The abortion movement is losing more than Americans' support. A new study shows that it also lost a significant chunk of business between 1990-2008. During those 18 years, the government says the abortion rate plummeted by 32% among women in their early twenties. Although the decline was smaller for women in their late twenties, there was still a noticeable drop (6%) in the older demographic.
According to experts on both sides, abortion rates are down across the board - a victory FRC celebrated in February when the government announced that the teen abortion rate had plunged by 59% from 1988 to 2008. One factor helping to build a culture of life is the growth of pregnancy resource centers, which FRC documents in A Passion to Serve.
Pregnancy rates, birth rates, and abortion rates have all fallen off--a trend that most liberals are chalking up to increased birth control. But taken together with another recently published report from the Centers for Disease Control, abstinence seems to have been a major factor.
After eight years of prioritizing abstinence education, the country may finally be seeing the fruit of President Bush's emphasis on "save" sex. Unfortunately, when liberals took over Congress and the White House, they not only zeroed out abstinence education, but they made teaching it a disqualifying factor for federal grants. Time will tell if the birth rates can withstand the administration's multi-million dollar, Planned Parenthood-style "if it feels good, do it 'safely'" sex education. As the Bush years are starting to show, self-control is a good personal policy - but it's also good public policy.
A Christian medical group's spokesman is concerned the contraception mandate in ObamaCare reflects an attitude similar to that behind China's one-child policy. Tuesday (June 19) was the deadline for public comments on the Obama administration's mandate forcing virtually all health insurance plans in the nation to provide free contraception. The 16,000-member Christian Medical Association expressed its opposition to the rule. CMA senior vice president Dr. Gene Rudd says his group filed official comments with Health and Human Services on Monday, right before the deadline. "[We were] explaining to them why this is both unprecedented, unwise, unlawful -- and basically un-American to proceed down this line," he states. Rudd tells OneNewsNow there are a number of reasons to oppose this directive. "[It is] undermining a foundational tenant of our society -- First Amendment rights, undermining years and many laws that have protected our conscious rights and [promoting] the whole attitude that somehow pregnancy is something to be systematically abandoned or avoided," he says. "All those reasons are reasons to want to overturn this mandate that's coming out from Health and Human Services." He notes China's one-child policy -- a policy he says reflects the philosophy that additional children are not good. "I fear that we are adopting some of that same philosophy in our country where we're saying that the government can decide it's a favorable policy to decide that children are a liability to our culture; therefore, we're going to have policies and procedures to help avoid that," he remarks. The CMA spokesman says he can understand individuals making decisions regarding how many children to have and when, but argues that is not the government's decision.
The Medical Establishment continues to try and misdirect the conversation on the pending threat of "death panels" under Obamacare. They pretend it is about "end of life discussions." But even though Sarah Palin mistakenly made that allusion when she first coined the term, she quickly corrected her mistake–as we noted here. "Death panels" really refer to the threat of health care rationing and centralized cost/benefit bureaucracies deciding that efficacious treatments will not be covered based on quality of life invidious discrimination–as occurs already in the UK, Canada, and Oregon's Medicaid rationing law. But they keep pretending. Latest example: In the Annals of Internal Medicine, a physician named Mark Vierra recounts an experience from his practice in which a woman decided to take her dying husband home to die rather than keep him maintained on machines in the ICU. He concludes with an allusion to death panels. From "Death Panels" (no link, 6 March 2012 ) Recently, we have been warned that government "death panels" would knock us off. The provision in the new health care legislation, which said that private, end-oflife discussions between a patient and his or her physician would be reimbursable every 5 years, somehow became a sinister governmental strategy to kill us quickly and save resources. It disappeared from the President's health care legislation, was quietly added back as a Medicare provision, but disappeared again when the new Medicare guidelines came out. Can this sensible, thoughtful proposal really be so objectionable? "I want to take him home." I am so grateful to this man's brave wife, who knew exactly what her husband would have wanted. She didn't need me to tell her what kind of man her husband was, to discuss with her the meaning of life or the nuances of medical futility. What she needed was someone to help her see what was about to happen in the world of medicine—a world that was foreign to her but one in which I travel every day. These conversations are difficult for me. They are so much harder than explaining the rationale for an operation, the side effects, or the risks; I don't feel that I am very good at them. But every one of my patients is going to die one day. Like it or not, I should have these conversations earlier, more often, and more comfortably. If that makes me part of a death panel, well, I suppose I can live with that. Of course, that doesn't make Vierra part of a death panel. It is part of the job. But rather than playing hide the ball by discussing a non death panel issue, I wish Vierra had addressed the real threat of death panels, e.g., a similar situation in which a different wife wants to keep her husband in the hospital to extend his life–and government bureaucrats and cost/benefit schedules tell her she can't. Or, they refuse to cover chemotherapy because it will only likely extend life for several months. and the Obamacarians decided that benefit wasn't worth the price. Or, how doctors/bioethicists are already refusing wanted life-extending treatment based on Futile Care Theory protocols. Those are the very real threats about which the death panel polemic properly applies. Pretending otherwise won't make the issue go away.
