2015 Illinois Legislative Update

There are a number of bills currently being heard in the Illinois General Assembly, some very good pro-life bills and some very bad pro-abortion bills.  Here is a summary of legislation currently introduced in the Illinois General Assembly.  Please stay informed for more upcoming action alerts.

Please visit our legislative page often for more updates.  Click here for more information.

Pro-Life Bills:

Ultrasound opportunity act

HB 2701

Chief Sponsor: Representative Barbara Wheeler

Background: This bill was sparked after an Illinois woman was refused by an abortion clinic to see her ultrasound. Frustrated, she left the clinic and instead went to a pregnancy help center that was able to give her a free ultrasound and let her see.

Bill Summary: This bill would require the medical professional to offer any woman seeking an abortion after 8 weeks gestation, the opportunity to receive and view the ultrasound prior to beginning an abortion.
Click here for more information.
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Women’s Health and Protection Act

HB 3274

Chief Sponsor: Representative Sheri Jesiel

Background: Illinois abortion clinics receive a health and sanitary inspection an average of once every 9 years. 193 health and sanitary violations were discovered in thirteen of the fourteen licensed women’s clinics when they were inspected between 2011 – 2014 (the majority of the women’s clinics were inspected for the first time in 9-17 years.)  A grave need for regular health and sanitary violations is necessary.

Bill Summary:  This bill does four things:

1) Requires clinics that perform 50 or more surgical abortions in a year to first receive a license from the Illinois Department of Public Health. The license can be a PTSC license (a less restrictive category made only for women’s abortion clinics) or an ASTC which is what other doctors offices are required to be licensed under – such as eye doctors.

Point of Interest: 54% of the abortion clinics open today, are not licensed and therefore have not since 1999 received a health and sanitary inspection. No Planned Parenthood in Illinois has a state license.

2)  This bill requires that each women’s abortion clinic receives an unannounced health inspection once per year.

3) If a violation is found within the clinic that continues to place women’s health at risk (such as unsterile surgical equipment was used), then the clinic doctor is required to issue a notice to all potentially affected patients. A copy of the letter must be included in the plan of correction that is submitted to the Illinois Department of Public Health.

4) The Illinois Department of Public Health will issue a Public Health announcement regarding the violations found that continue to endanger women’s health. It must include the location, the dates when the violation took place, and the issue (for example: HIV, STD, staph infection, tetanus, etc) that the female patients may need to be treated for.
Click here for more information.
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Women’s Health Defense and Pain Capable Act

HB 3561

Chief Sponsor: Representative Terri Bryant

Background: Advancements in science and medicine have provided us with substantial evidence showing that unborn children are feel the pain of dismemberment abortion as early as 20 weeks gestation. Documented reactions of unborn children feeling pain during surgery has led fetal surgeons to find it necessary to sedate the unborn child with anesthesia to prevent the unborn child from thrashing about in reaction to invasive surgery.

Bill Summary: This bill would prohibit abortions after the unborn child is 20 weeks gestation. An exception is allowed for a significant health risk that would endanger the mother’s life.
Click here for more information.
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Insurance Nutritional Support

HB 120

Chief Sponsor: Representative Mary Flowers

Background: Health insurance companies have denied coverage for intravenous feeding and for enteral or tube even if a doctor deems in a written order one is medically necessary for the health and life of a patient.

Bill Summary: This bill would require insurance companies to provide the same coverage (including co-pay and deductibles) as other benefits within the plan ensuring patience have full access to medically necessary feeding tubes.
Click here for more information.
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Pro-abort Bills:

Public Aid for Abortions

HB4013

Chief Sponsor: Sara Feigenholtz

This bill amends the State Employees Group Insurance Act of 1971 and removes a provision prohibiting the non-contributory portion of a health-benefits program from including the expenses of obtaining an abortion, induced miscarriage or induced premature birth

Bill Summary: This bill removes on restrictions on tax payer funding of abortions
Click here for more information.
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Immunization Exemption Amendment

SB1410 

Chief Sponsor: Senator Mulroe

This bill amends the School Code. Requires the State Board of Education to publish on its Internet website the exemption from immunization data it receives from schools. It requires that parents or legal guardians who object to health, dental, or eye examinations or immunizations on religious grounds must present to the appropriate local school authority a Department of Public Health objection form, detailing the grounds for the objection and signed by the parent or legal guardian, as well as a religious official attesting to a bona fide religious objection whose signature must be notarized (instead of presenting a signed statement of objection detailing the grounds for the objection).

Bill Summary: This bill complicates and makes it harder for parents to opt out of immunizations due to parent's & religious rights.
Click here for more information.
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Health Care Right of Conscience Act


SB1564 

Chief Sponsor: Senator Biss

This bill amends the Health Care Right of Conscience Act.  This bill requires that notwithstanding any other law, a health care facility, or any physician or health care personnel working in the facility, may refuse to permit, perform, assist in, counsel about, suggest, recommend, refer for, or participate in health care services because of a conscience-based objection.

