The HHS mandate: What's at stake?

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a pair of cases that challenge the HHS mandate requiring most private companies' insurance to provide coverage for contraceptives and abortifacients. The Obama administration asked the high court to review the issue after a federal appeals court in Colorado found in favor of Hobby Lobby, an Oklahoma-based crafts franchise. The court will combine the Hobby Lobby case with lesser-known case involving Conestoga, a Pennsylvania company that lost earlier bids for relief from the mandate.

These are among the questions people are asking about the issue:

Q: What is this contraception mandate?

A: As part of the Affordable Care Act, the universal health insurance reform passed in 2010 (often referred to as "Obamacare"), all group health plans must now provide -- at no cost to the recipient -- certain "preventive services." The list of services mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services includes sterilization, contraceptives and abortifacient drugs.

Q: If this mandate is from 2010, why are we talking about it in 2013?

A: On Jan. 20, 2012, the Obama administration announced that it would not expand the exemption for this mandate to include religious schools, colleges, hospitals and charitable service organizations. Instead, the administration merely extended the deadline for religious groups who do not already fall within the existing narrow exemption so that they will have one more year to comply or drop health care insurance coverage for their employees altogether and incur a hefty fine.

Q: Is there a religious exemption from the mandate? If so, who qualifies for the exemption?

A: According to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the SBC's GuideStone Financial Resources in one of the suits, there is a "religious employer" exemption from the mandate but it is extremely narrow and will, in practice, cover very few religious employers. The exemption may cover certain churches and religious orders that inculcate religious values "as [their] purpose" and which primarily employ and serve those who share their faith.

Many religious organizations -- including hospitals, charitable service organizations and schools -- cannot meet this definition. They will be forced to choose between covering drugs and services contrary to their religious beliefs or cease to offer health plans to their employees and incur substantial fines. "Not even Jesus' ministry would qualify for this exemption," they note, "because He fed, healed, served and taught non-Christians."

Q: Doesn't the mandate only apply to religious organizations that receive federal funding?

A: No. The mandate applies to religious employers even if they receive no federal funding.

Q: When did the government begin requiring employer insurance programs to pay for contraceptives?

A: According to the Becket Fund, the trend toward state-mandated contraceptive coverage in employee health insurance plans began in the mid-1990s and was accelerated by the decision of Congress in 1998 to guarantee contraceptive coverage to employees of the federal government through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). After FEHBP -- the largest employer-insurance benefits program in the country -- set this precedent, the private sector followed suit, and state legislatures began to make such coverage mandatory.

Q: Why is the federal government dictating that contraceptives should be covered by insurance?

A: In 2000, the EEOC issued an opinion stating that the refusal to cover contraceptives in an employee prescription health plan constituted gender discrimination in violation of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA). That law was adopted by Congress in 1978 in response to a Supreme Court decision holding that an employer's selective refusal to cover pregnancy-related disability was not sex discrimination within the meaning of Title VII, the primary federal law addressing employment discrimination.

As the Beckett Fund notes, "Although this opinion is not binding on federal courts, it is influential, since the EEOC is the government body charged with enforcing Title VII. This opinion led to many lawsuits against non-religious employers who refused to cover prescription contraceptives." The federal district courts have split over the issue of whether the PDA requires employers to provide contraception. The only federal court of appeals to address the issue held that the PDA did not include a contraceptive mandate.

Q: But what about the First Amendment protections? Isn't such a requirement inherently unconstitutional?

A: In Employment Division v. Smith, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment's free exercise clause "does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a 'valid and neutral law of general applicability,'" simply because "the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes)." According to the Becket Fund this means that the fact that an act infringes on the religious beliefs or regulates the religiously motivated policies of a religious institution does not necessarily make the law unconstitutional.

Q: Doesn't this seem to be primarily a Catholic issue?

A: No. Although the Catholic Church has been the most vocal opponent of the mandate, many Protestant, Jewish and Muslim leaders also oppose the mandate. In fact, several evangelical leaders have called on evangelicals to stand with Catholics in civil disobedience to this law. Additionally, 300 academics and religious leaders signed a statement by the Beckett Fund explaining why the mandate is "unacceptable."

Q: I don't oppose contraceptives, so why should I care about this issue?

A: There are two reasons that all Christians, regardless of their view on contraceptives, should be concerned about this mandate.

The first reason is because it forces Christians to pay for abortion-inducing drugs. The policy currently requires coverage of Ulipristal ("ella"), which is chemically similar to the abortion drug RU-486 (mifepristone) and has the same effect (to prevent embryos from being implanted or, if already implanted, to die from lack of nutrition). Additionally, RU-486 also is being tested for possible use as an "emergency contraceptive." If the FDA approves it for that purpose, it will automatically be included under the mandate.

The second reason is that it restricts religious liberty by forcing religious institutions to pay for contraceptives and abortifacients even if the employer has a religious or moral objection to such practices.

Q: While it may be a pro-life concern, why is it a religious liberty issue for me since I support the use of contraception?

A: If the mandate is allowed to stand it will set a precedent that the government can not only force citizens to violate their most deeply held beliefs but that we can be sanctioned for refusing to do so. As John Leo has noted, today it is contraceptives and abortifacients, but "down the road it will be about suicide pills, genetic engineering, abortion and mandatory abortion training, transgender operations, and a whole new series of morally problematic procedures about to come over the horizon."

As Leo has recounted, a Catholic-run California hospital was sued because it refused to perform breast-enlargement surgery on a transgendered patient. The state court ruled the hospital had violated the state's anti-discrimination laws. (Caving under litigation, the hospital paid $200,000 to the transgendered man.)

Q: Didn't the Obama administration offer a compromise?

A: In response to the concerns of religious organizations, Obama offered a "compromise" in which he proposed that insurance companies, instead of religious institutions, be required to cover procedures and products that they find objectionable at no cost in their insurance policies. In other words, the insurer would be required to provide the services "free of charge" and pay for them out of their own pocket.