International reaction is stirring in response to shocking photos that illustrate forced abortion in China.
China restricts families to having just one child, though there are some exceptions. So, women are forced to abort if they do have a second pregnancy. For example, a woman seven months along was beaten on June 3 and forced to abort her second child. The baby was placed next to her in bed, and a picture was taken to shame her.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president and primary spokesperson for the Susan B. Anthony List, says it is a travesty that the leaders of the U.S. are doing nothing about this.
"We should, as planet earth, as children of God, be outraged and express that, certainly to China," she urges. "But our direct representative, President Obama, has all the power in the world, as does Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, to communicate our great displeasure and to revoke funding for the United Nations Population Fund."
She says that is an organization that "has turned a blind eye over and over to this abuse." And it is a taxpayer-funded body.
"You and I contribute to the U.N. Population Fund, which manages the Chinese Population Family Control Program on the ground," Dannenfelser details. "You and I and everyone [reading] are implicit in this forced abortion that happened and every other one that has occurred."
Through an executive order in 2009, President Obama resumed funding to the organization and requested $47 million from the 2012 budget for the cause.
With the release of a new undercover video from Live Action, there is a fresh push for federal legislation to ban sex-selective abortions.
Live Action visited two abortion clinics in Hawaii, where employees encouraged prospective patients to abort female babies and use tax dollars to pay for it. In the first video, an undercover investigator talked with a worker at a clinic in Maui, who encouraged her to abort a baby girl:
Employee: "…and like I said -- everybody has a different story and a different reason, and this is your reason and this is your situation. So, they should be accommodating, because we can help you determine, and it's nobody's business and nobody's reason but yours."
In a similar video filmed in a Honolulu Planned Parenthood, a Live Action undercover worker was encouraged to proceed with aborting a girl and to use state insurance to pay for it:
Employee: "You've got to go with the state Quest, or you've got to pay out of your pocket."
Life Action: "What's Quest?"
Employee: "State insurance."
Live Action: "Quest -- so it covers abortion?"
Employee: "Yeah."
Live Action: "How much of it?"
Employee: "All of it."
Live Action: "Really?"
Employee: "Uh huh."
Live Action: "And they don't, it doesn't matter the reason?"
Employee: "No."
Live Action: "So, if I wanted to terminate a girl, the government would pay for it?"
Employee: "They don't care."
The day after the release of the latest video, Senator David Vitter (R) of Louisiana introduced a bill called the "Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act," which would make abortions on the basis of gender illegal.
Live Action has previously released undercover video revealing sex-selective abortion practices in Arizona and Texas.
With the focus of part of Planned Parenthood's school sex-ed program being on religion and sexuality, one pro-lifer says the aim is simply to use the Bible to promote an unbiblical agenda.
Planned Parenthood of Illinois works within local public schools, it says, "to ensure that students are provided with medically-accurate, age-appropriate, comprehensive sexuality education." Educational sessions cover health topics like reproductive healthcare, contraception, sexually-transmitted diseases, and religion and sexuality.
The whole purpose of the latter, according to Jim Sedlak of the American Life League (ALL), is to convince clergy, parents and students that "it's okay with God" to have intimate relations for pleasure and eliminate the pro-creation factor.
"It is really an attempt by Planned Parenthood -- much as they try to say that it's okay to have an abortion and God is okay with that -- that the Bible does not have prohibitions against having out-of-wedlock sex and that it is truly okay to do it," Sedlak says.
But as he points out, that fits within Planned Parenthood's agenda to sell contraceptive products, get children involved in intimacy, then direct youngsters to abortion when the contraception fails.
Unfortunately, clergymen are often used to sell the message "that all of these religious people who say that the Bible says you should be abstinent outside of marriage and then faithful to your partner inside of marriage are wrong, that the Bible doesn't say that at all," the pro-lifer laments. "And so they twist all of the phrases and verses in the Bible into making you believe what they want you to believe."