Bill Summary: This bill undermines Healthcare Right of Conscience
Click here for more information.
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Source: Illinois Federation for Right to Life with information from Illinois Right to Life

Teenager dies after being forced to take abortion pill

The Times of India is reporting that a teenage girl died after being forced to consume an abortifacient by a man who had allegedly sexually exploited her “several times.”

Reporting from Kanpur, Faiz Rahman Siddiqui wrote that police identified the man as Monu, a local resident. According to the story, Monu has fled and authorities “are conducting raids at his possible hideouts to arrest him,” according to Officer Anurag.

Siddiqui quoted an unnamed police official at length:

When Monu learnt that the girl had become pregnant, he allegedly started forcing her to undergo an abortion. On Friday, Monu compelled her to consume a pill that would cause an abortion. Soon after consuming the pill, the girl’s condition deteriorated and she collapsed. Monu abandoned her at the spot and fled. Later, she was spotted by locals who informed her parents, who rushed her to a nearby Community Health Centre from where she was later referred to Lala Lajpat Rai hospital. She died in the hospital on Sunday night during treatment,” said the police official. Her body has been sent for postmortem.

Siddiqui also quoted the girl’s father who said, “Monu had raped my daughter several times and forced her to consume [an] abortion pill. He must be severely punished for causing [the] death of my daughter.” (What exactly the girl consumed was not specified other than an “abortion pill.”)

Siddiqui reported that police have registered a case against Monu under sections 313 (forcible abortion) and 314 (causing death with abortion).

By Dave Andrusko, NRL News Today

Suicide Prevention Facebook Style

Facebook has decided to try and prevent suicides. From the San Francisco Chronicle story: 

When people write about harming themselves on Facebook, their friends can ask Facebook to review the post because it’s “hurtful, threatening or suicidal.” 

A team of Facebook employees from America, Dublin or India will take a look at the flagged post to determine whether it is troubling, and then essentially lock the user out from their account until they review options related to suicide prevention.

Those include suicide prevention materials, links to contact Facebook friends or a suicide-prevention hotline. 

I can see it now: “But I have cancer!,” the suicidal person responds. 

“Oh, never mind,” Facebook replies, having received training from the Hemlock Society Compassion and Choices. “Carry on.”

By Wesley J. Smith, National Review

Pro-Life Doctor Succeeds in Reversing Abortion Pill

Advancements in science and medical technology have proven to be great gifts to the pro-life movement time and time again. Doctors are able to routinely deliver premature babies at earlier and earlier stages of development. Innovations in sonogram imaging have provided a window to the womb enabling expectant mothers to see their unborn children face to face. We also have the ability to hear the unborn baby’s tiny heartbeat.

These glimpses at the baby’s humanity have inspired countless numbers of mothers to reject abortion and choose life. However, until now, once a pregnant woman selected a chemically-induced abortion, there was little hope that the unborn child would survive.

Now, a new medical advancement is saving lives in a previously unimaginable way. Dr. George Delgado, medical director at the Culture of Life Family Health Care in San Diego, California, has been instrumental in developing a technique to reverse what was the inevitably fatal effect of the RU-486 abortion pill.

Dr. Delgado’s story began when he received a call from a friend in El Paso, Texas, who informed him about a woman who had taken the abortion pill but immediately regretted the decision.

At the 2015 American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) conference, Dr. Delgado told attendees, “I started thinking about my years of experience with progesterone, and how I’d used progesterone to try to prevent miscarriage.” The protocol calls for taking the injectable progesterone as soon as possible after taking the mifepristone.

Dr. Mary Davenport, another pro-life physician at the forefront of this new innovation, explained how chemical abortions involve two drugs:

“Medical [chemical] abortion is actually performed in early pregnancy with TWO pills, the first – RU-486 – mifepristone or Mifeprex, antagonizes the hormone progesterone, which is necessary for pregnancy. This cuts off the nutritional supply to the pregnancy, ending in the unborn baby’s death. One or two days later the woman takes a second pill, misoprostol or Cytotec, which causes uterine contractions and expels the pregnancy. Medical abortion is frequently a horrible experience for the women, lasting up to 2-4 weeks with nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, hemorrhage, and intense pain.”

The reversal attempts to counteract the first drug, mifepristone, before the second one, misoprostol, is ever given.

Progesterone is a critical hormone during pregnancy, said Delgado. It helps nourish the placenta, keeps the cervix closed, and inhibits contractions. Mifepristone, a progesterone receptor antagonist, acts like a “false key” binding with the progesterone receptor and blocking its activity. This action softens the cervix, makes the uterine wall more vulnerable to contractions, and attacks the placenta, Delgado said.

“I thought, well, maybe we can out-compete [mifepristone] at the receptor [using progesterone],” he said.

At a press conference held at the National Press Club, AAPLOG physicians reported that as of the end of 2014, 78 babies have been born after abortion reversal treatment, with 45 women still pregnant, a 57% success rate out of 223 attempted reversals.

