According to Entertainment Weekly, MTV's December 28 abortion reality show "will tackle all sides of the issue."
This apparently means the pro-life perspective will simply get tackled.
The new website, 16 and Loved, sponsored by the pro-abortion group Exhale, states MTV collaborated with it for the program:
16 & Loved is a campaign to give our public support to the 3 young women who told their abortion story on the MTV special – "No Easy Decision" – created for the popular series "16 & Pregnant."…
16 & Loved is brought to you by Exhale, a nonprofit organization which provides the 1st and only national, multilingual after-abortion talkline. We partnered with MTV on the special….
What's more, the "No Easy Decision" website links only to pro-abortion groups (including The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and, of course, Planned Parenthood) and false and dangerous contraceptive propaganda….
Actually, according to Guttmacher, the pregnancy failure rate of condoms is 17.4%, never mind the failure rate for STDs, some of those deadly.
What's more, pro-abort blog Jezebel reports:
They've also gotten feminist bloggers like Jessica Valenti, Lynn Harris, and Steph Herold (disclosure: all friends of the site and this writer) to live-blog or tweet the show. There will also be a Women's Media Center watch-in.
16 and Loved's Facebook page inadvertently shows how pro-lifers can attempt to balance the spin:
Follow the conversation live on Twitter with the hashtags #16andloved, #WMCwatchin, and #provoice.
Pro-life tweeters can use those same hashtags as well.
Pro-lifers should also contact MTV to express disapproval that pro-life groups were not also contacted to "partner" on this show, if MTV were truly interested in balance. While MTV makes it difficult to email complaints (perhaps someone will have better luck finding an email address), it does host a community forum at which pro-lifers can certainly express themselves.
And while the pro-abortion side focuses on showing approval and love to a teen who has aborted, the pro-life message is to love both the teen and her baby. It does not have to be either-or.
Contact: Jill Stanek Source: JillStanek.com Publish Date: December 27, 2010
Pro-lifers crashed the "holiday" parties of NARAL and DC Abortion Fund to deliver the message that you cannot murder innocent babies in the womb and celebrate Christmas without making a complete mockery of the Christ Child. These are the very same people who would kill the baby Jesus, given some of Mary's circumstances.
Christ said: "Whatever you have done to the least of my brothers, you have done to ME."
Is it YouTube's policy to prevent free speech? YouTube allows some of the most disgusting videos, but these two videos were pulled because "content violated YouTube's Terms of Service" and because the apparently violated "YouTube's policy on shocking and disgusting content."
See both videos:
NARAL Disruption and DC Abortion Fund Disruption:
Statement of Gary Boisclair, Insurrecta Nex DC Chapter
"The people at NARAL and DC Abortion Fund have celebrated their selfish, deceptive, wicked ideas and called it a holiday party. We at Insurrecta Nex love them too much to fail to tell them the truth.
"These enemies of life and of God's law will have no rest until they repent. We will not cease to publicize the fact that they are murdering babies. People who are determined to support the murder of the most defenseless must listen to the Voice of Truth, the Baby born in Bethlehem."
Statement of Andrew Beacham, Insurrecta Nex DC Chapter
"YouTube has consistently discriminated against the Pro-Life message and objective Truth by censoring Pro-Life videos submitted to their website, including three of our recent submissions. YouTube allows obscene, perverse, and graphic videos to remain on their website, but not our videos which are educational, a documentation of history and newsworthy.
"The D.C. Abortion Fund and LOYL (League Of Young Leaders), NARAL's young professionals group, both threw 'holiday parties' that were fundraisers and were open to the public. Both groups have public pages...and public event pages on Facebook. If anyone wants to see who is supporting, raising money, or attending these events they only need to look the events page up on each groups' Facebook page.
"Dear YouTube, There is no violation of privacy when they make their face and views public. Murder is murder and it does not matter if it happens in public or in private. We will all know who you are eventually. Remember Nuremburg?"
Statement of David Lewis, Insurrecta Nex DC Chapter
"I wanted to let them know that being involved directly or indirectly with the murder of children is a sin against Almighty God and man. What I did was an act of mercy to the people involved financially or otherwise with child killing.
"I am shocked in the cowardice of YouTube. The fact that they would leave pornography and other garbage untouched and would pull our video down is a mockery of truth and justice."
Contact: Catherine Veritas Publish Date: December 23, 2010
The Kansas Board of Healing Arts is planning to hold disciplinary hearings for an abortionist in May.
The hearings for Kristin Neuhaus have been delayed from the original scheduled dates of December 20 and January 11. The disciplinary hearing will be conducted in a trial-like format.
"Kristin Neuhaus was an abortionist who was disciplined because she forced an abortion on a girl several years ago, so that forced her to close her own abortion clinic," Operation Rescue spokesperson Cheryl Sullinger tells of the abortionist's history.
Ann Kristin NeuhausSo with her own business shut down, Neuhaus went to work for late-term abortionist George Tiller of Wichita, who, according to state law, needed another doctor to sign off on late-term abortions to provide medical confirmation that a need existed for the procedure. But Operation Rescue contends that Neuhaus broke the stringent state law in her illegal financial affiliation with Tiller.
"It's more of the same with her, more of what she's been previously disciplined for -- not making adequate patient interviews, not taking adequate patient histories, not doing enough to come to the diagnosis that she came to [and] not recording the diagnosis," Sullinger explains.
The pro-life spokeswoman notes 11 documented cases in which Neuhaus helped kill viable babies who should have been protected by law. The four-day hearing is now set for May 3.
Contact: Charlie Butts Source: OneNewsNow Publish Date: December 27, 2010
Christian author and pro-life apologist Randy Alcorn has responded to this December 14 Associated Press story:
An Aberdeen [Washington] doctor who admitted misconduct with an abortion will keep his license under an agreement with WA regulators…
Dr. John Eiland will pay a $3,000 fine, attend ethics training and be on probation for 3 years. He's an obstetrician and gynecologist with the Grays Harbor Women's Clinic.
