about the future.
I will order the Williams book this week and return with further thoughts once I’ve had a chance to read Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-life Movement before Roe v. Wade.
Editor’s note. If you want to peruse stories all day long, go directly to nationalrighttolifenews.org and/or follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/daveha

Source: NRLC News

Assisted Suicide

 

Appeals court affirms one conviction, overturns another in assisting suicide cases

By Dave Andrusko

William Melchert-Dinkel

The case of William Melchert-Dinkel, a former nurse convicted of assisted suicide, took still another twist this week when The Minnesota Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction “for assisting the suicide of a British man, but reversed his conviction for attempting to assist a Canadian woman’s suicide,” the Associated Press’ Steve Karnowski reported.

“The appeals court said Melchert-Dinkel gave [Mark] Drybrough detailed instructions on how to hang himself,” according to Karnowski. “But it said he didn’t give specific instructions to [Nadia] Kajouji when he recommended that she hang herself. She jumped from a bridge into a frozen river in Ottawa, where she was going to college” in 2008.

The AP reported that given Melchert-Dinkel’s conviction in the more serious count of assisting Drybrough’s suicide, Rice County Attorney John Fossum said he doesn’t plan to challenge the reversal of Melchert-Dinkel’s conviction for attempting to assist in Kajouji’s death. But Fossum added he was still evaluating the decision.

As NRL News Today and Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL) have reported, Melchert-Dinkel admitted to posing as a depressed female nurse in online chat rooms using several names. He claimed that no treatment had helped ease his suffering and entered into suicide pacts with his victims. He urged each of them to use a webcam as they committed suicide, as he would, so that they would not be alone as they died. Melchert-Dinkel was not suicidal but secretly wanted to watch others kill themselves.

Melchert-Dinkel encouraged his victims to hang themselves and he gave them details about how to do so. He boasted online about watching the death of Drybrough. Melchert-Dinkel admitted he entered into about 10 suicide pacts and believed five killed themselves.
Melchert-Dinkel was convicted in 2011 under Minnesota Statutes section 609.215, subdivision 1, which provides criminal penalties for anyone who “advises, encourages or assists” suicide. MCCL was instrumental in the passage of this protective law in 1992.
The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled earlier this year in State v. Melchert-Dinkel that “advising” or “encouraging” suicide is protected speech under the First Amendment.
“Whatever their reasons, people who attempt to assist others in killing themselves need to be prevented from doing so,” said MCCL Executive Director Scott Fischbach said. “Assisted suicide is a violent, inhuman act against an individual in desperate need of help. Vulnerable people need protections, including the medical and mental health care they need to live.”
After his 2014 conviction Melchert-Dinkel served nearly six months in jail and remains on 10 years of probation.

Terry Watkins, Melchert-Dinkel’s attorney, said they plan another appeal to the state Supreme Court.

Source: NRLC News

China- One Child Policy

December 31, 2015   China

China approves Two-Child Policy, but nothing has changed

By Reggie Littlejohn
Editor’s note. Reggie Littlejohn is the president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers (WRWF)

Reggie Littlejohn in front of the U.S. Capitol

Predictably, China’s rubber-stamp legislature has approved the new Two-Child Policy proposed last October. Officially, all couples will be allowed a second child, beginning January 1, 2016.
Equally predictably, the mainstream media has mischaracterized this move as a major change. One major media outlet, for example, announced that this modification “effectively dismantles the remnants of the country’s infamous one-child policy that has been eased in recent years.”
Under no circumstances does the move to a two-child policy “effectively dismantle[] the infamous one child policy.”

Blind activist Chen Guangcheng stated the problem succinctly when 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.’
Characterizing this latest modification as “dismantling” the One-Child Policy is wholly inaccurate. A two-child policy will not end any of the human rights abuses caused by the One Child Policy, including forced abortion, involuntary sterilization or the sex-selective abortion of baby girls. Nor will it “dismantle” the extensive infrastructure of coercion necessary to implement population control in China.

Indeed, earlier this month I testified before Congress at a hearing entitled, “China’s New Two-Child Policy & the Continuation of Massive Crimes Against Women and Children.” Also testifying was a woman who fled to the U.S. to avoid a having to pay an impossible fine or face forced abortion, because she had gotten pregnant without a birth permit. She is currently in hiding in the United States to have her baby safely.

