National Right to Life denounces bill to force DNR orders against patient wishes
The National Right to Life Committee, the oldest and largest pro-life organization in the United States, is calling for the defeat of a Texas bill -- S.B. 303 -- that would allow doctors to impose "Do Not Resuscitate (DNR)" orders on patients even if doing so would violate the patient's express wishes.
"Texas S.B. 303 violates the most fundamental tenet of patient autonomy by allowing doctors to strip patients (or their surrogates), of the right to dictate their wishes with regard to CPR," said Burke Balch, J.D., director of National Right to Life's Powell Center for Medical Ethics. "Texas S.B. 303 gives doctors the unilateral authority to deny CPR, thus imposing involuntary death on patients, with little recourse for patients or their surrogates to seek relief from an imposed DNR order."
Under the bill, sponsored by State Senator Bob Deuell, Vice-Chair of the Texas Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, a doctor is authorized to impose a "DNR" order even over the protest of a patient or surrogate.
The bill provides that the most a patient or surrogate who wants the DNR removed can do is pay for "a second opinion at the patient's or surrogate's expense" and -- only after that "opinion has been obtained" -- appeal to the health care facility's ethics committee. If the patient should go into cardiopulmonary arrest in the meantime, the patient will suffer involuntary death without resuscitation. In some circumstances, the patient would be denied even the opportunity for a second medical opinion or resort to the facility committee.
"We appeal to anyone who cares about patient autonomy or the right to live to shine the light of outraged public opinion on this dangerous bill," Balch added.
National Right to Life's Powell Center for Medical Ethics has an analysis of S.B. 303 posted here.
The full text of the legislation is here.
Source: National Right to Life Committee
29 year old Jennifer Morbelli's instructions after her 33
week abortion at Leroy Carhart's Maryland abortion clinic,
was to NOT go to the ER in the event of an emergency.
At a Maryland Coalition for Life (MDCFL) press conference in Germantown, Maryland where it was announced that a 29 year-old woman was pronounced dead at a Germantown hospital as a direct result of complications from a 3rd trimester abortion.
The abortion was performed by Dr. LeRoy Carhart. Carhart, former associate of late-term abortionist George Tiller, was recently hailed a "hero" in the film "After Tiller" at the Sundance Film Festival. Carhart was the abortionist who performed a late-term abortion on a young woman with Downs Syndrome who died following complications from that abortion in 2005 at Women's Heath Care Services in Wichita, KS.
The young woman who died Thursday was approximately 33 weeks pregnant and came to see Carhart for an abortion procedure that lasted four days and ended in her death from apparent blood loss and shock, according to MDCFL.
Another botched abortion at an Elkton, Maryland resulted in a woman suffering from a ruptured uterus and the discovery of three dozen late-term aborted fetuses in the clinic freezer. This led Maryland, one of the most abortion-friendly states in the country, to quietly enact stricter abortion facility regulations in July, 2012. Those regulations require licensure of facilities and basically mirror regulations that govern outpatient surgical facilities.
MDCFL has learned that while Carhart's facility was recently licensed by the state, no actual inspection took place prior to that licensure to guarantee that the facility conformed to the new MD regulations. This senseless tragedy should serve as a wake-up call to abortion supporters who continually insist that abortion is "health-care" and is safe for women.
As we have seen over and over again in states like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Marylandand Kansas, abortion facilities and procedures remain unsanitary and unsafe. Late-term abortions are particularly dangerous. Late term abortion complications include, but are not limited to pain, bleeding, shock, infection and instrumental injury, according to S.V. Gaufburg, professor of medicine at Harvard University.
U.S. mortality rates per 100,000 abortions are 14.0 for procedures at 16-20 weeks of gestation and 18.0 for procedures after 21 weeks of gestation, according to Gaufberg. A Bartlett study conducted during the years of 1988-1997 paints an even more dire picture. Specifically, it found that per 100,000 abortions, the relative risk of abortion-related mortality was 14.7 at 13–15 weeks of gestation, 29.5 at 16-20 weeks, and 76.6 at or after 21 weeks.