The state Health Dept. accused him in February of having an improper relationship with a co-worker in 2006 when he worked at Providence Centralia Hospital. Investigators said he performed an abortion on the woman when she became pregnant. He failed to refer her to another doctor or keep records of her treatment.
Alcorn's enlightening response, on Facebook:
Here is the true story of a licensed physician who kills babies for a living. He has an adulterous relationship with a hospital employee. (What a surprise that a child-killer would act unethically). Then when she becomes pregnant, he performs an abortion on her. He did all this undercover, not keeping records of her treatment because it would have incriminated him. (Imagine a professional child-killer killing his own child to cover up his sins. What a shock!)
Dr. Eiland was found guilty of all this by the state Health Dept. And what is his punishment? Being dismembered like the thousands he has killed? Imprisonment? Loss of his medical license? No. A small fine equal to what he makes in an hour killing children. Plus, he will be on probation 3 years and have to attend "ethics training." This means he can go right on killing other people's children and being well paid to do so.
Is this not a hideous irony? First, why should anyone be surprised that a man who kills children for a living would have a sexually inappropriate relationship with a co-worker and try to cover it up by murdering his own child? This is a man who has spent his life accumulating substantial wealth by murdering other people's children. He does this not occasionally, but daily.
And what message does the WA State Health Dept. send when he is caught doing this? That his biggest crime was this: failing to keep records of his child-killing and failing to refer the killing of his child to be done by one of his colleagues. (It would have been perfectly fine for him to kill one of their children in exchange for them killing one of his, as long as proper records were kept.)
The ultimate irony is the way the authorities attempt to take the moral high ground. The man will be given "ethics training." The way the health department has deemed best to deal with a licensed child-killer is not to eliminate child killing. It is not to take away his license to kill children. It is to send him to an ethics class so that in the future he can kill children without being unethical.
Whom shall we send next to an ethics class? Serial killers? If it seems offensive to even say such a thing, what is an abortionist if not a serial killer? Does the fact that society declares it legal for him to kill children, and the fact that he is well paid by others to do so, in any way change the humanity of the child he is killing, or the moral repugnance of what he is doing in the sight of a holy God?
Shame on the medical profession for calling cold-blooded killers "physicians." Shame on America for arrogantly regarding ourselves as a civilized nation while we endorse the killing of our children. And shame on all Christians who look the other way and pretend babies aren't dying. And shame on all those, including Christians, who year after year go right on supporting political figures who continue to advocate the killing of innocent unborn children.
God help us. We deserve only his judgment, but may he be merciful to us. And may we use what time we have left to repent.
Contact: Jill Stanek Source: JillStanek.com Publish Date: December 27, 2010
NRLC President Dr. Wanda Franz
When I had my first baby forty years ago, I was told that he could not feel or "register" pain like adults. When he was a few days old, I had to hold him in order for the medical personnel to "stick" his heel repeatedly with a razor-blade-like instrument in order to draw blood. It was obvious to me that he felt this procedure as a painful stimulus.
What were the signs that told me he felt pain? First of all, he screamed loudly. As the procedure was repeated, he tried to pull his foot away, and the technician had to hold on tightly to the little foot. Finally, he turned very red and sweated profusely. When the procedure was over, I fed him and he fell asleep for an extended period.
Meanwhile, I was being told by the doctors that he felt no pain. How could the medical personnel have seen what I saw, yet still claim that newborn babies do not feel pain? They always implied that mothers were too emotionally-involved to be able to evaluate, with scientific accuracy, what we were seeing.
Although I was a mother, I was also a developmental psychologist; and I had learned something about doing evaluations on newborn babies. Eventually, the doctors got the scientific evidence they needed to be able to see what I was seeing.
The problem with recognizing pain is to understand how pain works. Pain is what one feels as a result of some kind of event from outside being monitored by the body. The nervous system brings the stimulus into the body to the brain where it is registered, that is, felt. We can't see that part of the event. What we see is the response to the pain. However, the response of the body to the pain is managed by different nervous pathways than those used for experiencing the pain.
The ability of the individual to respond to the pain is affected by many different things. A person may be sick, under the effect of medications, or distracted by other events, which can limit the ability to respond. A very important factor in the response to pain is the developmental maturity of the individual. Babies have, what developmental psychologists call, a "limited behavioral repertoire." That is, babies can cry and pull away, but they can't speak and express their anger at being hurt. Babies can't do the things that adults can do to demonstrate that they are in pain.
In other words, all of us, including the doctors taking blood from my baby, rely on the behavioral response of the person to determine whether or not they think that person is in pain. It is easy to mis-read the cues the person is giving us. The baby's behavior alone wasn't enough to give the doctors the idea that the baby was really hurting.
Since I had my experience with my first baby, we have learned a lot more about pain, and we have new ways of assessing its presence or absence. For example, we now know that pain causes stress hormones to be released into a person's bloodstream. It is possible to measure how much pain a person is feeling by measuring the amount of hormones in the person's blood.
That is the same stress response that causes a person in pain to turn red and sweat, just as my baby did. There is no question that those symptoms are further signs that he was in pain. I had assumed that, while it was certainly unpleasant, that it would pass and be forgotten leaving no negative side-effects. However, research suggests that the effects of experiencing pain in infancy can be more negative than one would have expected.
Contact: Dr. Wanda Franz Source: National Right to Life
Publish Date: December 22, 2010
Planned Parenthood Federation of America's government funding keeps mounting.
Its recently released report for the 2008-09 year showed the country's leading abortion provider received $363.2 million in government grants and contracts. That compares with $349.6 million in such funding received during 2007-08. The figures are based on a financial year that goes from July to June.
Planned Parenthood's total revenue in 2008-09 was $1.1 billion, according to the report. Its revenue from the previous year was $1.04 billion.
