Nurses in a big city hospital never know what a day's shift will bring – straightforward cases or medical miracles, major crises or minor first aid. Whatever her station, whatever the duty of the moment, a nurse tries to ready herself for anything. But some things, you just can't see coming.
It was Beryl Otieno Ngoje's turn to work the desk in the Same Day Surgery Unit at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ), in Newark. She was busy with the usual administrative duties – filing charts, handing out forms to the patients, answering visitors' questions – when another nurse hurried up beside her.
"Oh, something just happened, you won't believe it," the woman said, visibly excited. "I have it in my hand." She held up a clenched fist, palm up. "I have it in my hand," she said again.
"What do you have in your hand?" Beryl asked, bemused at the woman's demeanor.
"Do you want to see?"
"Yes," Beryl said – and instantly regretted it.
The other nurse opened her hand to reveal the tiny, tiny form of a baby, just aborted.
"I felt like somebody had just hit me with something in my face," Beryl remembers.
She began to cry, to the consternation of her coworker.
"I'm sorry – I didn't know you were going to react like that," the woman said.
It was a moment that seared Beryl's soul and haunted her memory, and it would come back often, in the days ahead. For the other nurse was not just a co-worker, but her manager... with the power to hold not just an unborn baby, but Beryl's career in the palm of her hand.
The dozen-or-so nurses of the UMDNJ Same Day Surgery Unit – like nurses at any other hospital – are a lively mixture of backgrounds and personalities. Beryl, a native of Kenya, is a quiet ICU specialist who's been with the hospital for over 15 years. Fe Esperanza Racpan Vinoya, a veteran of the ER and ICU, is from the Philippines, and speaks with cheerful delight about her love for music and for her church. Lorna Mendoza has been a nurse for 25 years, at University for more than a dozen, and takes both her work and her Christian faith very seriously.
"We high-five each other," Beryl says, "Most of us are there 12 hours, and that is a good portion of your day. It is important that you get along and feel relaxed and free."
Because: "you get to socialize a lot," Fe says. "You're less busy here than in the ER."
The nurses of Fe's unit are responsible for monitoring, medicating, and placating patients going into and coming out of surgery. That means a lot of bedside comfort, encouragement, and interaction with both patients and their families, so conversations between coworkers tend to be quick exchanges in the hallway or on break. What the nurses share, more than close friendship, is delight in and commitment to a job they love.
"It's a noble job," says Fe. "Very fulfilling... a healing profession. Everything you do for the patient just makes them feel better, and satisfies my entire being, because I've helped someone."
"A lot of people don't realize... we usually see somebody at their worst," Beryl says. "They're not perky, happy – they're ailing and hurting. They just want somebody to be there. I can make a difference. I can help in whatever little way. I find that very gratifying."
All operations on this unit are elective – that is, the patient chooses to have a specific procedure done: a tonsillectomy, a hernia repair, the removal of cataracts. And, sometimes, an abortion.
Not the kind of abortion where the mother's life is in danger, Beryl says. "They just choose to end it. These are people who go to the doctor and say, 'Look, I don't want this pregnancy.' The age range is mostly teenagers – 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds – and a lot of times, they come back."
"To some, it's like contraception," Fe says. "Five or six times, you see them there."
If she ends up talking to those patients, she says, "I always tell them, 'I'll be praying for you, and I hope that this is the last time I'll see you doing this kind of procedure.' I can see in their faces how guilty they feel, the guilt in their hearts." Many say, "Yes, definitely this is my last time."
And yet, so often, they come back.
Fe knows, all too well, about that guilt in their eyes. Twenty years ago – still new to America, still learning the language and culture, just getting the hang of her first nursing job – she found she was pregnant. But her doctor said the number of rubella antibodies in her blood was too low, and posed far too great a risk for the baby. He urged her to get a therapeutic abortion.
Fe and her husband pressed the doctor repeatedly – was this absolutely necessary? He assured them it was, and, out of their depth in a new country, they didn't realize they had any choice. Fe soon found herself in a clinic, surrounded by half-a-hundred teenagers, all waiting their turn to abbreviate the life in their wombs. Fe sat with her husband and sister.
"We were the only ones crying," she says.
Right up until the moment of the procedure itself, Fe was on the phone with her doctors, trying to get their okay not to end her baby's life. But her pediatrician and the specialist were adamant, and she went through with what they told her to do. The decision has troubled her ever since.
"I wasn't able to sleep for a long time," she says. "It took me years to just feel that, okay, it's done. I asked for forgiveness. The Lord knows my heart, that I didn't want to have that happen."
Within a year, Fe was pregnant again. She is now the mother of three... yet her thoughts linger, sometimes, on the one she lost. The experience makes it that much harder, she says, to watch the young teenagers come through to eliminate a child just because it might complicate their lives. She knows how their hearts will be haunted in ways they can't imagine now.
Which is why she was horrified to learn that she was being ordered to help with their abortions.
The change came in September of 2011, with the news that a peer was being promoted. Though employed in the same unit as Fe, Beryl and the rest, this particular nurse had long been assigned to a special team that carried out the abortions without any involvement or assistance from other nurses on the Same Day Surgery floor. The abortion team had always drawn its staff from nurses who had expressed no qualms about helping end a child's life.
Promoted from that team to a supervisory position over all the nurses, the new assistant manager announced that – since she and others had to help with abortions – she saw no reason why every nurse shouldn't help. Hospital officials agreed, and passed a new, mandatory policy to make it so. The assistant manager quickly set up a training program that would give each nurse on the unit hands-on experience in how to assist with and clean up after abortions.
"As long as you work here," she told the 12 nurses who openly protested, "you're going to have to do it. If you don't, you're going to be fired or transferred out."
"We were all shocked," Fe says. "All these years I've been a nurse, I was never told to help kill children."
But the managers remained adamant. Hospital administrators supported them. When the nurses brought up a long-standing, in-writing agreement exempting them from taking part in abortions apart from a medical emergency, officials told them "an emergency" would hereafter be defined as any situation in which the patient was "bleeding." And every birth involves bleeding.
"I knew we were going to lose our jobs," says Lorna, who, at one point, amid the flurry of discussions with the managers, was asked to provide a patient with a bedpan. Retrieving it, she found an aborted baby inside. Horrified and sobbing, she called for help, telling the manager who responded, "I don't know what to do with this. I can't do this." She soon found herself in the office of the vice president of nursing, where she was accused of refusing to help patients and threatened with termination. She wasn't the only one called in.
"Our jobs were hanging by a string," Beryl says. "We were like, 'All right. If they're going to fire all 12 of us, fine. But this is against what we believe God wants us to do.' We didn't come into this profession to do [abortions]. We told them we weren't comfortable with it and didn't feel they should force us. And if that meant our jobs, well... God was going to provide."
When even their own union declined to help them, Fe wrote a letter to hospital officials saying that she and her coworkers would not participate in abortions. She passed it around for the other nurses; 15 signed it. She gave the letter to her manager, who took it to the director of nursing.. Response was swift. A meeting was called for the next day, with each of the signing nurses, the labor board, a union official, the managers, and "an expert on ethics" scheduled to be on hand.