One success story is Andrea Minichini, her boyfriend Chris Caicedo, and their son Gabriel David. Minichini, though still wrestling with the decision, took the first abortion pill, mifepristone, while the abortionist at Planned Parenthood cheered her on.

Instead of taking the second pill the next day, which would induce contractions, she began to look into ways to stop the death of her unborn child. Not surprisingly, the abortion center staff was no help. A local hospital informed her that if she carried the baby to term, he would face severe health issues.

A Google search led her to Dr. George Delgado in San Diego. On December 31, 2014, she delivered a healthy baby boy they named Gabriel David.

“Obviously women are changing their minds and interested in options,” said Delgado.

As noted, Dr. Delgado’s innovations have already saved 78 young lives. And that is just the beginning! AAPLOG recently unveiled a new “Emergency Abortion Pill Reversal Kit,” which they would like to see placed in emergency rooms and urgent care clinics nationwide.

Dr. Davenport observed that there are approximately 200,000 chemically-induced abortions annually in the USA.

By: By Andrew Bair, NRL News Today

Illinois bill could deny doctors freedom of conscience

SPRINGFIELD, IL - New legislation proposed in Illinois would compel health care providers who may deny care for reasons of conscience or religious belief to provide patients with information about where to find treatment.

The bill (SB1564) is sponsored by state Senator Daniel Biss and co-sponsored by state Sen. Michael Noland. Biss and Noland say the new law would still allow health care providers to assert religious objections, but would require them to provide material information to patients despite those objections.

Critics argue the bill essentially denies doctors and health care providers the right to exercise their First Amendment religious freedom by requiring them to provide material support and assistance for things such as abortion or abortifacients - drugs that cause abortion.

The bill also requires that any refusal to provide health care cannot impair the patient's health, subjectively defined by the state or the patient.

The bill seeks to change the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act, under which an appellate court ruled three years ago that the religious beliefs of the provider trump the patient's needs.

Source: Illinois Review

The pro-life movement loses two heroes

On the same day, February 20, the pro-life movement lost two of its heroes, Dr. Jack Willke and Brother Paul O’Donnell.

I was honored to know both and to be close friends with Bro. Paul. The photo right is us at a wedding last year. His death at the youthful age of 55 came as a shock, but it happened peacefully during his sleep, which brings some comfort, along with knowing he now lives on in blissful happiness of which we cannot yet fathom.

You can read Bro. Paul’s obituary here.

Bro. Paul was long involved in the pro-life movement before the plight of Terri Schiavo in 2005 thrust him into the national spotlight as the Schindler family’s spokesperson.

I met Bro. Paul sometime after that. What bonded me to him was first his engaging personality and then his strong will to protect the defenseless among us.

Bro. Paul belonged to the Franciscan Brothers of Peace, and he wore a Franciscan habit, but those who thought these may have signified a passive personality were mistaken. Bro. Paul was passionate, tough, vocal, and bold in his attempts to protect those without a voice. I loved and was inspired by those qualities about him.

Bro. Paul was also my March for Life walking buddy. It was our tradition. The last time I saw him was at the Washington, D.C., pro-life hang-out pub, The Dubliner, a month ago. I will be attending his wake and funeral in Minneapolis on Thursday and Friday. I will really miss him.

Dr. Willke and his wife Barbara, who preceded him in death by almost two years, helped launch the anti-abortion movement even before abortion was legalized in 1973.  The 89-year-old retired obstetrician died at his home.

I’m grateful Dr. Willke lived to see his memoir published – just two weeks before he died. Entitled, Abortion and the Pro-Life Movement: An Inside View, it describes the history of the pro-life movement from his vantage point.

A poem by pro-life stalwart Congressman Henry Hyde concludes that “a chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world but are heard beautifully and clearly in the next world” will greet pro-lifers as they enter Heaven.

What a wonderful moment that must have been for Bro. Paul and Dr. Willke.

By Jill Stanek, JillStanek.com

The post The pro-life movement loses two heroes appeared first on Jill Stanek.

Kansas Senate passes first-in-nation ‘dismemberment abortion’ ban

Great news from Kansas. This morning the Kansas Senate approved SB 95, the Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act, by a vote of 31-9.

Crafted to withstand constitutional scrutiny, SB 95 heads to a very receptive Kansas House, where it is expected to pass easily. The bill would then go to pro-life Gov. Sam Brownback (R), who promised to sign this bill.

Lead sponsor Sen. Garrett Love (R-Montezuma) began Thursday’s formal discussion on the Senate floor by recounting how members of the Senate Health committee heard an ex-abortionist describe this method

“of tearing the arms, legs, and other body parts off until a baby dies. Hearing the description made myself and many other members of the committee feel sick [especially] when learning nearly 600 such abortions occur each year in Kansas.”