Planned Parenthood affiliates performed 324,008 abortions in 2008, the latest year for which statistics have been reported by the organization. That was an increase of nearly 19,000 abortions from the previous year.
Pro-life legislators are expected to make a renewed effort in the next session of Congress to pass a bill that would withhold Title X funds from PPFA and other abortion providers. Title X is the federal government's family planning program.
"It is morally wrong to end an unborn human life by abortion. It is also morally wrong to take the taxpayer dollars of millions of pro-life Americans and use those funds to promote abortion," Rep. Mike Pence, R.-Ind., said in a written statement Dec. 18. Pence is the sponsor of the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act.
"Planned Parenthood's own report shows that the largest abortion provider in America is being bankrolled by American taxpayers," Pence said. "With a nearly 10 percent unemployment rate, there is simply no reason during these tough economic times why taxpayers' hard-earned money should fund the activities of abortion providers and equip them with the resources they need to end innocent human life."
Contact: Tom Strode Source: Baptist Press
Publish Date: December 22, 2010
Clinic escorts for the Summit Women's Abortion Center
A Detroit pro-life counselor is taking exception to a court ruling against him.
According to Tom Brejcha of the Thomas More Society, the court ruling that requires Chris Coatney to stay at least 100 feet away from the Summit Women's Center in Detroit stems from an incident in which the abortion clinic manager followed the pro-lifer to a service station before she sought a protective order and lied in her testimony as she claimed Coatney was the one who stalked her.
Tom Brejcha (TMS)"The transcript shows that the abortion clinic proprietor actually said under oath... 'Judge, he has these signs. And you can't see; he might, for all I know, have been holding a gun underneath one of the signs,'" the attorney reports.
But though the claims are "absolutely outrageous" and "purely hypothetical," the court went along with what Brejcha contends is a lie.
"This is not a man who uses guns," the Thomas More Society attorney assures. "He uses his religious faith in his zeal for the gospel to try and persuade people to do the right thing and save their babies' lives."
Meanwhile, Coatney says he has video evidence that shows the clinic workers were stalking him, so Brejcha's group is looking into legal avenues to challenge the court's current ruling.
Contact: Charlie Butts Source: OneNewsNow Publish Date: December 23, 2010
Oregon may be about to pass a law that puts a patient's end of life desires into a computer registry. From the story:
Oregon is making it easier for the seriously ill to voluntarily make their wishes known about end-of-life care by creating an electronic database that first responders can quickly check during a medical emergency. At least two other states—West Virginia and New York—are developing similar systems, which are an outgrowth of signed paper forms. Known as physician orders for life-sustaining treatment, or Polst, the forms are supposed to direct all health-care providers about the type of care a patient wants to receive.
Paper-based systems are in use or in development in 33 states. Many people put the papers on their refrigerators or some other prominent location in their homes. But paper forms are sometimes overlooked or lost. The electronic systems aim to make the information in these forms—such as whether a patient wants a feeding tube or even to be taken to a hospital at all—more readily available to an emergency worker, through a phone call or the Internet.
I have no problem with this in theory and under restricted conditions such as hospice. But we must be careful. I think there should be a complete exclusion from suspected suicides from this plan. In other words, no emergency response or medical team should be required to stand back and allow a person attempting suicide to die–whether or not part of a legalized assisted suicide regimen–otherwise they become complicit in the death. Indeed, no one should have the right to force another to participate in their self destruction.
Think that would never happen? It already has in the UK. Even though she could have been saved, Kerrie Woolteron was allowed to die by doctors after she drank anti freeze. Why? When the ambulance brought her to the ER, she had a note pinned to her clothes stating she didn't want to be treated. And so, even though she was mentally disturbed and had many suicide attempts on her record, the doctors just stood back and watched her die painfully over a 24 hour period. Disgraceful–and approved by the Coroner's Inquest.
Contact: Wesley J. Smith Source: Secondhand Smoke Publish Date: December 22, 2010
Euthanasia is in the air. We see stories of disabled people in the UK being assisted in suicide. and the prosecutors look the other way. The Dutch are debating whether the elderly "tired of life" should allowed access to assisted suicide. The Swiss Supreme Court declared assisted suicide for the mentally ill. Dutch and Belgian doctors–and in Belgium, nurses–commit euthanasia without request or consent. And yet, when a Finnish nurse murders elderly patients, we can't imagine what her motive could be? From the story:
Aino Nykopp-Koski, 60, killed the patients, aged between 70 and 91, with drugs they had not been prescribed, including sedatives and opiates. The murders took place at various hospitals, care homes and patients' homes between 2004 and 2009, the Helsinki court heard. Media reported that the court had not been able to determine any motive for the crimes.
I am not asserting a direct connection between euthanasia practice and advocacy and these crimes. Yet, it is certainly worth noting that the exact same thing happens in Belgium and the Netherlands–sick and debilitated patients killed by medical personnel who have not asked for euthanasia–and the authorities yawn. Robert Latimer murdered his daughter Tracy in Canada because she had cerebral palsy, and received good poll numbers and general applause. Jack Kevorkian has been portrayed by Al Pacino and gets $50-,000 a speech! Stories of "death with dignity" proliferate in the media and in popular culture, giving the impression that bumping off the suffering is compassionate.
If this were a right wing terror bombing, angry critics would point (and have pointed) to far less explicit advocacy as an obvious potential cause of unleashing the perpetrator's inner demons. I daresay, the general atmosphere that has been created around taking life as a legitimate answer for the suffering of patients should at least be considered as providing a misguided justification in the disturbed murderer's mind. I mean, look around!
Contact: Wesley J. Smith Source: Secondhand Smoke Publish Date: December 23, 2010
My initial interpretation of the December 20 news that Planned Parenthood will now require all its affiliates to commit abortions was that it would require all clinics to commit them.
A pro-abort tweeted in response to my post, "doesn't mean all CLINICS. affiliate = regional grouping."
