Disclaimer: The linked items below or the websites at which they are located do not necessarily represent the views of The Illinois Federation for Right to Life. They are presented only for your information.
Arizona Gets Go-Ahead for Pro-Life License Plates
Arizona drivers will be able to put a pro-life license plate on their cars, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal on the case.
For six years, the Arizona Life Coalition has sought to create a "Choose Life" license plate. In January, the notoriously liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a lower-court ruling and decided the plates are constitutional.
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Feds Take Away Pro-Life Student's Free Speech Rights
A Detroit middle school did not violate a student's free speech rights when it prohibited him from distributing anti-abortion leaflets in school hallways, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a ruling by a federal judge in Detroit who had issued an injunction stopping Jefferson Middle School authorities from interfering with the First Amendment rights of an eighth-grade student and awarded the student nominal damages of $1. The appeals court ruled the school did not bar the student's freedom of expression but merely regulated it. "The school district ... is entitled to put time, place, and manner restrictions on hallway speech so long as the restrictions are viewpoint neutral and reasonable," the court said. Byron Babione, a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund, which defends religious speech and represented the student, said he is considering an appeal. "The student in this case was censored because of his pro-life message," Babione said. The 2007 lawsuit was filed by Michael's parents after the 14-year-old participated in a "Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity," organized by the national group Stand True in October 2006.
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Ohio Supreme Court Hears Arguments Over Juvenile Abortion Records
When a 14-year-old girl showed up at a Cincinnati abortion clinic in 2004 accompanied by a 21-year-old who was not her relative, clinic officials should have suspected statutory rape, an attorney for the girl's parents told the Ohio Supreme Court. Instead, Planned Parenthood performed the abortion without alerting the girl's parents or the authorities. The girl's parents are suing Planned Parenthood, alleging that the nonprofit organization has systematically ignored evidence of abuse against girls who visit Planned Parenthood's 37 Ohio clinics for abortions. The case took a detour from the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas to the Ohio Supreme Court to decide one issue: Should Planned Parenthood be compelled to turn over medical records albeit with names left out -- for dozens of other girls who may have been victimized?
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Calif. Insists U.S. Keep Paying for 'Free' Taxpayer-Financed Birth Control and Family Planning Services for Illegals
California's congressional delegation is asking the federal government to reverse its new policy created to deny illegal immigrants free, taxpayer-financed birth control and family planning services long offered in the state. For nearly a decade California has spent hundreds of millions of dollars a year to provide poor residents with free birth control and other family planning services at clinics throughout the state. Nearly 2 million people "benefit" annually from the mostly federally funded Family Planning Access Care and Treatment Program (Family PACT), many of them illegal immigrants. The letter also reminds the feds that Family PACT has helped "avoid" hundreds of thousands of pregnancies that saved the federal and state governments nearly half a billion dollars. Therefore, the legislators write, continuation of the program under its current form (of serving illegal immigrants) will mean ongoing savings for the federal government as well as California.
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Celebrity Hospital In Abortion Row
The catholic Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth, which has a maternity unit popular with celebrity mothers such as Kate Moss, Cate Blanchett and Emma Thompson, does not ban GPs at the hospital from referring women for abortions or prescribing contraception and the morning-after pill. The ban on abortion referrals was omitted from the North London hospital's code of ethics because it was thought that it would have brought GPs into conflict with their NHS contracts. Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, who authorised the code, has now been criticised for ignoring Catholic teaching.
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Men Grieve Too: Abortion and Men Forgotten Victims of Choice
How abortion affects men remains largely a story unexamined and untold. In modern abortion practice, gender discrimination is rampant; women may choose, fathers may not. By law, fathers are excluded from participating in the abortion.
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