Sedlak goes on to note that few parents know what their children are being taught through the Planned Parenthood curriculum being used in public schools. OneNewsNow also reported recently that the federally funded abortion-provider has set up a clinic on the campus of a high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Sometimes, you need to call 'em like you see 'em. That's what Dr. Wesley Smith, an ally of FRC who has appeared on Tony Perkins' webcast on health reform, has done in his new article, "Fat Stem Cells into Bone Casts Light on Advocates Lies." As he documents in his piece, too often proponents of embryonic stem cell (ESCR) research do what small children do when caught in a fib – they just "make stuff up." Yet ESCR champions are still given visibility and credibility by those in the media, government, and academia for whom ethical limits on scientific research are not boundary-markers but legalistic inconveniences. That's sad, both because of its moral dimensions for nascent human persons – embryos – and for the caliber of honest scientific and political debate in our country. As Dr. Smith says, "Reasonable people can differ about ethical issues. But, if we are to have reasoned debates, the public must be told the truth. Too often in the ESCR and animal rights debates … that doesn't happen." It's also regrettable because as the hard science repeatedly demonstrates, ethical adult stem cell research works. Earlier today, what some are calling a "breakthrough for arthritic knees" was described in the Australian publication Body and Soul: The treatment is called fat-derived stem cell therapy. It supports the regeneration of joint and tendon disease by harvesting adult stem cells from the patient's own fat – specifically adipose tissue, found in the abdominal region. The cells are injected into the affected area to replace lost or damaged cells, reducing inflammation and encouraging the repair and regrowth of healthy tissue. Although fat-derived stem cell therapy is still in its infancy, early results indicate it may lead to cartilage regeneration, delaying the need for joint replacement by 10 or 20 years and possibly, if the disease is treated at the early stage, stop its progression altogether. FRC's Dr. David Prentice has advanced adult stem cell therapies with courage and energy for years. You can read more about his efforts and view FRC's videos on ethical adult stem cell treatments that – unlike ESC treatments – actually work at Stem Cell Research Facts.
The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer notes a study of 1,028 women ages 20-44 in the April 15, 2012 issue of Cancer Research found that recent users of depo provera (DMPA) for 12 months or more had a statistically significant 2.2-fold increased risk of developing invasive breast cancer. [1] The authors, Christopher Li and his team (including Janet Daling) at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center called it the "first large scale U.S. study" examining the link between DMPA and breast cancer. They concluded it's the fifth study "conducted over a diverse group of countries that have observed that recent DMPA use is associated with a 1.5- to 2.3-fold increased risk of breast cancer." [2]
Li's team said the 2003 Women's Health Initiative study of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) "strongly suggest" that agents containing progestin, "medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA), in particular, increase a woman's risk of breast cancer." MPA combined with estrogen raised risk by 24%, while estrogen only replacement therapy "had a nonstatistically significant reduced risk." [3]
Like cancer-causing oral contraceptives (the pill) and combined (estrogen + progestin) HRT, the DMPA-breast cancer link supports an abortion-breast cancer link. Estrogen in the presence of progesterone (i.e. progestin) stimulates the growth of cancer-susceptible Type 1 and 2 breast lobules.
"In the case of DMPA or any other progestin-only pill, the estrogen component is provided by the woman's own ovarian estrogen," reported Joel Brind, professor of human biology and endocrinology at Baruch College, City University of New York.
Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, added:
"In implementing Obamacare, the federal government will require employers to purchase insurance that provides women free abortifacients, contraceptives and sterilizations, including DMPA. Why offer free drugs that damage women's health, but not free life-saving drugs? That's the perfect definition of a war on women!
"Cancer groups should have implemented a nationwide awareness campaign about the DMPA-breast cancer link, but it's no surprise they didn't. They've lied to women about the risks of abortion, oral contraceptives and combined hormone replacement therapy for decades. They still haven't reported that two studies since 2009 strongly linked oral contraceptive use with the deadly triple-negative breast cancer." [4,5]
The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer is an international women's organization founded to protect the health and save the lives of women by educating and providing information on abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer.
References:
1. Li C, Beaber E, Tang M, Porter P, Daling J, Malone K. Effect of depo-medroxyprogesterone acetate on breast cancer risk among women 20 to 44 years of age. Cancer Research 2012;72(8):2028-2035.
2. Ibid, p. 2034.
3. Ibid, p. 2028.
4. Dolle J, Daling J, White E, Brinton L, Doody D, et al. Risk factors for triple-negative breast cancer in women under the age of 45 years. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2009;18(4)1157-1166. Available at: <http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/download/Abortion_Breast_Cancer_Epid_Bio_Prev_2009.pdf>.
5. Ma H, Wang Y, Sullivan-Halley J, Weiss L, Marchbanks PA, Spirtas R, Ursin G, Burkman RT, Simon MS, Malone KE, Strom BL, McDonald JA, Press MF, Bernstein L. Use of four biomarkers to evaluate the risk of breast cancer subtypes in the Women's Contraceptive and Reproductive Experiences Study. Cancer Research 2010;70(2):575-587. Available at: <http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/70/2/575.long>.
