Pro-life summit discusses pro-life future in U.S.
The sold out Pro-Life Summit to End Abortion was held in Ann Arbor, Michigan over the weekend to discuss the future of the pro-life cause in the wake of the recent elections.
The summit, which was organized by Dr. Monica M. Miller of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, was held at Christ the King Parish in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and was attended by hundreds of people.
Speakers called for resistance to President-elect Barack Obama's pro-abortion rights agenda, which includes plans to provide federal funding for domestic and international abortions and to reduce restrictions on the fatal procedure.
Bishop Earl Boyea, the new bishop of Lansing, addressed the gathering and asked that pro-life activism always be carried out with love that can "win the heart."
Other speakers included Priests for Life President Fr. Frank Pavone, Prof. Janet Smith, radio talk show host Al Kresta, Ed Rivet of Michigan Right to Life and National Director of the Pro-Life Action League Joseph Scheidler.
Speakers agreed about the success of the Obama campaign's Catholic outreach effort, saying it was well-planned, well-executed, and properly funded.
"If pro-life Catholics want to respond successfully over the next four years, they must undertake a similar level of national coalition-building that can influence chanceries and parish communities," said Catholic political commentator Deal Hudson, who also spoke at the event.
Hudson said the 2008 election had changed his mind about the role of clergy in "Catholic political strategy."
He reported that previous Catholic outreach efforts had focused on Mass-attending laity and did not actively seek to enlist friendly priests and bishops.
However, he claimed, in 2008 Catholic Obama supporters promoted their message inside parishes through study groups and seminars.
Several speakers at the summit advocated the creation of a parish-level effort to correct the misinterpretation of episcopal documents on the duties of Catholic voters. However, they emphasized that this should not recruit clergy to a Republican Party effort, but must encourage and support pro-life candidates in both parties.
Father Pavone noted that several speakers at the National March for Life on January 22 will host a group of former abortion doctors who will speak from the steps of the Supreme Court about their regrets about performing abortions.
No groups of doctors gather to say they regret not performing abortions, Father Pavone noted, arguing that the nature of abortion itself helps lead people to abhor it.
Source: Catholic News Agency
Source URL: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com
Publish Date: January 13, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090113_2.htm
January 13, 2009
Health Group Supports Assisted Suicide, Abortion
Public Health Group Supports Assisted Suicide, Abortion
The American Public Health Association (APHA) claims to be "leading the way" to protect Americans from "serious health threats." Yet, according to two of its 2008 policy statements, assisted suicide and abortion are not among those threats.
The APHA is endorsing assisted suicide for terminally ill adults, but rejects the phrase "assisted suicide" as "inaccurate."
Among its recommendations:
• "Support allowing a mentally competent, terminally ill adult to obtain a prescription for medication that the person could self-administer to control the time, place and manner of his or her impending death."
Dawn Vargo, bioethics analyst at Focus on the Family Action, said: "It's hypocritical for the APHA to claim they are protecting Americans from serious health threats while at the same time advocating for the killing of the weakest among us.
"If they really wanted to help protect Americans, they would start by advocating pro-life policies that protect the most vulnerable members of society."
The public health group also calls for state legislation "protecting and enhancing women's ability to obtain safe, legal abortion services without delay or government interference."
Contact: Jennifer Mesko
Source: CitizenLink
Source URL: http://www.citizenlink.org
Publish Date: January 12, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090113_1.htm
The American Public Health Association (APHA) claims to be "leading the way" to protect Americans from "serious health threats." Yet, according to two of its 2008 policy statements, assisted suicide and abortion are not among those threats.
The APHA is endorsing assisted suicide for terminally ill adults, but rejects the phrase "assisted suicide" as "inaccurate."
Among its recommendations:
• "Support allowing a mentally competent, terminally ill adult to obtain a prescription for medication that the person could self-administer to control the time, place and manner of his or her impending death."
Dawn Vargo, bioethics analyst at Focus on the Family Action, said: "It's hypocritical for the APHA to claim they are protecting Americans from serious health threats while at the same time advocating for the killing of the weakest among us.
"If they really wanted to help protect Americans, they would start by advocating pro-life policies that protect the most vulnerable members of society."
The public health group also calls for state legislation "protecting and enhancing women's ability to obtain safe, legal abortion services without delay or government interference."
Contact: Jennifer Mesko
Source: CitizenLink
Source URL: http://www.citizenlink.org
Publish Date: January 12, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090113_1.htm
January 12, 2009
Government-Funded Abortion Alternatives Program Serves Over 150,000 Women
Nation's First Government-Funded Abortion Alternatives Program Serves Over 150,000 Women Since 1995
Pennsylvania Program Sets Record - 19,747 women provided pregnancy and parenting support services last year.
Real Alternatives, statewide administrator for the award winning Pennsylvania Alternative to Abortion Services Program, reports that in fiscal year 2007 -2008 a record 19,747 women were provided comprehensive counseling, mentoring, and support throughout their nine (9) months of pregnancy and twelve (12) months after the birth of their baby. In fiscal year 2007-2008 the program received its highest funding of $6.5 million per year by the Commonwealth's Department of Public Welfare. The program's administrative cost ratio is less than 8.5%.
"We have seen a steady decrease in annual abortions since the start of the program 13 years ago. To date, the citizens of Pennsylvania have placed $59 million of tax payer funds to provide pregnancy and parenting support services to 150,000 women experiencing an unplanned or crisis pregnancy. We are striving for the day when no woman in the Commonwealth feels that she must have an abortion – that is what the program is about," said Kevin I. Bagatta, Esquire, Real Alternatives President & CEO.
In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2008, 118 Real Alternatives-funded pregnancy support centers, Catholic Charities, social service agencies, maternity homes, and adoption agencies throughout the Commonwealth provided services to 19,747 women at 83,263 visits. There is a center within an hour of every woman in Pennsylvania.
Since its inception 13 years ago, the Program has served over 150,000 women at over 645,329 office visits.
Bagatta continued: "this state-funded support program is the only program in the Commonwealth dedicated to lowering abortions after there is a crisis pregnancy. It continues to work because of the approximately 500 counselors and mentors statewide meeting the needs of women in unplanned and crisis pregnancies. By providing a counselor to be with the woman in need from the moment she finds out she is pregnant to 12 months after the birth of the baby, this program empowers her to overcome her obstacles and crisis. She is not alone. She knows someone is with her to help her. An alternative to abortion is not a pamphlet, it is another person….it is one woman seeing another woman in crisis and loving her and supporting her like she is her own daughter. This program represents the best in America."
View a short film about this successful program visit: www.RealAlternatives.org/movie.
Contact: Kevin I. Bagatta, Esq.
Source: Real Alternatives
Source URL: www.RealAlternatives.org
Publish Date: January 12, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090112_6.htm
Pennsylvania Program Sets Record - 19,747 women provided pregnancy and parenting support services last year.
Real Alternatives, statewide administrator for the award winning Pennsylvania Alternative to Abortion Services Program, reports that in fiscal year 2007 -2008 a record 19,747 women were provided comprehensive counseling, mentoring, and support throughout their nine (9) months of pregnancy and twelve (12) months after the birth of their baby. In fiscal year 2007-2008 the program received its highest funding of $6.5 million per year by the Commonwealth's Department of Public Welfare. The program's administrative cost ratio is less than 8.5%.
"We have seen a steady decrease in annual abortions since the start of the program 13 years ago. To date, the citizens of Pennsylvania have placed $59 million of tax payer funds to provide pregnancy and parenting support services to 150,000 women experiencing an unplanned or crisis pregnancy. We are striving for the day when no woman in the Commonwealth feels that she must have an abortion – that is what the program is about," said Kevin I. Bagatta, Esquire, Real Alternatives President & CEO.
In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2008, 118 Real Alternatives-funded pregnancy support centers, Catholic Charities, social service agencies, maternity homes, and adoption agencies throughout the Commonwealth provided services to 19,747 women at 83,263 visits. There is a center within an hour of every woman in Pennsylvania.
Since its inception 13 years ago, the Program has served over 150,000 women at over 645,329 office visits.
Bagatta continued: "this state-funded support program is the only program in the Commonwealth dedicated to lowering abortions after there is a crisis pregnancy. It continues to work because of the approximately 500 counselors and mentors statewide meeting the needs of women in unplanned and crisis pregnancies. By providing a counselor to be with the woman in need from the moment she finds out she is pregnant to 12 months after the birth of the baby, this program empowers her to overcome her obstacles and crisis. She is not alone. She knows someone is with her to help her. An alternative to abortion is not a pamphlet, it is another person….it is one woman seeing another woman in crisis and loving her and supporting her like she is her own daughter. This program represents the best in America."
View a short film about this successful program visit: www.RealAlternatives.org/movie.
Contact: Kevin I. Bagatta, Esq.
Source: Real Alternatives
Source URL: www.RealAlternatives.org
Publish Date: January 12, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090112_6.htm
Economy goes down, abortion goes up
Economy goes down, abortion goes up
The downtrodden economy may be taking a toll on the unborn.
One Planned Parenthood clinic alone, located in Fresno, California, reports a tripling of abortions since the economic downturn began. Peggy Hartshorn of Heartbeat International finds that statistic unfortunate because, as she points out, there are reasonable alternatives -- such as adoption.
"Unfortunately, a lot of women don't know that, and when they go to an abortion clinic -- particularly to a Planned Parenthood or other so-called 'family planning' organization -- if they have a crisis pregnancy, often they are not told of the alternatives," she points out.
Peggy HartshornHartshorn points out Heartbeat International represents about half of the pro-life counseling services in the United States and can provide practical, Christian-based assistance. "We're available with our option line 24/7 -- a toll free number 1-800-395-HELP [and] with a website that's OptionLine.org."
Heartbeat International, according to Hartshorn, will help work out a plan to save the life of the baby and spare the mother of the proven emotional consequences of abortion.
Contact: Charlie Butts
Source: OneNewsNow
Source URL: http://www.onenewsnow.com
Publish Date: January 8, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090112_5.htm
The downtrodden economy may be taking a toll on the unborn.
One Planned Parenthood clinic alone, located in Fresno, California, reports a tripling of abortions since the economic downturn began. Peggy Hartshorn of Heartbeat International finds that statistic unfortunate because, as she points out, there are reasonable alternatives -- such as adoption.
"Unfortunately, a lot of women don't know that, and when they go to an abortion clinic -- particularly to a Planned Parenthood or other so-called 'family planning' organization -- if they have a crisis pregnancy, often they are not told of the alternatives," she points out.
Peggy HartshornHartshorn points out Heartbeat International represents about half of the pro-life counseling services in the United States and can provide practical, Christian-based assistance. "We're available with our option line 24/7 -- a toll free number 1-800-395-HELP [and] with a website that's OptionLine.org."
Heartbeat International, according to Hartshorn, will help work out a plan to save the life of the baby and spare the mother of the proven emotional consequences of abortion.
Contact: Charlie Butts
Source: OneNewsNow
Source URL: http://www.onenewsnow.com
Publish Date: January 8, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090112_5.htm
Ohio Signs Protecting Pregnant Women From Coercion & Violence Bill
Ohio Governor Signs Protecting Pregnant Women From Coercion & Violence Bill
Governor Ted Strickland recently signed Sub. H.B. 280, the Protecting Pregnant Women from Coercion & Violence Act. In addition to protecting pregnant women from violence and coerced abortions, the new law will allow proof of a pattern of failing to report known or suspected child sexual abuse in a lawsuit for damages against abortion facilities or others who are required to report child abuse.