The reason given for the adjustment to a two-child policy is entirely demographic: “to balance population development and address the challenge of an ageing population.” The adjustment is a tacit admission that continuation of the one-child policy will lead to economic and demographic disaster. The policy was originally instituted for economic reasons. It is ironic that through this very policy, China has written its own economic death sentence.
Noticeably absent from the Chinese Communist Party’s announcement is any mention of human rights. The Chinese Communist Party has not suddenly developed a conscience or grown a heart. Even though it will now allow all couples to have a second child, China has not promised to end forced abortion, forced sterilization, or forced contraception.
Coercion remains the core of the policy. Instituting a two-child policy will not end forced abortion or forced sterilization.

The problem with the one-child policy is not the number of children “allowed.” Rather, it is the fact that the CCP is telling women how many children they can have and then enforcing that limit through forced abortion and forced sterilization. There is no guarantee that the CCP will cease their appalling methods of enforcement. Women will still have to obtain a government-issued birth permit, for the first and second child, or they may be subject to forced abortion. It will still be illegal for an unmarried woman to have a child. Regardless of the number of children allowed, women who get pregnant without permission will still be dragged out of their homes, strapped down to tables, and forced to abort babies that they want.

Further, instituting a two-child policy will not end gendercide. Indeed, areas in which two children currently are allowed are especially vulnerable to gendercide, the sex-selective abortion of females. According to the 2009 British Medical Journal study of data from the 2005 national census, in nine provinces, for “second order births” where the first child is a girl, 160 boys were born for every 100 girls. In two provinces, Jiangsu and Anhui, for the second child, there were 190 boys for every hundred girls born. This study stated, “sex selective abortion accounts for almost all the excess males.” Because of this gendercide, there are an estimated 37 million Chinese men who will never marry because their future wives were terminated before they were born. This gender imbalance is a powerful, driving force behind trafficking in women and sexual slavery, not only in China, but in neighboring nations as well.

Sending out the message that China has “dismantled” its one-child policy is detrimental to sincere efforts to stop forced abortion and gendercide in China, because this message implies that the one-child policy is no longer a problem. In a world laden with compassion fatigue, people are relieved to cross China’s one-child policy off of their list of things to worry about. But we cannot do that. Let us not abandon the women of China, who continue to face forced abortion, and the baby girls of China, who continue to face sex-selective abortion and abandonment.

The one-child policy does not need to be modified. It needs to be abolished.Source: NRLC News

Abortionists

 

Should we really trust abortionists to have women’s best interests at heart?

  Cassy Fiano 

In Texas, abortionists are still fighting regulations enacted to make abortion safer. They’re upset that their abortion facilities will be held to the same standards as actual medical facilities, and that they’ll have to have admitting privileges to a nearby hospital — and they claim they’re upset because they have women’s best interests at heart.

Lawyers for Whole Woman’s Health and other clinics argued that law imposes an undue burden on women seeking to end their pregnancies, in violation of Supreme Court decisions protecting abortion rights.

The healthcare providers are challenging a state law that forces Texas clinics offering abortions to have hospital-grade facilities and requires physicians to obtain admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles (48 km).

… Lawyers for the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing the clinics, in their filing said that more than 40 clinics operated in Texas before the 2013 law. Afterward, nearly half closed. If the costly hospital-grade requirements stand, many more would shut down, they said.