Sen. Love, the “youngest-ever-elected” to the Kansas Senate, discussed his new baby daughter and coming to love her more through her ultrasound imaging at 12 and 19 weeks gestation, the time frame when most dismemberment abortions occur. He said

“people in my generation are outraged by this procedure; they see the sonograms of their friends, family and their own babies on Facebook and realize that in those pictures are little, defenseless babies. They need us to defend them because they cannot defend themselves…This is a truly barbaric practice we must end in Kansas.”

Unfortunately, none of the eight Senate Democrats supported the bill. Only two strident abortion supporters, Marci Francisco (D-Lawrence) and David Haley (D-Kansas City), chose to speak yesterday. Unsurprisingly, neither discussed the dismemberment method per se.

Sen. Francisco took pains not to use the word “dismemberment” and referred to “the procedure” as being very safe for women. She offered one amendment that would have both gutted the bill and eliminated many pro-life provisions enacted over the past five years. Her amendment was strongly rejected.

Sen. Haley riled up his peers by saying SB 95

– would cost too much to defend,

– was purely a political ploy using inflammatory terms of ‘unborn child’ and ‘protection,’ and ‘dismemberment,’

– was advanced by people who are anti-science,

– was improperly being debated by male senators, who have no right to vote on this issue since they can’t ever get pregnant.

He finished by calling himself a defender of mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and daughters who should not be restricted from access to ‘healthcare’ –i.e., abortions.

Of course these are all side issues, which were easily and quickly rebutted. Thus, it was clearly demonstrated that in the Kansas Senate, the pro-abortion side has no substantive defense for the barbaric abortion procedure of dismembering living, tiny unborn babies with sharp metal tools.

By Kathy Ostrowski, Legislative Director, Kansans for Life, via NRL News Today

EMILY’s List up to no good

(Pictured: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker)

Quick. What comes to mind when I say, “EMILY’s List”?

Radical pro-abortion feminist PAC which distributes its considerable largesse only to pro-abortion female Democrats who toe EMILY List’s extremist line.

What you might not know is that they are already loaded for bear, 21 months out from the 2016 presidential election. Thanks to Real Clear Politics’ Caitlin Huey-Burns, we have some insight into what they are planned to do to smear pro-life Republican presidential candidates.

(Pictured: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie)

First, the “war on women” may have been an unmitigated disaster for them in 2014, but that doesn’t mean they don’t intend to resuscitate this misleading and dishonest slur. They will just expand the range of differences on issues which they will insist constitutes a second-generation “war on women” and then feign indignation when their targets fight back.

Second, according to Huey-Burns,
With the help of EMILY’s List, Democrats are already laying down markers on GOP candidates. This week, the group that supports pro-choice female Democratic candidates launched a new campaign that will document each time a Republican candidate “ignores, insults, or offends” American women. The “Insult & Injury” initiative, first shared with RealClearPolitics, includes digital advertising and graphics that can be shared via social media.

(Pictured: Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush)

To put it mildly, EMILY’s List and its fellow pro-abortion Democrats have incredibly thin skin. Ignoring, insulting, or offending “American women” means any comment that pro-abortionists can take out of context, magnify, and distort (which, of course, was par for the course for the phony baloney “war on women”). Or if you simply disagree with them, that’ll suffice.

And, third, as NRL News Today has written about extensively, the abortion issue will be stuffed into a duffel bag of issues—“contraception access and pay equity” and opposition to Planned Parenthood, for example—with an “economic security” label slapped on the side. Why? For the same reason support for abortion rarely stands alone: it’s a losing proposition for pro-abortionists.

There is potentially a huge field of Republican presidential candidates. Huey-Burns mentions only some: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, all of whom are pro-life.

Is there a chance of overkill? Is their likelihood of overkill? I would say yes to both. Why?

(Pictured: Florida Sen. Marco Rubio)

Think of some of the attack dogs pro-abortionists have used, such as Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. At the drop of a hat—or an imaginary “insult”—they go nuclear.

And look what happened in Colorado. Pro-abortion incumbent Senator Mark Udall (D) was so over the top that the Denver Post (no friend to Republicans) threw its editorial weight behind NRLC-endorsed Rep. Cory Gardner (R) who won last November.

Lynn Bartels of the Post affixed the moniker “Mark Uterus” to Udall and joked that if the race were a movie, it would be set in a gynecologist’s office.

As for the Republicans, they did not seem particularly worried, according to Huey-Burns, “arguing that such attempts failed in the midterms. Hillary Clinton spotlighted many of the same issues while campaigning for Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky, but the Senate hopeful lost to Mitch McConnell, even among women.”

Nothing was or is more predictable than that pro-abortionists would smear pro-life Republican men (and women, for that matter). When you got nothing to offer the American people, slinging mud would be, for them, taking the high road.

By Dave Andrusko, NRL News Today

Planned Parenthood Study Supports Their Profitable Chemical Abortion Protocol

One of Planned Parenthood large affiliates has just published a study that they assert shows that the abortion drugs mifepristone (RU-486) and misoprostol can be used safely and effectively following a different protocol than the one laid out by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

No real surprise there – Planned Parenthood has a lot of money and its reputation riding on the outcome. But facts are stubborn things. The data show that risks still remain, that follow up is lax, and that they really don’t know what happened to a lot of their patients, despite putting a lot of women through a whole lot of misery.