As economist Steve Landsburg has noted, the proposed compromise does not really change the fact that the religious employers are still being forced to pay for the contraceptives-abortifacients: "[A]ll economists ... understand that transferring the responsibility from employers to insurers amounts to transferring the cost from [insurers] to insurance buyers, which is to say that it's not a change in policy. One of the first and most important lessons we teach our students is well summarized by a slogan: 'The economic burden of a tax is independent of the legal burden.' Ditto for a mandated insurance purchase. It is not the law, but the underlying price-sensitivities of buyers and sellers that determines where the burden ultimately falls. Your president knows this. He's banking that you don't."

By Joe Carter who is director of communications for the SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

What the new CDC abortion numbers tell us about abortion’s impact on minorities

 

The abortion of a child of any ethnicity or color is a tragedy that impacts a whole nation. But one thing the latest numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) tell us is that abortion continues to exact a particularly devastating toll on minority communities.

As mentioned in a post from earlier this week, the CDC annual "Abortion Surveillance" for 2010 found a 3.1% drop in abortions from 2009, on top of a 4.6% drop from the previous year. (See "CDC Report Shows Decline in Abortions for 2010; abortion rates and ratios both down")

Because the substantial decline in abortion across the board in the last twenty years (upwards of 400,000 fewer a year by the Guttmacher Institute's more exact count), clearly raw numbers of abortions have gone down for virtually all demographic groups, minorities included. This is obviously good news and an indication that the drop that began in 1990 continues to the present day.

However what these latest numbers confirm is that declines seem to have been greater among whites than among minorities. Put another way demographic data from the latest CDC report clearly show that abortion continues to have a hugely disparate impact on minorities.

There is an important caveat: There are significant limitations in the CDC's numbers. Several states, including the most populous, California, do not report their numbers to the agency. And even among those that do, the data is not necessarily gathered and sorted in the same way.

Not every state asks about race or ethnicity, so precision is difficult. But in the 28 reporting areas [1] that identified both race and ethnicity, 35.7% of abortions were performed on what the CDC refers to as "black" women, 21% were performed on Hispanics, and 6.5% were done on non-Hispanic women identified as being of "other" race or ethnicity (Table 12 in the CDC's Abortion Surveillance for 2010).

This means that 63.2% of abortions in those reporting areas were done on minorities, or nearly two thirds.

Tallying up figures from the 2010 Census, minorities constitute 44.1% of the population: Hispanics (16%), Black (13%), Asian (5%), Native American (0.9%), Hawaiian or Pacific Islander (0.2%), "Other" (6%), or some mixed race category (3%) [2]

If 44.1% of the population is responsible for 63.2% of the abortions, unborn children in those communities are clearly under assault. It is obvious that abortion mills located in or near minority communities are doing high volumes of business.

It is possible, of course, that statistics from "missing states" could tilt the balance back towards the middle, but unlikely. While states not reporting both race and ethnicity to the CDC include predominantly white northeastern states like Vermont and New Hampshire, and Midwestern states such as Nebraska or North Dakota, other large states with significant minority populations such California, Florida, and Illinois were also not included.

If anything is likely, it is that the percentage of abortions to minorities is higher.

The drop in abortions across the board for all racial and ethnic groups shows that pro-life legislation, education, and outreach have had an impact, but these statistics are perhaps an indication that there is more work to be done in these particular minority communities.

Planned Parenthood and its allies in the abortion industry market themselves to these communities, doing Latino outreach, bringing in hip-hop celebrity spokespersons, offering themselves as allies to the poor, yet, not surprisingly, the presence of an abortion clinic has never done anything to "revitalize" these hurting communities.

In 2004, women, many of them minorities, told researchers from Guttmacher that abortion was not something they wanted, but was sometimes what they thought was their only option. For their sake, for the sake of their children, we need to make sure that minority women know of and have access to life-affirming and life-preserving alternatives.

Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight…

[1] The CDC uses reports from both state health departments and those from health departments in Washington, DC and New York City.

[2] www.census.gov/2010census/news/releases/operations/cb11-cn125.html

By Randall K. O'Bannon, Ph.D., NRL Director of Education & Research

Unborn baby destroys mother’s cancer, “he saved his mummy’s life”

Nicola Weller and son, Brandon

In 2010 Nicola Weller went into the hospital to remove a tumor from her womb. As she told the British newspaper, The Daily Mail recently, "I was absolutely devastated. My world just fell apart. My daughter was four years old, and I was being told that I was facing cancer. It was terrifying to think that I may leave her without a mum."

But as a nurse at Dorset County Hospital in Southwest England was performing a scan to locate the tumor, she abruptly left the room. When she returned with three radiologists, they informed her the tumor had disappeared!

"They then broke the news to Mrs. Weller that she was seven weeks pregnant," Lucy Laing reported. "The pregnancy hormones had caused her tumour to disappear."

Mrs. Weller told Laing, "'I was stunned to find out I was expecting a baby – but even more stunned to hear that this baby had caused my tumour to disappear. It was like he had been sent from above to save my life."

Doctors closely monitored her pregnancy but no further treatment was required and her son Brandon, now three, was born September 2010, at 7Ib 8oz. "none the worse for his experience."

Mrs. Weller had not intended to become pregnant, "So getting pregnant was a miracle in itself," she told Laing "[B]ut to find that my unborn baby had caused this tumour to disappear was a further miracle. All that was left on the scan was a few blobs of blood floating around. There was no other sign of it. My baby ended up saving my life. Without him I may not have been here today."

According to Laing, Mrs. Weller was referred to Bridport Community Hospital in Dorset, England for a scan after discovering swelling under her rib in September 2009. She was told her there was a tumour growing around her womb and she needed an operation to remove it.

It was then that the miraculous sequence began.

Mrs. Weller told Laing, "It was a relief when he was born, and it was lovely to meet and hold my wonderful son who had saved me. He was delivered with his right arm pointing forwards so we nicknamed him Superman."

She concluded

"'I hadn't planned another baby, but I'm so glad I did. The tumour was in the early stages of cancer, so it was life-threatening. I've never heard of a baby destroying a tumour before – but I'm very glad that Brandon did.

"'One day when he's old enough to understand I'll tell him how he saved his mummy's life. Alisha understands what has happened and she's very grateful to him too. She dotes on her little brother.'"

Contact: Dave Andrusko, NRL News

Inspiring true story of a woman who survived an abortion

Melissa Ohden

Melissa Ohden is a walking miracle.