Here’s a question: why on earth should anyone trust anything these people are saying? Why should we believe, for one second, that they’re thinking of women, and not of themselves? Let’s be honest here: this is about self-preservation. And they said it themselves — if these regulations aren’t overturned, then the clinics will close. They’re looking out for themselves, not for women.
These regulations are very much needed. As it is right now, clinics around the country rarely get inspected. Tattoo parlors, tanning salons, fast food restaurants, veterinary clinics… these are just a few examples of businesses that are held to higher health standards than abortion facilities. Our government will regularly inspect McDonald’s to make sure your Big Mac is safe to eat, and will check to make sure you get a safe spray tan at your local tanning salon, but when it comes to a facility performing surgical abortions, it’s not unusual for them to not get inspected at all for years on end. It’s ridiculous. This is exactly how Kermit Gosnell was able to continue practicing under such disgusting conditions.
Gosnell, by the way, is a perfect example of why these regulations need to be put into place. One of the most frequent complaints from the abortion lobby is over the requirement of widened hallways. It’s too costly and serves no purpose, they say. But widened hallways actually serve a very vital purpose: they’re wide enough to allow a gurney to fit through. It is precisely the lack of such hallways that led to the death of Gosnell’s patient, Karnamaya Mongar, who was slowly dying from her botched abortion as paramedics tried desperately to find a way to get to her, and then safely get her out.

But, of course, women like Mongar, who have died since abortion was legalized, are of little concern to the abortion lobby. They’re worried about money.

There’s also the fact that so many abortion facilities are known to operate in disgusting conditions. When a Michigan abortion clinic was shut down for being filthy and unsafe, the only concern abortion advocates had was whether women could still get abortions. An abortionist has bragged about using kitchen tools to perform abortions. In Virginia, the problems spread across the state, as the nine clinics inspected all had deficiencies, racking up over 80 citations altogether. Mississippi’s only abortion clinic is praised by the abortion lobby, but the owner, Diane Derzis, has a terrible safety record, sending three women to the hospital and earning herself 76 pages worth of health code violations.

And in Texas itself, filthy clinics are far from rare. Interestingly, Whole Women’s Health itself was found to be one of the worst violators, so of course they’re the ones kicking and screaming the loudest about the Texas regulations. Pro-abortion extremists praise them for their herbal tea and cozy blankets, but somehow, they seem to leave out the fact that Whole Women’s Health has been found to use rusty equipment and expired medications.

Obviously, these regulations in Texas are very much needed. So the next time you hear abortionists crying over how they can’t serve women because of mean pro-lifers raining on their parade with useless nonsense, remember whose interests these people have at heart.
It’s not women who will be in danger if these shoddy clinics close — it’s the paychecks of the people who work there.

Source: LiveAction News

Abortion Pill

 

Federal judge to rule on Arkansas abortion pill restriction

  Danny Burton 

On Thursday, a federal judge issued a temporary stay against an Arkansas law that would restrict access to the abortion pill. U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker will hear continue to hear arguments regarding the law, which passed the Arkansas legislature in March, and was set to take effect Friday.
The law requires any organization or individual dispensing the abortion pill to maintain a contract relationship with a doctor who has hospital admitting privileges. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, which operates two clinics in Arkansas, filed a lawsuit against the legislation on Monday.

Maithreyi Ratakonda, an attorney for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, argued against the legislation…

These provisions are unconstitutional because they will significantly reduce abortion access in the state, leaving only one abortion provider, and they will eliminate entirely the option of medication abortion.

Colin Jorgensen, an Arkansas assistant attorney general, told the judge that Planned Parenthood “made a strategic decision to file this lawsuit at the eleventh hour in the hope that the defendants would be unable to mount a full-throated defense.”
Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, who signed the bill into law, says he hopes the judge will uphold the law after hearing further arguments.
“Planned Parenthood places a premium on the convenience of abortion providers over the health and welfare of women seeking these procedures,” Hutchinson said.

Source: LiveAction News

Pro Abortion Loosers

 

 

The four biggest pro-abortion losers of 2015

Cassy Fiano 

 

2015 was a rough year for the abortion lobby. They saw a huge number of pro-life laws passed. For the first time in history, the Senate — along with the House of Representatives — voted to defund Planned Parenthood. And while the media tried valiantly, they couldn’t close the floodgates of negative information about the abortion industry.
But while 2015 was a hard year for everyone in the abortion industry, some definitely had a harder time than others. Here are the four biggest losers in the abortion lobby for 2015.