Sub. H.B. 280, which was sponsored by Rep. Michelle Schneider, will:
1) Require abortion facilities to post a "No One Can Force You to Have an Abortion" poster;
2) Require mandatory minimum prison sentences for assault and increase penalties for domestic violence if the offender knew the victim was pregnant;
3) Permit recovery of compensatory and exemplary damages and use of reports of prior abuse incidents (with identifying information removed) in a civil action for failure to file required reports of known or suspected child abuse; and,
4) Provide mandatory prison sentences and payment of restitution to victims in cases of "human trafficking" for prostitution.
"We are delighted that Ohio has enacted this law to protect women and children from coercion and abuse," said Mike Gonidakis, Executive Director of Ohio Right to Life. "All Ohioans should join in opposing coerced abortion and violence against pregnant women," Gonidakis said.
"Although we have a statute requiring professionals to report child abuse, recent reports indicate that some abortion facilities failed to report sexual abuse of minors by adults. This new law will clarify that a failure to report can result in recovery of damages and that evidence of a pattern of failing to report abuse can be used in a lawsuit seeking such damages."
Source: LifeSiteNews.com
Source URL: http://www.lifesitenews.com
Publish Date: January 9, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090112_4.htm
Governor Ted Strickland recently signed Sub. H.B. 280, the Protecting Pregnant Women from Coercion & Violence Act. In addition to protecting pregnant women from violence and coerced abortions, the new law will allow proof of a pattern of failing to report known or suspected child sexual abuse in a lawsuit for damages against abortion facilities or others who are required to report child abuse.
Sub. H.B. 280, which was sponsored by Rep. Michelle Schneider, will:
1) Require abortion facilities to post a "No One Can Force You to Have an Abortion" poster;
2) Require mandatory minimum prison sentences for assault and increase penalties for domestic violence if the offender knew the victim was pregnant;
3) Permit recovery of compensatory and exemplary damages and use of reports of prior abuse incidents (with identifying information removed) in a civil action for failure to file required reports of known or suspected child abuse; and,
4) Provide mandatory prison sentences and payment of restitution to victims in cases of "human trafficking" for prostitution.
"We are delighted that Ohio has enacted this law to protect women and children from coercion and abuse," said Mike Gonidakis, Executive Director of Ohio Right to Life. "All Ohioans should join in opposing coerced abortion and violence against pregnant women," Gonidakis said.
"Although we have a statute requiring professionals to report child abuse, recent reports indicate that some abortion facilities failed to report sexual abuse of minors by adults. This new law will clarify that a failure to report can result in recovery of damages and that evidence of a pattern of failing to report abuse can be used in a lawsuit seeking such damages."
Source: LifeSiteNews.com
Source URL: http://www.lifesitenews.com
Publish Date: January 9, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090112_4.htm
Federal Lawsuit After Police Ban Pro-Life Display
Activists Plan Federal Lawsuit After Police Ban Pro-Life Display in Front of the White House During Inauguration Week
The Christian Defense Coalition is calling for the D. C. Metropolitan Police Department to lift a ban on pro-life displays in front of the White House by Monday, January 12, or they will file a federal lawsuit.
The Christian Defense Coalition is being represented by The American Center for Law and Justice.
Activists had planned to leave a "sidewalk chalk" display with pro-life messages and artwork for President Obama on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House.
The date for this display was Saturday, January 24, 2009.
The Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department sent a letter on January 7 saying the activity of the Christian Defense Coalition "…would constitute defacing public property in violation of D.C. Official Code…" Click for January 7 letter from Metropolitan Police
However, for 16 years law enforcement officials in Washington, D.C. have given permission to the Christian Defense Coalition to conduct numerous demonstrations involving "sidewalk chalking."
In a letter to the Metropolitan Police Department, James Henderson, Senior Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice points out that the City of Washington, D.C. has actually sponsored public sidewalk chalk art displays. Click here to view the letter which shows color pictures of actual D.C. public chalk events.
The Christian Defense Coalition is troubled that the City of Washington, after allowing public chalk display for years, chooses now for the first time to ban sidewalk chalk because it contains a pro-life message and would be displayed in front of the White House.
Will the City of Washington, D.C. now begin to ban free speech that disagrees or is offensive to President Barack Obama?
Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition, states:
"The foundation of this nation is that every American has the right to peacefully share their views, thoughts and opinions in the public square free from government interference and harassment. It should not matter what the particular content of those views might be.
"Sadly, the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department has chosen to trample and crush the First Amendment by banning clearly protected free speech.
"For over 16 years, law enforcement officials have given permission to the Christian Defense Coalition to use public 'sidewalk chalking' as a part of their demonstrations and vigils in the nation's capital. Washington D.C. has also allowed numerous public 'chalk art displays' throughout the city.
"It is therefore most troubling that for the first time ever law enforcement is choosing to ban this practice when it involves a pro-life display taking place in front of the White House. Is this the future of free speech and political dissent under President Barack Obama?
"The streets in front of the White House should be open to all views, opinions and thoughts. It should be not be a place of censorship or intimidation. I hope this was not the kind of change President Obama was talking about."
Contact: Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney
Source: Christian Defense Coalition
Publish Date: January 11, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090112_3.htm
The Christian Defense Coalition is calling for the D. C. Metropolitan Police Department to lift a ban on pro-life displays in front of the White House by Monday, January 12, or they will file a federal lawsuit.
The Christian Defense Coalition is being represented by The American Center for Law and Justice.
Activists had planned to leave a "sidewalk chalk" display with pro-life messages and artwork for President Obama on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House.
The date for this display was Saturday, January 24, 2009.
The Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department sent a letter on January 7 saying the activity of the Christian Defense Coalition "…would constitute defacing public property in violation of D.C. Official Code…" Click for January 7 letter from Metropolitan Police
However, for 16 years law enforcement officials in Washington, D.C. have given permission to the Christian Defense Coalition to conduct numerous demonstrations involving "sidewalk chalking."
In a letter to the Metropolitan Police Department, James Henderson, Senior Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice points out that the City of Washington, D.C. has actually sponsored public sidewalk chalk art displays. Click here to view the letter which shows color pictures of actual D.C. public chalk events.
The Christian Defense Coalition is troubled that the City of Washington, after allowing public chalk display for years, chooses now for the first time to ban sidewalk chalk because it contains a pro-life message and would be displayed in front of the White House.
Will the City of Washington, D.C. now begin to ban free speech that disagrees or is offensive to President Barack Obama?
Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition, states:
"The foundation of this nation is that every American has the right to peacefully share their views, thoughts and opinions in the public square free from government interference and harassment. It should not matter what the particular content of those views might be.
"Sadly, the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department has chosen to trample and crush the First Amendment by banning clearly protected free speech.
"For over 16 years, law enforcement officials have given permission to the Christian Defense Coalition to use public 'sidewalk chalking' as a part of their demonstrations and vigils in the nation's capital. Washington D.C. has also allowed numerous public 'chalk art displays' throughout the city.
"It is therefore most troubling that for the first time ever law enforcement is choosing to ban this practice when it involves a pro-life display taking place in front of the White House. Is this the future of free speech and political dissent under President Barack Obama?
"The streets in front of the White House should be open to all views, opinions and thoughts. It should be not be a place of censorship or intimidation. I hope this was not the kind of change President Obama was talking about."
Contact: Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney
Source: Christian Defense Coalition
Publish Date: January 11, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090112_3.htm
Illegal Fetal Age Deception Scheme Uncovered
Illegal Fetal Age Deception Scheme Uncovered at Tiller's Abortion Clinic
Undercover investigation reveals that viability and fetal age are underestimated to avoid compliance with Kansas law. Operation Rescue again calls for emergency closure of Tiller's clinic.
Operation Rescue announces the release of results from an undercover investigation it recently conducted at George R. Tiller's late-term abortion clinic, Women's Health Care Services. Those results show compelling evidence that WHCS routinely underestimates the fetal age and viability of pre-born babies in order to avoid having to comply with Kansas law.
"The evidence shows there is no doubt that fetal ages and viability are being intentionally misstated by WHCS in order to do abortions that would otherwise be illegal," said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.
A pregnant Operation Rescue volunteer named Shaye offered to participate in the undercover investigation of WHCS in October, 2008.
In a sworn statement Shaye said that a WHCS employee conducted her sonogram and determined that her baby was 24 weeks, 6 days gestation, past the threshold of viability. The Tiller employee then tore off those ultrasound photos and threw them into the trash. She took new measurements, then told Shaye her baby was only 23 weeks gestation.
Shaye easily obtained an appointment for an abortion without having to see the second physician required by law for post-viability abortions.
In order to confirm the actual fetal age of Shaye's baby, she received two more sonograms on that same day, both of which indicated the baby was beyond 24 weeks gestation. Shaye's baby was undeniably past the threshold of viability.
Shaye had made WHCS aware that both she and her baby were healthy and that the pregnancy was without complications. Shaye did not receive the abortion only because she did not show up for the abortion appointment.
Operation Rescue's investigation confirms the testimony of District Attorney Phill Kline who stated in court last week that evidence showed that Tiller was doing late-term abortions on healthy women with viable babies. Kline told the court that he saw evidence that Planned Parenthood referred women in such situations to Tiller for illegal abortions.
"This evidence warrants further investigation by law enforcement authorities," said Newman. "This is convincing proof that, in spite of already facing 19 criminal charges, Tiller continues to flout the law to the danger of women and their babies."
Operation Rescue calls on Attorney General Steve Six to launch a further investigation of Tiller, and renews its call on the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts for an emergency closure of WHCS and suspension of Tiller's medical license.
View the video and read the report.
Contact: Troy Newman, Cheryl Sullenger
Source: Operation Rescue
Source URL: http://www.operationrescue.org
Publish Date: January 12, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090112_2.htm
Undercover investigation reveals that viability and fetal age are underestimated to avoid compliance with Kansas law. Operation Rescue again calls for emergency closure of Tiller's clinic.
Operation Rescue announces the release of results from an undercover investigation it recently conducted at George R. Tiller's late-term abortion clinic, Women's Health Care Services. Those results show compelling evidence that WHCS routinely underestimates the fetal age and viability of pre-born babies in order to avoid having to comply with Kansas law.
"The evidence shows there is no doubt that fetal ages and viability are being intentionally misstated by WHCS in order to do abortions that would otherwise be illegal," said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.
A pregnant Operation Rescue volunteer named Shaye offered to participate in the undercover investigation of WHCS in October, 2008.
In a sworn statement Shaye said that a WHCS employee conducted her sonogram and determined that her baby was 24 weeks, 6 days gestation, past the threshold of viability. The Tiller employee then tore off those ultrasound photos and threw them into the trash. She took new measurements, then told Shaye her baby was only 23 weeks gestation.
Shaye easily obtained an appointment for an abortion without having to see the second physician required by law for post-viability abortions.
In order to confirm the actual fetal age of Shaye's baby, she received two more sonograms on that same day, both of which indicated the baby was beyond 24 weeks gestation. Shaye's baby was undeniably past the threshold of viability.
Shaye had made WHCS aware that both she and her baby were healthy and that the pregnancy was without complications. Shaye did not receive the abortion only because she did not show up for the abortion appointment.
Operation Rescue's investigation confirms the testimony of District Attorney Phill Kline who stated in court last week that evidence showed that Tiller was doing late-term abortions on healthy women with viable babies. Kline told the court that he saw evidence that Planned Parenthood referred women in such situations to Tiller for illegal abortions.
"This evidence warrants further investigation by law enforcement authorities," said Newman. "This is convincing proof that, in spite of already facing 19 criminal charges, Tiller continues to flout the law to the danger of women and their babies."
Operation Rescue calls on Attorney General Steve Six to launch a further investigation of Tiller, and renews its call on the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts for an emergency closure of WHCS and suspension of Tiller's medical license.
View the video and read the report.