A different protocol

The study, “Efficacy and safety of medical abortion using mifepristone and buccal misoprostol through 63 days” was published online January 14, 2105, and is slated to appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Contraception.

Two of the three authors are from Planned Parenthood’s Los Angeles affiliate. The patients from the study were drawn from “Our large network of urban healthcare centers in the Los Angeles, California area, [which] includes 19 health centers providing approximately 15,000 abortions a year, of which about 30% are medical abortions.”

The study followed 13,373 women who came in for abortions between April 1, 2008, and May 31, 2011. The chemical abortion regimen consisted of 200 milligrams of mifepristone (RU-486) followed by an at-home dose of 800 micrograms of misoprostol taken bucally (under the cheek or gum) 24-28 hours after the mifepristone.

Two immediate contrasts. The FDA protocol involved 600 milligrams of mifepristone followed by 400 micrograms of misoprostol taken orally at a return visit to the clinic two days after the first.
And while the FDA protocol also limited use to the first 49 days after a woman’s last menstrual period (LMP), Planned Parenthood aborted women who were as many as 63 days LMP.

The authors concluded that their study reinforced the safety and efficacy of their regimen.
Why do they want to change the regimen?

Before getting into the data, let us look for a moment at why Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry have such a problem with the FDA protocol.

The official focus is allegedly on increased safety and efficacy (for the woman). However the changes just happen to have the fortuitous side effect of making things easier and much more profitable for the abortion industry. Here’s how.

Mifepristone sells for about a $90 a pill, while generic misoprostol can be purchased for less than a dollar a pill. By reducing the dose of mifepristone from the FDA’s recommended three pills to one, and doubling the dose of the cheaper misoprostol, as Planned Parenthood has done in this “study,” there’s more money to be made.

Allowing women to take the second drug (misoprostol) at home rather than return to the clinic saves the clinic the space and time of additional appointments so that they can set that aside for other customers.

Likewise, extending the cutoff date by two weeks from 49 days to 63 days LMP means a bigger pool of customers.

Whether women’s chemical abortions supposedly get safer or not, take note that industry leaders like Planned Parenthood stand to gain more customers and make more money with these changes.

Study Results

As mentioned earlier, Planned Parenthood looked at the outcomes for 13,373 chemical abortion patients over a five year period. Of this number, the authors claim that 13,066, or 97.7%, were “successful.”

Seventy patients had an “aspiration for ongoing pregnancy” and 237 had “aspiration for symptoms.” There were just two cases of infections among the group and four cases requiring transfusions.

This was supposed to offer an improvement over results from the study the FDA used to justify its protocol when it approved mifepristone in September of 2000. Using the results of an April 30, 1998, study from the New England Journal of Medicine, that protocol showed diminishing “success” rates with time: 92% at 49 days LMP, 83% at 56 days LMP, and 77% at 63 days LMP. This decreased “efficacy” prompted the FDA to limit use of the drug to 49 days.

The authors here argue that by comparison, this demonstrates that their method is more effective and can be used later than the FDA limit.

“This study reinforces the safety and efficacy of the regimen for medical abortion … through 63 days estimated gestational age, and contributes to the existing evidence against restrictions requiring use of the FDA-approved regimen in the United States,” the report’s authors wrote.
Let’s see if that’s true.

Measuring “Efficacy”

The authors say that “The primary outcome of interest was successful abortion,” and the abortion was deemed “successful” if there was “expulsion of the pregnancy without the need for aspiration.”

A few things worth noting here. Abortion, not patient comfort or safety, was the criteria for success. If a woman aborted, but suffered a major injury, as long as she did not have an “aspiration,” it would, by this standard, be successful.

Also, “success” rates may have been, in some cases, boosted by extra doses of misoprostol.

While the study used by the FDA tallied “success” or failure after a single course of the drugs and an assessment at the end of two weeks, the Planned Parenthood study “allowed for repeat doses of misoprostol for patients who had an incomplete abortion.” This means what would have been counted as a “failure” in the original study could have been listed as a “success” in the latest from Planned Parenthood. This would inflate the study’s “success” rate.

The precise number receiving this extra dose is unclear, though 87 in a subgroup of about half 7,335) did receive a repeat of misoprostol. Without this modification, efficacy rates would have been lower.

A different process?

Some may argue that modification of the protocol doesn’t matter as long as efficacy was increased. However when misoprostol becomes the primary drug, this moves towards becoming a different procedure entirely.

And this does matter. Misoprostol, developed and FDA approved as an anti-ulcer drug, has been found to function as a stand-alone abortifacient. But it has never been tested by the manufacturer or approved by the FDA for that purpose. That means that there is no standard protocol or any official guidelines about contraindications, over dosages, or side effects.