4. Wendy Davis
Hey, remember Wendy Davis? She was crowned the darling of the abortion lobby in 2013 after filibustering for over 10 hours in defense of late-term abortion. She tried to parlay that notoriety into a political career, running for governor… and failed miserably. She lost her gubernatorial bid, in spectacular fashion, to pro-lifer Greg Abbott. Since then, Wendy Davis has done close to nothing. She went back to her roots, fundraising for Planned Parenthood, and penned an op-ed defending them when their illegal activities came to light this year. There was talk of a TV show being developed about her career, short and pointless as it was, but there haven’t been any more updates about this “dreamed,” and there has been very little buzz surrounding it — probably because, well, no one cares about Wendy Davis anymore. Interestingly, the executive producer of the proposed TV show is Davis herself.
During her gubernatorial campaign, Davis desperately tried to lose the “Abortion Barbie” image she had built for herself, but now that her political career is over, she’s fallen right back into what she was before: a single-issue politician (albeit a politician without a job now) who has descended into complete and total irrelevancy. She rose so high (on the backs of aborted babies) last year, only to fall so very far in 2015.
3. Amanda Marcotte
There are a few basic obligations when you work as a journalist, and one of them is to get your facts correct, even if you’re writing an opinion piece. But Amanda Marcotte showed over and over and over again this year that, not she couldn’t be bothered to get the basic facts right. She started the year off by sinking to new lows, by attacking grieving fathers, defending predatory men, and calling for the abortions of babies with Down syndrome.
But where she really lost it in 2015 was in the knowledge arena. Whether it was that her extreme pro-abortion bias clouded her ability to understand the facts, or that she was just clueless is anyone’s guess. But over and over and over and over again, she proved that she literally had no idea what she was talking about. America’s views on abortion? Wrong. Science, biology, and embryology? Wrong. The 14th Amendment? Yep, she was wrong. Carly Fiorina and Planned Parenthood? Still wrong. Texas abortion regulations? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Defunding Planned Parenthood? Wrong again.
For having a complete and utter lack of knowledge on the facts about… well, everything, Amanda Marcotte is a huge loser in 2015.
2. The National Abortion Federation
Much of the focus was on Planned Parenthood this year, with the Center for Medical Progress releasing scores of videos showing the abortion behemoth breaking the law. But they weren’t the only ones who ended up in hot water. The National Abortion Federation (NAF) had videos leaked from their annual conference in San Francisco, and what was heard on tape was horrifying. NAF did all they could to prevent the videos from being released, but it was to no avail: they still became public.
So, what was NAF trying to hide? One of the clips makes it very clear that they were worried about the negative press. The grisly things that abortionists were admitting to at the conference didn’t bother them at all, but thinking about how it would look to Americans who would be rightly horrified by what was being said sure did make them nervous. And for good reason. There was a lot of talk about how to dispose of the babies they killed — ideas given involved shoving the babies down the garbage disposal, or throwing them into an incinerator. They admitted that the babies were pushed into the sewer system. One abortionist floated the idea of burning aborted babies to power homes, something that was seen as a “great idea” — and it’s also already happening. Another abortionist talked about how they make sure babies they abort don’t survive. They laughed about being kicked out of funeral homes for being so callous and disrespectful.
Thanks to these videos, Ohio legislators have now introduced a bill requiring that the bodies of aborted babies are treated with respect, instead of like garbage (something that infuriates the pro-abortion extremists). Seeing these videos, it’s no wonder that the National Abortion Federation wanted all of these statements hidden.
1. Planned Parenthood
There was really no contest about who fared the worst this year in the abortion industry. Hands down, it was Planned Parenthood, and much of that was due to the work of David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress. But the fact is, the hits just kept coming and coming and coming this year for Planned Parenthood. It started this summer, when the Center for Medical Progress began released videos from a long undercover investigation. The first video featured Dr. Deborah Nucatola discussing selling the body parts of aborted babies — which is illegal — and it never stopped. The floodgates opened, and more and more illegal activity was revealed.

Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer fraud came to the light. They admitted to getting a fair amount of income selling the body parts. Cecile Richards herself admitted to manipulating the rules on fetal organ sales. They were even caught killing babies born alive after abortions. The scandal was so great that Planned Parenthood President and CEO Cecile Richards had to testify before Congress about it. Multiple states stripped Planned Parenthood of their funding; many more opened investigations. Several congressional investigations were also launched. And of course, in a historic move, the Senate voted to defund Planned Parenthood.

