Support for teen emergency contraception access deemed 'foolish'

Doctors and pro-life advocates warn that the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendation of emergency contraceptives for teenage girls promotes unwise and “risky behaviors."
 
“It is beyond belief that the AAP would make this statement which is not in the best interest of teens … but in fact encourages them to initiate sexual activity and to do more risky behaviors. It's very foolish,” Doctor Donna Harrison told CNA on Nov. 27.
 
A policy statement released Nov. 26 by the American Academy of Pediatrics aims to “encourage routine counseling and advance emergency-contraception prescription as 1 part of a public health strategy to reduce teen pregnancy.”
 
This recommendation is disconcerting to pro-life health care professionals because at least one method of emergency contraception, known as ulipristal or ella, can work by inducing abortion.
 
Harrison, who is the director of research and public policy for the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, stated that “ella clearly can end a pregnancy that's already implanted in the mother's womb – it is clearly capable of killing an unborn child.
 
“Pro-life doctors will not prescribe ella, as an issue of conscience,” she added.
 
Harrison also raised concern about the safety of teenage girls who take ella.
 
“Because ella is a drug like RU-486,” her organization is “very concerned about the misuse of this drug for abortions, and what we see with women who use RU-486 is hemorrhage and fatal bacterial infections.”
 
“And we know that ella has not been tested in young girls. The testing was just in women over 18, so we have no safety data about young girls using this powerful drug.”
 
The other major drug discussed by the American Academy of Pediatrics' policy statement is levonorgestrel, or Plan B.
 
According to Harrison, the descriptions from the manufacturer and the FDA both note that Plan B has “a mechanism of action that can also prevent the embryo implanting, so that also ends the life of an unborn child.”
 
Harrison pointed out that “contraception” is generally understood to work before fertilization, but that these “emergency contraceptives” can kill an embryo.
 
“That becomes a pro-life issue … are you willing to take the life of another human being? Drugs that work after fertilization we don't do, because we don't kill our second patient, who is the embryo-fetus who's conceived inside the mother.”
 
Population Research Institute president Steven Mosher raised similar concerns about the abortifacient nature of emergency contraception, as well as fears about conscience protection for Catholic physicians.
 
“The AAP statement nonetheless asserts that pediatricians have an ethical responsibility to 'inform/educate about availability and access to emergency-contraception services.' There is no ethical basis for this assertion which, if enforced, would violate the conscience of all Catholic and many Christian physicians,” Mosher wrote Nov. 27.
 
Giving emergency contraceptives to teenage girls has in studies been shown to not decrease pregnancies or sexual activity, according to Harrison. She also said that “it does lead to an increase” in sexually transmitted diseases.
 
“So to give underage girls, for an organization that claims it is interested in the health of young girls, is a really stupid thing to do.”
 
Harrison believes that the recommendation will end up encouraging “a lot of young girls to initiate sexual activity, and get into a sexually active relationship that they find later they can't back out of, and that's the stupidity.”
 
The American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendations “would be devastating, from a public health perspective,” Leslee Unruh, founder of National Abstinence Clearinghouse, told CNA Nov. 28.
 
Rather than providing teens with pharmaceuticals, Unruh said teens should be taught about “the real meaning of love and intimacy and bonding.”
 
“Love is the better answer,” she said, “they will see chemicals aren't the answer.”
 
“I believe it would be devastating for young men and women who would go that route.”

Contact: Carl Bunderson
Source: CNA

A Pro-Life Lincoln?

This is the 149th Anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.
 
An old man in Boston in the 1830s peeked out from his closed shutters at the horrible spectacle in the streets below. His house was locked up tight against the visit of that monster, the President of the United States. He had sent his family away, but the old man stayed behind to guard the estate, to protect the family silver. When the presidential carriage passed below, however, the old man saw the happy throng of his neighbors. He saw not a rough, savage backwoodsman, but a tall, spare, white-haired war hero, cloaked in dignity, and wrapped in goodwill. The old man couldn't help himself. He threw open the shutters and waved enthusiastically. He yelled out the window: Hurrah! Hurrah!
 