Ohden's mother, an unwed teenager at the time of her pregnancy, went through a saline-infused abortion, a procedure that soaked Melissa's body in saline solution for five days. Her mother was expected to give birth to a dead baby.

But a nurse heard Melissa crying on that day in 1977 at St. Luke's Medical Center in Sioux City, Iowa.

Since publicizing her story, Ohden has become an outspoken advocate for women and children to choose life.

Melissa shows us what our missing brothers and sisters would be like, if we would just give them a chance.

As Melissa said, "It's not just a word. It's not a statistic. It's not just a choice…just a right — It's a human being."

Watch and share her powerful testimony.

Editor's note. This appeared at liveactionnews.org.

By Caleb Parke, NRL News

As Americans Lose Both Their Insurance and Their Doctors, The Rationing Built into Obamacare is Being More Widely Acknowledged

As the mainstream media is now commonly reporting, and as NRL News Today has repeatedly documented, individuals whose health insurance policies are being terminated against their will are finding that the replacement policies available in the state and federal "exchanges" typically severely restrict the doctors and health care facilities in their plan networks, omitting many specialists and highly rated health care centers. The replacement policies often force people to leave their current physicians for others from a small pool of doctors accepting bottom-of-the-barrel reimbursements. It's as though your minivan was suddenly repossessed and replaced with a subcompact.

Also being reported in the mainstream media are acknowledgments of rationing elements in Obamacare that the National Right to Life Committee has been warning of since its original proposal in 2009 and 2010. Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, a prior Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is a physician who has been a presidential candidate as well as an Obamacare supporter.  Last summer, he was widely quoted as saying the Independent Payment Advisory Board set up by Obamacare is "essentially a health care rationing board."

Now Time magazine political analyst Mark Halperin has chimed in.

During a November 26, 2013, interview on CNBC, he noted, "The Independent Payment Advisory Board, which is a big part of the Affordable Care Act that is central to cost control, is something that hasn't been debated in a real way . . . we need to have that debate in this country. . . . Those decisions that are made by that board are going to lead to what I think could be described perfectly reasonably as rationing."

On a Newsmax TV program the previous day, Halperin said that rationing is "built into the plan. It's not like a guess or like a judgment. That's going to be part of how costs are controlled."

It is said that as Benjamin Franklin was departing from the Constitutional Convention, he was accosted by a woman who asked whether under the newly drafted Constitution ours was to be a monarchy or a republic. "A republic, Madam," Franklin is reported to have said, "–if you can keep it."

Americans can keep our freedom – including our freedom to spend our own money, if we choose, to save the lives of our family members – only if we inform ourselves about the laws enacted in our name, and seek action from our legislators based on that information. Candidly, how many have carefully read National Right to Life's factsheet, "Routes to Rationing"? You need to study it well enough to be able to recount the four key ways by which the federal government, under Obamacare, is limiting what we are allowed to spend, out of our own private funds, to get life-saving health care?

By Burke Balch, JD, Director, Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics

Of 112 Obamacare Plans for Congress and Staff, 103 are Pro-Abortion

Washington, D.C.—With a December 9th deadline for Members of Congress and congressional staff to sign up for Obamacare health insurance, U.S. Rep. Chris Smith released new evidence of President Obama violating pro-life laws and providing taxpayer funding for insurance plans that include abortion on demand.

"In the run-up to passage of Obamacare, Americans were repeatedly told and reassured by President Obama himself, including in a speech to a joint session of Congress in October 2009, that 'under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortion.' Obama even issued the infamous Executive Order that claimed, 'the Act maintains current Hyde Amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those restrictions to newly created health insurance exchanges,'" said Smith.

"Once again we see those promises ring hollow—what the President said simply isn't true today. In the most recent example, 103 of the 112 insurance plans that Members of Congress and congressional staff are being directed to INCLUDE ELECTIVE ABORTION coverage. Only nine plans offered exclude elective abortion," Smith continued. (Click here to view flyer regarding the nine plans.)

Congressional employees have until just Dec. 9, 2013 to sign up for an employer-sponsored insurance plan on the Obamacare exchange offered in the District of Columbia (DC Health Link). Doubtlessly many congressional staff will—knowingly or unknowingly—sign up for these abortion plans marking a distinct departure from the Smith Amendment, a longstanding law prohibiting abortion coverage in plans provided to federal employees.

The amendment offered by Chris Smith three decades ago to ban abortion funding in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Programs is still current law. Like the Hyde Amendment, the Smith Amendment prohibits the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) from funding or even engaging in administrative activities in connection with any plan that includes abortion. However, the Obama Administration is now violating the Smith amendment since OPM has begun to administer a system for Members of Congress and their staff to obtain taxpayer-subsidized insurance coverage that pays for the destruction of innocent unborn children.

"Only in response to public pressure did D.C. Health Link release a FAQ explaining how to decipher which plans exclude elective abortion coverage. To date, Secretary Sebelius has failed to provide any information about abortion coverage in plans sold in dozens of states on the Federally Facilitated Marketplace– even after promising to do so over a month ago," said Smith.

"This failure to disclose is a problem indicative of Obamacare plans nationwide and is why I have introduced the 'Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act' (H.R. 3279), a bill that requires information regarding either inclusion or exclusion of abortion coverage as well as the existence of an abortion surcharge to be 'prominently displayed.' To rid Obamacare of its massive expansion of abortion-on-demand facilitation and funding, I have also introduced the No Taxpayers Funding for Abortion Act, (H.R. 7)," Smith continued.

"Abortion isn't health care — it kills babies and harms women. We live in an age of ultrasound imaging — the ultimate window to the womb and the child who resides there. We are in the midst of a fetal health care revolution, an explosion of benign interventions designed to diagnose, treat and cure the youngest patients," said Smith.

"Once again it is clear that Obamacare's abortion mandate violates federal law and makes taxpayers complicit in the culture of death. This is not reform," said Smith.

Editor's note. The above was sent out today by the office of Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ)

Contact: Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), NRL News

Yes, It Is Rationing

It's four years overdue, but America is finally beginning to have the debate about Obamacare we were promised. Barack Obama had assured us – another in his long series of broken promises – that the meetings held to devise the plan would be televised on C-SPAN. Americans would have every opportunity to know what the law is, and how it would affect them.