Lacking government approval, the drug is sold on the black market in the U.S. and elsewhere, but those who use it may have limited information on its risks for mother and child. Off-label use in Brazil, for example, has been associated with the birth of children with hydrocephaly, partial facial paralysis, clubfeet, or fused or missing fingers and toes. A February 2007 report from Obstetrics & Gynecology tells of a death associated with what appeared to be a misoprostol overdose during an attempted abortion in Portugal.

Even with the repeated doses of misoprostol, there was still a drop-off in efficacy the farther along the pregnancy. It was not as dramatic as in the study from the U.S. trials of the drug, but it was clear nonetheless. Measured in terms of requiring “aspiration for ongoing pregnancy” or “aspiration for symptoms,” rates for women 57-63 days LMP (4.12%) were more than twice what they were for women 43-49 days (1.7%), the FDA’s original limit.

Counting Complications

The criteria the study uses to measure significant complications is whether or not the woman was hospitalized, reporting those only in situations where there was an infection or a transfusion was required. By this measure, there were two patients with infections and four who needed transfusions.

Four otherwise healthy women having to go to the hospital for transfusions simply after taking a drug is a big deal in itself. But it isn’t clear that these were the only ones dealing with excessive bleeding.

Remember that 237 women taking the drugs ended up having “aspiration for symptoms.” The examples of symptoms given are “pain or bleeding.” That would make bleeding a bigger issue.

Lower rates of infection may be due to an addition of a prophylactic antibiotic to the protocol, but this may come at a price. The FDA says on its “Postmarket Drug Safety Information for Patients and Providers” webpage that the “FDA does not have sufficient information to recommend the use of prophylactic antibiotics for women having a medical abortion… Prophylactic antibiotic use carries its own risk of serious adverse events such as severe or fatal allergic reactions. Also, prophylactic use of antibiotics can stimulate the growth of ‘superbugs,’ bacteria resistant to everyday antibiotics.”

The published data does not reveal whether this means there were no further instances of infection, excessive bleeding, no ectopic pregnancies, no episodes of diarrhea, vomiting (that were themselves serious enough in other trials to warrant some hospitalizations), or other significant adverse events.

This of course, tells us nothing about the outcome for the 2,517 chemical abortion patients of whom Planned Parenthood lost track.

Missing Patients

The original number of chemical abortion patients was not 13,373, but 15,890. This means that there were 2,517 patients (15.8%) missing from the data set, who were excluded from the analysis.
Most of these were patients who never returned for their follow up visits (2,470), but there were also 20 excluded for missing data on gestational age. Twenty-seven were left off because they changed their minds and did not complete the chemical abortion process

Some of those 27 who changed their minds may have opted for a surgical abortion or were past the gestational limit. But others simply “began the regimen but did not take all of the medications.” The authors do not seem to want to admit that some women may have changed their minds about aborting entirely, hoping their babies would service.

Hasty Conclusions

The researchers from Planned Parenthood look at these study results and conclude that “This study adds to the growing literature supporting provision of medical abortions using evidence-based regimens, and supports the conclusion that legislative efforts to restrict medical abortion to the FDA regimen are based on political goals to restrict abortions services, not efficacy or patient safety.”

While on paper, they are reporting higher efficacy and safety rates, high numbers of missing patients from this study (and from similar ones) make one wonder if these are legitimate conclusions. Women with serious problems may have simply skipped the clinic and gone on to the emergency room, where they may or may not have told the attending physician they had taken the abortion drugs. Other women may have changed their minds once the abortion did not occur, deciding to give birth.

In any case, even in this self-serving study, the risk of failure and safety issues still remain, as does the physical and psychological ordeal of every chemical abortion. A baby still dies, a mother still goes through great pain and agony, and an abortion clinic figures out how to make more money out of the whole deal.

By Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., NRL Director of Education & Research via NRL News Today

“Selectively Reducing” Our Humanity

Every so often you run across one of those stories that you simply will never forget. If you are a man, often those stories will tell a tale of powerlessness, of an inability to save your unborn child. Because that could be YOU, that utter inability to perform your basic duty—to protect your family—is something that saps your soul and sends chills up and down your spine.

Such is the story, “The New Scar on My Soul,” which ran at americanthinker.com.

The author is anonymous. I will provide only a few details here because you really do need to read this dirge, this lament from the bottom of his soul.

The outline is simply that having conceived one child via IVF (“the light of our lives”), the couple decided they wanted another child. The doctors implanted three embryos, all “took,” but his wife decided she would not carry three babies.

She would not carry two babies. She would “selectively reduce” triplets to one baby (in the abortion trade the survivor is glibly described as a “singleton.”)

His sad account is of his futile efforts to dissuade her; of the lies they are told about how the babies will die; of his wife’s ambivalence until the very end; of the horror of having to choose between one baby and “none”; implicitly, of the damage done to his marriage; and of the punishment he believes he deserves “For I have failed, intentionally and knowingly, in the first duty of a parent: protecting the lives of two of my children.”