Contact: Troy Newman, Cheryl Sullenger
Source: Operation Rescue
Source URL: http://www.operationrescue.org
Publish Date: January 12, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090112_2.htm
Abortion Defender Gov. Blagojevich Impeached
Chicago's Abortion Defender Gov. Blagojevich Impeached
In a move unprecedented in Illinois history, the state House of Representatives voted 114-1 to impeach disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich, one of the leading champions for abortion in U.S. politics, on account of widely disseminated corruption charges that erupted last month.
The Illinois governor fell into ignominy after federal authorities acquired wiretapped conversations between Blagojevich and various individuals in which the governor sought to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. As governor of Illinoi Blagojevich retained the right to name Obama's successor.
"We need him out and we need him out immediately," Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White told FOX News after the vote. "The people of the state of Illinois would benefit from his removal."
The vote to impeach came one day after an Illinois House committee that had investigated the scandal recommended Blagojevich be impeached for "abuse of power." The committee's report included various other allegations of corruption, including extortion of Children's Memorial Hospital and the Chicago Tribune, and a number of other "pay to play" schemes.
Gov. Blagojevich, who has earned praise from the abortion industry for his objection to pro-life measures put forward by the Bush administration, is well-known to pro-life activists for advancing his pro-abortion agenda with an iron fist.
In 2005, he issued an executive order forcing all Illinois pharmacists to provide the abortifacient morning-after pill or lose their jobs.
"Rather than try to get the legislature to pass something—because we attempted to and they didn't do it—on my own, through executive order action, I forced these guys to fill prescriptions for birth control for women who come in with prescriptions from their doctors," said the governor in a 2006 interview. Blagojevich later warned that any bills seeking to overturn the order would be "dead on arrival" at his desk.
The impeachment proceedings will now move to the Illinois Senate for trial, scheduled for January 26, where Blagojevich would be removed from office if convicted. In that case, Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn would take over in Blagojevich's place.
"The plague that has been brought upon us by Rod Blagojevich will be lifted," said Rep. Jack Franks after the impeachment.
Contact: Kathleen Gilbert
Source: LifeSiteNews.com
Source URL: http://www.lifesitenews.com
Publish Date: January 9, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090112_1.htm
In a move unprecedented in Illinois history, the state House of Representatives voted 114-1 to impeach disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich, one of the leading champions for abortion in U.S. politics, on account of widely disseminated corruption charges that erupted last month.
The Illinois governor fell into ignominy after federal authorities acquired wiretapped conversations between Blagojevich and various individuals in which the governor sought to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. As governor of Illinoi Blagojevich retained the right to name Obama's successor.
"We need him out and we need him out immediately," Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White told FOX News after the vote. "The people of the state of Illinois would benefit from his removal."
The vote to impeach came one day after an Illinois House committee that had investigated the scandal recommended Blagojevich be impeached for "abuse of power." The committee's report included various other allegations of corruption, including extortion of Children's Memorial Hospital and the Chicago Tribune, and a number of other "pay to play" schemes.
Gov. Blagojevich, who has earned praise from the abortion industry for his objection to pro-life measures put forward by the Bush administration, is well-known to pro-life activists for advancing his pro-abortion agenda with an iron fist.
In 2005, he issued an executive order forcing all Illinois pharmacists to provide the abortifacient morning-after pill or lose their jobs.
"Rather than try to get the legislature to pass something—because we attempted to and they didn't do it—on my own, through executive order action, I forced these guys to fill prescriptions for birth control for women who come in with prescriptions from their doctors," said the governor in a 2006 interview. Blagojevich later warned that any bills seeking to overturn the order would be "dead on arrival" at his desk.
The impeachment proceedings will now move to the Illinois Senate for trial, scheduled for January 26, where Blagojevich would be removed from office if convicted. In that case, Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn would take over in Blagojevich's place.
"The plague that has been brought upon us by Rod Blagojevich will be lifted," said Rep. Jack Franks after the impeachment.
Contact: Kathleen Gilbert
Source: LifeSiteNews.com
Source URL: http://www.lifesitenews.com
Publish Date: January 9, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090112_1.htm
January 9, 2009
Open Letter to World Magazine
"An Open Letter to World Magazine"
A new article in World Magazine discussed the disturbing financial relationship between the breast cancer group, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and an organization that is the primary cause of the breast cancer epidemic in the U.S. - Planned Parenthood.
The author, Alisa Harris, correctly reported that basic medical textbooks acknowledge that full term pregnancies offer women a considerable reduction in breast cancer risk. Logically, that means that the woman who chooses not to have a baby (i.e. by having an abortion) has a higher breast cancer risk than does the one who has a baby. The loss of the protective effect of a full term pregnancy is the first of three ways that abortion is linked with increased breast cancer risk (known as the "ABC link").
Harris' story, however, included inaccuracies and omitted important facts. Eight medical organizations acknowledge that abortion further raises a woman's risk (independently of the loss of the protective effect of childbearing) by leaving her breasts with more places for cancer to start. [1]
I am troubled that Harris left her readers in doubt about the existence of the independent link. She said Komen's officials dispute the independent link because:
"In 2003, 100 experts from the National Cancer Institute concluded there was no link between breast cancer and either miscarriages or induced abortions. Harvard University and Oxford University have found similar results in the past two years."
If Harris would read the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) workshop conclusions, she would find that the federal agency acknowledged the protective effect of a full term pregnancy, but then blatantly contradicted itself by denying an ABC link.
Research shows that abortions raise risk, but most miscarriages do not raise risk. The NCI throws up fairy dust and confuses the public by mixing up these effects. More about that later.
It is disheartening that Harris did not inform her Christian readers about a shocking quote from Dr. Leslie Bernstein, a lead moderator at the NCI's workshop (which has been called a "political sham"). The quote reveals Bernstein's motivation for concealing the ABC link from the public. After the workshop, she told a journalist at CancerPage.com that an early first full term pregnancy (before age 24) provides women with the best way to prevent the disease, but Bernstein doesn't want women to know about it. She said:
"The biggest bang for the buck is the first birth and the younger you are the better off you are...There are so many other messages we can give women about lifestyle modification and the impact of lifestyle and risk that I would never be a proponent of going around and telling them that having babies is the way to reduce your risk.
"I don't want the issue relating to induced abortion to breast cancer risk to be part of the mix of the discussion of induced abortion, its legality, its continued availability. I think it should not be part of the argument." (Available at: http://www.cancerpage.com/news/article.asp?id+5601)
Bernstein's abandonment of fundamental ethical principles is not uncommon among scientists today whose own textbooks encourage them to become activists. (For example, see: Understanding the Fundamentals of Epidemiology: An Evolving Text by Victor J. Schoenbach, Ph.D. and Wayne D. Rosamond, Ph.D. Available at <http://www.epidemiolog.net>)
The journal Nature published an article, "Scientists behaving badly," in 2005 showing that in an anonymous survey of several thousand career scientists who receive funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an astounding percentage admitted to participating in the most egregious misbehaviours. [2] For instance, 15.5% were willing to admit they had "changed the design, methodology or results of a study in response to pressure from a funding source" (that would be the NIH) within the previous three years.
When scientists become unethical, they can do great harm to the dignity of mankind.
The biological reason for the ABC link is extremely compelling, but Harris' article (and even Komen whose mission is to "eradicate breast cancer") omits any discussion of it. Even the most virulently pro-abortion scientists - who (appallingly) testify as expert witnesses for abortion providers in lawsuits challenging state parental notice and consent laws that protect minors from predatory abortion industry practices - have never attempted to refute the biological reason for the ABC link because it is physiologically correct.
Harris, furthermore, inaccurately quoted New Jersey breast cancer surgeon Angela Lanfranchi. Harris wrote:
"But Lanfranchi would add that abortions, both spontaneous and induced, create cancer-vulnerable breast tissue...."
Lanfranchi's medical journal articles make it abundantly clear that most miscarriages do not raise risk, but abortions do raise risk. [3,4] Most miscarriages are abnormal first trimester pregnancies with low hormonal levels that are insufficient to maintain those pregnancies, but most abortions are normal pregnancies with elevated hormonal levels. Studies have demonstrated that doctors can predict when a woman will have a miscarriage by drawing her blood and measuring hormonal levels.
The ABC link is about cancer-susceptible breast lobules being overexposed to the hormone estrogen, which is known to be a cancer-causing agent. Most of the lobules in a childless woman's breasts consist of cancer-susceptible Type 1 and 2 lobules. That is where 95% of all cancers originate.
During a normal pregnancy, estrogen causes breast growth by stimulating the lobules to multiply, so the woman who has the abortion is left with more places in her breasts for cancers to start (the independent link). However, the woman who has a full term pregnancy experiences a protective process during the last months of pregnancy known as "differentiation," which by the time of delivery, matures 85% of her lobules into fully cancer-resistant Type 4 lobules. That explains the protective effect of a full term pregnancy.
There is strong biological support for the independent link in other related scientific evidence. Similar biological events should have similar results. Several studies have found that a premature birth before 32 weeks of pregnancy increases breast cancer risk. [5,6,7,8] Why? For the same biological reasons explained above. The mother experiences the same hormonal influence on her breasts as the one who has an abortion. She, too, is left with more places in her breasts for cancers to start.
Scientists do not challenge the evidence supporting a link between premature birth before 32 weeks gestation and breast cancer, but they disingenuously challenge any findings that implicate their beloved surgical procedure - abortion - as an independent link for the disease. Komen (and other cancer groups) does not reveal this uncomfortable truth to its supporters either.
A Danish study, Melbye et al. 1997, found a 3% increase in risk for every week of pregnancy that passed before an abortion took place. [9] The biological explanation is very simple. The longer the mother is pregnant before her abortion takes place, the longer she is overexposed to estrogen, and the greater the number of cancer-vulnerable lobules that her breasts grow.
Importantly, the Institute of Medicine recognizes abortion as an "immutable medical risk factor for premature birth." [10] The Stop Cancer Coalition in Vancouver reports that some 100 studies support that link. Therefore, it can be concluded that abortion can cause a woman to have a premature birth in a subsequent pregnancy and - if she gives birth before 32 weeks of pregnancy - it puts her at risk for breast cancer (not to mention the fact that her premature child is at risk for cerebral palsy and other serious conditions).
Harris' article omitted other important facts. The overwhelming majority of epidemiological studies report risk increases for women who have had abortions. One study in 2007 found abortion to be the "best predictor of breast cancer" for eight European nations. [11] Patrick Carroll, a statistician and actuary, proved that he could predict future breast cancer rates for England and Wales for the years 2003 and 2004 with nearly 100% accuracy by using abortion rates.
The British insurance magazine, The Actuary, reported his findings in November of 2007 [12]; and the Royal Statistical Society sponsored a panel discussion of it last year. Strangely, Komen (and other cancer groups supposedly dedicated to the eradication of breast cancer) does not talk about that study either, not even during Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
As for the studies by Oxford and Harvard researchers that Komen likes to use to deny an ABC link, women have a right to know that these studies have been criticized in medical journals for having serious flaws. [13,14] The Oxford study received criticism from four researchers (independently of one another) in five separate medical journals. [15,16,17,18] That fact doesn't seem to faze Komen's officials.
The Harvard study received criticism for violating a basic scientific principle of allowing sufficient time to pass after an abortion before following-up to see how many subjects in the study have developed breast cancer. [19] A minimum follow-up time of eight to ten years is considered ideal.
According to Joel Brind, president of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, opponents of the ABC link are fond of incorporating a lack of follow-up time in the prospective studies that they use to deny an independent link. [19]
In 2005, Brind reviewed 10 prospective studies that abortion zealots use to deny the independent link (including the Oxford study). [20] He concluded that they are severely flawed and cannot be used to deny the much larger body of studies that support that link. Although the journal that published Brind's review has no time limit for critics to send letters proving Brind was wrong, no one has ever challenged his conclusions.