That never happened. The law was put together behind closed doors. Nancy Pelosi later arrogantly told us "we have to pass the law so you can know what's in it."

Now we're finding out.

National Right to Life was a lone early voice exposing how the law would cause rationing of life-saving care. But Obamacare supporters have mocked the claim. Their standard line has been "the ACA is designed to expand coverage, not reduce it."

But that's only one part of the law. Central to this overhaul of our healthcare system is a harsh regime of rationing – denial of care. And it's finally being admitted.

Last summer, former Vermont governor, Democratic presidential candidate, physician and Obamacare supporter Howard Dean made headlines when he spilled the beans. The Independent Payment Advisory Board set up by Obamacare, Dean said, was "essentially a health care rationing board."

Further clarification about the role of this board, known as IPAB, came in a series of interviews and tweets last week by Time magazine Senior Political Analyst Mark Halperin. Coming from an avowed supporter of universal coverage, as Halperin is, the interviews were very instructive, containing insights every American should know.

Halperin first discussed rationing on a November 25th Newsmax TV program. "It's built into the plan. It's not like a guess or like a judgment. That's going to be part of how costs are controlled."

Later that day, Halperin clarified in a tweet that his comments were not about so-called "death panels," as the show's host had termed it, but about rationing. This is an important distinction for pro-lifers to understand so we (unlike Obama) are completely clear and honest about what the Affordable Care Act does when we discuss it with others.

"Death Panels" vs. broad government-generated rationing in the ACA

The British National Health Service (NHS) has appeals committees to review "individual funding requests." They meet to determine whether treatments in a specific case will or won't be paid for by the government health care system, NHS. These have sometimes been termed "death panels" because if a patient needs a treatment to save or extend his life and can't afford to pay for it himself, a verdict of "no" by the committee means the patient could die – hence, the term "death panel."

Obamcare's Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) will not operate this way. It won't review individual cases; in fact, the law is written to preclude this type of direct rationing. That's why some Obamacare supporters protest that the law actually bars IPAB from rationing.

But Obamacare actually gives IPAB far more power to ration than if it was acting as judge and jury to individual patients. Broadly speaking, IPAB is given sweeping powers to recommend to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) whether and how whole categories of treatments are to be reimbursed – and is required to use these powers to prevent overall health care spending from being allowed even to keep up with medical inflation. Thus, they can (in fact, it is their job to) limit reimbursement and ration care from thousands or millions of people at a time.

For example, IPAB might decide that a new, promising treatment for breast cancer is not "cost-effective," given the board's calculation of the number of lives it might save versus the cost to offer the treatment. HHS might then issue a "quality measure" binding on health care providers that does not authorize use of the treatment.

Effectively, HHS would have the power to drive most doctors out of business if they ignore its directives to ration. Women who might have been saved by the new treatment would die if the older, cheaper treatments don't cure them.

Halperin was open about the law's intention to ration in a follow-up interview on CNBC last Tuesday.

"Those decisions that are made by that board are going to lead to what I think could be described perfectly reasonably as rationing, " Halperin said. "Again, as I said, that's built into the system."

"The Independent Payment Advisory Board, which is a big part of the Affordable Care Act that is central to cost control, is something that hasn't been debated in a real way . . . we need to have that debate in this country."

Currently, if an insurance company, doctor or hospital denies you a treatment or payment for a treatment, you have several options. States have insurance commissions to which you have a right to appeal payment denials by insurance companies. You can go to another doctor or hospital to get care.

Under Obamacare, these avenues will be largely closed off to you and your loved ones. If the government says you can't get a treatment, your current ability to appeal to a government body will be curtailed. And Americans don't yet realize the law will prevent you from spending your own money to get treatments deemed in an Orwellian way "ineffective" by the unelected, largely unaccountable IPAB board.

Source: NRL News

What is the Unborn? A Case for Biological Humanity from Fertilization

Aside from the sourced quotations and arguments in this article, it has been heavily influenced by Justice for All.

Before you can even answer the question of whether or not abortion is moral, you must first decide what the unborn is. For as Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason observes, if the unborn is not human, then no justification for elective abortion is necessary. It would be no different from having a mole removed or a tooth pulled. But if the unborn is human, then no justification for elective abortion is adequate.

If it's true that no one can tell when human life begins, then the benefit of the doubt should go to life. We should not be aborting the unborn because there's a chance we could be aborting living human entities. If a hunter hears a rustling in the woods, does he shoot right away or does he make sure the rustling wasn't caused by another human? Or if you're driving down a road in the dark and you see the outline of something that may be a child or may simply be the shadow of a tree, do you drive into it or do you slow down? Or if you're about to blow up a condemned building and you're not sure if someone's inside, do you blow it up anyway or send someone in to make sure?

However, it's not true that no one can tell when human life begins.

The unborn from fertilization are alive because they exhibit the properties of living things. They grow through cellular reproduction and division, they metabolize food for energy, and they respond to stimuli. In fact, the only things the unborn need to survive are adequate nutrition, a proper environment, and an absence of fatal threats. That's all any of us need. There is no point in human development at which the developing entity goes from non-life to living.

The unborn are also human from fertilization. We know that everything reproduces after its own kind; dogs have dogs, cats have cats, and humans have humans. They have separate human DNA from, and often a different blood type than, the mother. A white human embryo can be created in a petri dish, implanted into a black mother, and be born white. In fact, if the unborn organism were simply a "part of the mother's body," then following the law of transitive property (if A is a part of B, and B is a part of C, then A is a part of C), every pregnant woman would have four arms, four legs, two heads, four eyes, two noses, and roughly half the time male genitalia. But this is absurd. At no time during human development does the unborn ever go from non-human to human.

Finally, the unborn from fertilization are organisms. They are living human entities separate from the mother, with their own functional parts that work together for the good of the whole, developing themselves from within into a more mature version of itself, along the path of human development. Zygote, embryo, and fetus are not non-human entities, they are early stages of development in human life.