The death of the young Maryland woman could have been prevented had abortion been more tightly regulated in her home state. In light of this tragedy, Maryland should consider a total ban on late-term abortions in order to better protect women and families.
Maryland, a staunchly pro-abortion state, is not likely to re-think those laws anytime soon, according to LeRoy Carhart, who said in a 2011 interview, "[I] don't think the laws here will change. Maryland is one of the most pro-choice communities in the country." It is time for Maryland to prove Carhart wrong by putting the safety and dignity of its citizens first and outlawing these dangerous procedures.
Source: FRC
The NAACP has threatened to sue the Radiance Foundation for trademark infringement. The Radiance Foundation has responded by filing a suit of its own and is waiting for an answer.
The NAACP is upset because the Radiance Foundation has publicly revealed the former civil rights organization's support for abortion and close ties with Planned Parenthood. Foundation founder Ryan Bomberger tells OneNewsNow the NAACP has threatened to sue them unless they remove every reference to their name and seal. However, those items are things the media and other organizations commonly use in stories or in issuing press releases.
"They're particularly irked by the fact that we have given them, satirically, the name of the 'National Association for the Abortion of Colored People,'" he explains. "That has apparently pushed them over the line."
While the information Bomberger has put out about the NAACP is factual, he argues that organization is not demonstrating appreciation for constitutional protections for freedom of speech.
"The issue is we've got the NAACP celebrating abortion," he says. "In fact, their president, Julian Bond, praised the high abortion rates among black women. We're talking about black children being aborted at rates of up to six times more than the majority population. In fact, in New York City -- that's where Julian Bond gave that address -- more black babies are aborted than are born alive."
Responding to the threat of a lawsuit, Alliance Defending Freedom is representing the Radiance Foundation and has gone to court asking for a judge to rule in the Foundation's favor.
Source: OneNewsNow
Thomas More Society Files a Formal Complaint on Behalf of Chicago's Pro-Life Action League
Yesterday, the Pro-Life Action League ("the League"), acting through its legal counsel, the Chicago-based Thomas More Society, filed a formal administrative complaint with the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation ("IDPR"), urging in the public interest that the IDPR undertake an immediate investigation as to whether substandard medical care led to the death last summer of Tonya Reaves, shortly after she had a late term abortion at a Planned Parenthood facility in Chicago. In five single-spaced pages with ten attached exhibits (Exhs. A-J), the complaint raises a series of questions -- arising from news reports, Web postings, 911 records, the autopsy report of the Cook County Coroner, and other sources -- as to whether Ms. Reaves, a 24-year-old single mother, who died on July 20, 2012, after she underwent a surgical abortion at Planned Parenthood's "Loop Health Center" facility at 18 South Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60603, received unprofessional care from Illinois licensed physicians.
Thus the League and the Thomas More Society have detailed a series of serious concerns about apparent inadequate and substandard care given to Ms. Reaves -- concerns that are immediately prompted by critical facts of the case that have become public up to this date. First, Planned Parenthood's website for the 18 S. Michigan facility, where Ms. Reaves had her abortion, recited (in a passage that was later deleted) that only limited services -- birth control, emergency contraception, and medication abortion (i.e., the abortion pill) -- were available at that facility. Yet Ms. Reaves, then 16 weeks pregnant according to her autopsy report, underwent an invasive, surgical dilatation & evacuation (D&E) abortion. Thus these facts suggest that this facility was inadequately equipped and/or staffed to handle either the D&E procedure or complications arising as a result -- complications that later led to the patient's demise. Any physician taking responsibility for performing surgery in such a sub-par setting, who inflicts the ultimate "harm" (death) on his or her patient, is not even remotely "properly qualified or competent" to render such potentially fatal surgical services, which is "dishonorable, unethical or unprofessional conduct" or "questioned activities" that flout regulatory norms.