The day of that announcement, Pastor Terry Smith, of Life Christian Church in West Orange, New Jersey, returned from a trip. A staff member told him that one of his parishioners – Fe – had called, shared what was happening at the hospital, and asked for advice. The pastor immediately phoned Len Deo, president of the New Jersey Family Policy Council.
"I'll be all over this," said Deo, who hung up and called Alliance Defending Freedom. Shortly afterward, staff attorney Matt Bowman was on the phone with a local allied attorney, Demetrios Stratis, enlisting him to help defend the nurses. The two immediately called Fe.
"I remember... I was driving and speaking to them three-way," says Fe, who had just been convincing herself the nurses' case was hopeless. "I didn't know a thing about conscience law – it was very, very new to me." The two told her she had a legitimate case, and offered to defend her. Best of all, Stratis said he could be on hand for her meeting with the managers the next day.
"Is there a catch?" Fe asked. Visions of sky-high attorneys' fees danced in her head.
"No catch," Stratis said. "We're pro bono lawyers." Fe drove home in a daze.
Next morning, she met Stratis at the hospital entrance. She took him upstairs to the Same Day Surgery Unit and introduced him to the nurses on duty and others waiting for the meeting. Twelve of the 15 immediately agreed to have him and Bowman represent them in the case.
"A godsend," Beryl says. "We had no idea which way to go. It was like something from heaven just dropped in our lap at the right time. It boosted our morale a lot." It did considerably less for the morale of the nurse managers and others gathered for the meeting, who had not reckoned with the nurses hiring outside counsel.
"Who are you?" a manager asked Stratis.
"He's our attorney, and he is going to speak on our behalf," replied Fe. Everyone split into huddles – Stratis and the nurses in one room, administrators in another. After a few minutes, the nurse manager came to cancel the meeting, but not before Stratis made it clear that he would be defending "my clients' legal right not to be forced to participate in terminating a pregnancy."
"It was like we had been talking to a brick wall, and that brick wall just got smashed," Fe says. "We were very happy after that. It gave us a sense of hope."
Stratis and Bowman reminded hospital officials – face to face and in writing – that their new policy transgressed both state and federal laws that make it illegal to compel medical professionals to violate their conscience by forcing them to help with a non-emergency abortion. With their actions, the hospital was not only risking a lawsuit, but more than $60 million in federal funding. Still, administrators stubbornly contended that all abortions in the Same Day Surgery area – each scheduled weeks in advance – were "emergencies."
"These surgeries are, by definition, elective, outpatient procedures," Bowman says. "If they weren't, the ER is just 30 seconds away." Plus, he points out, "these are pre- and post-operative nurses. They're not even supposed to be there for a surgery, whether it's abortion or not."
To get around that, he says, the abortion team "would give a woman a pill that induced labor, give it in the pre-op area, and leave her there. After a couple of hours, she'd start going into labor." And now, she was outside the surgical area – in a section for which the 12 pro-life nurses were responsible.
With the hospital unwilling to budge, Alliance Defending Freedom filed suit on behalf of the 12 nurses to defend their legally protected right of conscience. Their managers, meanwhile, insisted on including the 12 in abortion training, which included interactions with abortion patients and handling dead babies. Three were forced to take part before the nurses enlisted Bowman and Stratis. Once hired, though, the two quickly obtained an injunction that prevented other nurses from having to undergo training the following day.
One of the three forced to train did not quite accomplish, perhaps, what her managers had in mind. During her shift, a patient expressed reluctance to go through with the procedure. The nurse talked with her awhile, then – at her request – quietly brought in the woman's husband. After a bit, the woman dressed and they left... having decided not to have the abortion.
For weeks, the 12 nurses worked in a decidedly tense environment. "It was scary," Beryl says. "We prayed a lot. We came into work and stepped off the elevator and said, 'God just let the day go by well, without incident' – because we had our incidents. It was very, very uncomfortable." The 12 drew strength, she says, from each other, from praying friends, and from their faith that, "Our God is greater than this."
As a court date drew nearer, the hospital came up with another threat: if the 12 would not help with abortions, administrators would hire nurses who were willing to do so. Soon, officials intimated, there might not be work enough for everybody... in which cases those nurses willing to do anything might well enjoy greater job security than those only willing to do most things.
Amid all the tension, threats, and growing media coverage, the judge in the case stunned everyone by suddenly announcing, in a preliminary hearing, that a settlement had been reached.
"We had gotten everything [the 12 nurses] requested," Stratis says. "We'd gotten the hospital to agree not to force them to perform these abortions. There would be no retaliatory measures against them, and they could feel free and sleep at night, knowing that the next day they would not have to be trained on the abortion process or help a woman kill an innocent child."
"I was crying – really crying," says Lorna, who heard the news from one of the other nurses. "And very thankful. The next day, I went to work, and all of us were hugging and very happy."
"Before, I used to think that some prayers won't be answered," Fe says. "Sometimes, I'd feel very hopeless. But with this case, I saw how the Lord moves... providing the resources, the people who would help us out. It just strengthened my faith. I really thank God for Alliance Defending Freedom."
"I'm not sure I know where we'd be today if it wasn't for them, really," Beryl says. "We were up against some really big guns, and Alliance Defending Freedom was determined to support us."
"This case took an emotional toll on all of these nurses," Stratis says. "To stand up, to be part of a lawsuit against their employer, is very, very hard to do. There was a lot at stake. Some were the sole breadwinners for their family. Being faced with termination of their job or standing up for their faith... that is a very, very difficult decision, especially in these economic times."
But "I couldn't do what they were asking me to do," Beryl says. "I could not. You go against what you believe, what are you? What's left? Just a shell of what you are."
Spoken like a woman whose conscience is in good hands.
Source: Alliance Defending Freedom
Musical Reminder of Christ Child Encourages Women to Choose Life for their Babies
Sometimes a song can save a life. That's what happened one year during the Pro-Life Action League's annual "Empty Manger" Christmas Caroling Day at abortion facilities in Chicago and the western suburbs.
"We were singing 'Silent Night' at American Women's Medical Center when a young woman came out of the clinic," said the Pro-Life Action League's executive director, Eric Scheidler. "She approached one of our pro-life counselors and said we got her thinking about Mary and Baby Jesus. She just couldn't go through with her abortion." The counselor directed the young mother to a nearby pregnancy center for help.
The Pro-Life Action League hopes for similar life-saving results during this year's 10th annual "Empty Manger" Christmas Caroling Day on Saturday, December 22. "These beloved Christmas carols remind us all of the hope and joy brought into the world by a newborn baby," said Scheidler. "We want to share that hope with the mothers entering these abortion clinics. We want them to know that just like Baby Jesus, their unborn babies are a gift, too."
Last year, 130 carolers participated in this annual event, and similar caroling tours were held at abortion facilities throughout the country, with even more groups signing on this year. "We encourage more pro-lifers to join this national event," said Scheidler. "Simply download and print out our caroling booklet and gather a few friends to sing carols at the abortion facilities in your area."