The Daily Caller today confirmed this. I'm skipping PP's rhetoric in my excerpt, but be sure to read its PR spin at the link.
When contacted by The Daily Caller, Lisa David, senior vice president of Health Services Support for PP, said that the organization is implementing a broad "new patient services initiative."…
[S]aid David in a statement. "To meet the needs of our patients, PP affiliates will now offer a unified set of core preventive services."…
She went on to say that abortion services will be offered in at least one clinic per affiliate. However, a waiver may be obtained in the case of "unique local circumstances."…
[A] spokesperson for the Family Research Council… told TheDC… "This is about… bringing in more money…. [T]hey try to create a public image where everything focuses on STD's, family planning, etc, but abortion is a profitable endeavor."
Right now, PP has 817 health clinics throughout the U.S. 173 of those already perform surgical abortions, and 131 perform chemical abortions. The PP network is made up of 87 locally-government regional centers, which then oversee hundreds of other clinics.
What's going on is PP wants to stop outsourcing abortions and keep them all in-house.
The plan also dovetails nicely with PP's burgeoning webcam (telemed) abortion business. The new scheme will allow each affiliate to have an RU486 hub, requiring only 1 abortionist, from whence the chemical abortion cocktail is dispensed via computer screen to all other clinics in the affiliate.
Contact: Jill Stanek Source: JillStanek.com Publish Date: December 23, 2010
Choice, privacy, reproductive freedom. Bodily autonomy. Rape, incest. Teen pregnancy, economic hardship. Back-alley abortions. Overpopulation. Crime and child abuse.
These are some of the things people talk about when they discuss the ethics of abortion. But none of them is relevant to deciding whether abortion is morally right or wrong. Author and speaker Greg Koukl uses a helpful illustration.
"Imagine that your child walks up when your back is turned and asks, 'Daddy [or Mommy], can I kill this?' What is the first thing you must find out before you can answer him? You can never answer the question 'Can I kill this?' unless you've answered a prior question: What is it? [A cockroach? Sure. His baby sister? Hold on a minute!] This is the key question.
"Abortion involves killing and discarding something that's alive," Koukl continues. "Whether it's right or not to take the life of any living thing depends entirely upon what it is."
…The real issue is the moral status of the unborn entity who is killed by abortion. Is the unborn a human being (a scientific question)? If so, how should we treat him or her (a moral question)?
The pro-life argument, in brief, runs as follows. From conception the unborn is a distinct, living and whole (though immature) human organism--a member of the species Homo sapiens at a very early stage of his or her development. We know this from the science of embryology.
Morally, no relevant difference exists between human beings before and after birth. Unborn humans differ from older humans (like newborns) in size, level of development, location and degree of dependency, but none of those differences are significant in a way that would justify killing the former.
Rather, human beings have moral value and a right to life by virtue of the kind of thing they are, not because of acquired characteristics or abilities that some human beings have and others do not, and which we may gain or lose throughout our lifetimes.
It follows that all human beings, including the unborn, are equal in having basic dignity and a right not to be unjustly killed. So elective abortion is wrong.
How do pro-choice advocates respond? Usually with the kind of question-begging rhetoric discussed above. Always clarify the issue--the moral status of the unborn--and use science and simple moral reasoning (above) to point them to the truth: Abortion unjustly takes the lives of innocent human beings, and it should not be permitted.
Editor's note. The previous are excerpts from an article that appeared in the December 2010 issue of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life News.
Source: National Right to Life
Publish Date: December 21, 2010
Last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revoked its regulatory approval of the drug Avastin to treat late stage, metastatic breast cancer. Each year, the practicing oncologists chosen by 17,500 American women to save them from their life-threatening, heavily progressed cancer prescribe Avastin to treat them.
The FDA explained that it was revoking approval of the drug for that use because it decided that the drug does not provide "a sufficient benefit in slowing disease progression to outweigh the significant risk to patients." Risk? The drug is prescribed for women who are otherwise going to die from cancer unless the drug saves them at least for a time. The far greater risk to these women is from the FDA, not the drug.
As The Wall Street Journal said last Friday in response to the FDA's explanation:
Ponder that [word] "sufficient." The agency is substituting its own judgment about clinical meaningfulness for those of practicing oncologists and terminally ill cancer patients.
That FDA judgment was determined last summer by an internal agency panel of 13 experts, only two of whom were breast cancer oncologists, and none of whom were breast cancer patients.
Death Sentence for Mrs. Turnage?
Contrast the FDA's elitist, authoritarian, Ruling Class explanation for its bureaucratic dictat with the real world experience of Mrs. Turnage, whose story was told in a New York Post commentary on December 15 entitled "Don't Kill the Drug That Saved My Mom," by her son Josh Turnage. Josh explained:
In June 2006, my mom was diagnosed with Stage II breast cancer. She underwent a double mastectomy, reconstruction and six months of chemo…. Then just 44, she had "triple negative breast cancer," a rare and particularly lethal form of the disease.
As Josh observed, traditional therapies typically do not work against the disease that threatened to kill his mother at that early age. As a result,
A year after the initial diagnosis, the doctor told our family that the cancer had gone metastatic, or Stage IV, and had spread to her right lung. Such news is typically a death sentence.
But her doctor urged her to try a new experimental drug called Avastin, just approved by the FDA for breast cancer. Josh explained the results:
We got a miracle. After four months of Avastin treatment in combination with chemo, the cancer effectively vanished -- the doctors literally couldn't find any trace of the disease in her body.
In January, 2009, Mrs. Turnage's chosen doctors decided she could terminate her chemotherapy treatments and just continue with exclusive use of Avastin. Today, nearly two years later, she's still cancer-free.