Moreover, while Ms. Reaves' abortion was performed at about 11:00 a.m. on July 20th, her autopsy shows that she was not transferred to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, which was fully equipped to handle post-surgical emergencies, until 5½ hours later. Capable, experienced medical staff should have noted that the patient was not recovering properly and needed emergency medical care. Even after Ms. Reaves' ultimately fatal complications must have been plainly apparent, staff failed to call 911. The autopsy also indicates that she received large quantities of saline solution, but no effective medical help. No city ambulance was summoned, so Ms. Reaves may well have been taken to the hospital in a non-emergency vehicle, unequipped for transport of life-threatening cases. These facts alone cry out a chilling message that Ms. Reaves was victimized by woefully inadequate emergency care, far from what proper medical standards required in such a grave, exigent situation.
Finally, the autopsy shows that when the patient finally arrived at Northwestern Memorial Hospital (NMH), she was given an ultrasound and re-suctioned. But the autopsy does not indicate that NMH doctors considered whether she had suffered a uterine perforation -- what the Planned Parenthood physician must have suspected, given profuse bleeding and statistical likelihood of such an event occurring during an abortion procedure. Indeed, it was only after the hospital doctors conducted another abortion (perhaps her third of that fateful day) that staff noted the build-up of fluid in the abdominal cavity. But by 10:15 p.m., it was already too late to save Ms. Reaves' life. All these facts suggest a gross failure of the Planned Parenthood physician to communicate to hospital staff all of the relevant and urgent facts about this gravely endangered patient immediately upon her transfer to the hospital, amounting to a flagrant case of utterly unprofessional "patient abandonment."
While normally, such violations of professional medical standards would be reported to the Illinois Department of Public Health, all Illinois Planned Parenthood clinics are unlicensed. As a result, any investigation relating to sub-standard medical care on their part is entrusted to IDPR.
"We request, respectfully but urgently, that the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation investigate and scrutinize all relevant facts surrounding the death of Tonya Reaves," said Tom Brejcha, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Society. He added: "It is IDPR's solemn duty to protect patients from dangerous medical treatments, and Illinois citizens sorely need dependable assurance that Tonya Reaves' tragedy will never be allowed to recur."
To read the complaint letter in its entirety:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/124380236/Tonya-Reaves-Complaint
To read an excerpt of the Tony Reaves autopsy:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/124383425/Tonya-Reaves-Autopsy
To read the Illinois Health Medical Practice Act:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/124382384/Health-Medical-Practice-Act-of-1987
Source: Thomas More Society
In proposed revisions to the preventive services mandate issued today, the Obama Administration once again employs changes in packaging in an attempt to conceal continuity in substance. This latest revision continues to compel countless employers to purchase health plans that will pay for drugs and procedures to which they are opposed on moral and religious grounds.
For a nonprofit organization that "holds itself out as a religious organization," the Administration claims that it is relieving the employer of the moral conflict by obligating the insurer to pay for the objected-to drugs and services. This is a subterfuge, since the employees would not be getting the objected-to services if the religious employer was not paying for the health plan.
Moreover, the Administration once again puts forward the rationale that "issuers generally would find that providing such contraceptive coverage is cost neutral because they would be insuring the same set of individuals under both policies and would experience lower costs from improvements in women's health and fewer childbirths." This justification -- which essentially argues that contraceptive coverage really costs nothing -- could later be employed by the Administration to attempt to mandate coverage of surgical abortions in at least some health plans, on similar grounds that each abortion prevents the higher costs of prenatal care and childbirth.
The proposed revision also continues to apply the mandate to for-profit businesses run by people of faith, without even the cosmetic changes discussed above, and provides no options for individuals seeking plans that accommodate their values on the exchanges.
National Right to Life applauds the ongoing work of Alliance Defending Freedom and others in challenging the Obama Administration's infringements on the free exercise of religion in the courts. National Right to Life will continue to work with like-minded members of Congress to seek legislative remedies, as well.
Source: National Right to Life Committee
Two well-known Michigan abortionists are apparently retiring. But one pro-lifer believes business will continue as usual in most of their facilities.