Graciously, President Andrew Jackson tipped his hat and bowed to Mr. Boston. Mr. Boston’s heart was the first of the many Old Hickory won that day. I am like Mr. Boston. I went to the local theater today to see Lincoln. I expected to hate it. I know the politics of the director and the producers of this film. And what could I expect of that British actor, Daniel Day-Lewis? But I fling open the shutters of my heart and I’m yelling: Hurrah! Hurrah! This is a wonderful movie. Go see it! Take your children (your teenage and above children.) View it as a family. Day-Lewis’s performance as Lincoln may be the best Lincoln we will ever see. He is wise and funny, sometimes crude, and yet elevated beyond the ken of normal men.
 
You will see here why his young secretaries, John Hay and John Nicolay, called Lincoln the Tycoon. Most Lincoln biographers treat his White House years as a burden, a trial. They deplore the fact that poor Mr. Lincoln was beset by an endless parade of office seekers and those wanting favors of every kind. Well, why didn’t Lincoln tell his shrewd and politically savvy Secretary of State William Seward to handle the appointments? Or why didn’t he summon Seward’s man Thurlow Weed down to Washington and let Weed handle all political patronage?
 
Because Lincoln knew that’s where the power was. He knew that this was how you learn what the American people are thinking, feeling. To have given those reins to another was to let that man drive the team. Not going to happen. Early in his administration, Lincoln had told Hay and Nicolay, I can’t afford to let Seward take the first trick. Wings clipped, but not too severely, Seward became Lincolns ally and then his best friend. Daniel Day-Lewis has rescued Abraham Lincoln from the embalmers. Sometimes I think I’m the tiredest man on earth, Lincoln said late in his term. Day-Lewis walks as if his feet hurt. His shoulders are hunched. He slumps in the saddle.
 
If you want a Napoleonic figure on horseback, call for Gen. George B. McClellan. That Young Napoleon had all the qualities of the Corsican conqueror except, of course, decision. And speed.
 
The movie covers only a few weeks at the end of Lincolns life. And yet it captures so much of the drama of the times Lincoln lived through. Did he shape events? He was quick to say no. I confess events have shaped me, he said. We know, though, that Lincoln was the central figure in Americas Civil War. Okay.
 
Does Hollywood mess up the history? Yes and no. They certainly get U.S. Grant wrong. They show Gen. Grant giving Lincoln political advice and dealing with the Confederate peace commissioners as a proconsul. That’s not Grant. That’s one of his greatest qualities. Unlike McClellan, who lectured Lincoln on his political responsibilities, Grant avoided all such. He was strictly subordinate to Lincolns authority at all times. But the movie certainly gets Grant right at Appomattox. And that’s the big thing. This is the Grant who orders his jubilant artillerists to cease firing their One Hundred Gun salute. The rebels are our countrymen once again, says Grant, determined not to allow a single gesture that might humiliate Lees defeated gray legions.
 
The story involves the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in a lame-duck session of the U.S. House of Representatives. January, 1865, was the first time the Constitution mentioned slavery as it abolished it forever. President Lincoln signed the Thirteenth Amendment. There is no provision in the Constitution for a president to sign an amendment.
 
So why did he? Those on the right today who try to argue that Lincoln didn’t really care about slavery all that much will have to answer this question: Why therefore did he feel compelled to sign that instrument? Too bad the movie didn’t show Lincoln signing the amendment. Hollywood shows Sec. of State William Seward dealing with some low, shady characters. Are they some of Sewards Albany, New York, wire-pullers and backroom manipulators? Probably. Did Seward bribe Democratic House Members who had been defeated in the previous November election? Did he offer them federal jobs as a reward for voting for the Thirteenth Amendment?
 