Mrs. Turnage is a "super responder" to Avastin, one of a minority of patients receiving the treatment for whom the drug is powerfully effective. Tumors shrink for about half of patients receiving Avastin. On average, patients taking the drug with chemotherapy experience twice as many days or months with no progression of their tumors as those not taking the drug. That means they live longer, on average a few months longer, with their families and friends. Whether that and the chance for much greater success as for Mrs. Turnage is worth it is for patients to decide, with the advice of their doctors, not government bureaucrats.
As Josh rightly says, "We're talking about Stage IV cancer; the FDA should let patients and doctors decide if a medicine's benefits are worth the risks." That has been the tradition of freedom in America.
Josh explains the message from the FDA's decision to his mother, and to the American people:
By denying approval for this drug, the FDA is basically telling my mother and my family that her life just isn't worth the price. They're robbing her of a chance to celebrate her 30th wedding anniversary with my dad, or to see my little sister who is in kindergarten graduate from high school…. Avastin has given my mom priceless time -- time to spend with me, my siblings, my father and all her other family and friends. No woman should ever be denied that opportunity by our government."
Bloodthirsty Progressives
The Susan G. Komen Foundation opposed the FDA's action. So did the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, a cancer patients' advocacy organization. The U.S. National Comprehensive Cancer Network, an alliance of 21 top cancer centers that issues medical guidelines based clinical evidence, also supports the continued availability of Avastin for breast cancer. Even in Europe, where health care rationing is prevalent, the European Medicines Agency, which is the FDA for the European Union, ruled last week that Avastin would continue to be available for breast cancer treatment there.
To no avail. In America, the FDA has spoken. Those super responders to Avastin like Mrs. Turnage, if not Mrs. Turnage herself, must die, the sooner the better.
As Sally Pipes wrote at Forbes.com last week, "Government drug rationing isn't going to stop at Avastin." The FDA decision is a straw in the wind, indicating an ominous turn in American medicine, if doctors, patients, and the American people do not fight back. What is needed is not a stop gap solution applying only to Avastin. The FDA must be fundamentally reformed, as specified below.
Avastin works by cutting off the blood supply to tumors, causing them to wither and die. It is still in use for the treatment of kidney, colon, lung, and brain cancers. Because of that, doctors can still legally prescribe Avastin even for breast cancer "off label," which means for a use not approved by the FDA. But the treatment costs $88,000 a year. The FDA didn't say so, but that cost is the real reason for its action.
The FDA's decision means that Medicare and Medicaid will likely refuse to pay for the drug for breast cancer. These government programs do not pay for costly medicines where not FDA approved. This in turn provides the legal foundation for private insurance companies to now refuse payment for the treatment as well. They are not legally obligated to pay for costly therapies denied FDA approval and rejected by Medicare and Medicaid. Otherwise, they could be forced to pay for dances by Indian Medicine Men to cure cancer.
Ignorant liberals running your mouths about insurance company rationing, take note of how this works. No insurance company has the power to weigh costs against benefits, and tell you that your health if not your life is not worth the money. But the government has now arrogated to itself the power to do precisely that. That is the meaning of the Avastin decision.
When a third party, not the patient with his doctor's advice, weighs your health and life in the balance like this, I call it Fascism. It is a perfect analogue to Nazi practices, and we are not going to accept that in America. The American people need to go to war now against the FDA.
But the FDA decision is just one symptom of that more ominous, fundamental turn in American medicine mentioned above. The decision reflects a new fashion rising among America's Ruling Class, the imperious "judgment" that the latest, most advanced medical care for America's most seriously ill is too costly and not worth it.
The great virtue of American medicine is that it provides to the broad public, rather than just to the rich as in some enclaves around the world, the latest, most technologically and scientifically advanced health care on the planet for the most sick. Those suffering from cancer and heart disease, seniors suffering from the infirmities of advancing age, premature babies born smaller than your hand, are consequently rescued from premature death and incapacitating suffering far more than anywhere else on earth.
It should be no surprise that most health care spending is actually spent on the sick. That is what health care is for. But that is a big revelation to bloodthirsty progressives in the Ruling Class. In their emerging view, so much could be saved if we would just cut off the costly health care for the sickest and most vulnerable, and they would just fulfill their social responsibility by dying a cheap natural death that would not so burden the glorious Welfare State.
But what else could we better spend our money on but our health and our very lives and those of our loved ones? The progressives in the Ruling Class have their own dark answer to that question.
The rising anti-health care fashion is fueled by the realization of those in the know with access to the levers of power that they can buy far more votes spending all that money elsewhere than on health care for the sickest and most vulnerable. Those suffering from cancer and heart disease are too weak and sick to be relentless, effective political advocates. They may well be dead before they can even vote in the next election. Far more votes can be bought spending that money on younger, healthy voters who will be around a long time to work on, contribute to, and support campaigns and the progressives' Ruling Class political machine. Maybe spend it on more welfare for young families, or on more corporate subsidies for the endless "Green Energy" funding drain.
I call it the political logic of socialized medicine. This is why we see rationing in every other country where the government and politics have taken over the health care system. Of course, there are many "useful idiots" just caught up in the latest fashion swirl who have no clue as to the deeper political logic. But it is that political logic that is driving the suicide train that will deprive America of the central health care component of its high standard of living, unless we derail it.
Do Not Ask for Whom the Bell Tolls
The rising, anti-health care fashion of the Progressives and the Ruling Class is at the heart of Obamacare, which otherwise seems so perverse in relentlessly attacking the ability of the health care system to serve the sickest and most vulnerable. That is reflected most obviously in the legislation's insufficiently heralded, draconian cuts to Medicare.