On top of all this, the reality about Planned Parenthood’s overstated relevance became more and more obvious. Contrary to their claims, Planned Parenthood only serves a small percentage of American women. They’re vastly outnumbered by comprehensive health care clinics. It’s also become evident to women around the country that Planned Parenthood doesn’t really provide health care; their own annual report makes this clear. So of course, more people have a negative view of Planned Parenthood than ever before — and support eliminating taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood took a beating this year and was, by far, the biggest loser in the abortion industry of 2015.

Source: LiveAction News

Eugenics are Alive and Doing OK

 

Eugenics allowed Gosnell “House of Horrors” facility to go uninspected for decades

  Nancy Flanders 

Kermit Gosnell

Kermit Gosnell committed horrendous crimes in his abortion facility in West Philadelphia over nearly three decades. Some he got away with. Some he will spend the rest of his life in prison for. When looking at the timeline of events highlighted in the documentary 3801 Lancaster: American Tragedy, and when learning of the numerous instances in which Gosnell was reported, we’re left wondering how his reign of terror lasted so long.
How was Gosnell able to injure and murder so many people in an unsanitary facility before he was finally caught?
The grand jury came to one conclusion: eugenics. They said Gosnell did what he did and got away with it for so long because the women were “poor” and “of color” and the infants were “victims without identities.”

Adolf Hitler

Eugenics first arose in the 1880s with the idea that allowing only the healthiest, most-abled, and most intelligent to live will improve the world. Which people fall into those categories are based on the culture and political environment in which they live. The Nazis used eugenics to attempt a “Master Race.” To do it they murdered millions of people who didn’t fit Hitler’s standards, including Jews, the disabled, the mentally ill, and those who didn’t agree with his plans.
Essentially, Gosnell was doing something similar to the people whom he felt had no potential to lead what he considered a good life: the underprivileged, mostly black members of a high crime rate community. He admits that he ran his facility with a eugenic mentality. In a poem he wrote, which is featured in the documentary, he says:

What chance have those infants? Those without the support of their parents, of their families, of their communities and their societies. So many of those, without sufficient support, stumble into drugs, crime, mental illness, institutions, and languish in their jails.