The author bares his soul to the reader. After you read “The New Scar on My Soul,” please be sure to say a prayer for him, his wife, the son who is already with them, and for the child she is carrying.

By Dave Andrusko, NRL News Today

Why abortion is not a “reproductive right”

This week, my colleagues and volunteers and I are at the University of Central Florida, debating university students on abortion and making the case, through conversational apologetics and abortion victim photography, that abortion is a human rights violation. As the inevitable pro-abortion protestors began to show up with their hand-made signs, I noticed that one argument was surfacing more often than most: “Reproductive rights are human rights.”

Like virtually all of pro-“choice” rhetoric, this statement is scientifically illiterate and misses the point entirely. Our case against abortion is a simple one: Human beings have human rights. Human rights begin when the human being begins, or we are simply excluding a group of human beings based on arbitrary criteria—in the case of abortion, age. Any inclusive human rights doctrine must protect all human beings.

We are not talking about the woman’s right to decide whether or not she wants to bring a child into the world. We are talking about whether or not we should have the right to violently kill a child that already exists. Abortion does not prevent a man and a woman from conceiving a child together. Abortion is a process that violently decapitates, dismembers, and disembowels a unique and unrepeatable human being, a son or daughter, that has already been conceived.
This is very simple.

The discussion about preventing life from coming into being is a religious and a moral question. The discussion surrounding the violent taking of another human life is certainly a moral question, but it is also a human rights question. Do we have the right to kill innocent human beings? No one who wishes to possess a consistent and morally coherent view of human rights can answer “Yes.”

Editor’s note. This appeared at unmaskingchoice.ca.

By Jonathon Van Maren via NRL News Today

Pro-abortion Justice Ginsburg on Roe, Casey, and retirement

Pictured: MSNBC’s Irin Carmon interviewing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

There are some prerogatives if you are co-authoring a book about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. For example, you get to interview her at the Supreme Court and act like chums, as was the case with MSNBC’s Irin Carmon.

I’ve only seen the transcript of the entire interview, not the actual interview that appeared Monday on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” I hope to do that later today. In the meanwhile let’s talk about a few of the more interesting insights into Justice Ginsburg that came out of the interview.

#1. How appropriate in describing the status of abortion laws prior to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that Ginsburg would radically understate what the situation was–just as the breadth and depth of Roe is minimized to this day.

Justice Ginsburg told Carmon

Remember that before Roe v. Wade was decided, there were four states that allowed abortion in the first trimester if that’s what the woman sought. New York, Hawaii, California, Alaska.

Truth be told, abortion was essentially legal on demand in those states throughout almost the entirety of the second trimester.

#2. Most pro-abortionists rent their garments at the thought of the 1992 Casey decision which pried open the door allowing the passage of commonsensical pro-life measures that heretofore the High Court had rejected. Ginsburg has a different—or additional—take. (Her response was in the context of whether the Court would overturn Roe and Ginsburg cited the Court’s adherence to precedent in explaining why she thought they wouldn’t.)

They gave a reason [in Casey], a rationale that was absent in Roe v. Wade itself. Roe v. Wade was as much about a doctor’s right to practice his profession as he sees fit. And the image was the doctor and a little woman standing together. We never saw the woman alone. The Casey decision recognized that this is not as much about a doctor’s right to practice his profession, but about a woman’s right to control her life destiny.

Surely it was true that if you read Justice Blackmun’s opinions in Roe (and the companion case, Doe v. Bolton), it was at least as much about deference to physicians as it was to extending the “right” to abortion to women.

In Casey, by contrast, some of the justices soared off into metaphysical ramblings—specifically in its so-called “mystery passage.”

They asserted that the abortion liberty is necessary in order “to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

“Beliefs about these matters,” says the Court, “could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.”

#3. Ginsburg gave no hint she has any intention of retiring soon. “I’m concerned about doing the job full steam,” she told Carmon. “And I’ve said many times, once I sense that I am slipping, I will step down.”

As you may remember, periodically “liberals” will suggest she step down so that President Obama could nominate her successor. The last time Ginsburg addressed this idea she was pretty hostile.

In her interview with Carmon, asked “what you want your successor to look like?,” Ginsburg responded, “My successor will be the choice of whatever president is sitting at that time.” And

#4. Carmon asks, “And when the time comes, what would you like to be remembered for?” Justice Ginsburg answered

Someone who used whatever talent she had, to do her work to the very best of her ability. And to help repair tears in her society, to make things a little better through the use of whatever ability she has.

But in the abortion context, Ginsburg did not help repair tears. In her work at the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, she helped pave the way for Roe and Doe.

In her many years on the bench, she has helped delay the day when the deep gash in our hearts and our Constitution is mended.

You can read the entire interview here.

By Dave Andrusko, NRL News Today

Chicago Tribune Publishes Major Story on Abortion Clinic That Refuses to Pay $36,000 Fine Following Woman’s Death

The Pro-Life Action League has been following the story of the Women’s Aid Clinic abortion facility closely for the past three years, and we’re pleased that it’s finally receiving thorough treatment from a major media outlet.

Today’s Chicago Tribune has a major front-page article on the Women’s Aid facility, whose owner, Larisa Rozansky, still has not paid the $36,000 fine assessed by the State of Illinois in 2011.

Abortion clinic moves, changes name, claims it doesn’t exist

The massive fine was assessed in response to a host of serious violations discovered by state inspectors, including failure to perform CPR on 18-year old Antonesha Ross, who died following an abortion performed there in 2009.

Since that time, Rozansky closed out the Women’s Aid Clinic bank account, dissolved the company, changed its name to Women’s Aid Center and moved to a different location — although the “Center” continued to use the same website and phone number, and for a period of time, even processed credit cards via the same Merchant Services account number as the “Clinic.”

When the state reminded Rozansky that in March 2012 that paying the $36,000 fine wasn’t optional, her response was that Women’s Aid Clinic “does not exist,” and so the state was out of luck.

In a January 2014 court hearing—which I attended—Rozansky’s attorney, Scott Skaletsky, argued that Women’s Aid Clinic and Women’s Aid Center were two “totally different businesses,” and that when Women’s Aid Clinic closed in March 2012, it had a mere $77 in its bank account. Skaletsky then told Cook County Judge Alexander White that Rozansky would be willing to write a check to the state for $77 to “make this go away.”

Unbelievably, Judge White actually bought that argument. In response, the Pro-Life Action League asked Illinois residents to take action by calling the office of State Attorney General Lisa Madigan and urging her to appeal the judge’s ruling. Her office did ultimately appeal the ruling, and the case is currently in the Illinois Appellate Court, where both parties are filing brief for oral arguments (the date for which has yet to be determined).

“For them not to pay the fine…it’s not right.”

Today’s Chicago Tribune article by reporter Nara Schoenberg—totaling over 2,200 words—is one of the most comprehensive articles I’ve read about an abortion clinic in a major news outlet in some time. Particularly noteworthy is the detailed account Schoenberg gives regarding the negligent treatment Antonesha Ross received on the day she died.

The abortion took about five minutes, after which Ross had difficulty breathing and began coughing up fluid and blood, although clinic employees didn’t call an ambulance until 40 minutes later. Then, Schoenberg notes, they merely “[offered] her a bag to breathe into” but didn’t bother performing CPR.

Schoenberg also includes some very emotional remarks from one of Ross’s close relatives:

“At the end of the day, there is a young lady that is gone, and she cannot see her children grow up, and her family misses her,” said Ross’ cousin Janell Austin Tuft of College Park, Ga. “And for us to not get justice — for them not to pay the fine — it’s not right. It’s just not right.”

Horrific conditions found by state inspectors

Schoenberg also goes into detail on what Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) officials found when they paid a visit to Women’s Aid in 2011:

In an operating room that hadn’t been used for two days, five insulin syringes were found outside of their protective packaging. The anesthesia cart contained about 28 vials of expired medication, including about 20 vials that had expired more than a year earlier. 

The inspector found medications and frozen dinners stored in a biohazard refrigerator that also contained fetal or placental tissue, according to the report, and a recovery room technician was observed taking a paper towel from the garbage and using it to cover a tray used to serve food to patients. … 

After the inspection, the state suspended the clinic’s license on an emergency basis, citing conditions that were “directly threatening to the public interest, health, safety and welfare,” and fined the clinic $36,000. [emphasis added]

It’s also worth noting that this was the first time Women’s Aid had been inspected in 15 years.

Abortion clinic owner claims she is the victim

Rozansky herself is quoted in the article on a couple of occasions, and makes no bones about claiming that she is the one who’s the victim. Here’s one example:

“I tried to help women to get legal abortions,” Rozansky said. “If someone wants to work against that, there’s nothing I can do.”

Here’s another (referring to the January 2014 Cook County court hearing):

At one point, Rozansky blamed the fine on the age of her medical equipment — a relatively small factor, inspection records show, compared with the lack of proper nursing personnel and the lapse in Ross’ care.
“That’s why I was fined: because the equipment was old,” Rozansky told the judge. “So I gave it away.”

“So I gave it away.”  Think about that for a second.

It doesn’t take much common sense to know what should be done with old—and, more to the point, unsafe—medical equipment: It should be disposed of.  But instead, abortion clinic owner Larisa Rozansky gave it away, presumably to be used again.

Expired medications, frozen dinners in biohazard freezers, giving a dying woman a paper bag instead of performing CPR, failing to dispose of unsafe medical equipment…and Larisa Rozansky claims that she and her abortion clinic are the ones being victimized.

Such complete and total disregard for basic health and safety and utter contempt for the law illustrate how incredible it is that Illinois does not require regular inspections of abortion facilities, to say nothing of the fact that several other abortion facilities in the state—including all of those run by Planned Parenthood—are not subject to inspection at all.

“Safe and legal”? You be the judge.

By  John Jansen, Pro-Life Action League