I challenge Komen, the American Cancer Society and other cancer groups that have the audacity to deny the ABC link to either prove Brind wrong or stop misleading women and causing more breast cancers than they prevent.
There is no doubt that Planned Parenthood causes more women to develop breast cancer through its sales of cancer-causing hormonal contraceptives/abortifacients. The World Health Organization assigned combined (estrogen + progestin) oral contraceptives ("the pill") and combined hormone replacement therapy (HRT) the highest level of carcinogenicity - Group 1 - in 2006. [21,22]
Both contain the same type of drugs - estrogen + progestin. In the case of combined oral contraceptives (drugs which can be delivered through the pill, IUD, injection, vaginal ring or transdermal patch), exposure often takes place during the most cancer-vulnerable time of a woman's life - before first full term pregnancy when nearly all of her breast lobules are cancer-susceptible Type 1 and 2 lobules.
Recognition of the evidence of a breast cancer risk involving either use of the pill or HRT containing estrogen and progestin also provides additional biological support for an independent link between abortion and breast cancer. The biological basis is the same. It's about cancer-vulnerable breast lobules being overexposed to estrogen while in the presence of progesterone.
According to a 2008 report from STOPP International, Komen gave Planned Parenthood $711,485 between April 2005 and April 2006. [23] Is it reasonable for Komen to entrust Planned Parenthood with the important job of breast cancer screening, even when there are so many legitimate organizations that already carry out this function? Certainly, not! It is as scandalous and offensive as if the American Lung Association had entrusted the tobacco company, Philip Morris, with funds to screen its customers for lung cancer!
Komen's former Latina adviser, Eve Sanchez Silver points out that Planned Parenthood does not even serve the right demographic for breast cancer screening. Planned Parenthood's customers are young people. Breast cancer occurs most often in women 50+ years old.
In conclusion, I ask World Magazine to correct Harris' misinformation.
References: available at:
http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/news/090107/index.htm
Contact: Karen Malec
Source: Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer
Source URL: http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com
Publish Date: January 8, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090109_1.htm
A new article in World Magazine discussed the disturbing financial relationship between the breast cancer group, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and an organization that is the primary cause of the breast cancer epidemic in the U.S. - Planned Parenthood.
The author, Alisa Harris, correctly reported that basic medical textbooks acknowledge that full term pregnancies offer women a considerable reduction in breast cancer risk. Logically, that means that the woman who chooses not to have a baby (i.e. by having an abortion) has a higher breast cancer risk than does the one who has a baby. The loss of the protective effect of a full term pregnancy is the first of three ways that abortion is linked with increased breast cancer risk (known as the "ABC link").
Harris' story, however, included inaccuracies and omitted important facts. Eight medical organizations acknowledge that abortion further raises a woman's risk (independently of the loss of the protective effect of childbearing) by leaving her breasts with more places for cancer to start. [1]
I am troubled that Harris left her readers in doubt about the existence of the independent link. She said Komen's officials dispute the independent link because:
"In 2003, 100 experts from the National Cancer Institute concluded there was no link between breast cancer and either miscarriages or induced abortions. Harvard University and Oxford University have found similar results in the past two years."
If Harris would read the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) workshop conclusions, she would find that the federal agency acknowledged the protective effect of a full term pregnancy, but then blatantly contradicted itself by denying an ABC link.
Research shows that abortions raise risk, but most miscarriages do not raise risk. The NCI throws up fairy dust and confuses the public by mixing up these effects. More about that later.
It is disheartening that Harris did not inform her Christian readers about a shocking quote from Dr. Leslie Bernstein, a lead moderator at the NCI's workshop (which has been called a "political sham"). The quote reveals Bernstein's motivation for concealing the ABC link from the public. After the workshop, she told a journalist at CancerPage.com that an early first full term pregnancy (before age 24) provides women with the best way to prevent the disease, but Bernstein doesn't want women to know about it. She said:
"The biggest bang for the buck is the first birth and the younger you are the better off you are...There are so many other messages we can give women about lifestyle modification and the impact of lifestyle and risk that I would never be a proponent of going around and telling them that having babies is the way to reduce your risk.
"I don't want the issue relating to induced abortion to breast cancer risk to be part of the mix of the discussion of induced abortion, its legality, its continued availability. I think it should not be part of the argument." (Available at: http://www.cancerpage.com/news/article.asp?id+5601)
Bernstein's abandonment of fundamental ethical principles is not uncommon among scientists today whose own textbooks encourage them to become activists. (For example, see: Understanding the Fundamentals of Epidemiology: An Evolving Text by Victor J. Schoenbach, Ph.D. and Wayne D. Rosamond, Ph.D. Available at <http://www.epidemiolog.net>)
The journal Nature published an article, "Scientists behaving badly," in 2005 showing that in an anonymous survey of several thousand career scientists who receive funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an astounding percentage admitted to participating in the most egregious misbehaviours. [2] For instance, 15.5% were willing to admit they had "changed the design, methodology or results of a study in response to pressure from a funding source" (that would be the NIH) within the previous three years.
When scientists become unethical, they can do great harm to the dignity of mankind.
The biological reason for the ABC link is extremely compelling, but Harris' article (and even Komen whose mission is to "eradicate breast cancer") omits any discussion of it. Even the most virulently pro-abortion scientists - who (appallingly) testify as expert witnesses for abortion providers in lawsuits challenging state parental notice and consent laws that protect minors from predatory abortion industry practices - have never attempted to refute the biological reason for the ABC link because it is physiologically correct.
Harris, furthermore, inaccurately quoted New Jersey breast cancer surgeon Angela Lanfranchi. Harris wrote:
"But Lanfranchi would add that abortions, both spontaneous and induced, create cancer-vulnerable breast tissue...."
Lanfranchi's medical journal articles make it abundantly clear that most miscarriages do not raise risk, but abortions do raise risk. [3,4] Most miscarriages are abnormal first trimester pregnancies with low hormonal levels that are insufficient to maintain those pregnancies, but most abortions are normal pregnancies with elevated hormonal levels. Studies have demonstrated that doctors can predict when a woman will have a miscarriage by drawing her blood and measuring hormonal levels.
The ABC link is about cancer-susceptible breast lobules being overexposed to the hormone estrogen, which is known to be a cancer-causing agent. Most of the lobules in a childless woman's breasts consist of cancer-susceptible Type 1 and 2 lobules. That is where 95% of all cancers originate.
During a normal pregnancy, estrogen causes breast growth by stimulating the lobules to multiply, so the woman who has the abortion is left with more places in her breasts for cancers to start (the independent link). However, the woman who has a full term pregnancy experiences a protective process during the last months of pregnancy known as "differentiation," which by the time of delivery, matures 85% of her lobules into fully cancer-resistant Type 4 lobules. That explains the protective effect of a full term pregnancy.
There is strong biological support for the independent link in other related scientific evidence. Similar biological events should have similar results. Several studies have found that a premature birth before 32 weeks of pregnancy increases breast cancer risk. [5,6,7,8] Why? For the same biological reasons explained above. The mother experiences the same hormonal influence on her breasts as the one who has an abortion. She, too, is left with more places in her breasts for cancers to start.
Scientists do not challenge the evidence supporting a link between premature birth before 32 weeks gestation and breast cancer, but they disingenuously challenge any findings that implicate their beloved surgical procedure - abortion - as an independent link for the disease. Komen (and other cancer groups) does not reveal this uncomfortable truth to its supporters either.
A Danish study, Melbye et al. 1997, found a 3% increase in risk for every week of pregnancy that passed before an abortion took place. [9] The biological explanation is very simple. The longer the mother is pregnant before her abortion takes place, the longer she is overexposed to estrogen, and the greater the number of cancer-vulnerable lobules that her breasts grow.
Importantly, the Institute of Medicine recognizes abortion as an "immutable medical risk factor for premature birth." [10] The Stop Cancer Coalition in Vancouver reports that some 100 studies support that link. Therefore, it can be concluded that abortion can cause a woman to have a premature birth in a subsequent pregnancy and - if she gives birth before 32 weeks of pregnancy - it puts her at risk for breast cancer (not to mention the fact that her premature child is at risk for cerebral palsy and other serious conditions).
Harris' article omitted other important facts. The overwhelming majority of epidemiological studies report risk increases for women who have had abortions. One study in 2007 found abortion to be the "best predictor of breast cancer" for eight European nations. [11] Patrick Carroll, a statistician and actuary, proved that he could predict future breast cancer rates for England and Wales for the years 2003 and 2004 with nearly 100% accuracy by using abortion rates.
The British insurance magazine, The Actuary, reported his findings in November of 2007 [12]; and the Royal Statistical Society sponsored a panel discussion of it last year. Strangely, Komen (and other cancer groups supposedly dedicated to the eradication of breast cancer) does not talk about that study either, not even during Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
As for the studies by Oxford and Harvard researchers that Komen likes to use to deny an ABC link, women have a right to know that these studies have been criticized in medical journals for having serious flaws. [13,14] The Oxford study received criticism from four researchers (independently of one another) in five separate medical journals. [15,16,17,18] That fact doesn't seem to faze Komen's officials.
The Harvard study received criticism for violating a basic scientific principle of allowing sufficient time to pass after an abortion before following-up to see how many subjects in the study have developed breast cancer. [19] A minimum follow-up time of eight to ten years is considered ideal.
According to Joel Brind, president of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, opponents of the ABC link are fond of incorporating a lack of follow-up time in the prospective studies that they use to deny an independent link. [19]
In 2005, Brind reviewed 10 prospective studies that abortion zealots use to deny the independent link (including the Oxford study). [20] He concluded that they are severely flawed and cannot be used to deny the much larger body of studies that support that link. Although the journal that published Brind's review has no time limit for critics to send letters proving Brind was wrong, no one has ever challenged his conclusions.
I challenge Komen, the American Cancer Society and other cancer groups that have the audacity to deny the ABC link to either prove Brind wrong or stop misleading women and causing more breast cancers than they prevent.
There is no doubt that Planned Parenthood causes more women to develop breast cancer through its sales of cancer-causing hormonal contraceptives/abortifacients. The World Health Organization assigned combined (estrogen + progestin) oral contraceptives ("the pill") and combined hormone replacement therapy (HRT) the highest level of carcinogenicity - Group 1 - in 2006. [21,22]
Both contain the same type of drugs - estrogen + progestin. In the case of combined oral contraceptives (drugs which can be delivered through the pill, IUD, injection, vaginal ring or transdermal patch), exposure often takes place during the most cancer-vulnerable time of a woman's life - before first full term pregnancy when nearly all of her breast lobules are cancer-susceptible Type 1 and 2 lobules.
Recognition of the evidence of a breast cancer risk involving either use of the pill or HRT containing estrogen and progestin also provides additional biological support for an independent link between abortion and breast cancer. The biological basis is the same. It's about cancer-vulnerable breast lobules being overexposed to estrogen while in the presence of progesterone.
According to a 2008 report from STOPP International, Komen gave Planned Parenthood $711,485 between April 2005 and April 2006. [23] Is it reasonable for Komen to entrust Planned Parenthood with the important job of breast cancer screening, even when there are so many legitimate organizations that already carry out this function? Certainly, not! It is as scandalous and offensive as if the American Lung Association had entrusted the tobacco company, Philip Morris, with funds to screen its customers for lung cancer!
Komen's former Latina adviser, Eve Sanchez Silver points out that Planned Parenthood does not even serve the right demographic for breast cancer screening. Planned Parenthood's customers are young people. Breast cancer occurs most often in women 50+ years old.
In conclusion, I ask World Magazine to correct Harris' misinformation.
