NEWS SHORTS FOR FRIDAY
Disclaimer: The linked items below or the websites at which they are located do not necessarily represent the views of The Illinois Federation for Right to Life. They are presented only for your information.
Mother Has Healthy Baby Boy Despite Abortion Warning By Doctor
Gaynor Purdy was warned her first child could have a fatal chromosome defect and a life threatening heart condition. But she rejected two suggestions to terminate the pregnancy and she and her husband Lee are celebrating life with their "perfect" ten-month-old son. Mrs Purdy, 28, a quality control inspector, said: "We refused to give up on him, and decided throughout the pregnancy that as long as he was fighting, we would continue fighting with him."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/4045097/Mother-has-healthy-baby-boy-despite-abortion-warning-by-doctor.html
Born At Just 23 Weeks, The Baby Who Defied Our Abortion Laws
When Lexie Slater-Folksman was born at 23 weeks - an age at which babies can still be aborted - she weighed just 1lb 8oz. She was put on a life support machine and her parents were warned their daughter might not pull through. She was so premature her eyes hadn't even developed properly. At a month old she underwent laser surgery on her eyes and then spent week after week on ventilator machines after she suffered collapsed lungs.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1102516/Born-just-23-weeks-baby-defied-abortion-laws.html?ITO=1490
State Grants For Stem Cell Use Debated
A Missouri trial judge said Tuesday that a state constitutional amendment endorsing stem cell research likely creates problems for a law set up to award life science research grants. At issue in the case before Cole County Circuit Judge Richard Callahan is whether state grants for life sciences research may be spent on stem cell research. Critics have filed suit seeking to block $21 million from going toward the research grants over fears for how the money will be used.
http://www.news-leader.com/article/20081231/NEWS01/812310404/-1/RSS
Amateurs Are Trying Genetic Engineering At Home
The Apple computer was invented in a garage. Same with the Google search engine. Now, tinkerers are working at home with the basic building blocks of life itself. Using homemade lab equipment and the wealth of scientific knowledge available online, these hobbyists are trying to create new life forms through genetic engineering - a field long dominated by Ph.D.s toiling in university and corporate laboratories.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081225/D959VC300.html
International Stem Cell Corporation Closes Financing
International Stem Cell Corporation announced that it had received the first $1 million tranche of an anticipated private equity financing of up to $5 million to be funded over the next several months. The total amount of the financing is intended to allow the Company to retire its existing secured debt and fund operations of the Company as it moves forward with planned pre-clinical trials in the first quarter of 2009. "This is an important vote of confidence by a sophisticated investor group and we believe it is a major first step on the path to making our company financially independent," said Kenneth Aldrich, CEO of the Company.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/International-Stem-Cell-Corporation-Closes/story.aspx?guid={E1EF1130-5ECC-488B-A2F6-02221FE7064F}
Man with Disabilities "Not Worth Saving"
The next time you are tempted to scoff at folk with disabilities who worry that they many people think their lives are not worth living, remember this story. Two medical technicians from the UK have been arrested for allegedly deciding that the life of a man with disabilities wasn't "worth saving" from a heart attack. From the story:
It is alleged that staff in the control centre heard the two medics making disparaging comments about the state of the house.
A police source, who asked not to be named, said that the ambulancemen were then heard discussing Mr Baker and saying “words to the effect that he was not worth saving”. The source said that the two men were allegedly first heard commenting on the untidy state of the house and then saying that it was not worth bothering to resuscitate Mr Baker. They are said to have discussed what to tell ambulance control and decided to say that Mr Baker was already dead when they got there.
Friends and colleagues who have disabilities report similar stories of disdain occurring here when seeking medical care, for example, of people on ventilators being pressured to sign DNRs by hospital personnel even though they were not undergoing usually life-threatening procedures. A friend who is legally blind had her white cane thrown down a METRO escalator in Washington D.C., as her assailant told her she belonged in a concentration camp. She also reports not being picked up by cabs. Then there is the general public applause for Jack Kevorkian and suicide tour guides for helping people with disabilities kill themselves.
http://www.wesleyjsmith.com/blog/2008/12/man-with-disabilities-not-worth-saving.html
History of abortion at the UI
Near the Nursing Building on the Health Sciences Campus sits Westlawn, home to many health-related entities, including Student Health. Few people know, however, that bulletproof windows once peeked from Westlawn's basement. Combination locks still guard the rooms behind them.
These rooms - carefully hidden from most - once housed the UI's abortion clinic. For 25 years, staff members performed thousands of abortions, up to 1,223 in fiscal 1990, according to the Cedar Rapids Gazette.
The clinic doors shut in 1998, caving to social and political factors that manifested as financial troubles.
Those who oppose the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision became increasingly vocal during and after the Reagan era. In a 1989 demonstration, more than 150 anti-abortion-rights activists were arrested on campus for civil disobedience.
Hoping to deflect hostility from the public, the hospital administration distanced the UI Hospitals and Clinics from the Westlawn clinic. Outside hospital walls, legislative wrangling over legal limits on abortion turned up the pressure. Over the past 10 years, the community has largely forgotten the hospital's push for providing abortion services - and training - during the years following the Roe decision.
But January may swing the spotlight around. The university recently received a national Kenneth J. Ryan grant, awarded to schools seeking to improve residents' training in abortion and family planning. The three-year endowment will bring hundreds of thousands of dollars for new equipment, workshops, and expanded curricula.
http://media.www.dailyiowan.com/media/storage/paper599/news/2008/12/16/Metro/A.History.Of.Abortion.At.The.Ui-3579857.shtml?reffeature=htmlemailedition
How Support for Abortion Became Kennedy Dogma
For faithful Roman Catholics, the thought of yet another pro-choice Kennedy positioned to campaign for the unlimited right to abortion is discouraging. Yet if Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of Catholics John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, is appointed to fill the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Clinton, abortion-rights advocates will have just such a champion.
Ms. Kennedy was so concerned to assure pro-abortion leaders in New York, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported on Dec. 18, that on the same day Ms. Kennedy telephoned New York Gov. David Patterson to declare interest in the Senate seat, "one of her first calls was to an abortion rights group, indicating she will be strongly pro-choice."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123086375678148323.html
Film Has Message About Abortion
"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is a film about a Nazi family living in Germany during the Holocaust. The father of the family is an SS officer who has been promoted to be the commandant of a death camp. It becomes the job of the parents to try to live a normal life while trying to protect the children from the truth that's in their midst. It is also the story of evil chosen as a good, understandably so since we are programmed as human beings, to choose the good. In the 1940s, it was said, "Jewish people are bad for the good of the country - kill them." Today, "The baby is bad for the good of the mother - kill him." When the law against killing is no longer written on our hearts, we are capable of the most heinous crimes.
http://www.coloradoan.com/article/20090102/OPINION03/901020308/1014/OPINION