When I compared the year by year data from the 2010 Annual Medicare Report with the 2009 Annual Medicare Report, even I was shocked by the draconian effect of Obamacare policies. For the first 20 years of full implementation of Obamacare, 2014 to 2033, Medicare is cut by $5 trillion! This involves mostly cuts in the payments to doctors and hospitals providing health care to seniors under Medicare. The Administration has already claimed political credit for the positive financial effects of these cuts. But if these Obamacare policies are not reversed, no doubt seniors will no longer be getting the health care under Medicare that has been so effective in extending their lives and functional capabilities. Even before these cuts, two thirds of hospitals were already losing money on Medicare patients,
The Wall Street Journal indicated in last week's Avastin editorial what is coming,
In September, the FDA and Medicare proposed a "parallel review" process that will allow the two agencies to coordinate market and reimbursement approval. Medicare is also increasingly opening "national coverage determination" reviews that allow a government board to decide if a therapy is "reasonable and necessary."
In other words, still more death panels for seniors.
Conservatives have been far too reluctant to criticize the unworkable Medicare cuts because they know that fundamental reform of Medicare is necessary to sharply reduce the program's dramatic runaway costs. But denying payment to doctors and hospitals for the health care they provide to seniors is no way to reform Medicare. That would not only suddenly leave seniors without the health care they have been promised, and have come to rely on as a result. It would suddenly leave doctors, clinics, specialists, and hospitals with uneconomic practices for seniors that they entered in good faith on the promise of payment from the government. This is like trying to balance the family budget by deciding not to pay the bills, for services the family expects to continue to consume. Or trying to achieve budget savings in national defense by not paying the manufacturers of the Air Force's planes, the Navy's ships, the Army's tanks and artillery, and the bullets, bombs and guns.
Ryan's Rescue
Far more responsible and carefully crafted are the Medicare reforms of newly minted House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan in his Ryan Roadmap, which conservatives should be supporting and advocating even more ardently. Those reforms would turn all of Medicare into Medicare Advantage, granting seniors vouchers they could use to purchase the private health insurance of their choice. As the above discussion shows, those private insurers would not have the power to ration and deny health care for seniors on the grounds that their health and their lives are not worth the money, which is what is now developing in Medicare.
The growth in payments for these health insurance vouchers is slowed so that seniors may have to pay some more for their coverage over time than under the current bankrupt Medicare system. But funds are provided to protect lower income seniors from these added costs. CBO scores these reforms as achieving full solvency for Medicare, without rationing and denying health care for seniors. This is a big winner politically as well as economically as compared to the Obamacare fiasco. This is what more conservatives need to realize.
Further, fundamental, FDA reform is also now essential, to protect all Americans from the Ruling Class bureaucrats. The FDA's legal mandate must be changed so that it determines only whether a drug is safe in considering approval, not whether it is effective as well, as required by current law. Whether it is effective can and should be determined by the patient's chosen doctors, not government bureaucrats. This should become a major cause among conservatives, to blow back the Ruling Class.
Finally, I can't tell for sure from Josh Turnage's article whether his mother is still receiving Avastin treatments to keep her cancer from returning. But if it does return, and she is denied the treatment, and she dies from the disease, then I would expect the Attorney General of her state to open an inquest into her death.
Contact: Peter Ferrara Source: The American Spectator
Publish Date: December 22, 2010
Judge Jody Luebbers
An Ohio judge has ruled a Planned Parenthood affiliate violated a state law involving an under-age girl in another example of misconduct uncovered among the abortion giant's centers.
Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Jody Luebbers ruled Dec. 7 that Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio broke the state's informed consent law when its doctor failed to meet with a 14-year-old girl at least 24 hours before performing an abortion on her. The decision came even before the case goes to trial Feb. 7.
"The health and safety of young girls is more important than Planned Parenthood's desire to perform an abortion," said Brian Hurley, an Alliance Defense Fund-affiliated lawyer who is representing the girl's parents in the case.
The parents -- who, along with their daughter, remain unnamed at Luebbers' order -- filed suit on behalf of their daughter when they learned Planned Parenthood performed an abortion on her after she was brought to the clinic by her soccer coach, who was the father of the unborn child. John Haller, 22 at the time, served three years in prison for sexual battery.
The Planned Parenthood clinic failed to notify civil authorities, a requirement in cases of statutory rape. The clinic also failed to inform the parents of the abortion or the sexual relationship, according to Alliance Defense Fund.
This is the latest in a pattern uncovered at some Planned Parenthood clinics. Hidden-camera investigations since 2008 by Live Action, a pro-life organization led by college students, have caught Planned Parenthood employees in Alabama, Arizona, California, Indiana and Tennessee seeking to cover up alleged child sexual abuse.
Affiliates of Planned Parenthood Federation of America performed 324,008 abortions in 2008, the latest year for which statistics have been reported by the organization.
Contact: Tom Strode Source: BP
Publish Date: December 21, 2010
The 112th Congress, which takes office in January, will bring with it more than 50 new pro-life representatives. Three from Virginia. One from New York. At least four from Ohio. Another five from Pennsylvania.
Leaders in the pro-life movement will be looking for them to get right to work.
"We made major pro-life gains last month, but they mean absolutely nothing if we do not turn them into serious legislative gains for the unborn," Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, wrote recently.
Republicans took back the majority in the House in November, claiming 242 seats, which will provide opportunities to pass pro-life amendments and stop taxpayer funding of abortion. Democrats, who typically support abortion, maintain control of the Senate.
In addition to pro-life amendments being added to budget bills, two bills will be introduced to block federal funding of abortion throughout the government, as promised by House Republican leadership before the election.
Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., will co-sponsor the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, which would install a government-wide prohibition on such funding, including a repeal of abortion funding in ObamaCare. And Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., will sponsor the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act, to ensure that Title X family planning programs do not send tax dollars to abortion organizations like Planned Parenthood.
Leading the House will be four pro-lifers: Rep. John Boehner (Ohio), as speaker; Rep. Eric Cantor (Virginia), as majority leader; Rep. Kevin McCarthy (California), as majority whip; and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Texas), as chairman of the House Conference.
Dr. Charmaine Yoest, president and CEO of Americans United for Life, applauded the GOP for its choice of leadership.