Two simultaneous caroling tours will take place the morning of December 22, one visiting five abortion facilities in Chicago and the other visiting four in DuPage County. Maps and more information, including other caroling sites across the country, are available at ProLifeAction.org.
At each abortion facility, pro-life carolers will gather around an empty manger, which symbolizes both the hope that new life can bring as well as the emptiness left behind when an unborn child is killed by an abortion—especially at Christmas time.
"Empty Manger" Christmas Caroling Tour, Saturday, December 22, 2012:
CHICAGO CAROLING TOUR:
• 9:00 Family Planning Associates, 659 W. Washington Blvd., Chicago
• 9:45 Planned Parenthood, 1200 N. La Salle Dr., Chicago
• 10:30 All Women's Health Center, 2000 W. Armitage Ave., Chicago
• 11:15 American Women's Medical Ctr., 2744 N. Western Ave., Chicago
• 12:00 Albany Medical Surgical Ctr., 5086 N. Elston Ave., Chicago
DUPAGE CAROLING TOUR:
• 9:00 ACU Health Center, 736 N. York Rd., Hinsdale
• 10:00 Aanchor Health Center, 1186 Roosevelt Rd., Glen Ellyn
• 11:00 Access Health Center, 1700 75th St., Downers Grove
• 12:00 Planned Parenthood Aurora, 3051 E. New York St., Aurora
VISUALS/AUDIO:
• Pro-life carolers gathered around Christmas crèche-style empty manger
• Christmas caroling
• "White Christmas" weather
• Pro-life signage
• Possible opposition counter-protest
• Backdrop of abortion facilities
More details available at ProLifeAction.org
Contact: Tom Ciesielka
Source: Pro-Life Action League
A federal appeals court has delivered an important victory to religious nonprofit organizations that oppose the Obama administration's abortion/contraception mandate.
In the first ruling on the mandate at the appellate level, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the federal government Dec. 18 to keep its promise to issue a new rule to protect the religious liberty of two colleges and other religious nonprofits. The three-judge panel told the Obama administration to report back every 60 days on its commitment to publish a notice of a proposed rule by March 31 and to issue a final rule before August.
The D.C. Circuit Court also said it expected the administration to fulfill its pledge not to enforce the current rule against Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian school in suburban Chicago, and Belmont Abbey College, a Roman Catholic institution in North Carolina, as well as other religious nonprofits.
"We take the government at its word and will hold it to it," the panel said in its three-page order.
The appeals court issued the order in response to lawsuits by Wheaton and Belmont Abbey against a rule by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that mandates employers provide workers with health insurance covering contraceptives and abortion-causing drugs. The rule is part of the implementation of the 2010 health care reform law, which has been dubbed Obamacare.
The abortion/contraception mandate went into effect Aug. 1 of this year, but the Obama administration established a one-year "safe harbor" from that date intended to accommodate the concerns of nonprofit religious entities. Neither the "safe harbor" nor the D.C. Circuit Court's order applies to for-profit companies with owners opposed to the mandate.
Religious freedom advocates praised the court's order.
Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention called it "a tremendous day for religious freedom and freedom of conscience," adding he was "extremely pleased but not surprised" at the court's action.
"It shows clearly that when the federal government oversteps its bounds and denies the First Amendment free exercise and freedom of conscience rights of Americans that those citizens can successfully appeal to the federal court system to be the protector of those divinely endowed and constitutionally guaranteed rights," said Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission which signed onto a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Wheaton and Belmont Abbey.
Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said the court "has now made it clear that government promises and press conferences are not enough to protect religious freedom. The court is not going to let the government slide by on non-binding promises to fix the problem down the road."
The D.C. Circuit Court's order came only four days after Duncan and government lawyers presented oral arguments before the panel of judges. During the arguments, the Obama administration lawyers promised the judges the government would not enforce the current rule against religious nonprofits and would provide a new rule to guard their religious freedom.
Wheaton and Belmont Abbey appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court after federal judges dismissed their lawsuits separately, partly because they ruled neither school had standing to sue. The appeals court, however, ruled the schools had standing. The three-judge panel also decided not to return the cases to the federal judges for further action but to hold them until a new rule is issued.
In addition to the challenges by the two colleges, 40 other lawsuits have been filed against the HHS for a rule that requires employer coverage of drugs defined by the Food and Drug Administration as contraceptives, even if they can cause abortions. Among such drugs are Plan B and other "morning-after" pills that can prevent implantation of tiny embryos and "ella" which -- in a fashion similar to the abortion drug RU 486 -- can even act after implantation to end the life of the child.
While the religious exemption to the rule provided by HHS covers churches, it is insufficient to protect religious hospitals, schools and social service ministries, as well as some churches, critics have pointed out.
Four Baptist schools -- Louisiana College, Houston Baptist University, East Texas Baptist University and Criswell College – are among the institutions or businesses that have filed lawsuits against the mandate.
Among others suing the federal government are Hobby Lobby, Christian publisher Tyndale House, Colorado Christian University, Geneva College, Priests for Life and the EWTN Catholic television and radio network.
The ERLC joined 10 other evangelical organizations in a brief filed by Christian Legal Society in support of the appeals by Wheaton and Belmont Abbey on religious liberty grounds.
Contact: Tom Strode
Source: Baptist Press
Arts and crafts giant Hobby Lobby will appeal to the nation's highest court after an appeals court ruled the federal contraception mandate does not impose a "substantial burden" on the owners' religious freedom.
"The Green family is disappointed with this ruling," said Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is handling the case.
He explained that the Christian family that owns and operates Hobby Lobby must now "seek relief from the United States Supreme Court."
"The Greens will continue to make their case on appeal that this unconstitutional mandate infringes their right to earn a living while remaining true to their faith," Duncan said.
On Dec. 20, an appeals court denied the plaintiffs' request for a temporary injunction to block the federal contraception mandate from being enforced against them while their case moves forward in the court.
The mandate requires employers to offer health insurance covering sterilization and contraception, including drugs that may cause early abortions. As Christians, the Greens are morally opposed to funding any type of abortion, including those caused by "morning after" and "week after" pills.
In its decision, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the mandate did not impose a "substantial burden" on the Greens' religious freedom because it only forces them to fund "someone else's participation" in an activity that their religion condemns.
Started in a garage in Oklahoma City in 1972, Hobby Lobby now has more than 500 stores in 41 states. Its owners, the Greens, have said that they seek to serve God through all of their endeavors, including their business decisions.
The company donates considerable amounts to charity, maintains a minimum wage that is much higher than the federal requirement and closes all of its stores on Sundays, sacrificing profit to allow its employees to rest and worship with their families.
A lower court ruled last month that as a "secular, for-profit" corporation, Hobby Lobby does not have a constitutional right to freedom of religion, even if its owners see its management as part of their call to Christian stewardship.