References: available at:
http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/news/090107/index.htm
Contact: Karen Malec
Source: Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer
Source URL: http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com
Publish Date: January 8, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090109_1.htm
'Terri's Day' to be Observed
'Terri's Day' to be Observed in Remembrance of Terri Schiavo
Terri's Foundation and Priests for Life once again invite individuals, families, Churches and organizations to observe the "International Day of Prayer and Remembrance for Terri Schindler Schiavo, and All of Our Vulnerable Brothers and Sisters" ("Terri's Day") on March 31, the fourth anniversary of Terri's death.
The two organizations established this day last year. Its purpose is to foster education, prayer, and activism regarding discrimination against the disabled, and advocacy for people in situations similar to what Terri and her family faced.
Suzanne Vitadamo, Terri's sister, and Bobby Schindler, her brother, stated on behalf of the family, "Sadly, our recent headlines are a clear indication that what happened to Terri is only getting worse. We are seeing that many of our institutions caring for our most vulnerable are being encouraged to devalue the sanctity of human life. Indeed, this is influenced by a very strong pro-death movement continuing to work very hard to legitimize euthanasia and assisted suicide."
Fr. Frank Pavone, who was with Bobby and Suzanne at Terri's bedside as she was dying, said, "As we consoled Terri and prayed with her, what I felt most strongly was the presence of countless people around the world who, by their love, prayers, and tears, accompanied Terri and her family through those difficult days. I am confident that these same individuals, families, and Churches will want to observe Terri's Day."
Materials to assist the observance of Terri's Day can be found at www.TerrisDay.org.
Contact: Jerry Horn
Source: Priests for Life
Source URL: http://www.priestsforlife.org
Publish Date: January 7, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090109_2.htm
Terri's Foundation and Priests for Life once again invite individuals, families, Churches and organizations to observe the "International Day of Prayer and Remembrance for Terri Schindler Schiavo, and All of Our Vulnerable Brothers and Sisters" ("Terri's Day") on March 31, the fourth anniversary of Terri's death.
The two organizations established this day last year. Its purpose is to foster education, prayer, and activism regarding discrimination against the disabled, and advocacy for people in situations similar to what Terri and her family faced.
Suzanne Vitadamo, Terri's sister, and Bobby Schindler, her brother, stated on behalf of the family, "Sadly, our recent headlines are a clear indication that what happened to Terri is only getting worse. We are seeing that many of our institutions caring for our most vulnerable are being encouraged to devalue the sanctity of human life. Indeed, this is influenced by a very strong pro-death movement continuing to work very hard to legitimize euthanasia and assisted suicide."
Fr. Frank Pavone, who was with Bobby and Suzanne at Terri's bedside as she was dying, said, "As we consoled Terri and prayed with her, what I felt most strongly was the presence of countless people around the world who, by their love, prayers, and tears, accompanied Terri and her family through those difficult days. I am confident that these same individuals, families, and Churches will want to observe Terri's Day."
Materials to assist the observance of Terri's Day can be found at www.TerrisDay.org.
Contact: Jerry Horn
Source: Priests for Life
Source URL: http://www.priestsforlife.org
Publish Date: January 7, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090109_2.htm
Richard John Neuhaus, 1936–2009
Richard John Neuhaus, 1936–2009
In an Internet-driven world, news gets out very quickly. Even so, many of you may not know that Fr. Richard John Neuhaus died this morning. The following appeared on the web page of First Things, the very influential publication of which Fr. Neuhaus, a pro-life stalwart if ever there was one, was editor in chief...
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus slipped away today, January 8, shortly before 10 o'clock, at the age of seventy-two. He never recovered from the weakness that sent him to the hospital the day after Christmas, caused by a series of side effects from the cancer he was suffering. He lost consciousness Tuesday evening after a collapse in his heart rate, and the next day, in the company of friends, he died.
My tears are not for him--for he knew, all his life, that his Redeemer lives, and he has now been gathered by the Lord in whom he trusted.
I weep, rather for all the rest of us. As a priest, as a writer, as a public leader in so many struggles, and as a friend, no one can take his place. The fabric of life has been torn by his death, and it will not be repaired, for those of us who knew him, until that time when everything is mended and all our tears are wiped away.
Funeral arrangements are still being planned; information about the funeral will be made public shortly. Please accept our thanks for all your prayers and good wishes.
In Deepest Sorrow,
Joseph Bottum
Editor
First Things
This first appeared in the July 29, 1982, issue of National Right to Life News, it is a story Dave Andrusko wrote after Fr. Neuhaus delivered a speech to the 1982 NRLC convention. To read Fr. Neuhaus's speech, please visit: http://www.nrlc.org/News_and_Views/Jan09/nv010809part3.html
The Pro-Life Movement: Keepers of the American Dream
The Pro-Life Movement today stands as the principle defender of the historically radical belief that "every person has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," Reverend Richard Neuhaus told an overflow audience at the 1982 NRLC National Convention.
Rebutting the stereotype of the Movement as a reactionary force Neuhaus argued that on the contrary the pro-life movement is radical, "not by virtue of how far out it is but by virtue of how deep and central is the question it raises." That question, which Neuhaus said is the beginning of all moral judgment and all just law, "is simply this" Who then is my neighbor?"
Neuhaus told his audience that the outcome to the debate over abortion is fundamental. Abortion is not merely one issue among many. The answer we give to that question, Neuhaus said, will "define the America that we pass on to our children…"
Neuhaus posed the options before our country in this way: "Will it be an America that is inclusive, embracing the stranger and giving refuse to he homeless? Or will it be an exclusive America in which we grasp what we have for ourselves and beat off those who call us to share?"
A humane and progressive society is marked by an evermore expansive definition of the human community for which we accept resistibility Neuhaus said. "The American people do not subscribe to the narrow and constrictive logic of Roe v. Wade that would exclude from that community those who fail to meet the criteria for 'meaningful human life,'" he said.
Neuhaus shrewdly observed that those who would presume to speak of "meaningful life," or "unloved children" are saying much more about themselves than they realize.
"If we say a life is without meaning, we are not saying something about that life; we are saying something about ourselves," he said. "Meaning is not ours to give or withhold. Meaning is there to acknowledge and revere."
Likewise, when people speak of a child that is unloved, "we are not saying something about these children; we are saying something about our failure to love," Neuhaus said.
Piercing the rhetoric that pro-lifers seek to "impose their morality," Neuhaus argued that "it is more accurate to say that our goal is to restore the legitimacy of law by bringing law back into democratic conversation with the convictions of the American people." That fundamentally necessary conversation was broken off by Roe v. Wade, Neuhaus said, "and among the victims of that broken conversation is the legitimacy of the law itself."
Pro-life initiatives would restore the opportunity to converse. Neuhaus noted that irony of those who oppose even the consideration of a human life amendment.
"Why do our opponents so distrust the judgment of the people?" he asked.
"Why are they so afraid of the democratic process? Are their numbers so few, are their arguments so weak, that they dare not expose their case to the light of public debate in the legislatures of this land?"
The authentic liberal vision of American, he said, is one that "is hospitable to the stranger, holding out arms of welcome to those who share the freedom and opportunity we cherish."
But, tragically, American, a land of immigrants, has closed its doors to the ultimate immigrant. Neuhaus said: the unborn child.
Those threatening newcomers "are stopped before they enter our line of moral vision," Neuhaus said. "They are stopped early, still in the darkness of the womb, before they can force us to recognize them as ourselves, before their all too person-like appearance can lay a claim upon our comfort and maybe upon our conscience."
In its Roe v. Wade decision, "the court invoked the darker side of our national character," he said. "We were given license, indeed encouragement, to close our heart to the stranger, to patrol the borders of our lives with lethal weaponry."
Later in his speech, Neuhaus again challenged the mythology that portrays pro-abortionists as a liberal, progressive force and the pro-life movement as an anti-liberal force. On the contrary, it is the members of the Movement who "are light keepers in a time of darkness."
Indeed, "You are not the defenders of an old order but the forerunners of a world yet to be," he noted. "What we would retrieve from the past is the promise of the future."
Neuhaus said he believes "this great testing of the American experiment" will prevail on the side of life. "And yet, if that hope is deferred for a time, we must not be discouraged," he said. "We are recruited for the duration, we must be long distance radicals; we must never give up.
Referring to the convention's theme [A New Birth of Freedom], Neuhaus concluded, "I do not know if there will again be a new birth of freedom--for the poor, the aged, the crippled, the unborn. But we commend this cause to the One who is the maker and the sure keeper of promises, to the Lord of life.
"In that commendation is our confidence: confidence that the long night of Roe v. Wade will soon be over; confidence that the court will yet be made responsive to the convictions of a democratic people; confidence, ultimately, in the dawning of a new and glorious day in which law and morality will be reconciled and liberty will no longer war against life."
Contact: Dave Andrusko
Source: National Right to Life
Source URL: http://www.nrlc.org
Publish Date: January 8, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090109_3.htm
In an Internet-driven world, news gets out very quickly. Even so, many of you may not know that Fr. Richard John Neuhaus died this morning. The following appeared on the web page of First Things, the very influential publication of which Fr. Neuhaus, a pro-life stalwart if ever there was one, was editor in chief...
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus slipped away today, January 8, shortly before 10 o'clock, at the age of seventy-two. He never recovered from the weakness that sent him to the hospital the day after Christmas, caused by a series of side effects from the cancer he was suffering. He lost consciousness Tuesday evening after a collapse in his heart rate, and the next day, in the company of friends, he died.
My tears are not for him--for he knew, all his life, that his Redeemer lives, and he has now been gathered by the Lord in whom he trusted.
I weep, rather for all the rest of us. As a priest, as a writer, as a public leader in so many struggles, and as a friend, no one can take his place. The fabric of life has been torn by his death, and it will not be repaired, for those of us who knew him, until that time when everything is mended and all our tears are wiped away.
Funeral arrangements are still being planned; information about the funeral will be made public shortly. Please accept our thanks for all your prayers and good wishes.
In Deepest Sorrow,
Joseph Bottum
Editor
First Things
This first appeared in the July 29, 1982, issue of National Right to Life News, it is a story Dave Andrusko wrote after Fr. Neuhaus delivered a speech to the 1982 NRLC convention. To read Fr. Neuhaus's speech, please visit: http://www.nrlc.org/News_and_Views/Jan09/nv010809part3.html
The Pro-Life Movement: Keepers of the American Dream
The Pro-Life Movement today stands as the principle defender of the historically radical belief that "every person has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," Reverend Richard Neuhaus told an overflow audience at the 1982 NRLC National Convention.
Rebutting the stereotype of the Movement as a reactionary force Neuhaus argued that on the contrary the pro-life movement is radical, "not by virtue of how far out it is but by virtue of how deep and central is the question it raises." That question, which Neuhaus said is the beginning of all moral judgment and all just law, "is simply this" Who then is my neighbor?"
Neuhaus told his audience that the outcome to the debate over abortion is fundamental. Abortion is not merely one issue among many. The answer we give to that question, Neuhaus said, will "define the America that we pass on to our children…"
Neuhaus posed the options before our country in this way: "Will it be an America that is inclusive, embracing the stranger and giving refuse to he homeless? Or will it be an exclusive America in which we grasp what we have for ourselves and beat off those who call us to share?"
A humane and progressive society is marked by an evermore expansive definition of the human community for which we accept resistibility Neuhaus said. "The American people do not subscribe to the narrow and constrictive logic of Roe v. Wade that would exclude from that community those who fail to meet the criteria for 'meaningful human life,'" he said.
Neuhaus shrewdly observed that those who would presume to speak of "meaningful life," or "unloved children" are saying much more about themselves than they realize.
"If we say a life is without meaning, we are not saying something about that life; we are saying something about ourselves," he said. "Meaning is not ours to give or withhold. Meaning is there to acknowledge and revere."
Likewise, when people speak of a child that is unloved, "we are not saying something about these children; we are saying something about our failure to love," Neuhaus said.