Philosopher Richard Stith once made a valuable observation. He discovered that the reason pro-choice people tend to think pro-life people are absurd is that they tend to think of the unborn entity as being constructed in utero, like a car on an assembly line. When does a car become a car? Is it when the frame resembles a car, or when the tires are attached, or when it drives off the lot? It requires an outside builder to put all the pieces together into what we understand is a car. A car is not present from the beginning, because the parts that make a car can be used in the construction of something else (such as a boat or a plane).

However, the unborn's development is different. He or she directs his or her own development from within. He or she does not have an outside builder, he or she directs his or her own internal growth and maturation, and this entails continuity of being. Professor Richard Stith illustrates the difference with the following analogy:

"Suppose we are back in the pre-digital photo days, and you have a Polaroid camera and you have taken a picture that you think is unique and valuable — let's say a picture of a jaguar darting out from a Mexican jungle. The jaguar has now disappeared, so you are never going to get that picture again in your life, and you really care about it. (I am trying to make this example comparable to a human being, for we say that every human being is uniquely valuable.) You pull the tab out and as you are waiting for it to develop, I grab it away from you and rip it open, thus destroying it. When you get really angry at me, I say blithely, 'You're crazy. That was just a brown smudge. I cannot fathom why anyone would care about brown smudges.' Wouldn't you think that I were the insane one? Your photo was already there. We just couldn't see it yet." (Richard Stith, "Does Making Babies Make Sense? Why So Many People Find it Difficult to See Humanity in a Developing Foetus," Mercatornet, September 2, 2008.)

As pro-life philosopher Scott Klusendorf notes, "The science of embryology is clear. From the earliest stages of development, the unborn are distinct, living, and whole human beings. Therefore, every 'successful' abortion ends the life of a living human being." (Scott Klusendorf, The Case for Life, Crossway Books, 2009, p. 35.)

Embryologists, who are the experts in the field on human embryos, consistently agree that the unborn are alive and human from fertilization. Consider the following from the most-used textbooks on the issue:

"Although life is a continuous process, fertilization (which, incidentally, is not a 'moment') is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new genetically distinct human organism is formed when the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte." (Ronan O'Rahilly and Fabiola Muller, Human Embryology and Teratology, 3rd ed., New York: Wiley-Liss, 2001, p.8.)

"A zygote is the beginning of a new human being (i.e., an embryo)." (Keith L. Moore, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 7th ed., Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2003, p.2.)

There are many more examples I could give. In short, you didn't come from an embryo, you once were an embryo. Sophisticated pro-choice philosophers also know that human life begins at fertilization:

"It is possible to give 'human being' a precise meaning. We can use it as equivalent to 'member of the species Homo sapiens.' Whether a being is a member of a given species is something that can be determined scientifically, by an examination of the nature of the chromosomes in the cells of living organisms. In this sense there is no doubt that from the first moments of its existence an embryo conceived from human sperm and eggs is a human being." (Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp.85-86.)

"Perhaps the most straightforward relation between you and me on the one hand and every human fetus on the other is this: All are living members of the same species, Homo sapiens. A human fetus after all is simply a human being at a very early stage in his or her development." (David Boonin, A Defense of Abortion, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003, p. 20.)

In fact, Alan Guttmacher, former president of Planned Parenthood, in 1933 (a full forty years before Roe v. Wade was passed), wrote:

"This all seems so simple and evident that it is difficult to picture a time when it wasn't part of the common knowledge." (Alan Guttmacher, Life in the Making: The Story of Human Procreation, New York: Viking Press, 1933, p. 3.)

Additionally, a Planned Parenthood brochure from 1964, when answering a question about whether or not abortion is birth control, states: "Absolutely not. An abortion ends the life of a baby after it has begun."

In my next article, I will address objections to biological humanity from fertilization. But the facts of science are clear: human life begins at fertilization.

Editor's note. This appeared at blog.secularprolife.org.

Contact: Clinton Wilcox, NRL News

Polls Show Most Americans Oppose HHS Mandate

Two polls show that most Americans oppose the government mandate requiring most business and nonprofit employers to offer potential abortion-inducing drugs in their employee health plans.

WPA Opinion Research found that 59 percent of likely American voters do not support the Health and Human Services mandate.  A Rasmussen survey shows that 51 percent disagree with it.

The Obama administration required most for-profit businesses to comply by August of last year. Nonprofits — many of which are faith-based — have a "safe-harbor" until January.

"Public opposition to the HHS mandate regarding contraception and drugs that can destroy human embryos, like opposition to the law overall, is significant," WPA concludes. "Obamacare has seen its public support drop as the unadvertised consequences of the law have become clear. Drugs that can destroy a human embryo are just another instance of this."

More than 80 lawsuits are in play.

"Although the Supreme Court has agreed to hear (two of) these cases, Congress should listen to the American people and act to protect the livelihoods of Americans that are now at risk," said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. "Congress must fulfill its constitutional duty to protect employers and individuals who do not want to be punished for standing up for their rights."

Contact: Bethany Monk, CitizenLink

Doctor’s explanation of disability risks in unborn children can be misleading, author says

In an article I wrote back in March, I spoke about the pressure that doctors often put on the parents of disabled unborn babies to abort.

One study cited in that article found that:

… [d]espite the shock and grief they may experience upon hearing the news of a fetal anomaly, the pregnant woman and her partner are usually urged to make the decision to terminate quickly. Behind the urgency is the physician's desire to avoid complications of 'late' terminations of pregnancy. Because of the delays involved in amniocentesis, abortions may occur in the second and even third trimester pregnancy. In health care settings, the issue of such late abortions has raised ethical and legal questions. In one early study, most of the terminations occurred within 72 hours of the woman receiving the news of the abnormality. This hardly allows time for the couple to become informed about parenting children born with that anomaly and thus considering carrying through with the pregnancy.

I was reading a book called All God's Mistakes: Genetic Counseling in a Pediatric Hospital by Charles L Bosk.

Bosk interviewed counselors who met with pregnant women and their partners and talked to them about the risks of having a disabled child. The author also attended some of these counseling sessions. Sometimes the counselors would meet with the parents after amniocentesis had determined that the baby had a health problem. Other times they met after the test was inconclusive.

Then there were cases where the parents carried a gene for a genetic illness, but there was no test available to detect whether the baby was affected. In these cases, the counselors were supposed to give the parents information about the risks to the child and let them decide whether or not to abort. There was the possibility that if they chose to abort, they would be killing a healthy child.