Forty-two separate lawsuits challenging the mandate have been filed on behalf of religious schools, hospitals and charities, for-profit businesses and individual states. Rulings in the cases have been split. Among for-profit businesses, four have been granted preliminary injunctions and two have been denied them.
Hobby Lobby is the largest business to file a lawsuit challenging the mandate. If it is not granted relief from the regulation, it will be forced to pay $1.3 million per day in fines for refusing to comply with the objectionable provision.
The company will now turn to the Supreme Court to ask for an injunction protecting its right to religious freedom.
"It is by God's grace and provision that Hobby Lobby has endured," said David Green, founder and CEO of the company. "Therefore we seek to honor God by operating the company in a manner consistent with Biblical principles."
Contact: Michelle Bauman
Source: CNA/EWTN News
Religious freedom advocates applauded a federal appeals court's decision to hold the government accountable for revising its controversial contraception mandate.
Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, called the decision "a win not just for Belmont Abbey and Wheaton, but for all religious non-profits challenging the mandate."
"The D.C. Circuit has now made it clear that government promises and press conferences are not enough to protect religious freedom," he said in a Tuesday statement responding to the ruling.
On Dec. 18, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said that it will hold the government responsible for following through on its promises to issue a proposed revision of the federal contraception mandate for objecting religious organizations by March 2013.
The mandate requires employers to offer health insurance plans that cover sterilization and contraception, including some drugs that may cause early abortions. Exemptions to the mandate were only granted to a small number of religious employers that meet the government's requirements of existing to teach religious values and primarily hiring and serving members of their own faith.
After a wave of protest from non-exempt individuals and organizations, the government announced a one-year "safe harbor" to delay the enforcement of the mandate against objecting non-profit religious groups. It said that it would create an "accommodation" for their religious freedom during this time.
However, critics have said that the early suggestions put forth by the Obama administration are inadequate. And while the plan for an accommodation was announced in February, the government has not yet issued its formal proposal with the details of the new rule, and its promise to create one was not legally binding.
More than 40 lawsuits have been filed against the mandate, drawing split rulings from district courts. Among for-profit businesses that are not protected by the safe harbor period, four out of six have been granted a preliminary injunction blocking the mandate from being enforced against them.
Several lawsuits filed by religious non-profit groups – including Belmont Abbey and Wheaton Colleges – were dismissed by district courts as premature because of the government's promise to amend the mandate.
However, a federal judge in New York determined on Dec. 6 that a case by the local archdiocese was mature despite the government's promise, noting, "There is no 'Trust us changes are coming' clause in the Constitution."
In making its Dec. 18 decision, the appeals court observed that the government had said during oral arguments that it would "never" enforce the mandate in its current form against morally objecting religious institutions.
"There will, the government said, be a different rule for entities like the appellants," the court noted, "and we take that as a binding commitment."
The judges also pointed to the government's statement that it would issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the new rule by the end of March 2013 and would publish the Final Rule before August 2013.
"We take the government at its word and will hold it to it," they said, ordering the Obama administration to report back every 60 days on the progress of the accommodation. The colleges' lawsuit will be postponed during this time.
The ruling was hailed by supporters of religious freedom around the country.
Maureen Ferguson, senior policy advisor for The Catholic Association, applauded the court for fighting the "disinformation" surrounding the mandate and showing the serious threat to religious freedom facing religious employers.
Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life and a graduate of Wheaton College, called the decision "a first step toward halting the anti-life coercion in the healthcare law."
Duncan, who argued the case before the appeals court, explained that the decision offers hope to all of the religious plaintiffs throughout the country.
"The court is not going to let the government slide by on non-binding promises to fix the problem down the road," he said.
Contact: Michelle Bauman
Source: CNA/EWTN News
Though new studies confirm a link between abortion and breast cancer, that information is not being widely reported.
Karen Malec of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer tells OneNewsNow the studies [PDF] conducted in France and China between 2009-2011 confirm that breast cancer cases are related to the number of abortions a woman has. LifeNews.com reports that the authors examined information on disease diagnosis, demographics, medical history, and reproductive characteristics of the patients involved. They also looked at a number of other factors.
"There have been 71 studies now that have been published, epidemiological studies showing a statistical relationship between having an abortion and having an increased breast cancer risk," Malec notes.
Even so, she says, most women remain uninformed about it because many cancer-related not-for-profit organizations look the other way.
"They are ignoring it, and they're misrepresenting the research," the pro-lifer laments. "It's simply not good for fundraising to tell women that their abortions may be responsible for their breast cancers. It's a very emotional issue."
At the same time, the standard medical text shows that childbearing protects women because it has a significant defensive effect. Dr. Joel Brind, a professor at Baruch College in New York City, has compiled a statistical review of previous studies confirming the link between abortion and breast cancer, and the French and Chinese studies of late tend to confirm his findings.
Contact: Charlie Butts
Source: OneNewsNow.com
James Watson, the co-discoverer of the DNA double helix demonstrated that just because one is a brilliant scientist, that doesn't mean he or she is also a good ethicist.
And now, we have another example: Sir John Gurdon, who won the Nobel Prize for early work on cloning frogs, has come out in favor of human reproductive cloning. From the Daily Mail story:
'I take the view that anything you can do to relieve suffering or improve human health will usually be widely accepted by the public – that is to say if cloning actually turned out to be solving some problems and was useful to people, I think it would be accepted,' he said. During his public lectures – which include speeches at Oxford and Cambridge Universities – he often asks his audience if they would be in favour of allowing parents of deceased children, who are no longer fertile, to create another using the mother's eggs and skin cells from the first child, assuming the technique was safe and effective.
'The average vote on that is 60 per cent in favour,' he said. 'The reasons for "no" are usually that the new child would feel they were some sort of a replacement for something and not valid in their own right. 'But if the mother and father, if relevant, want to follow that route, why should you or I stop them?'
I don't know why so many scientists take such a crass utilitarian view of things, but let's unpack this for a moment. First, polls show overwhelming opposition to reproductive cloning. Be that as it may, note how Gurdon doesn't appear to care about the impact on the future cloned child of being a "replacement." Only the feelings of the parents matter. This is in keeping with the growing belief that people not only have the right to a baby, but to have a baby by any means they want, and indeed, the baby they want–in this example, custom manufactured.
But let's dig a little deeper. What kind of experiments would it take for reproductive cloning to be "safe?" Here's how biologist and stem cell researcher, David Prentice (now with the Family Research Council). put it back in 2003 when I interviewed him for my book Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World:
Scientists would have to clone thousands of embryos and grow them to the blastocyst stage [one week] to ensure that part of the process leading up to transfer into a uterus could be "safe," monitoring and analyzing each embryo, destroying each one in the process. Next, cloned embryos would have to be transferred into the uteruses of women volunteers [or implanted in an artificial womb]. The initial purpose would be analysis of development, not bringing the pregnancy to a live birth. Each of these clonal pregnancies would be terminated at various points of development, each fetus destroyed for scientific analysis. The surrogate mothers would also have to be closely monitored and tested, not only during the pregnancies but also for a substantial length of time after the abortions.