Monica Miller of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society confirms that Alberto Hodari and Enrique Gerbi have allowed their medical and pharmacy licenses to expire. Miller says this is good news, especially considering Hodari's history.
"This is a guy who has a long track record of malpractice," she reports. "At least three women have died in his abortion clinics."
In 2008, Miller was part of a team that discovered hundreds of patient records with confidential information in a dumpster behind one of the clinics, "including the remains of aborted babies that we found there also."
In addition, Hodari was sued by an 18-year-old woman. She reportedly changed her mind about an abortion, but in her court filings she claims she was held down while Hodari went ahead with the procedure. Moreover, he has openly stated that he never washed hands between abortions.
"The bad news is that at least four of his remaining five abortion clinics are still up and running because of the sale to these other abortionists who basically are not much better in terms of what we know about them and their medical practice," Miller laments.
But she asserts those facilities will remain under pro-life scrutiny.
At one time, Hodari owned 15 abortion clinics.
Source: OneNewsNow
A senior fellow for policy studies says the program allowing thousands of girls as young as 14 to receive emergency contraception and other forms of birth control from the New York public schools without parental consent is an infringement on parental rights.
The New York Post has uncovered the fact that this Plan B giveaway program, part of the Reproductive Health Project, is far more extensive than originally thought. Forty separate "school-based health centers" distributed nearly 13,000 doses of the "morning-after pill" during the 2011-2012 school year -- up from 10,720 in 2010-11 and 5,039 in 2009-10. "Handouts … to sexually active students have skyrocketed under an unpublicized project," the exclusive article asserts.
Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council (FRC) sees an obvious need in those numbers.
"This suggests that there is a desperate need for abstinence education in the New York City public schools to explain to young people the dangers of early sexual activity or of sexual activity outside of the context of marriage," he asserts.
And the FRC senior fellow contends that this low-profile program is a flagrant infringement upon parental rights, as minors do not need parental approval to get contraceptives, while "there are laws in some states that won't allow a young person to get their ears pierced or get a tattoo, or maybe even visit a tanning salon without permission from their parents."
According to city officials, more than 6,000 New York girls got pregnant by age 17 last year, and more than half chose to have abortions.
Mona Davids, whose 14-year-old attends a Manhattan high school, tells the Post that she is "in shock." She wonders, "What gives the mayor the right to decide, without adequate notice, to give our children drugs that will impact their bodies and their psyches? He has purposely kept the public and parents in the dark with his agenda."
The school-based health centers run under contract with local hospitals. Davids, who is black, says most of those facilities are located in poor neighborhoods.
Source: OneNewsNow
A recent report indicates that numerous states are passing restrictions on insurance coverage of abortion under the health care reform law.
Mary Harned, staff counsel at Americans United for Life, said that state-level pro-life laws passed in recent legislative sessions have "been a great victory for the unborn and women across the country."
"The fact that these types of laws are successful," Harned told CNA on Feb. 5, "shows that many Americans do not want public funds paying for abortions, and they also do not want their own insurance premiums paying for abortion."
Harned responded to a new report by the Guttmacher Institute, an organization committed to "reproductive health" and formerly connected to Planned Parenthood.
The report analyzes state laws as the date approaches for the Affordable Care Act to go into effect. The law, which provides for state health care exchanges in which individuals and small businesses can find insurance plans, also gives states express authority to limit abortion coverage.
According to Guttmacher, 20 states have passed legislation to restrict abortion coverage in insurance plans offered through the health care exchanges.
Some states require abortion coverage to be purchased separately so as to avoid using taxpayer money to fund abortions. Others prohibit abortion coverage in the exchange health plans except in the cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother.
Eight states have laws "restricting insurance coverage of abortion" altogether in private plans, including those in the exchanges.
In addition, 18 states limit "abortion coverage in insurance plans for public employees," and 13 states have more than one kind of restriction.
Harned said that the institute's assessment of insurance coverage laws is "pretty accurate" and matches the study carried out by Americans United for Life.
"Polls show that the vast majority of Americans oppose the public funding for abortion," she noted.