I will quote the Great Emancipator himself: Damfino. I won’t spoil the ending by telling the reader what happens. Suffice it to say it is probably not news that the Thirteenth Amendment is part of the Constitution. What may be news is that every vote cast against the Thirteenth Amendment was cast by a Democrat.
 
How can I maintain that this is a pro-life Lincoln? He speaks of the sacrifice of his day as necessary for millions yet unborn. We know Lincoln thought the Civil War was being fought for a vast future. We know he looked to an America in the 1930s that would have 130 million people and he welcomed that quadrupling of our population. Would he have disapproved of abortion? We cannot say. He certainly did approve of women’s suffrage and said so. But he might well have been like Susan B. Anthony and the other early Suffragists who were for women’s rights and strongly pro-life.
 
Liberals today embrace Lincoln. Good for them. Let us rally around Lincoln. Lincoln said nothing stamped in the divine image was sent into the world to be trod upon. Are not unborn children so stamped? Lincoln spoke in parables. Even an ant knows when he has been wronged. Take from him the crumb of bread he has earned from his own labor and he will resist.
 
TIMEs Joe Klein tells us that ultrasound has made it impossible to deny the reality that that thing in the womb is a human being. Look at The Silent Scream. See that unborn child try to fend off the lethal probe. See as she struggles for her life. If the ant knows he is wronged, what would Lincoln say of that ultrasound homicide? Would he deny that reality?
 
Film critic Rex Reed panned Daniel Day-Lewis’s portrayal of Lincoln. He says it’s as wooden as George Washington’s teeth. Rex Reed knows no more of Lincoln than Ralph Reed does. And besides, Washington’s teeth were hippopotamus ivory. Rex Reed must have missed the scene where President Lincoln pardons a 16-year old soldier boy. The boy has been condemned to be shot for cowardice. He pauses, reflectively, and you know what Abraham is thinking: My son Willie would be 16 now, or nearly so. It moved me to tears. You’d have to have a wooden heart not to appreciate what Lincoln is feeling.
 
Daniel Day-Lewis, from Wales, has captured our Lincoln better than any other before him. This is doubtless fitting. It was a British biographer of Lincoln, after all, Lord Charnwood, who gave us this priceless insight a hundred years ago: The Union soldiers stopped calling the president Old Abe and Uncle Abe in the bloody autumn of 1862. That was after he’d issued his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Then, they began calling him Father Abraham. Now, with this triumphant film, we have a Father Abraham for all Americans to share. The Union forever, hurrah, boys, hurrah.

Contact: Robert Morrison
Source: FRCBlog

2 Federal Courts Dismiss Lawsuits Against HHS Mandate

 
Two US district courts have dismissed lawsuits by the Diocese of Pittsburgh, the Diocese of Nashville, and other Catholic institutions against the HHS mandate.

“While I am disappointed in the ruling that our lawsuit cannot proceed at this time based on the very narrow argument that we allegedly have no real damages yet from the Health and Human Services mandate, I am very encouraged that it was ‘dismissed without prejudice,’” said Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh. “That means that we have every right to file again in the future.”

Bishop Zubik added:

We will now await in good faith the accommodation to religious freedom that the federal government has claimed it will offer. However, we must all be aware that no modification to the original HHS mandate in regard to religious freedom has yet been made.

Other courts have reached differing conclusions in the challenges to the HHS mandate, so this remains fluid. I do want to make clear, however, that we cannot and will not negotiate away our constitutional rights to religious freedom and religious expression.

Following a different federal court’s dismissal of its lawsuit, the Diocese of Nashville said in a statement that the ruling “does not foreclose the bringing of similar claims once the alleged administrative change to the mandate takes place.”

Source: CWN

Abortions decrease as people become more pro-life

Abortion numbers have dropped five percent -- the biggest one-year decrease in at least 10 years. An expert says abortion proponents are misinterpreting the significance of that figure.