"Speaker Boehner has told me he wants to be the most pro-life speaker ever," she said recently. "We look forward to working with Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor and these new pro-life leaders of the House of Representatives."
Pro-life advances in the next two years would lay the groundwork for even greater progress if life advocates can add to their number of Senate allies in 2012 and elect a pro-life president.
"The leaders of both parties have been reminded that pro-life voters count," Dannenfelser said. "We remember. And our convictions about life are not 'also-rans' to any political party's priorities."
Source: CitizenLink
Publish Date: December 21, 2010
European Court of Human Rights
Pro-life advocates welcomed a legal ruling that refused to find there is a European right to abortion in a case that had been labeled the "Roe v. Wade of Europe."
The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights ruled there is no right to abortion for the Council of Europe that overrides pro-life laws in member countries. The decision, which is binding on all lower chambers and countries of the council, said the European Convention on Human Rights "could not be interpreted as conferring a right to abortion," according to a court news release.
The court, however, decided Ireland violated the rights of a woman who obtained an abortion in England because of fear her cancer might return and threaten her life if she continued to carry her child. The Grand Chamber ruled the Irish government should revise its procedures to enable a woman in such a circumstance to obtain an abortion in her own country.
William Saunders of American United for Life (AUL) said the Dec. 16 ruling "is a victory for those who value the sanctity of all innocent human life."
"The Convention was designed to protect against injustice," said Saunders, AUL's senior counsel and a consultant in the case, in a written statement. "The Court correctly held that the Convention cannot be used to deny a member state's right to legally protect its smallest and most vulnerable members."
In a written release, Jeanne Monahan of Family Research Council (FRC), which filed a brief on behalf of Ireland, described the court's decision as "a very welcome message not only to its constituent countries but to the world at large that the so-called 'right to an abortion' is neither fundamental nor recognized worldwide, as abortion advocates would suggest."
Ireland is one of four countries in the 47-member council that have not legalized abortion. The others are Andorra, Malta and Poland, according to the Times of Malta.
The chamber's decision against a council-wide right to abortion rejected efforts by abortion-promoting organizations that have sought to extend such a requirement to all member states and to punish health-care workers who refuse to perform the procedure.
The case -- A, B and C v. Ireland -- involved three women living in Ireland who traveled to Britain in 2005 for abortions. The Grand Chamber ruled against two of the women, whose reasons for seeking abortion did not involve a threat to their lives.
The court decided Ireland violated the "right to respect for her private life" of the third woman, who feared carrying her child to term might cause her cancer to come out of remission, according to the court's release. The Irish government did not provide the appropriate procedures for the woman to have an abortion, since the country's constitution protects the right to life of both the mother and her unborn child, the court said.
Roger Kiska, legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) in Europe, said in a written release, "[I]t's regrettable that Ireland lost on the third count despite such a lack of judicial record, physician consultation, or recourse to Irish courts."
ADF represented FRC in its brief filed with the court.
The chamber ordered Ireland to pay the woman the equivalent of 15,000 euros, which is about $19,600 in the United States.
Roe v. Wade is the 1973 opinion in which the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed state bans on abortion and, in conjunction with an accompanying decision, effectively legalized the procedure for any reason throughout all stages of pregnancy.
Contact: Tom Strode Source: BP Publish Date: December 21, 2010
Cincinnati Window Company Replaces Windows Shattered in Pro-Abortion Attack
Gilkey Windows in Cincinnati
In the wake of an act of pro-abortion violence, a Cincinnati window company has offered to replace the damaged windows at the home of Joe and Ann Scheidler, founders of the Pro-Life Action League.
On Thursday, December 2, the Scheidlers were awakened by the sound of shattering glass. They later discovered that someone had hurled two chunks of asphalt through their living room and dining room windows. Glass was all over the floor and outside on the front porch. One of the "missiles" was inside a plastic bag with an expletive-filled note for Joe Scheidler from self-identified "crazy feminist[s]." Click here to read the text of the note (warning: strong language).
"I have to admit it's a little unsettling," said Joe Scheidler, founder and president of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League. "But I have never tried to hide where I live or keep my phone number a secret. I think you have to be accessible, even if that means some of your enemies might show up."
After reading the story of the window vandalism online, Mike Gilkey, owner of Gilkey Windows in Cincinnati and passionate pro-lifer, wanted to do something to help the Scheidlers.
"I was speechless when I got a call from Mr. Gilkey's office offering to replace our windows," said Ann Scheidler, vice president of the League. "And it's not just the broken windows -- he's going to replace all the windows in the living room and dining room. This is unbelievably generous."
Joe Scheidler had met the Gilkeys more than 20 years ago while giving a speech in Cincinnati. Gilkey Window Company has a showroom in Chicago Ridge, and the company has recently expanded into the market of replacement windows in school buildings, helping to reduce heating and cooling costs and create a healthy and green environment.
"We are so grateful to the Gilkey family and company," said Joe Scheidler. "I hope any pro-lifer who needs new windows or doors will turn to Gilkey. In fact they can come over to my house and see my new windows. After all, we're in the book!"
Contact: Stephanie Lewis Source: Pro-Life Action League Publish Date: December 22, 2010
January 1 may be the day for New Year's Resolutions, but December is the time where politicos and think tanks and activists start planning their new initiatives in a big way.
Having watched his own party take it on the chin--both at the federal AND state levels--you would anticipate that pro-abortion President Barack Obama is in the uncomfortable position of having to do some serious re-evaluation. Or, perhaps not, judging by a piece that ran in Politico--"President Obama 2.0: Becoming 'CEO of America'," by John Harris and James Hohmann.
They argue, convincingly, that it's not just that Team Obama has a weak bench. The first-string lacks many of the skill set successful White House teams have possessed before. (And Obama, himself, has very little real legislative experience and is learning executive skills on the fly.)
Given all that, the advice is to "discard the Congress-focused strategy of the first two years and coming up with new and more creative ways to exercise power and set the national agenda." Where to look for guidance?