Public discussion of the Affordable Care Act "drew a lot of people's attention to the fact that many insurance plans do cover abortions," she added, and many states are now "very interested" in modifying such insurance coverage.
Harned said "an increase in interest" among the general American population has also been a driving force behind measures to restrict both public and private insurance funding of abortion procedures.
Citizens have come to the conclusion that they "do not want their tax dollars paying for their public employees to have abortions," she explained, and in many states "they don't want their premiums covering abortions for other people" either.
Americans United for Life has worked to provide legal counsel and model legislation for states wishing to enact pro-life laws.
Several states, including Alabama, Nebraska, South Carolina and Virginia, have relied upon the pro-life organization's language in enacting laws restricting insurance coverage of abortion in the exchanges, Harned said.
"Our conclusion is that this is a great victory for the unborn, and for their mothers and for taxpayers," she explained, adding that "we expect more states to follow."
Source: CNA/EWTN News
Ruling against the Obama administration's motion to dismiss the case, a US district court judge has determined that the Diocese of Fort Worth's lawsuit against the HHS mandate may proceed.
"Because the Mandate is 'on the books,' there is nothing improper about subjecting it to the limitations of the United States Constitution and other applicable laws," ruled Judge Terry Means, who said the administration was "disingenuous" when it argued that the case was not ripe because the diocese has not yet suffered injury.
Quoting a decision by a US district court in New York, Judge Means, an appointee of President George H. W. Bush, added:
Moreover, the First Amendment does not require citizens to accept assurances from the government that, if the government later determines it has made a misstep, it will take ameliorative action. There is no, "Trust us, changes are coming" clause in the Constitution. To the contrary, the Bill of Rights itself, and the First Amendment in particular, reflect a degree of skepticism towards governmental self-restraint and self-correction.
Source: CWN
Forty years ago this past Tuesday marks the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous, reckless and inhumane abandonment of women and babies to abortionists.
Forty years of victims--dead babies, wounded women, shattered families.
Forty years of government sanctioned violence against women and children.
Since 1973, more than 55 million children have been killed by abortion--a staggering loss of children's precious lives--a death toll that equates to the entire population of England.
The passage of time hasn't changed the fact that abortion is a serious, lethal violation of fundamental human rights. And that women and children deserve better. And that the demands of justice, generosity and compassion require that the right to life be guaranteed to everyone.
Rather than dull our consciences to the unmitigated violence of abortion, the passage of time has only enabled us to see and better understand the innate cruelty of abortion and its horrific legacy—victims—while making us more determined than ever to protect the weakest and most vulnerable.
In his inaugural speech on Monday, President Obama said "together, we resolve that a great nation must care for the vulnerable…that all are created equal…and our journey is not complete until all of our children…are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm."
We indeed, Mr. President, must care for the vulnerable—but that also includes unborn children and their mothers. No one gets left out or left behind. All people are created equal. And our journey is not complete until all our children—including the child in the womb—are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm.
Yet, President Obama systematically and aggressively promotes abortion at home and overseas.
Despite the fact that taxpayer-subsidized Planned Parenthood claims direct responsibility for killing over 6 million unborn babies, Planned Parenthood remains President Obama's favorite organization.
Someday future generations will look back on America and wonder how and why such a seemingly enlightened society could have failed to protect the innocent and inconvenient. They will wonder how and why a Nobel Peace Prize winning President who spoke eloquently about caring, cherishing and safeguarding all our children, could also simultaneously have been the Abortion President.
Know this Mr. President, we will never quit. In adversity our faith and trust in God is tested, but it also deepens and overcomes and forges an indomitable yet humble spirit.
Know this, the pro-life movement is comprised of noble, caring, smart and selfless people. It is an extraordinarily powerful, non-violent, faith-filled human rights struggle that is growing in public support, intensity, commitment and hope.
And know this Mr. President, the pro-life movement is not only on the side of compassion, justice, and inclusion; we are on the right side of responsible science and of history.
Source: Rep. Chris Smith