What they are saying is it is due to better use of birth control during tough economic times. But Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Steven H. Aden tells OneNewsNow "the abortion industry talks out of both sides of its mouth" when it comes to figures like this.

Aden, Steven (ADF)"Previously, the industry said that abortion figures tend to rise during a recession because more people are aborting their babies to avoid the economic consequences of childbirth," he points out.

"But with this drop in abortions during the recession, they're saying it's because of better birth control."

But Aden says that is false as well. Studies show birth control does not correlate with abortions at all. He says "what it really shows is that America is truly becoming more pro-life and that more women are wisely choosing to give life to their unborn babies."

In addition, government figures continue to show abortions are much higher among minorities.

"It's not surprising that the abortion industry would see a rise in abortions in minority populations because historically they've always targeted minorities for abortion," he says.

"In fact, Planned Parenthood itself was based on the eugenic principles of Margaret Sanger, who believed that birth control and abortion should be available to reduce the numbers of so-called 'undesirables' in the population."

Contact: Charlie Butts   
Source: OneNewsNow.com

UN report on world population draws criticism from pro-life advocates

 

 
"The State of World Population 2012," a new report by the United Nations Population Fund, has attracted criticism from pro-life advocates because of its emphasis on contraception as a human right.

The report calls upon nations to "promote family planning as a right, the exercise of which enables the attainment of a whole range of other rights."

"All human beings—regardless of age, sex, race or income—are equal in dignity and rights," the report adds. "Yet 222 million women in developing countries are unable to exercise the human right to voluntary family planning."

"The UN doesn't have the authority to declare contraception a human right, but particularly an agency of the UN doesn't have the right to declare something a human right; it debases the entire concept of human rights, to declare a commodity or a product a human right," said Wendy Wright of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute.

Source: CWN

UNFPA’s dark view

 

The new UN Population Fund report is riddled with problems which undercut its call for $8.1B a year for ever more contraception in developing countries. The evidence for this ambitious claim is so thin that it should not be hard for critics to refute it, but here are 11 problems that jumped off the very first pages:
 
1. The report is based upon the claim that there is a "huge unmet need for family planning." To the contrary, the term "unmet need" has been debunked by the very development experts who coined it. Particularly because the "huge" number–now claimed to be about 222 million–includes women who have specifically said they do not want the commodities.
 
2. The report says, "The power and means to determine the size of their families are scarce or inadequate." In fact, studies confirm that development experts have found family programs ineffective precisely because couples do not use contraception when are already using other means to freely decide the number and spacing of children.
 
3. The report claims contraception is an "intrinsic right," that is, a natural right that cannot be trumped by such rights as freedom of religion or conscience. Similarly, the executive director of UNFPA said in a letter to US UN ambassador Susan Rice last week that it was an "inalienable right." This claim asserts that condoms are somehow on par with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
 
4. The report claims that this right is affirmed in human rights treaties. This too is unsubstantiated.
 
5. The report emphasizes the "forces" of "negative social pressure" which prohibit the use of contraception. Translation: religion and culture. The author of the report is in fact an activist whose organization specifically seeks to change social mores to promote this agenda.
 
6. The report promotes the elimination of "child marriage," ostensibly any marriage under the age of 18, while at the same time promoting sex education for youth.  While forced child marriage is nearly universally opposed at the UN, the report does not make that distinction, and does not sufficiently account for the benefits of marriage, and particularly sex inside marriage for women at the age of consent.
 
7. The report claims that "studies have shown that investing in family planning helps reduce poverty, improve health…enable adolescents to finish schooling and increase labor force participation." In fact, studies also show that the opposite is true: schooling and better health care lead to lower fertility rates.
 
8.  Additionally, authors of the study that is cited, the 1977 Matlab, Bangladesh study, have noted that it is incorrect to say that family planning was the sole reason for better life outcomes such as higher wages. There were many other subsidies such as health care and housing which contributed to the study's results.
 