Finally, if these experiments demonstrated that it was probably safe to proceed, a few clonal pregnancies would be allowed to go to full term. Yet even then, the born cloned babies would have to be constantly monitored to determine whether any health problems develop. Each would have to be followed (and undergo a battery of tests both physical and psychological) for their entire lives, since there is no way to predict if problems [associated with gene expression] might arise later in childhood, adolescence, adulthood, or even into the senior years.
Does that sound moral or ethical to anyone? It is manufacturing human life and then treating it as if it were nothing more meaningful than potter's clay.
Contact: Wesley J. Smith
Source: National Review
The birth rate in the United States continues to fall -- and that could have an adverse effect on the future of the country.
The birth rate last year dropped to the lowest level in history in the United States, with the heaviest drop among immigrants. The rate dropped eight percent, and Elizabeth Crnkovich of the Population Research Institute discusses the significance of that.
"We already dropped below replacement level," points out the Institute's media coordinator. "And when a country's fertility drops below replacement, the future generations suffer more and more and it's harder and harder for them to support the economy -- and so the economy would keep declining."
According to Crnkovich, that also impacts the aging part of the population.
"The young generations, they're also the ones paying the Social Security taxes," she explains. "And if you don't have as many young people as old people, then they're paying way more than they would need to support their elders."
The drop in the birth rate is not just because many families are opting for fewer children. Other factors include abortion, which has a major influence, as well as the state of the economy, which influences how many children people will have.
Contact: Charlie Butts
Source: OneNewsNow.com
CHOICES4LIFE, founded February 2012 is devoted to bringing awareness to the rape conception issue and has formed a panel addressing the issues of rape pregnancy. This powerful team speaks personally on every aspect of this issue in a private or public forum. One woman speaks on regretting aborting her baby, another was pregnant by her father at twelve, another was conceived in incest, still another mother raised her child and Juda Myers, founder of CHOICES4LIFE was conceived in an eight man gang rape. No longer does society have to speculate what mothers and children of rape conception think or feel. They can hear it straight from the victims.
CHOICES4LIFE, also reaches out to mothers struggling with society's stigma. Mothers who want their babies face rejection. CHOICES4LIFE offers emotional and financial support. Currently pregnant by rape a young woman expresses joy that this organization exists. Contemplating adoption and asked why she said, 'Finances.' CHOICES4LIFE is raising funds to give her a hand up so that she can find a job and raise her much loved baby boy - because no one should have to lose their child for lack of finances, especially in a temporary situation.
When threatened by her rapist, one woman was relocated to a safe place. Rent and food are some of the other ways CHOICES4LIFE has helped mothers. For rape conceived children struggling with value, Juda Myers offers logic as well as a higher purpose. "There's no difference between a human conceived in rape and one conceived in love. We are all created in God's image. You certainly can't pick us out of a crowd. For 48 years I didn't know I was rape conceived but when I found out it was devastating. I almost believed society. But I am no different than any other human."
Myers, having spoken to hundreds of mothers pregnant by rape, knows these women love their babies. Their babies are now doctors, lawyers, teachers, pastors, musicians, chemists, and professors, just like any other child.
Myers, international speaker also hosts a blog talk radio show. She's interviewed over 20 persons with powerful rape conception stories. Some spoke of being suicidal after aborting. Myers believes education will help both the victims and society.
Contact: Juda Myers
Source: CHOICES4LIFE
The United Nations Foundation is bashing American pro-lifers.
The U.N. has a website section called Reality Check, which includes a blog by Jessica Mason Pieklo praising the re-election of President Obama because now Attorney General Eric Holder can continue to prosecute what the author refers to as violent attacks by pro-lifers.
"Holder has been a consistent target of the radical right as DOJ has turned closer attention to domestic terrorism and hate crimes enforcement," writes Pieklo. "And if this last election cycle showed us anything, it's that anti-choice radicals feel both empowered and threatened, which is a dangerous combination for [abortion] providers and women who need reproductive health care."
Dana Cody, head of the Napa, California-based Life Legal Defense Foundation, says Pieklo's statements are far from reality.
"If she would do her homework instead of pandering to the abortion lobby, she'd find out that Eric Holder's record is dismal," Cody tells OneNewsNow. "For practically everybody that he's prosecuted, the evidence shows that they weren't being violent."
Pieklo cites National Abortion Federation statistics to justify prosecution, but if one goes to that organization's training resource guide, it can be seen that the list of alleged "violent activities" is greatly exaggerated.
"It characterizes things like holding signs and handing out leaflets and participating in boycotts and huge posters -- these are their instances of unlawful violent conduct," Cody explains. "I mean, it's ridiculous."
Cody says that means the government would actually like to see the free speech and civil rights of peaceful pro-lifers suppressed.
In one case in Florida, prosecuted by Holder's Department of Justice, the judge scolded federal prosecutors for taking the case to court in the first place and even awarded the pro-life demonstrator damages. There was a similar case in Denver.
Contact: Charlie Butts
Source: OneNewsNow.com
Students for Life of America announced today that it will honor Father Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, with its 2013 Defender of Life award.
The award will be bestowed Jan. 26 during SFLA's annual National Youth Conference in Bethesda, Md.
"Throughout Father Frank's ministry he has been a leader, a visionary, and a courageously outspoken voice for the preborn," the organization said in a statement announcing the award. "His ground-breaking work exposing the true horrors of abortion through images of the aborted child, his countless hours standing and praying outside of abortion facilities offering women in crisis real help, and his great compassion for the women and men left with the heartache of abortion have inspired a generation to enter into the pro-life movement."
Father Pavone has been the National Director of Priests for Life since 1993. He is also the president of the National Pro-Life Religious Council. The New York native was ordained by Cardinal John J. O'Connor in 1988. After serving five years in parish ministry, the Cardinal released him to do pro-life ministry full-time. He has been involved in the pro-life movement since he was a teenager and attended his first March for Life in D.C.
"I am so honored and so happy to be receiving this award," Father Pavone said. "We know that youth are not only the future of the pro-life movement, they are vital to its work right now. I have met so many of the Students for Life across America, and they inspire me! Priests for Life and our Youth Outreach Director Bryan Kemper have been working closely with Students for Life and we expect this partnership to grow and flourish."
Contact: Leslie Palma
Source: Priests for Life
Marie Freyre was born with cerebral palsy and fluid surrounding her brain. She suffered from life-threatening seizures. [Family photo courtesy of Miami Herald]
Even after Marie Freyre died alone in a nursing home 250 miles from the family in North Tampa that loved her, Marie's mother had to fight to bring her home.
In March 2011, state child protection investigators took 14-year-old Marie from her mother, Doris Freyre, claiming Doris' own disabilities made it almost impossible for her to care for Marie, who suffered from seizures and severe cerebral palsy. But a Tampa judge signed an order that Marie be returned to her mother, with in-home nursing care around the clock.
Florida health care administrators refused to pay for it, although in-home care can be demonstrably cheaper than care in an institution. Child welfare workers ignored the order completely.