"Presidential scholars and veterans of previous administrations from both parties point to five strategies past presidents have used to meet the challenge Obama is confronting now," write Harris and Hohmann. Let's look at three. Trust me, it's essentially blue smoke and mirrors--and executive orders.
On the one hand Obama is being counseled to avoid Capitol Hill/the legislative process by issuing executive orders. It cannot be good for us, or the babies, or the medically vulnerable when Obama is following his instincts which include enthusiastically advancing the agenda of his many pro-abortion allies.
On the other hand, he is advised to "co-opt" the GOP opposition by adding some token Republicans to his Administration. ("Obama's challenge is to make sure that wave [of "conservative anger and energy"] is a spent force by 2012 -- in part by letting conservatives think they have achieved some of what they want"). Obama may think the public is an unsophisticated as this recommendation assumes, but in an era of limitless communication, meaningless gestures have short shelf-lives.
He's also advised to follow in the footsteps of Bill Clinton and use the powers of the executive branch (in "legitimate ways," of course) to expressly serve his own political ends--aka make use of the two million people who serve the Executive Branch. This is just another way of saying take credit for everything under the sun that is good, a strategy that Clinton excelled at.
And, I almost forgot, Obama should also "Draw new lines -- with new ideas." Put another way, "focus on issues for which debate transcends traditional partisan terms."
But this is the same rigmarole that Obama served up running for the Presidency--and ever since. For us in particular, all we EVER hear is that if were "really pro-life" or "really concerned about reducing the number of abortions," we'd buy into one or another bogus "compromise." Or we would accept Obama's assurances that an executive order can neutralize/obviate/eliminate all the provisions of ObamaCare that promote abortion.
So, we may hear that Obama is re-tooling, but there is zero reason to believe that means he will take his foot off the abortion-enhancing accelerator.
Contact: Dave Andrusko Source: National Right to Life
Publish Date: December 20, 2010
A New York nurse has lost her appeal of a court decision involving a work incident that she believes violated her conscience rights.
The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has refused Nurse Kathy DeCarlo the right to sue for enforcement of the Church Amendment -- the federal law that protects healthcare workers against discrimination for their beliefs -- after she was threatened with disciplinary measures if she did not assist in a late-term abortion.
"Nurse DeCarlo had been forced by Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, her employer, to assist with a 22-week abortion -- a horrific experience which gives her nightmares to this day," reports Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) attorney Steven F. Aden.
Steven Aden (ADF)Hospital administrators also attempted to coerce her into signing an agreement that she participate in future abortions, but the court has refused to apply the conscience-protection amendment, ruling that only the federal government has the right to do so.
"Unfortunately, the Obama administration has now taken the position that it will not enforce rights under the Church Amendment and has tried to set aside regulations passed in the Bush administration to give the Church Amendments more teeth and to protect pro-life healthcare workers," the attorney laments.
Meanwhile, a state court lawsuit in which DeCarlo requests damages is still pending. Aden says ADF will back the nurse until she and other pro-life healthcare workers are vindicated and their right of religious conscience is protected.
Contact: Charlie Butts Source: OneNewsNow Publish Date: December 21, 2010
A campaign against late-term abortions in Wisconsin has proved victorious, and one supporter of the effort feels it should be an encouragement to the rest of the country.
After an almost two-year struggle to convince the University of Wisconsin to drop its plans to perform late-term abortions at a medical center in Madison, the school agreed and now says it will also refrain from doing them elsewhere. Virginia Zignego of Pro-Life Wisconsin tells OneNewsNow it took a number of approaches to convince the school, including the participation of thousands in prayer vigils during that period.
Virginia Zignego"We have aired hundreds of pro-life television commercials in the Madison area, which emphasized the humanity of the pre-born," she reports. "Tens of thousands of people signed a pro-life petition, and hundreds of people boycotted the Madison Surgery Center."
She believes the success in Madison should warm the hearts of pro-life individuals throughout the rest of the country.
"Overwhelmingly, Americans have shown that they are more and more pro-life, and this really shows the impact that average people can have when they stand together," the Wisconsin pro-lifer notes.
After much success for the pro-life cause throughout the state, Zignego reports that only one late-term abortion center remains in Milwaukee and continues to kill viable babies.
Contact: Charlie Butts Source: OneNewsNow Publish Date: December 21, 2010
A Georgia woman has filed suit in federal court for the right to assisted suicide.
The New Jersey-based Final Exit Network, which is alleged to have helped people commit suicide, stopped its activities in Georgia when four members were arrested in connection with a June 2008 suicide. The four are charged with violating Georgia law in the death of John Delmer, 58, of Cumming, who died of asphyxiation after inhaling helium in the presence of two of them.
Rita Marker, an attorney and founder of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, now tells OneNewsNow that 43-year-old Susan Caldwell, who has a serious medical issue, wants the help of the Final Exit Network as she seeks to die.
"The woman...has Huntington's Chorea -- which is really a devastating illness, without question," she acknowledges. "But she has now filed suit in federal court asking that an 'exit guide' can be assigned to her."
Rita Marker (International Tasf Force on Euthanasia and Assited Suicide)According to the Final Exit Network, exit guides assist people through suicides. The arrests of the four Network guides two years ago prevented Caldwell from proceeding with her plans.
Marker says the lawsuit is dangerous -- and not just because it is filed in federal court. "This makes it clear that if indeed the court were to agree with her, this would permit anybody, anyplace, anytime to be involved in someone else's suicide just saying it's a compassionate thing to do," says the Task Force spokeswoman.
The court could dismiss the case -- or it could issue a ruling, which would send it on a path to the U.S. Supreme Court. Whether that court would accept it, of course, would be a totally different matter since it usually rules on only a handful of cases each year.
Contact: Charlie Butts Source: OneNewsNow Publish Date: December 21, 2010