Piercing the rhetoric that pro-lifers seek to "impose their morality," Neuhaus argued that "it is more accurate to say that our goal is to restore the legitimacy of law by bringing law back into democratic conversation with the convictions of the American people." That fundamentally necessary conversation was broken off by Roe v. Wade, Neuhaus said, "and among the victims of that broken conversation is the legitimacy of the law itself."
Pro-life initiatives would restore the opportunity to converse. Neuhaus noted that irony of those who oppose even the consideration of a human life amendment.
"Why do our opponents so distrust the judgment of the people?" he asked.
"Why are they so afraid of the democratic process? Are their numbers so few, are their arguments so weak, that they dare not expose their case to the light of public debate in the legislatures of this land?"
The authentic liberal vision of American, he said, is one that "is hospitable to the stranger, holding out arms of welcome to those who share the freedom and opportunity we cherish."
But, tragically, American, a land of immigrants, has closed its doors to the ultimate immigrant. Neuhaus said: the unborn child.
Those threatening newcomers "are stopped before they enter our line of moral vision," Neuhaus said. "They are stopped early, still in the darkness of the womb, before they can force us to recognize them as ourselves, before their all too person-like appearance can lay a claim upon our comfort and maybe upon our conscience."
In its Roe v. Wade decision, "the court invoked the darker side of our national character," he said. "We were given license, indeed encouragement, to close our heart to the stranger, to patrol the borders of our lives with lethal weaponry."
Later in his speech, Neuhaus again challenged the mythology that portrays pro-abortionists as a liberal, progressive force and the pro-life movement as an anti-liberal force. On the contrary, it is the members of the Movement who "are light keepers in a time of darkness."
Indeed, "You are not the defenders of an old order but the forerunners of a world yet to be," he noted. "What we would retrieve from the past is the promise of the future."
Neuhaus said he believes "this great testing of the American experiment" will prevail on the side of life. "And yet, if that hope is deferred for a time, we must not be discouraged," he said. "We are recruited for the duration, we must be long distance radicals; we must never give up.
Referring to the convention's theme [A New Birth of Freedom], Neuhaus concluded, "I do not know if there will again be a new birth of freedom--for the poor, the aged, the crippled, the unborn. But we commend this cause to the One who is the maker and the sure keeper of promises, to the Lord of life.
"In that commendation is our confidence: confidence that the long night of Roe v. Wade will soon be over; confidence that the court will yet be made responsive to the convictions of a democratic people; confidence, ultimately, in the dawning of a new and glorious day in which law and morality will be reconciled and liberty will no longer war against life."
Contact: Dave Andrusko
Source: National Right to Life
Source URL: http://www.nrlc.org
Publish Date: January 8, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090109_3.htm
Effectiveness of Abstinence Pledges
Media Mislead About Effectiveness of Abstinence Pledges
Once again the media are caught with their, if you will excuse the pun, pants down. A study was released a week or so ago that claimed there is no difference in the initial onset of sex between teenagers who took abstinence pledges and other teenagers. Sounds bad for promoting sexual restraint, doesn't it? Not so fast. It turns out that the study actually compared religious conservative teens who took the pledge and religious conservative teens who didn't, where there is indeed little difference. But between teenagers who took the pledge and the average teen--which is sure what I thought the story was about--there is a big difference. From the expose` in the Wall Street Journal, byline William McGurn:
The chain reaction was something out of central casting. A medical journal starts it off by announcing a study comparing teens who take a pledge of virginity until marriage with those who don't. Lo and behold, when they crunch the numbers, they find not much difference between pledgers and nonpledgers: most do not make it to the marriage bed as virgins.
Like a pack of randy 15-year-old boys, the press dives right in. "Virginity Pledges Don't Stop Teen Sex," screams CBS News. "Virginity pledges don't mean much," adds CNN. "Study questions virginity pledges," says the Chicago Tribune. "Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds," heralds the Washington Post. "Virginity Pledges Fail to Trump Teen Lust in Look at Older Data," reports Bloomberg. And on it goes.
In other words, teens will be teens, and moms or dads who believe that concepts such as restraint or morality have any application today are living in a dream world. Typical was the lead for the CBS News story: "Teenagers who take virginity pledges are no less sexually active than other teens, according to a new study."
Here's the rub: It just isn't true.
In fact, Dr. Bernadine Healy, of US News and World Report crunched the numbers and discovered that the average age of initial sexual intercourse for most teens is 17, but the conservative teens--including abstinence pledgers--wait until age 21! That's a huge difference that translates into fewer unwanted pregnancies, fewer abortions, a lower rate of STDs, and less suffering from the acute emotional difficulties that intense early sexual relationships can cause.
Contact: Wesley J. Smith
Source: Secondhand Smoke BLOG
Source URL: http://www.WesleyJsmith.com
Publish Date: January 7, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090109_4.htm
Once again the media are caught with their, if you will excuse the pun, pants down. A study was released a week or so ago that claimed there is no difference in the initial onset of sex between teenagers who took abstinence pledges and other teenagers. Sounds bad for promoting sexual restraint, doesn't it? Not so fast. It turns out that the study actually compared religious conservative teens who took the pledge and religious conservative teens who didn't, where there is indeed little difference. But between teenagers who took the pledge and the average teen--which is sure what I thought the story was about--there is a big difference. From the expose` in the Wall Street Journal, byline William McGurn:
The chain reaction was something out of central casting. A medical journal starts it off by announcing a study comparing teens who take a pledge of virginity until marriage with those who don't. Lo and behold, when they crunch the numbers, they find not much difference between pledgers and nonpledgers: most do not make it to the marriage bed as virgins.
Like a pack of randy 15-year-old boys, the press dives right in. "Virginity Pledges Don't Stop Teen Sex," screams CBS News. "Virginity pledges don't mean much," adds CNN. "Study questions virginity pledges," says the Chicago Tribune. "Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds," heralds the Washington Post. "Virginity Pledges Fail to Trump Teen Lust in Look at Older Data," reports Bloomberg. And on it goes.
In other words, teens will be teens, and moms or dads who believe that concepts such as restraint or morality have any application today are living in a dream world. Typical was the lead for the CBS News story: "Teenagers who take virginity pledges are no less sexually active than other teens, according to a new study."
Here's the rub: It just isn't true.
In fact, Dr. Bernadine Healy, of US News and World Report crunched the numbers and discovered that the average age of initial sexual intercourse for most teens is 17, but the conservative teens--including abstinence pledgers--wait until age 21! That's a huge difference that translates into fewer unwanted pregnancies, fewer abortions, a lower rate of STDs, and less suffering from the acute emotional difficulties that intense early sexual relationships can cause.
Contact: Wesley J. Smith
Source: Secondhand Smoke BLOG
Source URL: http://www.WesleyJsmith.com
Publish Date: January 7, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090109_4.htm
Assisted Suicide As Medical Care
The New Rx Cure: Assisted Suicide As Medical Care
You have cancer. Your doctor checks you over and says, "Well, you don't have long to live, and your insurance doesn't want to pay for expensive chemo drugs at $5000 a month."
Your doctor pulls out her prescription pad.
"We can offer you a quick and painless death through barbituates," she says, scribbling the prescription for barbs. "This will cost you less than a hundred bucks."
Don't believe it?
It's already happening.
Randy Stroup, of Dexter, Oregon, was 53 years old when he got prostrate cancer. He had no insurance so he applied for help for his medical treatment from Oregon's state health plan.
He got a letter this summer from Lane Individual Practice Association (LIPA), which administers the Oregon Health Plan in Lane County, Oregon. The letter said that Stroup's cancer was too advanced to warrant a pricey treatment.
However, the state was willing to pay for his assisted suicide.
"It dropped my chin to the floor," Stroup said. "How could they not pay for medication that would help my life, and yet offer to pay to end my life?"
Barbara Wagner is another Oregonian who applied for state medical care because she had cancer. She too got a letter from the Oregon Health Plan, notifying her that "Treatment of advanced cancer that is meant to prolong life, or change the course of this disease, is not a covered benefit of the Oregon Health Plan."
However, the plan does pay for "comfort care," or "physician aid in dying," better known as assisted suicide.
Wagner got angry when she read that letter. She told a local newspaper, "To say to someone, we'll pay for you to die, but not pay for you to live, it's cruel. Who do they think they are?"
Dr. William Toffler, a professor of family medicine at Oregon Health & Science University, agrees with Randy Stroup and Barbara Wagner that the new policy of assisted suicide stinks.
"It's chilling when you think about it," he said. "It absolutely conveys to the patient that continued living isn't worthwhile."
But as Ursula, the sea witch, told the Little Mermaid, "Life is full of tough choices.
Dr. Walter Shaffer, a spokesperson for the Oregon Health Plan, said, "We can't cover everything for everyone. We try to come up with policies that provide the most good for the most people."
Okay, let's take another example of assisted suicide as medical treatment. This time, you don't have cancer, but you do need an experimental operation. Are you willing to sign a paper saying that if your surgeon screws it up, you'll accept an assisted suicide?
Last month, a woman in Cincinnati, Ohio, needed a face transplant, only the fifth one in human history. Her doctor would actually be grafting the face of a dead person on to hers.
However, the hospital was afraid that if the operation did not work, the woman would die a slow death. A bioethicist suggested that she sign a form agreeing to an assisted suicide - just in case.
"The biggest ethical problem is dealing with failure -- if your face rejects. It would be a living hell," said bioethicist Dr. Arthur Caplan. "If your face is falling off and you can't eat and you can't breathe and you're suffering in a terrible manner that can't be reversed, you need to put on the table assistance in dying."
People vote in favor of assisted suicide laws because they think they are giving themselves a new right - a right to a dignified death. They don't realize they are giving insurance companies and doctors new rights too. They think in terms of assisted suicide as something they can do at the very end of life to make their deaths more comfortable. They don't realize that they have created a new form of medical treatment. And yes, it's already here.
Contact: Jane St Clair
Source: Pro-Life Blogs
Source URL: http://www.prolifeblogs.com
Publish Date: January 8, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090109_5.htm
You have cancer. Your doctor checks you over and says, "Well, you don't have long to live, and your insurance doesn't want to pay for expensive chemo drugs at $5000 a month."
Your doctor pulls out her prescription pad.
"We can offer you a quick and painless death through barbituates," she says, scribbling the prescription for barbs. "This will cost you less than a hundred bucks."
Don't believe it?
It's already happening.
Randy Stroup, of Dexter, Oregon, was 53 years old when he got prostrate cancer. He had no insurance so he applied for help for his medical treatment from Oregon's state health plan.
He got a letter this summer from Lane Individual Practice Association (LIPA), which administers the Oregon Health Plan in Lane County, Oregon. The letter said that Stroup's cancer was too advanced to warrant a pricey treatment.
However, the state was willing to pay for his assisted suicide.
"It dropped my chin to the floor," Stroup said. "How could they not pay for medication that would help my life, and yet offer to pay to end my life?"
Barbara Wagner is another Oregonian who applied for state medical care because she had cancer. She too got a letter from the Oregon Health Plan, notifying her that "Treatment of advanced cancer that is meant to prolong life, or change the course of this disease, is not a covered benefit of the Oregon Health Plan."
However, the plan does pay for "comfort care," or "physician aid in dying," better known as assisted suicide.
Wagner got angry when she read that letter. She told a local newspaper, "To say to someone, we'll pay for you to die, but not pay for you to live, it's cruel. Who do they think they are?"
Dr. William Toffler, a professor of family medicine at Oregon Health & Science University, agrees with Randy Stroup and Barbara Wagner that the new policy of assisted suicide stinks.
"It's chilling when you think about it," he said. "It absolutely conveys to the patient that continued living isn't worthwhile."
But as Ursula, the sea witch, told the Little Mermaid, "Life is full of tough choices.
Dr. Walter Shaffer, a spokesperson for the Oregon Health Plan, said, "We can't cover everything for everyone. We try to come up with policies that provide the most good for the most people."
Okay, let's take another example of assisted suicide as medical treatment. This time, you don't have cancer, but you do need an experimental operation. Are you willing to sign a paper saying that if your surgeon screws it up, you'll accept an assisted suicide?
Last month, a woman in Cincinnati, Ohio, needed a face transplant, only the fifth one in human history. Her doctor would actually be grafting the face of a dead person on to hers.
However, the hospital was afraid that if the operation did not work, the woman would die a slow death. A bioethicist suggested that she sign a form agreeing to an assisted suicide - just in case.
"The biggest ethical problem is dealing with failure -- if your face rejects. It would be a living hell," said bioethicist Dr. Arthur Caplan. "If your face is falling off and you can't eat and you can't breathe and you're suffering in a terrible manner that can't be reversed, you need to put on the table assistance in dying."
People vote in favor of assisted suicide laws because they think they are giving themselves a new right - a right to a dignified death. They don't realize they are giving insurance companies and doctors new rights too. They think in terms of assisted suicide as something they can do at the very end of life to make their deaths more comfortable. They don't realize that they have created a new form of medical treatment. And yes, it's already here.
Contact: Jane St Clair
Source: Pro-Life Blogs
Source URL: http://www.prolifeblogs.com
Publish Date: January 8, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090109_5.htm
Futile Care Theory
New Book Pushes Futile Care Theory
I haven't read the book, but I thought the review in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Michael Bevins, MD, Ph.D., brought up some important points for pondering. In Defiance of Death: Exposing the Real Costs of End-of-Life Care illustrates the growing utilitarian emphasis in medicine and apparently pushes futile care theory as a way of supposedly saving big bucks in medicine. From the book review (no link):
Who decides when care is inappropriate is an even more difficult question. The crux of this book's argument is its proposal of a system of "appropriate-care committees" made up of experienced physicians who would review each questionable case on an individual basis. These local, state, and national committees would be organized into a hierarchical structure, with local committees answerable to state committees and so on. Committee members would be paid a stipend,thereby avoiding financial conflicts of interest, and they would have the authority to withhold payment for care deemed inappropriate.
Right. I'd sure trust that system (he said sarcastically)! The idea appears to be to empower faceless bureaucrats to second guess care decisions by deciding after the fact whether hospitals should be paid for services rendered. That would put the economic benefit of doubt into refusing wanted care, not to mention making it a federal policy to impose futile care on unwilling families.
The ironic thing is that futile care theory will not save all that much money. When I was researching Culture of Death, end of life care took up about 10% of the nation's entire health care budget. Most people don't want expensive interventions until the bitter end. Thus, even if medical futility were imposed on all dying patients, the savings would be minimal, a point noted in the review:
Fisher admits it remains an open question whether hospice care actually saves money. While he valiantly tries to defend the claim that shifting from more aggressive, "inappropriate" care to more compassionate, palliative care would save oodles of money, this is a hard assertion to prove. Furthermore, saving money is not the most important reason for making some treatment decisions. In some cases, not doing certain things (eg, intubation, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, chemotherapy, surgery,feeding tubes) in favor of doing other things (eg, aggressive symptom control, spiritual support, bereavement support) is the right choice simply because it is the right thing to do, regardless of the cost.
I totally agree. But the method by which that shift should be accomplished is not the bludgeon of coercion, but education, compassionate counseling, and honest discussion. In the end, if people want their lives maintained, that should be permitted because keeping people alive when that is what they want is the quintessential purpose of medicine.
Moreover, going in the opposite direction poses a great risk to the sanctity and equality of human life, adherence to which is essential to a moral medical system. I once asked a futilitarian (as I call them), what would be withheld from patients next once the principle of withholding wanted treatment was established. He told me "marginally beneficial care." When I asked for an example, he said, "An 80-year-old woman who wants a mammogram."And so we see the terrible potential for medical discrimination masking as benign cost control.
We have to be very careful that in our reasonable desire to control costs and do right by suffering patients, that we don't institute a brutal regimen of medical discrimination in which our consciences are assuaged by self deception and euphemisms.
Contact: Wesley J. Smith
Source: Secondhand Smoke BLOG
Source URL: http://www.WesleyJsmith.com
Publish Date: January 9, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090109_6.htm
I haven't read the book, but I thought the review in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Michael Bevins, MD, Ph.D., brought up some important points for pondering. In Defiance of Death: Exposing the Real Costs of End-of-Life Care illustrates the growing utilitarian emphasis in medicine and apparently pushes futile care theory as a way of supposedly saving big bucks in medicine. From the book review (no link):
Who decides when care is inappropriate is an even more difficult question. The crux of this book's argument is its proposal of a system of "appropriate-care committees" made up of experienced physicians who would review each questionable case on an individual basis. These local, state, and national committees would be organized into a hierarchical structure, with local committees answerable to state committees and so on. Committee members would be paid a stipend,thereby avoiding financial conflicts of interest, and they would have the authority to withhold payment for care deemed inappropriate.
Right. I'd sure trust that system (he said sarcastically)! The idea appears to be to empower faceless bureaucrats to second guess care decisions by deciding after the fact whether hospitals should be paid for services rendered. That would put the economic benefit of doubt into refusing wanted care, not to mention making it a federal policy to impose futile care on unwilling families.
The ironic thing is that futile care theory will not save all that much money. When I was researching Culture of Death, end of life care took up about 10% of the nation's entire health care budget. Most people don't want expensive interventions until the bitter end. Thus, even if medical futility were imposed on all dying patients, the savings would be minimal, a point noted in the review:
Fisher admits it remains an open question whether hospice care actually saves money. While he valiantly tries to defend the claim that shifting from more aggressive, "inappropriate" care to more compassionate, palliative care would save oodles of money, this is a hard assertion to prove. Furthermore, saving money is not the most important reason for making some treatment decisions. In some cases, not doing certain things (eg, intubation, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, chemotherapy, surgery,feeding tubes) in favor of doing other things (eg, aggressive symptom control, spiritual support, bereavement support) is the right choice simply because it is the right thing to do, regardless of the cost.
I totally agree. But the method by which that shift should be accomplished is not the bludgeon of coercion, but education, compassionate counseling, and honest discussion. In the end, if people want their lives maintained, that should be permitted because keeping people alive when that is what they want is the quintessential purpose of medicine.
Moreover, going in the opposite direction poses a great risk to the sanctity and equality of human life, adherence to which is essential to a moral medical system. I once asked a futilitarian (as I call them), what would be withheld from patients next once the principle of withholding wanted treatment was established. He told me "marginally beneficial care." When I asked for an example, he said, "An 80-year-old woman who wants a mammogram."And so we see the terrible potential for medical discrimination masking as benign cost control.
We have to be very careful that in our reasonable desire to control costs and do right by suffering patients, that we don't institute a brutal regimen of medical discrimination in which our consciences are assuaged by self deception and euphemisms.
Contact: Wesley J. Smith
Source: Secondhand Smoke BLOG
Source URL: http://www.WesleyJsmith.com
Publish Date: January 9, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090109_6.htm
IFRL NEWS SHORTS FOR FRIDAY
NEWS SHORTS FOR FRIDAY
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.
Planned Parenthood Applauds Senate Legislation
Planned Parenthood is applauding the introduction of a bill in the Senate called the Prevention First Act, which life advocates say will do little to decrease abortions, as it claims — and will give more funding to the nation's largest abortion provider.
The legislation would improve awareness about contraception, restore affordable birth control and protect teens’ health.
But Carrie Gordon Earll, senior bioethics analyst at Focus on the Family Action, said bills like this falsely claim that greater access to contraception means fewer unintended pregnancies.
http://www.citizenlink.org/CLNews/A000009024.cfm
Scientists 'Trick' Adult Stem Cells To Repair The Body
Scientists have tricked bone marrow into releasing extra adult stem cells into the bloodstream, a technique that they hope could one day be used to repair heart damage or mend a broken bone, in a new study published in the journal Cell Stem Cell. When a person has a disease or an injury, the bone marrow mobilises different types of stem cells to help repair and regenerate tissue. The new research, by researchers from Imperial College London, shows that it may be possible to boost the body's ability to repair itself and speed up repair, by using different new drug combinations to put the bone marrow into a state of 'red alert' and send specific kinds of stem cells into action.
http://www.nurse101.com/news/archives/000027.html
Pro-Abort Group to Remind Lawmakers Abortion Ban Proposals Fail
South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families wants to remind the Legislature that their constituents don't want another measure that bans abortion in the state. Post-election surveying by the group showed people want the focus to shift to preventing unintended pregnancies, co-chairwoman Jan Nicolay said Wednesday. "The people of South Dakota do not want government intruding into their personal medical decisions," she said. "We just think everyone should work together on that and not spend time with ballot issues."
http://www.argusleader.com/article/20090108/NEWS/901080301/1001/rss01
FDA Scientists Complain To Obama Of 'Corruption'
In an unusually blunt letter, a group of federal scientists is complaining to the Obama transition team of widespread managerial misconduct in a division of the Food and Drug Administration. "The purpose of this letter is to inform you that the scientific review process for medical devices at the FDA has been corrupted and distorted by current FDA managers, thereby placing the American people at risk," said the letter, dated Wednesday and written on the agency's Center for Devices and Radiological Health letterhead.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090108/D95J8N980.html
Madoff Fallout Drains Funding Of Abortion Advocacy Groups
Fallout from the exposure of investment manager Bernard Madoff’s massive $50 billion Ponzi scheme threw many individuals and charities into financial distress. The fraud has also deprived funding from several pro-abortion rights groups and projects. The Florida-based Picower Foundation, listed as the 71st-largest in the nation by the Council on Foundations, claimed assets of $1 billion, the New York Times reports. It was forced to close in December due to financial problems with its assets, which were managed by Madoff.
http://catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=14720
Prosecutor Focus on Basis of Tiller Charges in Closing Arguments
Prosecutor Barry Disney on Wednesday urged a judge to focus on the criminal charges against a Wichita abortion provider, not his lawyers' attempts to discredit them. Disney had been less vocal than George Tiller's lawyers the previous two days during a pretrial hearing that concluded Wednesday. He lodged an occasional objection and spent little time cross-examining witnesses, as Tiller's lawyers argued the case should be dismissed.
http://www.kansas.com/819/story/655472.html
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.
Planned Parenthood Applauds Senate Legislation
Planned Parenthood is applauding the introduction of a bill in the Senate called the Prevention First Act, which life advocates say will do little to decrease abortions, as it claims — and will give more funding to the nation's largest abortion provider.
The legislation would improve awareness about contraception, restore affordable birth control and protect teens’ health.
But Carrie Gordon Earll, senior bioethics analyst at Focus on the Family Action, said bills like this falsely claim that greater access to contraception means fewer unintended pregnancies.
http://www.citizenlink.org/CLNews/A000009024.cfm
Scientists 'Trick' Adult Stem Cells To Repair The Body
Scientists have tricked bone marrow into releasing extra adult stem cells into the bloodstream, a technique that they hope could one day be used to repair heart damage or mend a broken bone, in a new study published in the journal Cell Stem Cell. When a person has a disease or an injury, the bone marrow mobilises different types of stem cells to help repair and regenerate tissue. The new research, by researchers from Imperial College London, shows that it may be possible to boost the body's ability to repair itself and speed up repair, by using different new drug combinations to put the bone marrow into a state of 'red alert' and send specific kinds of stem cells into action.
http://www.nurse101.com/news/archives/000027.html
Pro-Abort Group to Remind Lawmakers Abortion Ban Proposals Fail
South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families wants to remind the Legislature that their constituents don't want another measure that bans abortion in the state. Post-election surveying by the group showed people want the focus to shift to preventing unintended pregnancies, co-chairwoman Jan Nicolay said Wednesday. "The people of South Dakota do not want government intruding into their personal medical decisions," she said. "We just think everyone should work together on that and not spend time with ballot issues."
http://www.argusleader.com/article/20090108/NEWS/901080301/1001/rss01
FDA Scientists Complain To Obama Of 'Corruption'
In an unusually blunt letter, a group of federal scientists is complaining to the Obama transition team of widespread managerial misconduct in a division of the Food and Drug Administration. "The purpose of this letter is to inform you that the scientific review process for medical devices at the FDA has been corrupted and distorted by current FDA managers, thereby placing the American people at risk," said the letter, dated Wednesday and written on the agency's Center for Devices and Radiological Health letterhead.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090108/D95J8N980.html
Madoff Fallout Drains Funding Of Abortion Advocacy Groups
Fallout from the exposure of investment manager Bernard Madoff’s massive $50 billion Ponzi scheme threw many individuals and charities into financial distress. The fraud has also deprived funding from several pro-abortion rights groups and projects. The Florida-based Picower Foundation, listed as the 71st-largest in the nation by the Council on Foundations, claimed assets of $1 billion, the New York Times reports. It was forced to close in December due to financial problems with its assets, which were managed by Madoff.
http://catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=14720
Prosecutor Focus on Basis of Tiller Charges in Closing Arguments
Prosecutor Barry Disney on Wednesday urged a judge to focus on the criminal charges against a Wichita abortion provider, not his lawyers' attempts to discredit them. Disney had been less vocal than George Tiller's lawyers the previous two days during a pretrial hearing that concluded Wednesday. He lodged an occasional objection and spent little time cross-examining witnesses, as Tiller's lawyers argued the case should be dismissed.
http://www.kansas.com/819/story/655472.html
January 8, 2009
The New York Times Praises Pro-Lifers (!?!)
| The New York Times Praises Pro-Lifers (!?!) Sometimes, through no fault of its own, the New York Times has been known to stumble upon the truth. On pro-life issues, that's generally the best we can hope for. On 7 December 2008, the Times ran an op-ed by Ross Douthat called "Abortion Politics Didn't Doom the G.O.P." The pro-life movement, Douthat condescendingly concedes, was not completely responsible for John McCain's defeat in the 2008 presidential election. Why? Because pro-lifers have finally decided to leave the Stone Age and get with the program. According to Douthat, "compromise, rather than absolutism, has been the watchword of anti-abortion efforts for some time now. Since the early 1990s, advocates have focused on pushing largely modest state-level restrictions, from parental notification laws to waiting periods to bans on what we see as the grisliest forms of abortion." "The culture of (sometimes violent) protest that once defined the movement," Douthat continues, "is largely a thing of the past . . . Over the same period, pro-lifers--especially in the evangelical community--have broadened their movement's ambit, emphasizing poverty, the environment and other non-abortion "life issues" more consistently than an earlier generation did. Leading pro-life figures like Rick Warren are more likely to be photographed touring poor nations alongside Bono than protesting outside abortion clinics." Yay! Good for us. We have been upgraded from crazed, clinic-bombing fundamentalists to well-meaning--if simple-minded--folk. We can even be mentioned in the same sentence as the Blessed Bono, icon of the Left. Douthat may honestly think he's doing us a favor, so it's hard to get too angry with him. However, one must remember that a condescending pat on the head is really not any better than a slap in the face in the long run. It was, after all, the NYT that caricatured the largest peaceful movement in American history as "violent" (at the same time that it aids and abets the 4,000 violent acts against unborn children each day!). As far as compromising our pro-life principles, as Douthat suggests, we are having none of that. Passing a law that puts certain abortions off-limits is not a compromise. Real numbers of babies are being saved. And even the NYT is, if this article is any indication, beginning to sound a just little bit defensive. Douthat pretends that our interest in poverty and "non-abortion 'life issues'" is something new under the sun. Hardly. Why does he think that we came to this fight in the first place? The unborn are the poorest of the poor. A person is a person no matter how small, and pro-lifers love people. That's why it's important to us to save their lives. The NYT is celebrating because they think that we've become a little more like them. But in wandering a little closer to the truth, they actually become a little more like us. Contact: Colin Mason Source: Population Research Institute Source URL: http://www.pop.org Publish Date: January 8, 2009 Link to this article: http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090108_1.htm |
"I Saw The Truth With My Own Two Eyes"
| "I Saw The Truth With My Own Two Eyes" Linda Carter testified that she saw evidence that Tiller had committed illegal late-term abortions Wichita, KS - The ex-lover of disgraced former attorney general Paul Morrison concluded her testimony this morning with powerful and sometimes emotional testimony about her relationship with Morrison, dispelling the theory that she may have exerted influence over his decision to file the 19 criminal charges Tiller now faces. Carter testified that she knew that, while attorney general, Phill Kline had filed 30 criminal charges against Tiller related directly to illegal late-term abortions that were dismissed at the request of Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston. Kline assumed the office of Johnson County District Attorney and became Carter's boss after Morrison defeated Kline as Attorney General. Carter began her affair with Morrison when he served as the DA of Johnson County. Carter asked Kline to see the Tiller abortion records, copies of which were transferred by Kline to the District Attorney's office when he made the transition from the attorney general's office. She said that Kline took the top three files out of a box of files and allowed her to examine them. Carter testified that it was part of her normal duties in the DA's office to review medical records and make recommendations as to whether criminal charges should be pursued. Carter testified that after reviewing the records, it was her opinion that Tiller had committed the crimes with which Kline had charged Tiller. "I saw the truth with my own two eyes," she testified. "I saw the records and made my own opinion." Later Carter and Morrison quarreled about the Tiller charges and Carter asked him, "Are you going to do the right thing and charge Tiller?" By that, Carter said that she was referring to reinstating the 30 Kline charges against Tiller. She re-emphasized that the question was hers and hers alone, and that Kline never suggested that she ask it. As for Tiller's defense theory that she influenced Morrison to file the charges to please her, Carter told the court that Morrison's filing of the 19 "technical" charges against Tiller made her "very unhappy," because she thought that he should have instead reinstated the more serious Kline charges. "I exerted no influence on him and I don't think he considered my opinion whatsoever in filing the charges," she said. "It would have been futile on my part to try to persuade him." "I really doubt that this was the testimony that Tiller's defense team wanted to hear," said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman, who was present during the dramatic testimony. "Carter dismantled their absurd theories and left them stunned." Paul Morrison, who was subpoenaed and set to testify, was never was called due to an agreement between Tiller's defense and Assistant Attorney General Barry Disney. Morrison had previously stated that Carter had nothing to do with his decision to charge Tiller. "Tiller's attorneys had no desire to call Morrison and have him confirm that what Carter said was true. Carter was devastating to their claims of outrageous governmental conduct, but Morrison's testimony would have been the death knell," said Newman. Judge Clark Owens, told the parties that he planned to take matter under advisement and would issue a ruling in "mid-February." Contact: Troy Newman, Cheryl Sullenger Source: Operation Rescue Source URL: http://www.operationrescue.org Publish Date: January 7, 2009 Link to this article: http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090108_2.htm |
Losing a Baby You've Never Seen is Devastating
| Losing a Baby You've Never Seen is Devastating Say 'Silent No More' Leaders The case of a New Jersey hospital that threw out the body of a possibly stillborn baby is a heartbreaking story that calls to mind the anguish of post-abortive women, say the leaders of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign (SNMAC), the world's largest network of women and men harmed by abortion. "This case illustrates what is obvious - the loss of a baby, even a baby you've never seen, is devastating," said Janet Morana, co-founder of SNMAC. "The women and, yes, the men of Silent No More have suffered this same loss, of having their aborted children tossed out with the trash, only to have their anguish minimized or denied by apologists for the abortion industry. I pray not only that this little boy is found, but also that his mother experience healing and closure." "My heart goes out to the mother of this baby," said Georgette Forney, another co-founder of SNMAC. "Even if the child was stillborn, he was a human being who should have been treated with the respect and care that every single person, born and unborn, deserves. I know the trauma and heartache of wondering what happened to my baby's body; officials should turn those landfills upside down until they restore that child to his grieving mother." Contact: Janet Morana, Georgette Forney Source: Silent No More Awareness Campaign Source URL: http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org Publish Date: January 7, 2009 Link to this article: http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090108_3.htm |
Teen Birth Rate Soars
| Teen Birth Rate Soars in 26 States The teen birth rate is up significantly in 26 states, according to government data released today and reported by USA Today. The highest rates in 2006 were in the South and Southwest; Mississippi led the way, with 68.4 births per 1,000 15- to 19-year-old girls. The lowest rates were in the Northeast. Pinning down the reasons the rates have increased isn't easy. Some blame the sexualized culture. Chad Hills, research analyst at Focus on the Family Action, named another culprit. "Since schools have our children for much of their adolescent lives, the message they give our kids about sexual activity is crucial," he said. "Our liberal society's dream of consequence-free sexual activity is a lie. The truth is that all sexual activity does have consequences, condom or no condom." Hills said the foundation of a stable society rests on marriage and family. "When we deviate from these structures, in the name of tolerance and individualism, we destabilize society," he said. Contact: Jennifer Mesko Source: CitizenLink Source URL: http://www.citizenlink.org Publish Date: January 7, 2009 Link to this article: http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090108_4.htm |
Nancy Pelosi's Support for Embryonic Stem Cell Research
| Nancy Pelosi reiterates support for embryonic stem cell research Washington DC, Jan 8, 2009 / 04:05 am (CNA).- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has described herself as an "ardent, practicing Catholic," has again reiterated her support for funding embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). Her remarks were published January 4 in the International Herald Tribune, discussing Democratic proposals to implement funding legislation to overturn policies set by the Bush administration. "I myself would favor legislation, so it is the law," she said. Speaker Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat, has been criticized by bishops and other Catholics for her misleading remarks on Catholic teaching and ethical duties towards unborn human life, the California Catholic Daily reports. In her August 2008 interview with Meet the Press, she said the point at which life begins has been "an issue of controversy" over the history of the Church. Among other prominent prelates, Cardinal Justin Rigali of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities and Bishop William Lori of the USCCB's Committee on Doctrine issued a joint statement that said the Speaker "misrepresented the history and nature of the authentic teaching of the Catholic Church against abortion." Last September, San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer invited Speaker Pelosi to converse with him about her Catholic faith and her positions in conflict with Catholic teaching. "Let us pray together that the Holy Spirit will guide us all toward a more profound understanding and appreciation for human life, and toward a resolution of these differences in truth and charity and peace," he said. There has been no report concerning whether Speaker Pelosi has conversed with the archbishop, the California Catholic Daily reports. Speaker Pelosi's latest remarks on embryonic stem cell research come as the incoming Congress and the Obama administration are expected to lift restrictions on its funding. In 2001, President George W. Bush signed an executive order prohibiting federal funding of research on embryonic stem cells, excepting 60 existing stem cell lines from embryos which had already been destroyed. In June 2007, another executive order authorized the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health to fund stem cell research only if the cells were produced by methods that do not create, destroy, or harm human embryos. Bush vetoed ESCR funding bills in 2006 and 2007. Justifying his 2007 veto, he said "If this legislation became law, it would compel American taxpayers -- for the first time in our history -- to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos." "I made it clear to Congress and to the American people that I will not allow our nation to cross this moral line," he added. "Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical -- and it is not the only option before us." In June 2008 the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reiterated the teaching of the Church on ESCR, saying "Harvesting these 'embryonic stem cells' involves the deliberate killing of innocent human beings, a gravely immoral act." Source: Catholic News Agency Source URL: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com Publish Date: January 8, 2009 Link to this article: http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090108_5.htm |
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