Two months later, Marie was strapped into an ambulance for a five-hour trip to a Miami Gardens nursing home, as her mother begged futilely to go with her.
Marie died 12 hours after she arrived.
"Since the state of Florida took custody of my daughter, I would like the state of Florida to bring me back my daughter," Freyre, 59, said at a May 9 court hearing, 12 days after her daughter died.
"They kidnapped my daughter. She was murdered," said Freyre. "And I want my daughter back."
The last days of Marie Freyre, chronicled in hundreds of pages of records reviewed by the Miami Herald, are a story of death by bureaucratic callousness and medical neglect. The episode sheds significant light on an ongoing dispute between Florida health care regulators and the U.S. Department of Justice. Though the state claims that the parents of severely disabled and medically fragile children have "choice" over where their children live and receive care, federal civil rights lawyers say Florida, by dint of a rigged funding system, has "systematically" force-fed sick children into nursing homes meant to care for adults — in violation of federal laws that prohibit discrimination against disabled people.
Civil rights lawyers are asking the state to allow a federal judge to oversee Florida's Medicaid program, which insures needy and disabled people. It pays as much as $506 a day to put a child like Marie in a nursing home, but refuses to cover lesser or similar amounts for in-home care.
Late Friday, state health regulators wrote their final letter to the Justice Department in response to a deadline. The state, they wrote, "is not in violation of any federal law" governing the medical care delivered to needy Floridians, and cannot "agree to the demand … that a federal court take over the management of Florida's Medicaid service-delivery system."
Without doubt, Marie Freyre was a fragile, sickly child. Born with cerebral palsy and fluid surrounding her brain, Marie had a shunt in her skull to drain the fluid and suffered from life-threatening seizures. One of her hips was permanently displaced, causing sometimes excruciating pain. Marie could smile, though she could not speak.
Doris Freyre — who worked at a family store in Puerto Rico before becoming disabled herself— cared for her daughter well for 14 years, and Marie had suffered no seizures in recent years, records show.
"Doris spent every day of 14 years of her life giving everything she had to Marie, guaranteeing that Marie lived as healthy and wonderful a life as God allowed her," said the family's Tampa lawyer, Peter Brudny.
But in March 2011, one of the family's in-home nurses reported several concerns about Doris Freyre's parenting of Marie to the Department of Children and Families, setting in motion a disastrous chain of events. Hillsborough Circuit Judge Vivian Corvo began a hearing on the case on March 30, 2011, by praising Freyre for her care of her daughter.
Corvo wanted to help Freyre — not punish her. The greatest challenge was Freyre's own health: Freyre suffers from six herniated discs, as well as carpal tunnel syndrome in her wrists.
"The doctor told me to do surgery," Freyre said in court. "I told him no, because I have to take care of my daughter."
Freyre had asked the Agency for Health Care Administration to provide her with 24-hour nursing aides. As it stood, Freyre had a gap between midnight and 7 a.m. where she needed help to reposition Marie and change her diapers. "It's not easy," Freyre told the judge. "I'm human."
But AHCA administrators refused to pay for the additional hours. Corvo wanted to know why. "This is a nonverbal child, with all of these issues," the judge said. "Why would this mother not qualify for 24-hour care?"
From the beginning, state child protection administrators wanted to send Marie to a nursing home. Freyre's attorney suggested such a move could kill her.
"With this type of child, when you institutionalize them," attorney Steve Zucker said, "they never do well. And I'm very concerned."
"Can the (state) do better than this?" he asked the judge.
At the end of the hearing, Corvo required child welfare administrators to do better. She wrote an order that Marie be returned to her mother, with additional nursing care through the night.
It was an order the state simply ignored.
Records show state child welfare workers disregarded Corvo's order that Hillsborough Kids, which was under contract with the DCF, pay for the extra nursing hours while caseworkers looked into additional dollars from Medicaid.
Two weeks later, the state Attorney General's Office and Hillsborough Kids appeared before a different judge, Emily Peacock. AHCA, which runs Medicaid, had refused again to pay for 24-hour care, a lawyer said. With no permanent solution in sight, the state said, a nursing home was the only option.
"The best placement for the child right now is a … nursing home where she can get that 24-hour supervision and care that she needs," said Angeline Attila, an assistant attorney general.
The new judge, who never asked why the state ignored a prior judge's order, agreed — though she granted Freyre the right to visit with her daughter all she wanted. But even that kindness proved meaningless.
A DCF review of Marie's death said the only nursing home willing to take her was Florida Club Care Center in Miami Gardens.
At first, the state Attorney General's Office, which was representing Hillsborough Kids, asked that the long trip be delayed so lawyers could seek permission from a judge to move Marie.
But they were under significant pressure to get Marie out of Tampa General Hospital, where she was placed after child protection workers took her into state care. Records show the hospital complained bitterly that it was losing money on her care. A hospital social worker, records say, "was adamant about the child leaving the hospital today."
So, at 11:30 a.m. April 25, 2011, workers at Tampa General Hospital loaded the teen onto a stretcher in a private ambulance — as her mother and grandfather begged them to stop. Even as caseworkers were packing Marie's belongings, her grandfather was frantically filing hand-written emergency motions in court to delay the trip, Brudny said.
Doris Freyre, case notes say, "stated that no one knows my child like me," and that Marie's dislocated hip would cause her great pain if she were strapped to a stretcher for hours. She added: "If something happens to my daughter I am holding all of you responsible for it."
Freyre had no car — and the private ambulance refused to allow her to join Marie — so Marie made the trip to Miami-Dade County alone.
Records show the two ambulance workers refused to take Marie's seizure drugs with them; under the company's policy, they were not allowed to administer medications in any case. According to a report detailing Tampa General Hospital's care of Marie, the hospital neglected to ensure she was properly hydrated before she left. During her five-hour ambulance ride, she was given no water or food.
A September 2011 investigation by AHCA of how Tampa General discharged Marie to the nursing home faulted the hospital for a number of violations, including failing to ensure the child had enough fluids and was properly medicated. The hospital's lack of "concern" for Marie, the report said, left her "in danger."
The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services placed the hospital under the status of "Immediate Jeopardy" following the review, the highest penalty under federal health regulations, said an AHCA spokeswoman. The following October, the federal agency removed the designation after Tampa General implemented a corrective action plan. AHCA also is seeking to fine the hospital $5,000 in the case, and a hearing is scheduled for Jan. 14.
Marie arrived in Miami Gardens the way she left Tampa: screaming. AHCA records for the next 12 hours mention only four notations in the nursing home file, and two of them document Marie "screaming."
By 5:40 a.m. April 27, 2011, Marie was described as having "labored" breathing. Five minutes later, she was unresponsive. The AHCA investigation concluded she had been given none of her life-sustaining anti-seizure drugs, required three times each day.
Marie was pronounced dead at 6:54 a.m. Cause of death: heart attack.
Two weeks later, on May 9, 2011, Doris Freyre appeared one last time before a judge in Tampa — Peacock, who declared herself "terribly sorry" for Freyre's loss.