But even if Gosnell was murdering newborns and providing extremely low care to his patients because he didn’t believe their lives had any value, it’s hard to accept that the Department of Health felt the same way. Yet they continually turned a blind eye to what was happening at Gosnell’s facility.
From 1979 to 1989 there wasn’t a single inspection of Gosnell’s abortion facility, despite the fact that in May of 1972 Gosnell used an experimental device to perform 2^nd trimester abortions on 15 underprivileged women who were bussed there from Chicago. The women were kept in the dark about the experimental procedure and device Gosnell used. Nine of these women suffered from injuries including hemorrhaging, punctured uterus, and fetal remains left in the uterus. The experiment became known as The Mother’s Day Massacre, yet Gosnell’s license remained in good standing with the Department of Health.
Three inspections of his clinic took place in 1989, 1992, and 1993, but then not again for 17 years after a 1993 policy stated that inspections of abortion facilities would only occur when a complaint was filed. This policy was created because politicians determined that inspecting abortion facilities regularly would create a barrier for women seeking abortions. What woman would want to go to any health clinic, hospital, or even restaurant if she knew it wouldn’t pass inspection? To the government, it was apparently more important that poor women and women of color have abortion access – no matter how unsafe – than receive adequate care. Philadelphia District Attorney R. Seth Williams even noted that hair salons received more “oversight” than abortion facilities.
Even with this new policy to inspect abortion facilities after a complaint, Gosnell’s facility continued on uninspected. This is disturbing because during those 17 years, there were many complaints filed, allowing several opportunities for inspection.
From 1996-1997 a Philadelphia doctor who had referred several patients to Gosnell for abortions filed a complaint that those patients returned to him with trichomoniasis, an STD that none of the patients had prior to their visit with Gosnell. The Department of Health failed to inspect.
In 2001, a former Gosnell employee filed a complaint with the Department of State informing them that unlicensed employees were giving anesthesia to patients in Gosnell’s facility, that he used unsterile equipment and instruments, that the facility was “filthy,” and that underage patients were forced into abortions. According to the documentary, nothing was done in response to this complaint.
In January 2002, a 22 year old woman died at Gosnell’s facility due to a perforation of the cervix into her uterus which led to sepsis. The Department of State was notified, yet did nothing.
In November 2009, another woman died after an abortion at Gosnell’s facility due to an overdose of anesthesia administered by an untrained, unlicensed office worker. Again, no investigation was performed.
Complaints and even deaths went uninvestigated because the women who were being injured and killed were seen as unimportant, less human, and not worth the time of the Department of Health or State.
Even the National Abortion Federation, a group of hundreds of abortion clinics across the country, didn’t care enough about these women to do anything to stop Gosnell. When he applied to become a member in December of 2009, his application was rejected due to the conditions of his facility. The federation called it “the worst abortion clinic” they had seen. And though abortion providers claim to care about women, the NAF failed to report Gosnell.  Again, abortion access trumped the health and lives of women.
It wasn’t until February 2010 that Gosnell’s crimes were discovered, not because the facility was finally inspected, but because police entered his facility with a search warrant in an illegal drug selling investigation of one of Gosnell’s staff members.
Police “could not ignore what they saw with their own eyes, smelled with their own noses, and what they heard from interviews with employees,” said the D.A.
The officers described the facility as smelling like a morgue. Floors were dirty with blood, rooms were cluttered, and there was a chunk of ceiling missing with signs of water damage. A cat roamed around. There were dirty litter boxes. And there were jars of baby feet, along with 47 frozen babies.
Suddenly, everything Gosnell had done was out in the open. He had been inducing labor and killing the newborns by stabbing them in the backs of their necks with scissors and cutting their spinal cords. He had been using unsterilized equipment. He had been forcing women to abort even if they changed their minds and wanted to leave.
No one who allowed this type of “health” center to exist cared about women or their preborn children, simply because they were seen as unworthy. It’s horrible to think about, but it shouldn’t be shocking, because it’s that frame of mind that brought abortion into legal existence in the first place.

Margaret Sanger

When Margaret Sanger – an advocate for birth control and forced sterilization – founded Planned Parenthood, it was because she wanted to prevent the “unfit” from reproducing.  In an interview with Mike Wallace, Sanger said:

I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world – that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically. Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they’re born. That to me is the greatest sin – that people can – can commit.

After Gosnell’s case, Pennsylvania lawmakers passed bills in 2011, calling for regular inspection of abortion facilities and requiring that they meet the same safety regulations as every other ambulatory surgical facility in the state.
Virginia and Texas passed similar legislation in 2013. But in 2014, the Virginia State Board of Health voted to overturn the legislation, and Planned Parenthood is suing to stop the Texas legislation.
How many other abortionists like Gosnell exist right now, injuring women, killing infants born alive after abortion, and performing medical procedures in rooms full of bacteria and unclean equipment? Pro-abortion groups and politicians have fought to keep abortion facilities from being subject to the same standards as other surgical facilities because they say it will keep women from receiving safe care. In reality, there are likely many more instances of substandard and even horrific abortion facilities left to be uncovered. Pro-abortion groups don’t want anyone to know it because it would unmask the ‘legal abortion equals safe abortion’ lie. It would also hurt the bottom line of large abortion networks like Planned Parenthood.
The Gosnell documentary also references the 2014 temporary closing of a Delaware Planned Parenthood for unsafe and unsanitary practices, which were so egregious that the facility’s own nurses reported them. Gosnell is most certainly not an outlier, as the abortion industry claims.
Gosnell said that his patients were “making a decision that’s best for them as well as for our society” and that he “did the ethically best decision.”
Murdering innocent people and causing harm to others is never good for society and never the ethical thing to do.  Unfortunately, it’s how abortion providers make their money, and they’ve managed to convince a lot of people that they do it to help women. But one of Gosnell’s patients, a rape victim who was forced to abort her baby and was left sterile, reveals that this is a lie:

I’ve just never been violated to that extent. But the violation carried on. It just didn’t or wasn’t a violation that stopped. This is going on for the rest of my life.

Source: LiveAct6ion News