9.   The report claims that "where family planning supplies, information and services are widely available, abortion rates are lower." But the opposite has been shown to be true. In just one example, the CEDAW committee, which is by no means an opponent of widespread family planning and which has promoted abortion as a right over the years, has found just the opposite. In one instance, they admonished the government of France that where contraception rates rose among youth, unintended pregnancies and abortion rates also increased.
 
10. The bottom line of the report is the claim that nations which are struggling with the global economic downturn in their countries should pour another $8.1 billion dollars–every year–into already-well funded international family planning programs. This without any conclusive evidence that family planning programs reduce poverty or improve economies.
 
11. Most problematic of all, perhaps, is the troubling premise of the entire report, presented in its opening pages: "An unintended pregnancy can endanger a woman's health, undermine her opportunities to earn a living and trap her and her entire family in a cycle of poverty and exclusion."
 
Such a dark view of pregnancy–in which an innocent child, just because she is conceived unexpectedly, is a force for terrible evil– is radically out of step with the view of women all over the world who love their children, no matter whether they were expecting them or not.

Contact: Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.
Source: Turtle Bay and Beyond

Still no explanation for Irish woman's death, as pressure mounts to end abortion ban

 

 
As Ireland awaits the results of an official inquiry into the death of Savita Halappanavar, staff members at the Galway hospital where she died report that they are "mystified" by her death and by the reports that she was denied an abortion.

Galway University Hospital staff members say that there is no record of a request for an abortion in the Halappanavar case. And the hospital's Catholic chaplain reports that doctors there were clearly committed to saving the life of any mother in a difficult pregnancy. "The only ethos I have ever witnessed in the labor unit of Galway hospital is that the mother's life always comes first," said Father David Cribbin.

The death of Savita Halappanavar has roused new calls for legal abortion in Ireland. The official panel investigating the incident is reportedly weighing its own recommendation that Ireland should end its ban on abortion. But the cause of the young woman's death has not yet been established.

Source: CWN

News Links for November 23rd

 

U.S. abortion rate fell 5 percent in 2009: CDC study

Baby, or your money back: fertility doctor mass produces, then sells embryos for $9,800

Assault of pro-life advocate leads to arrest of serial rapist

Is that new abortion study biased? You bet. But don't expect the media to tell you that.

Planned Parenthood sends woman to hospital after abortionist halts 2nd trimester abortion

In Ireland abortion case, pro-lifers warn against snap judgments

Doctor leading inquiry into Irish woman's death is supporter of legal abortion

Court Rules Against Hobby Lobby's Challenge To HHS Mandate

Pro-life Catholic approved as EU Commissioner despite opposition from leftist groups

Campaign seeks to repeal Uruguay abortion law

African women sue government clinics for coerced sterilizations

Heroic Media releases TV ad educating women about 'The Adoption Option'

New CDC study promotes the use of abortifacients to reduce abortion rates

Ireland: the story of “the woman who died because she wasn’t allowed an abortion” falls in shambles

 

Savita Halappanavar, a 17-week pregnant
woman who died in a Galway hospital on Oct. 28.

For the international abortion lobby, the whole story was just too convenient to be true: at the very moment when the Irish government is discussing controversial plans to liberalize abortion, a pregnant woman dies in an Irish hospital because she was denied an abortion that would have saved her life. "This is a Catholic country", the doctors callously told her, so there was no other solution for her than to die at age 31. Upon learning this, thousands of enraged citizens flock to "spontaneous" demonstrations all over the country, shouting their anger at the country's "retrograde legislation that puts the lives of young women at risk" and (of course!) against the Catholic Church and its nefarious influence in Irish politics.
 
But what are the facts?
 
Firstly, Ireland has one of the lowest rates of maternal mortality in the World. While in Ireland only 6 in 100.000 women die of complications related to pregnancy, in the UK the figure is 12 and in the US 21. In both countrie, abortion is legal (and one is tempted to wonder whether that is not one of the reason for many pregnancy related deaths).
 
Secondly, it now appears that the young woman did not at all die of a complication related to pregnancy. Her autopsy has revealed that she died of blood poisoning and E. coli ESBL, an antibiotic-resistant strain of the bacterium. E. coli ESBL has recently spread throughout the U.K., causing urinary tract infections which can develop into blood poisoning.
 
One again, the abortion lobby has erected a monument to its own disingenuity. Sometimes it would be good to simply get the facts before launching an emotional debate that could potentially cost the lives of many women and children…

Contact: J.C. von Krempach, J.D.
Source: Turtle Bay and Beyond

Hobby Lobby appealing refusal of HHS mandate injunction

 

David Green, founder and CEO of Hobby Lobby
with his wife Barbara. Credit: Becket Fund.

The retailer Hobby Lobby will appeal a federal court's refusal of its request for an injunction against a Health and Human Services rule that requires the Christian-owned business to cover abortion-causing drugs in its health insurance plans or face millions of dollars in fines.

"We disagree with this decision and we will immediately appeal it," said Kyle Duncan, General Counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

The religious freedom group is representing the Oklahoma City-based company, which is owned by Founder and CEO David Green and his family. Hobby Lobby's sister company Mardel, Inc. is also a plaintiff in the case.

Green and his family object to providing abortion-inducing drugs.

"Every American, including family business owners like the Greens, should be free to live and do business according to their religious beliefs. The Green family needs relief now and we will seek it immediately," Duncan said Nov. 19.

The case is the latest in the controversy over the Department of Health and Human Services mandate requiring insurance coverage for sterilization and contraception, including some abortion-causing drugs. Its narrow religious exemption applies only to non-profit organizations which aim to spread religious values and which employ and serve primarily people of their religion.

Employees who violate the mandate risk fines of $100 per employee per day. Hobby Lobby, which employs over 13,000 full-time employees, said it faces a daily $1.3 million fine beginning Jan. 1, 2013 if it ignores the law.

A lawyer for the federal government said the drugs do not cause abortions and the U.S. has a compelling interest in mandating insurance coverage for them, the Associated Press reports.

U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton of the Western District of Oklahoma on Monday ruled that Hobby Lobby and Mardel "are not religious organizations." The judge also noted that the plaintiff's lawyers did not cite any case and the court did not find any case concluding that "secular, for-profit corporations" such as Hobby Lobby have "a constitutional right to the free exercise of religion." He said the mandate only "indirectly" burdens the Greens' religious beliefs.

Judge Heaton wrote that the court is "not unsympathetic" to the company's dilemma. He said the 2010 health care law's expansion of employer obligations has caused "concerns and issues not previously confronted by companies or their owners."

The question of whether restrictions on business corporations violate the religious freedom of their owners is one of "largely uncharted waters," he said.

Meanwhile, David Green said the legal action was necessary because of Hobby Lobby's dedication to God.

"It is by God's grace and provision that Hobby Lobby has endured," he said. "Therefore we seek to honor God by operating the company in a manner consistent with Biblical principles."

Hobby Lobby has 500 stores in 41 states. It is the largest business to file a legal challenge against the HHS mandate. It is also the first business not owned by Catholics to do so.

The company is one of the few national retailers that continues to close its stores on Sunday "in order to allow our employees and customers more time for worship and family," its website says.

The mandate is causing significant anxiety among Catholic and other employers with religious and moral objections to providing the mandated coverage. It could affect many Catholic colleges, charities, health care systems and even some dioceses which must provide the coverage or face crippling fines.

There are currently 40 lawsuits with over 110 plaintiffs challenging the mandate.

While the Obama administration has proposed an accommodation to expand religious freedom protections, its details and effectiveness are still unclear. The administration has opposed congressional efforts to broaden the exemption and President Obama criticized Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for supporting a broader religious exemption.

Source: CNA/EWTN News