"I don't accept your excuse," the mother replied. Freyre said she was in court to get her daughter's body back from the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner's Office. With no trust left for state officials, Freyre was seeking a private autopsy.
"It's the mother's position that the (state) had the child removed without proper authorization," said her attorney, Laguerra Champagne. "She objected to the child being physically removed from Hillsborough County and transported to Miami. No court hearing was held and, unfortunately, we're here today, dealing with a dead child instead of a living child."
Attila, the prosecutor who, weeks earlier, had fought so hard to get Marie to the nursing home, no longer wanted to discuss the matter. She told Peacock that a child welfare judge had no "jurisdiction" over a dead child and prosecutors would file a court motion saying so.
"Not to seem insensitive; I understand the mother is quite frustrated and I understand that she's grieving," Attila said, "but the information that she's providing to the court is moot at this point in time."
Despite Attila's protestations, Freyre had the last word.
"I had her for 14 years — cared (for) and loved her," Freyre said. "And you have her … in prison, in the hospital, without going out in the sun, without being with other people, in prison.
"Then, in (12) hours, you took her down to Miami and she died," Freyre added. "And I want the truth of this to come out. I want justice."
Marie's body remained in storage for nine months while the medical examiner's office completed its autopsy, and Freyre held a memorial with no body.
In the end, Marie's body was cremated in Tampa. Her ashes then were sent to Puerto Rico for a private family funeral.
Contact: Carol Marbin Miller
Source: Miami Herald/Illinois Review
"In its quest to move abortions into rural Wisconsin, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin is challenging Wisconsin's new law which requires that a woman seeking an RU 486 abortion be seen 'in person' by the individual performing the abortion and that in-person administration of the RU 486 abortion pill take place," stated Barbara Lyons, Executive Director of Wisconsin Right to Life. "Planned Parenthood would rather expand its abortion empire by having women talk to an abortionist over a web cam. This is not good medicine and not good protection for women."
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), and the National Abortion Federation (NAF) guidelines for administration of RU 486 abortions call for a physical exam as step one prior to obtaining this type of abortion. The guidelines also recommend follow-up after 14 days to the abortion provider to ensure that the abortion is complete.
The FDA reports 14 maternal deaths and over 2,200 adverse incidents from use of RU 486 since 2000. Adverse incidents include 612 hospitalizations, 58 ectopic pregnancies, 339 blood transfusions, and 256 cases of infection.
"The two-drug RU 486 abortion process is neither simple nor without significant risk to women. The least we can do, as the State of Wisconsin has done, is to require that the woman be seen in person before these dangerous drugs are administered. We are confident that this law is clear in its intent and will be upheld," continued Lyons.
Source: ProLifeBlogs
There has been much talk recently in "reproductive rights" circles about the over-the-counter (OTC) status of emergency contraceptives (EC's) and hormonal contraceptives, in general. Much of the debate has centered on a December 2011 decision by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius not to extend OTC status to Plan B One-Step, an emergency contraceptive, to girls less than 17 years of age. In defense of her decision, Secretary Sebelius stated, "the data provided as part of the actual use study and the label comprehension study are not sufficient to support making Plan B One-Step available to all girls 16 and younger, without talking to a health care professional."
Now, one year later, "reproductive rights" advocates such as RH Reality Check and Reproductive Health Technology Project are determined to push the Obama Administration for wider access to all emergency contraceptives to all women and girls of reproductive age, according to a Washington Times story. These advocates see prescriptions as "barriers to care" and claim that emergency contraceptives have been proven safe enough "to be on the shelf — right between the condoms and the pregnancy-test kits." (See President of Reproductive Health Technology Project Kirsten Moore's statement).
Even the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has recommended that prescription-only age restrictions for EC's be removed "to create true over the counter access to emergency contraception for all women." (Committee Opinion Number 542, November 2012, Committee on Health Care for Underserved Women). In their committee report, ACOG claims that making emergency contraception easily available to teens will not increase the incidence of risky sexual behavior or unintended pregnancy, and that physical examination is not needed prior to the prescription of contraceptives. However, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) refutes ACOG's findings.
AAPLOG addressed myriad problems with the decision to allow EC's over the counter. Most significantly, AAPLOG noted in a news release that abortion rates and unintended pregnancy rates in places with OTC status for EC's has not decreased (and, in fact, has increased in the UK), and since women will not need to be seen by a doctor before obtaining emergency contraceptives, they will bypass screening for STDs that they would normally receive at their doctor visits. AAPLOG also emphasizes the danger of easy access to EC's for male sexual predators who wish to cover up their abuse.
Likewise, the American College of Pediatricians notes in its December 3, 2012 press release that there is no association between wider access to emergency contraceptives and lower incidence of unintended pregnancy, and in fact, access to EC's is associated with a increased incidence of STD's. The American College of Pediatricians also says that despite arguments to the contrary, EC's are related to increased sexual activity among minors, "which is a risk factor for depression and suicide, poor school performance, more lifetime sexual partners, and an increased divorce rate."*
The American College of Pediatricians emphasizes the fact that the adolescent brain has not reached full maturity — a fact to which any parent or school teacher can attest — and, thus, teens need guidance in decision-making from parents. The College recommends the more responsible, common sense position that doctors "encourage good adolescent-parental communication, teach adolescent patients the benefits of delaying sexual activity until marriage, and teach them how to avoid premature/promiscuous consensual sex and situations resulting in coerced sex."
Protecting young women should be our foremost concern. Advocates of increased access to EC's for teens want to push children into making serious, adult decisions in the name of "removing barriers." As adults, it is our job to protect, not to endanger, children. If even a few of the concerns mentioned in relation to providing Plan B and other EC's over the counter are valid, then the proposal to provide them to all girls of reproductive age should be suspended indefinitely.
Contact: Anna Higgins
Source: FRCBlog
Religious liberty advocates are hailing the end of a seven-year legal battle over the required provision of abortion drugs in Illinois pharmacies as a major triumph for conscience rights.
"This decision is a great victory for religious freedom," said Mark Rienzi, senior counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has represented the pharmacists in the case for several years.
"The government shouldn't kick business owners out of the market just because it dislikes their religious beliefs," he said in a statement.
"Over seven years of litigation, there was never a shred of proof that a religious objection at a pharmacy harmed anyone," Rienzi explained. "These pharmacists do a wonderful job serving their communities, and the state's decision not to appeal lets them get back to that important work."
On Dec. 10, the Illinois Attorney General announced that it would not appeal a court decision upholding the conscience rights of pharmacists against a state mandate requiring the dispensation of abortion-inducing drugs.
After seven years in court, the decision secures a victory for two Illinois pharmacists and the pharmacies they run.
The case stems from a 2005 executive rule issued by then-Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich to require all pharmacists and pharmacies in the state to dispense Plan B, also known as the "morning after pill."
While it is commonly called "emergency contraception," the drug can cause an early abortion by ending the life of a newly created human embryo.
Pharmacists who did not comply with the rule were threatened with fines and the loss of professional licenses.