The author notes how counselors explained the risks to couples:

… the very fact that risks can be expressed in numeric form allows counselors, if they choose, to merely pass information on to clients in an objective fashion; for example, "The normal population risk is 3%. Your risk is 6%."… Such risk statements without elaboration are rare… For example, consider the difference between the following statements, each of which is correct: "Your risk is 3% greater than that of the general population" and "Your risk is double that of the general population." Risk statements of the latter form are more common than bare, unelaborated numbers, despite the counselors' commitment to not intruding on the privacy of patient decision-making.

This quote shows that the way statistics are stated has a huge impact on the message conveyed. Saying. "The risk is two times greater" vs. "The risk is 3% more" puts two completely different spins on the data. It could have a profound impact on couples' perception of risk and, therefore, their decision whether or not to abort. It is disturbing to read that the counselors used the "2x greater" phrasing much of the time. One wonders how many couples choose to abort thinking that the risk of having a disabled child is much greater than it actually is.

Why do the counselors phrase risk this way? One possibility is that they are biased towards abortion because of "wrongful life" suits sometimes aimed at medical facilities and doctors after the births of disabled children.

It is unknown as to whether this way of stating risk is common among medical personnel, but parents should be aware that what doctors say can be misleading, and, if faced with a baby who has a possible genetic disability, it is important to do more research.

Contact:  Sarah Terzo, a pro-life author and creator of the clinicquotes.com website. She is a member of Secular Pro-Life and PLAGAL.

Abortionists in Indiana fail to report abortions as required that were performed on girls under 14

Abortionist Ulrich Klopfer

Hats off to Amanda Gray of the South Bend Tribune. She reports

"At least four Indiana doctors have waited weeks or even months to report abortions provided to girls under 14 despite a law requiring them to do so within three days, according to state records.

"The law, intended to speed up reporting of statutory rape and sexual abuse, is part of a larger requirement for all Indiana abortions to be reported every six months. The law requires doctors to report within three days any abortions provided to girls 13 and younger to both the Department of Child Services and the Indiana State Department of Health. Breaking the law is a Class B misdemeanor."

Gray explained that the reports (which the newspaper obtained from public record requests) came from five counties. The abortionist who ignored the requirement the most was Ulrich Klopfer, in St. Joseph County. According to Department of Health reports, in at least three abortions since 2011 Kloper's reports were "well past the three-day window," Gray reported.

On September 13, 2013, Allen County Right to Life Executive Director, Cathie Humbarger and sidewalk counselor Evelyn Witte filed complaints with the Indiana Attorney General's office and the Indiana Medical Licensing Board. According to Indiana Right to Life, Humbarger reviewed the publicly- available records which shows that Klopfer (of the Fort Wayne Women's Health Organization) performed an abortion on a 13-year-old girl on Februaray 7 but the Indiana Department of Health reported receiving the report on July 25.

In Gray's story, we learn that Klopfer is an Illinois-based abortionist who provides abortions in three Indiana counties. Sue Swayze, communications director with Indiana's Professional Licensing Agency, told Gray that Kloper's Indiana medical licenses is currently listed as "valid while under review." In addition, "Klopfer is scheduled to come before the medical licensing board Jan. 22 in Indianapolis because of public statements he made about having failed to report an abortion of a 13-year-old"—comments made to an online pro-abortion blog.

However, Klopfer is not the only abortionist who failed to adhere to state reporting requirements. In seven of the 12 abortions performed on girls under 14 since July 2011, abortionists "did not file reports until several weeks — in one incident, it was six months — after the procedure," Gray reported. "In two other cases, it was unclear when the reports were filed because state records are incomplete."

The law was approved overwhelmingly in 2011. In the Indiana House the vote was 83-11. In the Indiana Senate the vote was 48-0.

Timely reporting of young teen abortions is critical to the investigations of possible abuse, according to prosecutors and child safety advocates.

"What we know is that some sex offenders have more than one victim," Jennifer Pickering, spokeswoman for Prevent Child Abuse St. Joseph County, told Gray. "The sooner the opportunity arises to investigate, the sooner DCS [Department of Child Services], can get involved and the sooner you can assure that girl is safe and determine if there are any other victims."

When Humbarger and Witte filed their complaint against Klopfer back in September, Mike Fichter, President and CEO of Indiana Right to Life said

"Indiana law is very clear about what needs to be reported, to whom and when reporting must take place regarding abortions on girls under 14 years of age. The law, instructions for reporting and violation details are printed at the top of each terminated pregnancy report. Klopfer's failure to report this abortion raises serious red flags about his abortion business. If he fails to send in a one-page form when he does an abortion on a 13-year-old, how can anyone know if he is following state abortion law in other areas such as informed consent, facility standards and appropriately determining the age of the baby before he aborts him or her?"

Contact: Dave Andrusko, National Right to Life

There were more and better choices before abortion came along. And no one had to die.”

In the Guttmacher Institute's 2004 study on the reasons women have abortion,* researchers drew conclusions that haunt me to this day. On the basis of in depth interviews with 38 women that followed surveys of over 1,200 women, researchers said, "[T]he language women used suggests that abortion was not something they desired…They say not having a child as their best (and sometime only) option."

Really? Abortion was something aborting women do not really want? As their only option? What happened to abortion as a matter of "freedom of choice?"

Before going further, we must point out that whether this was a realistic or accurate assessment of woman's circumstances is questionable. As far as we can tell, Guttmacher never asked these women or identified what resources they had available, what churches or local pregnancy care centers had to offer, what government programs were accessible, whether there were relatives to help care for the child, etc.

Guttmacher also failed to inquire as to what women knew about local adoption services, though several women volunteered that they wouldn't consider or couldn't "give away" their baby because that would be wrong.

So there are, in fact, alternatives to abortion, though it is unclear how much women are aware of or have access to them. It is obviously not something the abortion industry is keen on sharing with women.

But return to the original thought. Women (far more than the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute lets on) don't want abortion, but often feel like it is their only option. How is it that, in the name of "choice," women have ended up feeling like they have no choice at all?

The answer lies in understanding how the legal availability of abortion changes the dynamics of the situation.

Before abortion was legal in all 50 states and widely available, what did a pregnant woman do? What were her options? She might, in a ceremony celebrated and supported by the community, marry the father, bear the child, and go on to start a life as a family. If she chose not to get married, she might bear and raise the child on her own, but again probably with the help and support of her family and community.

There were, sometimes, in all honesty, prejudices and obstacles that had to be worked through, but most families eventually found ways to adjust and accommodate and actually welcome the new grandchild or niece or nephew when he or she arrived.

Adoption was a real and live option for women who needed it, as were homes for unwed mothers waiting to give birth. It may have been imperfect and creaky at times, but society had in place working solutions for women dealing with unplanned or crisis pregnancies.

The absence of ready access to abortion also meant that there was both a personal and societal expectation that men would bear some responsibility for the children they fathered. At a minimum, there was the expectation that they would offer (or be legally compelled to give) some financial support.

All that changed with Roe v. Wade.

States and communities no longer had to be as open to mothers, babies, or young families in difficult circumstances. Institutions like homes for unwed mothers, orphanages that, however imperfect, still provided critical services, were no longer necessities, and hence less easy to find. Expectations for churches, and local charities, which offered not only social services but mentorship, were lowered.

Men, and sadly, in some cases a woman's family, could point a woman to abortion as a solution to relieve everyone else's stress, to release them from expense and obligation, to make baby and problem disappear. Or they could not-so-subtly coerce them to abort.

And so, instead of having different life-affirming options–marriage, single motherhood, adoption, community support–abortion became for many of these women, not an option, but an obligation, the only "choice" they feel is really available or open to them in the particular community in which they live.

So, the legality of abortion forces an option on to the table that wasn't there before, with the implicit social message that it is an acceptable (if not preferred) option. Its availability and its promotion by the abortion industry and its popular media allies have crowded the other options off the table.

The legality/availability means that the father (or in many cases the state) will pay for the abortion, but may well adopt the attitude that if the woman decides to have the child, she is on her own.

Unless someone tells her different (that's one of the reasons for right to know laws), unless she encounters someone reaching out to her with personal support and practical assistance (the critical reason for pregnancy care centers), she may indeed feel that abortion is her only realistic option, and she may go do something that, in her heart of hearts, she does not want to do.

This is the legacy of "choice."

Not freedom, not liberation, but the sense of a whole culture, a whole community, all your circumstances conspiring against your carrying your child.

There were more and better choices before abortion came along. And no one had to die.

* Lawrence B. Finer, et al., "Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives," Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, September 2005

Contact: Randall K. O'Bannon, Ph.D. NRL Director of Education & Research

The "Gosnell taught us nothing" Act

New Hampshire's senior Senator Jeanne Shaheen and 2nd District Congresswoman Ann Kuster are co-sponsors of legislation introduced in Washington earlier this month that would wipe out all abortion regulations in every state, including those recommending parental involvement and restricting late-term abortions.

The deceptively-named "Women's Health Protection Act" was introduced in the Senate by Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and in the House by Judy Chu (D-CA). The Senate bill, S.1696, currently has 32 co-sponsors. The House Bill, H.R. 3471, has 77. Details of this bill may be found at congress.gov.

A better name for the bill would be GTUN: Gosnell Taught Us Nothing.

Kelly Ayotte's name is not on the bill, which is no surprise. Neither is Carol Shea-Porter's, which frankly does surprise me.

"Findings" in the preface to the bill include the claim that abortion has been "hindered" by blockades (like people praying outside abortion facilities?), restrictions on insurance coverage (like the Hyde Amendment), restrictions on minors (like parental notification with judicial bypass), and restrictions on providers.

Think about that. The sponsors want no restrictions on providers. Sounds like back-alley days to me.

So what would the bill do?

This Act would make a number of recently-passed state-level abortion laws null and void, including bills passed in the nauseating wake of Kermit Gosnell's crimes in Philadelphia. Among laws that would be wiped out:

Limits on a provider's ability to delegate tasks. Recall that Gosnell delegated to his staff the task of administering and monitoring sedation for women undergoing abortions. Karnamaya Mongar is dead thanks to that.

Limits on ability to prescribe and dispense drugs. This would mean the end of any meaningful FDA protocols regarding the use of abortion-inducing drugs. PP affiliates already advertise such drugs for use up to 63 days into pregnancy, while the FDA draws the line at 49. This would also pose challenges to any state that tries to keep taxpayers from entering into public contracts with abortion providers. Remember how PPNNE claimed after losing its New Hampshire Title X contract in 2011 that it could no longer "dispense" birth control, which turned out to be nonsense? The very claim of inability-to-dispense would undermine taxpayer protection.

Limits on telemed abortions. This is a gift to the pharmaceutical companies that make & plan to make abortion-inducing drugs.

Requirements that abortion facilities have doorways and hallways that can accommodate gurneys, should a woman require emergency transport following an abortion.

Requirements that abortion providers have admitting privileges at local hospitals.

Any law that requires more than one trip to a provider before abortion could be performed. Goodbye, 24-hour waiting periods, where they're required (NH has no such law yet). Hello, drive-through abortions. The thank-you notes to Shaheen and Kuster from abusive partners and other people who coerce women into abortions are probably already addressed and ready to go.

There's more, but you get the idea. I see a lot in there to warm the heart of an abortion provider or a pharmaceutical rep, but nothing that protects women's health.

Would statistical collection of abortion information be banned under this bill? I don't see how such requirements would survive under the bill. God forbid the stats might show that women are being harmed by abortion providers. Might have a chilling effect on the industry.

And the preborn child? A cipher. Post-viability abortion would be fine under this bill. It has no requirement that a child born alive following attempted abortion be cared for. Gosnell-like snipping of babies' necks would be protected under this bill, as long as the abortionist uses her or his "best" medical judgment.

Contact: Ellen Kolb, Leaven for the Loaf Blog

Supreme Court agrees to hear to two lawsuits against Obama Mandate

As widely anticipated, the Supreme Court this morning agreed to hear two lawsuits challenging the HHS mandate which compels employers to provide health coverage for drugs and procedures to which they have moral or religious objections.

Plaintiffs had prevailed in one case—Hobby Lobby—and lost in a second– Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. There are other similar cases but the justices did not announce whether they will hear them at this time.

This represents the first legal challenge to ObamaCare to reach the Supreme Court since it upheld the law's "individual mandate" 17 months ago. Early speculation is that oral arguments in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius will be held in March with a possible ruling by late June.

Because there was a split among circuit courts and because the Obama Administration in September asked the Justices to hear the Hobby Lobby case, it was widely assumed the justices would hear at least some of the lawsuits against the mandate. (The HHS mandate are regulations adopted by the Department of Health and Human Services under a provision of ObamaCare, formally known as the "Affordable Care Act.")

The core arguments raised are that the mandate violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment's free exercise of religion clause.

"My family and I are encouraged that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide our case," said David Green, Hobby Lobby's founder and CEO. "This legal challenge has always remained about one thing and one thing only: the right of our family businesses to live out our sincere and deeply held religious convictions as guaranteed by the law and the Constitution. Business owners should not have to choose between violating their faith and violating the law."

"This is a major step for the Greens and their family businesses in an important fight for Americans' religious liberty," said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and lead lawyer for Hobby Lobby. "The cases will decide 'who gets to exercise religion — it's really that simple,' Duncan told POLITICO. 'The idea that the protection of religious liberty is confined to only certain pursuits … from our perspective, that's disturbing.'"

In July, U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton granted the company a preliminary injunction against the HHS mandate. Prior to that the full 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby, which employs more than 13,000 full-time workers.

As noted yesterday, Adam Liptak (writing for the New York Times) explained how the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals applied "the First Amendment logic of [the 2010 case of] Citizens United" in ruling for Hobby Lobby.

"'We see no reason the Supreme Court would recognize constitutional protection for a corporation's political expression but not its religious expression,' Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich wrote for the majority.

The potential penalties for non-compliance with the mandates are staggering. "[L]arger for-profit corporations must comply or face fines of $100 per day per employee, which could total $475 million a year in Hobby Lobby's case," CNN reported today. "An alternative — dropping employee health insurance altogether — would cost $26 million in annual penalties.

Contact: Dave Andrusko, National Right to Life

Pro-lifers release second shocking video: Statutory rapist goes to Walgreens

Students for Life has released its second undercover video of the sale of Plan B, the morning-after pill, and this time was more shocking than the last. 

The investigation called "Expose Plan B" sent a man posing as a 33-year-old with a youngish-looking woman posing as his 15-year-old girlfriend to three well-known pharmacy chain stores in several states to purchase Plan B.

In the video, the older man made it obvious he was trying to cover up statutory rape.

Kristan Hawkins, who heads Students for Life, says there were statutory rape laws in every state where the investigation took place.

"Sadly every CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens we went into, he was sold the drug even when he went as far as to say he was planning to crush the drug into his girlfriend's drink because she was against abortion," Hawkins recalls.

According to a federal court order, and FDA regulations, the drug can be sold to anyone, male or female, of age or underage. That provides the perfect cover-up for child molesters.

"And there's no training being conducted of employees, of store clerks and pharmacists," says the Students for Life spokesperson. "No one knows if they have a right of conscience if they can refuse to sell in case some of these situations come up."

For the video, visit: http://youtu.be/sLHEWawsqPw

Students for Life has sample legislation on the Expose Plan B website which restores the pre-April FDA rule language to sell the drug to only those 17 years old or older. It also provides the right of conscience to employees to not sell the drug.

A petition can be signed on the same website. 

Contact: Charlie Butts, OneNewsNow.com

Eugenic Pre-Natal Cleansing Spreads to Autism

More boys than girls have autism, so now, an Australian IVF clinic will search out male embryos for destruction before implantation, e.g., sex selection.

A bioethicist thinks that accepting pre-natal autism cleansing needs to be respectfully debated. From, "Prenatal Screening and Autism," by Andrew Whitehouse:

The internet was ablaze last week with the news that health authorities in Western Australia (WA) have given approval for IVF clinics to 'screen' embryos to reduce the chances of a couple having a child with autism.

The Reproductive Technology Council will now allow certain women undergoing IVF treatment to be selectively implanted with female embryos only. The rationale for this practice is that autism is more likely to affect males than females (approximately 4 males for every 1 female), and by selecting female embryos, the chances of this child developing autism are reduced.

But there isn't a genetic test for autism, and females may be under-diagnosed. Not to worry, there soon will be, and so we have to discuss the issue.

Showing which side his head is on, he first pitches the junk biology:

PGD [pre-implantation genetic diagnosis] is not the abortion of a developing baby in the womb. It is the screening of fertilized eggs prior to being implanted in the womb.

There is no such thing as a fertilized egg. Once fertilization is complete, a new human organism exists, possessing his or her own genetic makeup and sex–hence, the advocacy for sex selection to stop autism. Hello! 

The distinction to abortion is one without a substantial difference. An early embryo is a human organism, a developing human being. Ditto a later-stage embryo or fetus gestating in a womb. True, destroying embryos before implantation isn't an abortion technically, but that is only because the woman's body is not involved. The effect is the same–destroying a developing human life.

Whitehouse admits that it would be painful for a person with autism to see advocacy for preventing people like them from being born. Tough toenails:

The flip-side of the debate is that autism sometimes associated with significant disability that can affect quality of life. It is without question that a person's life would be improved if they were free from intellectual disability, if they had the facility to communicate more freely, and if they had the capacity to live independently. To want a person to live without disability does not diminish in any way our love for people in these circumstances, nor their irreplaceable importance in our lives.

But, that isn't the argument. If someone can be treated medically to overcome the effects of autism, I don't know who would object. Whitehouse is saying that it is respectable to prevent them from ever being born.

And don't think that a genetic test wouldn't lead to calls for mandatory pre-natal testing and the promotion of eugenic abortion–just as now with Down syndrome and other gene-related disabilities.

Whitehouse says that debating autism cleansing is a "needs to be had." That is like saying allowing eugenic cleansing for racial features is a debate we need have: Both are invidiously discriminatory and have no place in an enlightened, equality-believing society.

P.S. The great animal welfare advocate, Temple Grandin, has mild autism. Our food animals have benefited tremendously because she wasn't selected out before birth.

Contact: Wesley J. Smith, National Review