The governor did not allow a religious exemption to the rule, saying that pharmacists who were morally opposed to the drug should find a different profession.
Several pharmacists and pharmacies that morally object to cooperating in the destruction of human life filed a lawsuit challenging the rule.
The suit argued that the rule violated state religious liberty laws, health care conscience protections and the religious freedom guarantees in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
It charged that the rule unfairly discriminated against health care professionals seeking to contribute to society according to their principles by forcing them to choose between their constitutionally protected rights and their livelihood.
In April 2011, an Illinois trial court granted a permanent injunction blocking the rule from applying to the pharmacists. The court found no evidence that anyone had been harmed by a pharmacist's religious objections to providing the drugs. It also noted that the law allowed pharmacies to refuse to sell drugs for many other business reasons, but not religious ones.
A state appellate court affirmed the injunction in September 2012, finding that the rule amounted to "discrimination in licensing" against those with religious objections to early abortion drugs.
Dr. Charmaine Yoest, president and CEO of Americans United for Life, hailed the decision as "a tremendous victory."
Americans United for Life, which filed the original lawsuit in the case, noted that many individuals throughout the country face similar dilemmas due the Obama administration's recent federal mandate requiring employers to offer health insurance plans covering contraception, sterilization and early abortion drugs.
Yoest said that the victory in Illinois "has dramatic implications for all people of faith who object to being forced to throw aside their convictions to support an anti-life agenda."
Source: CNA
For the first time a federal appeals court has issued an order against the Obama administration's abortion/contraceptive mandate.
The one-page order Wednesday (Nov. 28) from a three-judge Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals panel prevents the government from forcing a Missouri business -- O'Brien Industrial Holdings, LLC -- to cover contraceptives and abortion-causing drugs in its employee health care plans as the appeals process is completed. The panel's temporary injunction came two months after a lower court tossed out the lawsuit.
It marks the fourth time this year that a federal court has issued an order or ruling against the mandate, which applies to businesses and religious organizations. There are about 40 cases nationwide seeking to overturn the mandate, which was implemented by the Department of Health and Human Services after President Obama signed the landmark health care bill into law.
The lawsuit by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) says the mandate would force Frank O'Brien -- the business owner -- to violate his "religious beliefs and company policy." The mandate violates two federal laws as well as the First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom and free speech, the suit states. If the court does not intervene and O'Brien does not follow the mandate, he would face steep fines. O'Brien's company and its subsidiaries employ about 85 people.
"O'Brien is a Catholic who has the religious duty to conduct himself and his business in a manner consistent with the Catholic faith," ACLJ stated in an appeal to the Eighth Circuit. "Pursuant to these beliefs, O'Brien has 'established as company policy that [it] cannot pay for and provide coverage for contraceptives, sterilization, abortion or related education and counseling.'"
O'Brien's business operates a number of businesses that explore, mine and process refractory and ceramic raw materials, according to ACLJ.
"The order sends a message that the religious beliefs of employers must be respected by the government," said ACLJ attorney Francis Manion. "We have argued from the beginning that employers like Frank O'Brien must be able to operate their business in a manner consistent with their moral values, not the values of the government. We look forward to this case moving forward and securing the constitutional rights of our client."
The panel split 2-1 on the order, although all three judges were nominated by Republican presidents. The two justices in the majority were Raymond W. Gruender and Bobby E. Shepherd, each nominated by George W. Bush. Dissenting in the order was Morris Sheppard Arnold, who was nominated by George H.W. Bush.
The ACLJ suit involves a private business, but many of the 40 suits against the mandate involve religious organizations. Tyndale House Publishers, which publishes Bibles and Christian books, won in federal court in November when a judge issued a temporary injunction preventing it from being forced to follow the mandate.
Contact: Michael Foust
Source: Baptist Press
Top pro-life advocates are calling on the Republican Party to maintain its pro-life stance despite calls from some to back off from the position in the wake of the presidential election.
"A real soldier doesn't stay on the defensive," said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, which works to promote pro-life candidates and policies. "You go out and state your best case."
"The folks that have taken the stand on this issue have taken it because we're talking about defending vulnerable human life," she told CNA on Nov. 30. "If it's not about that, it's not about anything."
Dannenfelser was one of several pro-life leaders who responded to suggestions by some Republicans, including Arizona senator John McCain, that the GOP should drop or mitigate its pro-life stance in order to broaden its appeal after losing the presidential election.
Appearing on "Fox News Sunday" on Nov. 25, the senator – who unsuccessfully ran for president against Barack Obama in 2008 – suggested that while "I can state my position on abortion," Republicans should "other than that, leave the issue alone when we are in the kind of economic situation and, frankly, national security situation that we're in."
When asked by host Chris Wallace whether his suggestion to "leave the issue alone" meant allowing "freedom of choice" to abort, McCain responded, "I would allow people to have those opinions and respect those opinions."
"I'm proud of my pro-life position and record, but if someone disagrees with me, I respect your views," he said.
Pro-life advocates immediately rejected such suggestions, arguing that the adamant support of life is both a winning battle and the right thing to do.
Dannenfelser pointed to the historic words of Martin Luther King, Jr., "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's loss on Election Day should not be attributed to his opposition to abortion, said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, and Brendan O'Morchoe, the organization's national field operations director.
In a Nov. 12 blog post on the group's website, Hawkins and O'Morchoe responded to pundits who were already blaming Romney's loss on his support of life.
They pointed to a FOX News exit poll from election night showing that 59 percent of voters supported legal abortion and only 36 percent opposed it.
These numbers do not reflect Gallup's recent poll showing that the majority of Americans are pro-life, they said. Rather, the low turnout shows that pro-lifers did not vote.
They suggested that Romney's relative silence on the subject hurt him at the ballot box, noting that while he said he would de-fund Planned Parenthood and sign pro-life legislation, he did not match the Democratic Party's heavy emphasis on the subject.
"If the Republican Party had made any effort to highlight President Obama's extreme pro-abortion record, we believe the results of this election would have been much different," they said.
The grim reality of resistance within both parties points to the realization that the pro-life movement must not rely on politicians in the nation's capital, they said. Rather, it must continue working to change the culture.
"Our mission of abolishing abortion in our lifetime still stands," they stated. "It will happen in our lifetime. Culture shapes politics, and our culture is becoming pro-life."
Contact: Michelle Bauman
Source: CNA
A French study on women with mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, which are associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancers, shows "the clearest dose effect of any (abortion-breast cancer) study." Professor Joel Brind (Baruch College, City University of New York)
"Communist China's one child per couple policy is at least partially responsible for its escalating breast cancer rates, according to at least two studies. Researchers expect an epidemic of 2.5 million cases of breast cancer by 2021 among women from the One Child Generation who will then be between the ages 55 and 69." (Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer)
Studies from France and China have reported that breast cancer risk climbs with number of abortions. Demonstrating a "dose effect" is considered an "important measure of credibility" for establishing a cause-effect relationship.
Click here to read more.
Contact: Karen Malec
Source: Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer
