Illinois Federation for Right to Life: 8/30/09

September 4, 2009

Youth pro-life groups ask teens to protest Obama on abortion in health care Tuesday

Much has been on the news about Barack Obama's plan to address America's public school students, K-12, next Tuesday, September 8.

CBS News reported yesterday conservatives are "revolt[ing]" at what they saw clearly as an indoctrination attempt, reflected by such writing projects recommended following Obama's speech as, "Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president," which following the uproar has been changed to "Write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals."

Clearly the White House's Department of Education surrogate planned a not so subtle indoctrination campaign, which they've now had to subliminalize.

Now 3 youth pro-life organizations are planning an indoctrination push-back.

Students for Life of America, Stand True Ministries, and Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust have joined forces and are encouraging high school students "to make their voices heard and take action," according to a press release.

The groups are asking pro-life students to on Tuesday wear plain, white t-shirts with "Abortion Is Not Health Care" written in large letters across the front, "to protest the President's current support for nationalized health care that will include government funded abortions," states the press release.

Some great statements by organization leaders:

Kristan Hawkins, Executive Director of SFL, remarked, "Students for Life acknowledges the very real danger in passing a nationalized health care plan, and we are doing everything we can to raise awareness about the dangers in this bill. On Tuesday, high school students will show that they do not support any health care legislation which proposes government funded abortions."

Bryan Kemper, President of ST, has similar sentiments: "By very virtue of Obama addressing our students in the classroom at such a critical time when he is dropping in the polls for his radical healthcare reform policies, it is important that students understand that this will be the largest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade. Students need to wear their homemade shirts and show school administration, staff, and faculty that indoctrination stops with them."

Jeff White, Co-Founder of Survivors, remarked, "I saw recently President Obama in a 2nd grade class on a little chair talking with the students. I wonder if he told them that just 8 years ago he advocated the right to kill them."

Go, pro-life students!

Contact: Jill Stanek
Source: JillStanek.com
Publish Date: September 4, 2009
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UNFPA Pulls Name from Graphic Sex Ed While Training Activists to Agitate for It

UNFPA Pulls Name from Graphic Sex Ed While Training Activists to Agitate for It

Conference in Berlin pushes "sexual and reproductive rights" for youth

The same week that UNFPA pulled its name from a graphic sex ed guide that came under criticism, the organization is holding a conference in Berlin to train 400 activists to demand countries fund and provide similar sex ed programs and abortions.

Concerned Women for America's President Wendy Wright and C-FAM's Director of Government Relations Samantha Singson are at the conference on "sexual and reproductive rights" sponsored by UNFPA and the German government.

Sessions focus on training activists to agitate for more money from countries and foundations, pressuring governments to provide sex ed and abortion, and training youth to advocate for abortion and sexual rights. Materials entitled "Ensuring Women's Access to Safe Abortion" and "I Need an Abortion" are distributed to attendees.

Thoroya Obaid, Director of UNFPA, told the conference "Unlike us at the UN who are held accountable by intergovernmental mechanisms, you as NGOs have more freedom and space to push the agenda ahead."

The New York Times reported today on a UNESCO sex ed guide that advocates teaching 5 - 8 year olds about masturbation, ages 9 - 12 about abortion and orgasms, and by age 15 about "advocacy to promote the right to and access to safe abortion." CNSNews.com broke the story on UNESCO releasing the "International Guidelines on Sexual Education" in June with UNFPA. Facing public criticism over the guide, UNFPA told the New York Times it will remove its name from the publication.

The "age-appropriate" framework is identical to guidelines from the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). One of the authors is a former employee of SIECUS.

A statement to be released at the end of the conference tells countries:

• Provide abortions through public health systems.

• Guarantee "sexual and reproductive rights as human rights."

• "Eliminate parental... and age restrictions" for youth to access "the full range of sexual and reproductive health information and services."

• Increase funding for non-governmental organizations to expand advocacy.

Samantha Singson stated, "In the same week that UNFPA backtracked on putting its name on the sex ed manual, it trained activists to demand 'comprehensive sexuality education' and access to abortion for all youth."

Wendy Wright said, "UNFPA tells people to 'create a need' for reproductive health care. Now we can see that UNFPA creates the need for abortion, HIV/AIDS treatments and other health care by teaching kids as young as five to be sexually active."

Related Reading...

U.N. Sex-Ed Guidance Draws Fire

A U.N. agency is backing away from U.N.-proposed guidelines intended to reduce HIV infections through sex education for young people, officials in Paris said. Responding to criticism by conservative groups, the United Nations Population Fund has requested its name be removed from published materials associated with the guidelines, set for release in draft form next week by UNESCO, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
Click here for the full article.

Contact: Samantha Singson, Austin Ruse
Publish Date: September 4, 2009
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Killing Girls Is Bad, Killing Boys Is Okay

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is upset about abortion. Well, not abortion per se. But some abortions. Of girls. Apparently killing boys is okay.

Abortion is one issue never likely to disappear. It sets protection of life and liberty in apparent conflict and raises challenging issues such as responsibility and privacy. Abortion isn't amenable to easy political compromise and any resolution is apt to leave a lot of people feeling uncomfortable.

But the issue can't be avoided. The bottom line of abortion is a dead baby. No amount of obfuscation and euphemism can hide the obvious. And if abortion is a legal right, beyond regulation by government, then motivation is irrelevant. If you have a right to kill all babies, you have a right to kill girl babies.

However, Secretary Clinton, a supporter of unrestricted abortion, appears disturbed by the logical outcome of her policy preferences. In commenting on her international agenda for women, she observed that in some nations "girl babies are still being put out to die." Moreover, she explained: "Obviously, there's work to be done in both India and China, because the infanticide rate of girl babies is still overwhelmingly high, and unfortunately with technology, parents are able to use sonograms to determine the sex of a baby, and to abort girl children simply because they'd rather have a boy. And those are deeply set attitudes."

Secretary Clinton's remarks received surprisingly little comment from those she should have most offended -- other advocates of abortion "rights." Pro-lifers suggested that Secretary Clinton was a traitor to the abortion cause, but Laurie Carlsson defended the secretary's "nuanced view" on an issue that is "neither simple, nor clean-cut along lines of political beliefs or moral values."

Yet Secretary Clinton challenged two fundamental precepts of the case for legalized abortion. First, she tied the "infanticide rate of girl babies" to sex selection abortions. If sex-based infanticide and abortion are morally equivalent, then non-discriminatory infanticide and abortion should be morally equivalent as well. Secretary Clinton has raised the core moral challenge of abortion: once we enter the continuum of life, our essential humanity has been established. The moment of birth has no obvious moral distinction. Else why would Secretary Clinton be as upset with those who abort baby girls as with those who put newborn girls out to die?

Second, Secretary Clinton undercuts the essential argument of abortion activists: there is a right to unrestricted abortion (or abortion "on demand"). That means for any reason. However, the secretary has identified, to her, at least, one illegitimate reason. If there is one, might there not be others?

There are obvious social consequences of sex selection via abortion: for instance, a lot of men who can't find wives. But that doesn't seem to be Secretary Clinton's point. Rather, she is concerned, rightly, about the moral implications of this practice.

It is almost an axiom on the Left that there is no worse offense than to "discriminate," which makes sex selection abortion so odious to some. National Post writer Barbara Kay says "sex selection is a form of bias -- arguably even a form of hatred -- against an identifiable group." But surely sex selection is not the only form of inappropriate discrimination. How about abortion of the handicapped, whether physical or mental? Writer George Neumayr has warned: "Without much scrutiny or debate, a eugenics designed to weed out the disabled has become commonplace." This also is discrimination.

But discrimination, or even "hatred," doesn't necessarily stop there. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently discussed Roe v. Wade and noted the "concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of." Presumably she was referring to racial minorities, though there could be other disfavored groups. Cannot abortion be considered a form of society-wide discrimination?

And if we can judge the motives of those who choose abortion, then should we not critically assess other purported justifications? Why is it worse to decide that the baby's sex is "wrong" than to decide that the pregnancy's timing is "wrong." Secretary Clinton's apparent position, that people are free to choose abortion for any reason, except the one reason she finds most offensive, is intellectually unsustainable.

Perhaps the secretary still believes the procedure should be legal, and that the "work to be done" is persuading people not to abort their baby girls. Yet she mentions infanticide in the same sentence as abortion, and presumably she believes that more than persuasion is necessary in the former case. Again, there is no clear line between infanticide and abortion. The females are killed: the only question is when?

In any case, the law is never going to be able to control motives. If other abortions are legal, then anyone desiring one for the purpose of sex selection merely need state anything else -- or nothing -- and the law would not stand in the way. Australia, Canada, China, and India all formally ban the practice. Oklahoma has legislated against sex-selection abortions. Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) has introduced a bill imposing a federal prohibition. However, these measures are wasted effort so long as abortion is largely unrestricted.

Secretary Clinton has grasped an essential truth: It is wrong to kill baby girls. But it also is wrong to kill baby boys. The problem is not sex selection abortion. The problem is abortion. Many politicians desperately hope that the issue will just go away. But it won't. Abortion remains one of today's most profound moral challenges.

Contact: Doug Bandow
Source: The American Spectator
Publish Date: September 4, 2009
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Obama Regulation Czar Advocated Removing People’s Organs Without Explicit Consent

Obama Regulation Czar Advocated Removing People's Organs Without Explicit Consent

Cass Sunstein speaking at Harvard Law School.
(Photo: Matthew W. Hutchins, Harvard Law Record.)

Cass Sunstein, President Barack Obama's nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), has advocated a policy under which the government would "presume" someone has consented to having his or her organs removed for transplantation into someone else when they die unless that person has explicitly indicated that his or her organs should not be taken.

Under such a policy, hospitals would harvest organs from people who never gave permission for this to be done.

Outlined in the 2008 book "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness," Sunstein and co-author Richard H. Thaler argued that the main reason that more people do not donate their organs is because they are required to choose donation.

Sunstein and Thaler pointed out that doctors often must ask the deceased's family members whether or not their dead relative would have wanted to donate his organs. These family members usually err on the side of caution and refuse to donate their loved one's organs.

"The major obstacle to increasing [organ] donations is the need to get the consent of surviving family members," said Sunstein and Thaler.

This problem could be remedied if governments changed the laws for organ donation, they said. Currently, unless a patient has explicitly chosen to be an organ donor, either on his driver's license or with a donor card, the doctors assume that the person did not want to donate and therefore do not harvest his organs. Thaler and Sunstein called this "explicit consent."

They argued that this could be remedied if government turned the law around and assumed that, unless people explicitly choose not to, then they want to donate their organs – a doctrine they call "presumed consent."

"Presumed consent preserves freedom of choice, but it is different from explicit consent because it shifts the default rule. Under this policy, all citizens would be presumed to be consenting donors, but they would have the opportunity to register their unwillingness to donate," they explained.

The difference between explicit and presumed consent is that under presumed consent, many more people "choose" to be organ donors. Sunstein and Thaler noted that in a 2003 study only 42 percent of people actively chose to be organ donors, while only 18 percent actively opted out when their consent was presumed.

In cases where the deceased's wishes are unclear, Sunstein and Thaler argued that a "presumed consent" system would make it easier for doctors to convince families to donate their loved one's organs.

Citing a 2006 study, Thaler and Sunstein wrote: "The next of kin can be approached quite differently when the decedent's silence is presumed to indicate a decision to donate rather than when it is presumed to indicate a decision not to donate. This shift may make it easier for the family to accept organ donation."

The problem of the deceased's family is only one issue, Sunstein and Thaler said, admitting that turning the idea of choice on its head will invariably run into major political problems, but these are problems they say the government can solve through a system of "mandated choice."

"Another [problem] is that it is a hard sell politically," wrote Sunstein and Thaler. "More than a few people object to the idea of 'presuming' anything when it comes to such a sensitive matter. For these reasons we think that the best choice architecture for organ donations is mandated choice."

Mandated choice is a process where government forces you to make a decision – in this case, whether to opt out of being an organ donor to get something you need, such as a driver's license.

"With mandated choice, renewal of your driver's license would be accompanied by a requirement that you check a box stating your organ donation preferences," the authors stated. "Your application would not be accepted unless you had checked one of the boxes."

To ensure that people's decisions align with the government policy of more organ donors, Sunstein and Thaler counseled that governments should follow the state of Illinois' example and try to influence people by making organ donation seem popular.

"First, the state stresses the importance of the overall problem (97,000 people [in Illinois] on the waiting list and then brings the problem home, literally (4,700 in Illinois)," they wrote.

"Second, social norms are directly brought into play in a way that build on the power of social influences [peer pressure]: '87 percent of adults in Illinois feel that registering as an organ donor is the right thing to do' and '60 percent of adults in Illinois are registered,'" they added.

Sunstein and Thaler reminded policymakers that people will generally do what they think others are doing and what they believe others think is right. These presumptions, which almost everyone has, act as powerful factors as policymakers seek to design choices.

"Recall that people like to do what most people think is right to do; recall too that people like to do what most people actually do," they wrote. "The state is enlisting existing norms in the direction of lifestyle choices."

Thaler and Sunstein believed that this and other policies are necessary because people don't really make the best decisions.

"The false assumption is that almost all people, almost all of the time, make choices that are in their best interest or at the very least are better than the choices that would be made [for them] by someone else," they said.

This means that government "incentives and nudges" should replace "requirements and bans," they argued.

Neither Sunstein nor Thaler currently are commenting on their book, a spokesman for the publisher, Penguin Group, told CNSNews.com.

In a question-and-answer section on the Amazon.com Web site, Thaler and Sunstein answered a few questions about their book.

When asked what the title "Nudge" means and why people need to be nudged, the authors stated: "By a nudge we mean anything that influences our choices. A school cafeteria might try to nudge kids toward good diets by putting the healthiest foods at front.

"We think that it's time for institutions, including government, to become much more user-friendly by enlisting the science of choice to make life easier for people and by gently nudging them in directions that will make their lives better," they wrote.

"…The human brain is amazing, but it evolved for specific purposes, such as avoiding predators and finding food," said Thaler and Sunstein. "Those purposes do not include choosing good credit card plans, reducing harmful pollution, avoiding fatty foods, and planning for a decade or so from now. Fortunately, a few nudges can help a lot. …"

Contact: Matt Cover
Source: CNSNews.com
Publish Date: September 4, 2009
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88 Pro-Lifers Arrested at Notre Dame Still Facing Jail Time: Thomas More Lawyer Again Asks Fr. Jenkins for Leniancy

The president of a pro-life public interest law firm has issued an open letter to University of Notre Dame president Rev. John Jenkins, insisting that the school seek to drop the charges against 88 pro-lifers who await sentencing of up to one year in jail and a $5,000 fine for protesting the school's honoring pro-abortion President Obama last May.

"[Notre Dame] should honor all who dare to speak out for the dignity of all human beings - born or unborn, wanted or unwanted, humble or exalted - not prosecute them!" wrote Thomas More Society Pro-Life Law Center president Thomas Brejcha.

On May 17, at least 90 individuals protesting President Obama's presence and honorary law degree were arrested for trespassing on Notre Dame's campus. While witnesses say pro-Obama protesters were allowed to roam free, the arrested individuals were singled out for displaying any pro-life message - including slogans on the sanctity of life, photographs of aborted children, a large wooden cross, and images of Mary.

While the St. Joseph County prosecutor is now in charge of the proceedings, the school still has a prerogative, as the original complainant, to seek that the charges be dropped. Yet president Jenkins have repeatedly refused to seek such leniency or even answer the pro-lifers' requests for dialogue.

"The general council's office of Notre Dame has responded to me by saying that Fr. Jenkins has no interest in discussing these matters any further," pro-life attorney Tom Dixon, who is also supporting the pro-lifers, told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) in June.

Having joined the case in June, Brejcha is also preparing to launch a new website, FreeTheND88.org, dedicated to calling attention to the continued prosecution of the pro-life individuals.

In his letter to president Jenkins, Brejcha notes that among the arrestees were Norma McCorvey, the 'Jane Roe' of Roe v. Wade, former presidential candidate Alan Keyes, Motherhood Interrupted author Jane Brennan, author, and Denver pro-life activist Laura Rohling. He said it was "shocking" that the charges were not quickly dropped, as all the pro-lifers had already spent various amounts of time in jail.

"Surely that protracted detention and the humbling impact of a public arrest on trying to enter the campus of America's premier Catholic university was enough of a penalty to offset whatever 'injury' or 'insult' these good people inflicted on Notre Dame's property rights," said Brejcha.

Even worse, said the lawyer, is the fact that the protesters were compelled to return to South Bend to enter "not guilty" pleas, and again at a later date to demand jury trials - although Brejcha said the prosecutor has "backed off" the latter demand. Protesters originally traveled from as far as New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Florida, and Texas to protest the Notre Dame scandal.

Brejcha said he was "yet more deeply aggrieved on hearing, Fr. Jenkins, that you had responded to a request that the charges be dropped by claiming that 'it is out of [your] hands.'

"With respect, Father, the future of these cases - if they must go on - is squarely in your hands," he said. "Notre Dame is the complainant. Its security personnel directed and/or conducted the arrests, pointing out those who would be arrested (pro-lifers) and those who would not (those carrying pro-Obama signs and/or taunting the pro-lifers)."

Brejcha noted that, in the Society's long legal battle against the National Organization for Women that ended in the Supreme Court, Notre Dame's then-president Fr. Ted Hesburgh and other Notre Dame affiliates helped with the case.

"Now the 'Notre Dame 88' have asked us to take the lead in their defense," said Brejcha. "Not to spite Notre Dame but because we love it, we have agreed. America's civil rights movement is ongoing, and the pro-life movement is its next phase.

"Notre Dame should not only support this new civil rights movement but lead it. It should honor all who dare to speak out for the dignity of all human beings - born or unborn, wanted or unwanted, humble or exalted - not prosecute them!"

Click here for the full text of Brejcha's letter.

To contact University of Notre Dame president Fr. John Jenkins:

Office of the President
400 Main Building
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Phone: 574.631.3903
Email: president@nd.edu

Click here for guidelines for composing effective communicatons here.

Contact: Kathleen Gilbert
Source: LifeSiteNews.com
Publish Date: September 4, 2009
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"Dr. Death" Says he was Convinced to Embrace Life - But Would not Return the Favor

Although Jack Kevorkian says his lawyer had managed to talk "Dr. Death" himself out of committing suicide in prison, the doctor admits that, should his lawyer come to him for help in committing suicide, he will not return the favor.

Kevorkian made this and other revelations in one of his first in-depth interviews since the lifting of his parole restriction against discussing death.

Kevorkian, infamously known as "Dr. Death," has boasted of helping end the lives of over 130 suicidal people - many of whom had no diagnosed physical illness. He was released from jail in 2007, eight and a half years into a 10-25 year prison sentence for the second-degree murder of 52-year-old Lou Gherig's disease sufferer Thomas Youk.

In the wake of his latest murder charge, Kevorkian promised to no longer help kill suicidal individuals, but has vowed instead to dedicate himself to advocating for the legalization of euthanasia.

"The reformer is generally called crazy until he's proven right," he told FOX News Detroit interviewer Brad Edwards.

The interview notes that GlimerIQs, reportedly a collection of paintings, music, and philosophy Kevorkian completed while in prison, is due out this month. The cover features an image of a man screaming out of a black abyss while scraping with reddened claws at two narrow walls.

Kevorkian said he contemplated starving himself to death while in prison before his longtime lawyer and trusted advisor, Mayer Morgenroth, talked him out of it. Kevorkian has hepatitis C - whose sufferers, he claims, "as a rule" succumb to cancer.

But Kevorkian admitted that, if a terminally-ill Morgenroth expressed a wish to die, the outcome would be different.

"He says, 'Jack, I want to check out [commit suicide].' Do you help him?" Edwards asked.

"If nobody else would, I will - I would," Kevorkian replied. "What can they do to me, but what's already happened?"

Although Kevorkian's gruesome legacy has prompted euthanasia groups to uphold him as an early champion of "the right of consenting adults to choose the time and manner of their deaths," it was not for altruistic purposes that Kevorkian launched his controversial career.

Attorney and bioethics critic Wesley J. Smith points out that Kevorkian sought to perform experiments on living people as he was euthanizing them, as he had long held an avid interest in death and dying.

"Toward this end, he had spent years attempting to convince condemned prisoners and the authorities to permit him to cut open those being executed," Smith wrote in a 2006 article in the Daily Standard.

"Only after that effort failed did he turn his focus to the sick, disabled, and depressed, in the hope that through assisting their deaths he would eventually be permitted to conduct this macabre and useless research."

Kevorkian is scheduled to host a lecture entitled "Civil Rights, Civil Disobedience, and Criminal Justice" at Kutztown University on September 20. Also, a documentary on Kevorkian entitled "You Don't Know Jack," starring Al Pacino, is expected to be released next spring.

Toward the end of the interview, Kevorkian alluded strongly to "one more coming which I can't talk about now," which he said was "bigger than 'rights,' or euthanasia." "I can't talk about it til it happens," he said. It was not clear in what context Kevorkian gave his statements.

After his release from jail last year, Kevorkian claimed he would run for U.S. Congress, but nothing of his previous aspirations appeared in the interview video.

Oakland County prosecutor Dave Gorcyca, whose office prosecuted Kevorkian, said at the time of the doctor's claim that it was "probably more of a publicity stunt." "To call attention to himself is standard protocol for Jack when he doesn't have the limelight focused on him," said Gorcyca.

Contact: Kathleen Gilbert
Source: LifeSiteNews.com
Publish Date: September 3, 2009
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NEWS SHORTS FOR FRIDAY

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.

Montana Attorney General Approves Constitutional Pro-Life Initiative

The attorney general has approved ballot language for a proposed change to the state constitution. Constitutional Initiative 102 defines a "person" as beginning of a human being's biological development. A similar proposal fell short in 2008 of getting the required number of signatures for the ballot. Abortion foes now will have to start that process over to qualify for the 2010 ballot. It would take more than 40,000 petition signatures. Backers say similar efforts are under way in other states. Abortion foes now will have to start that process over to qualify for the 2010 ballot. It would take more than 40,000 petition signatures. Backers say similar efforts are under way in other states.
Click here for the full article.

Coalition For Life Opens New Facility

Coalition for Life hosted a community open house Thursday at its new facility at the corner of Carter Creek and East 29th Street in Bryan. The site will offer free pregnancy tests and counseling for women considering an abortion. The location of the Coalition for Life building is no coincidence. It's just a block away from the Planned Parenthood clinic which is a frequent protest site for Coalition members.
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Indian Woman Fights for 'Rape' Baby

The story of a pregnant teenager has been making the headlines in India. Lakshmi (not her real name) is 19 years old, but her mental age is said to be only around eight. She became pregnant after allegedly being raped in a government-run care home, and the state authorities petitioned the local courts to allow them to carry out an abortion. Their contention was that she wouldn't survive the trauma of childbirth, and that she wouldn't be able to take care of a baby. That court ruled that an abortion should go ahead.
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Couple Face Jail After Drugs Used to Murder Unborn Child

When Tegan Simone Leach became pregnant late last year, she and her boyfriend Sergie Brennan asked their mothers what to do. On the advice of their families, the Cairns couple decided to end the pregnancy. But rather than organise an abortion through a public hospital or private clinic, it was decided Leach should take the abortion drugs misoprostol and RU-486 at home. Brennan's sister allegedly smuggled the drugs from the Ukraine in December. The couple now face an anxious wait to discover if they will be committed to stand trial. Leach, 19, has been charged under Queensland's Criminal Code with procuring her own miscarriage. Brennan, 21, has been charged with supplying Leach with abortifacients. If convicted, Leach faces only seven years in jail, while Brennan faces only three years in jail.
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UN Calls For More Money For Birth Control

A lack of financing for global birth control programs has ended in an overwhelming number of unwanted pregnancies and death due to complications from childbirth. This has lead the UN to call for the world to focus on improving women's health and provide easier access to contraception. "It would cost the world only 23 billion dollars per year to stop women from having unintended pregnancies and dying in childbirth," said Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
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Documentary Follows Post-Abortive Women

Feminists for Life of America (FFL) has a new series of videos on its Web site called Exposing Coercion: Pregnant Women Stand Up.

The clips outline the heart-wrenching testimonies of college-age women who have been pressured by medical professionals, parents and boyfriends into having an abortion.

Serrin M. Foster, president of FFL, said the video highlights the need to provide tools and resources for women.

"The videos give us a bird's-eye view of how women have been treated by those they count on most," she said. "It's instructional for us as we try to help women in need."
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September 3, 2009

Humans never 'too expensive ... too inconvenient'

Christians must defend the sanctity of life from conception to natural death, Southern Baptist ethicist Richard Land said in a chapel message at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

That includes combating government policies assaulting the sanctity of life, Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said, making specific reference to legislation backed by President Obama's administration titled America's Affordable Health Choices Act, H.R. 3200.

The health care bill permits government-funded abortions and could pave the way for euthanasia, Land stated.

He also decried a federal manual for military veterans that he said "focuses on death."

Drawing from Matthew 4:1-11, Land said Satan seeks to entice people toward evil and opposes the intrinsic value God has placed on the life of a human being.

"It is sometimes easy for us to forget that the world is not a good world," Land said in his message at the seminary's Fort Worth, Texas, campus Aug. 27. "It is not a neutral world. It is a world that is racked with spiritual warfare."

Land read Article Three of the Baptist Faith and Message, a statement of generally held convictions in the Southern Baptist Convention. The article addresses the Bible's view on man as "the special creation of God, made in His own image."

The article concludes: "The sacredness of human personality is evident in that God created man in His own image, and in that Christ died for man; therefore, every person of every race possesses full dignity and is worthy of respect and Christian love."

Land described human beings as "different from any other part of creation, because it is human beings who are designed and created in the image of God."

"So, there are some things that must never be done to a human being. Our civilization is based upon that founding belief."

Land said America's founding fathers operated under the presupposition that human beings are special, guaranteeing in the nation's founding documents that men have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

"If you are a human being, you have the right to life," Land said. "That is the sanctity of life ethic upon which Western civilizations and the civilization of the United States have been based." But, he noted, "It's been under serious challenge throughout most of the 20th century by a so-called quality of life ethic."

Land cited "Your Life, Your Choices," an advice manual published by the Department of Veteran Affairs during President Clinton's administration that veterans have derisively nicknamed "The Death Book." The manual, recalled by President George W. Bush's administration but reinstated under President Obama, instructs veterans how to prepare a living will.

"The book fosters dark thoughts about a difficult life somehow being less of a life," Land said.

"On page 21, the death book poses questions to veterans on which they are to answer whether life was 'difficult but acceptable,' 'worth living but just barely' or 'not worth living.' The most positive choice is 'difficult but acceptable.' ...

"I thought about many words to describe this book -- atrocious, outrageous, disgusting, immoral, unethical, wrong, pernicious -- but as I spun the wheel on my moral compass, I kept coming back to the same word: evil.... To give this book to any fellow human being is evil, and your tax money paid for it and is paying for it. There's no attempt to ask people, 'What would it take for you to want to live?' Instead, the book focuses on death."

The Veterans Affairs website reports an online version of "Your Life, Your Choices" is being revised and will be released next spring.

Voicing concern about the public health plan associated with H.R. 3200, Land said while abortions are not listed as an essential benefit, they are allowed under the benefits.

"If abortion is not specifically excluded, it's covered," Land said. "That means that you will have, for the first time since the passing of the Hyde Amendment, not only abortion on demand, but you being forced to pay for the abortions with your tax money."

Land noted the bill also includes 8 percent revenue penalties for companies with group plans and a 2.5 percent income tax increase for individuals with private plans that do not provide for abortions.

"Baby boomers have killed their unborn babies in record numbers -- one out of every three babies conceived -- because they considered them too embarrassing, too expensive, too ill or too inconvenient," Land said.

"But unless we turn this tide of death around, Boomers, Busters and Millennials will be allowed and assisted in dying before their natural time because the government has made the decision that they are too expensive, too embarrassing, too ill or too inconvenient."

Land advised Christians to pray for God to change the hearts and minds of lawmakers. He also encouraged Christians to inform family and friends about the proposed legislation. A document analyzing the health care bill can be found on the ERLC's website at http://erlc.com/documents/pdf/20090731-affordable-health-choices-act-exposed.pdf.

Encouraging Christians to contact their congressmen, senators and the president, Land said individuals must make it clear they want the government to promote a sanctity of life ethic rather than a quality of life ethic.

Land said, "Our Baptist Faith and Message tells us that we're to defend the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death, not a government-imposed death because you're too expensive, too ill or too inconvenient."

Contact: Keith Collier
Source: BP
Publish Date: September 3, 2009
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“Right to Die” Means a Physician Duty to Kill?

"Right to Die" Means a Physician Duty to Kill?

Bioethicist Jacob Appel can be relied on to promote the most radical bioethics agendas, assisted suicide for the mentally ill, fetal farming, you name it. And now he has argued that if Montana affirms a constitutional right to assisted suicide in Montana, the state has a duty to make sure that doctors are willing to do the deed. Why? Doctors have a monopoly on a limited commodity–the practice of medicine–and hence they should be able to be forced to participate in the taking of patients' lives in assisted suicide. From his column:

However, it [medical license and professional autonomy] belies any claim that doctors should have the same right to choose their customers as barbers or babysitters. Much as the government has been willing to impose duties on radio stations (eg. indecency codes, equal time rules) that would be impermissible if applied to newspapers, Montana might reasonably consider requiring physicians, in return for the privilege of a medical license, to prescribe medication to the dying without regard to the patient's intent.

This is taking the duty to die and transforming it into a duty to kill. And it reflects a profound misunderstanding of the government's role. The government is not a guarantor that, for example, anyone will read this blog–which is a classic example of a citizen exercising his First Amendment right to free speech. The government, absent a compelling interest, just can't prevent me from writing. Similarly, if the Montana Supreme Court goes the wrong way, Montana law won't be able to prevent physicians from engaging in assisted suicide. But that doesn't mean it should be able to compel them help kill.

The culture of death, however, brooks no dissent. Apple continues:

The right to die is not an abstract principle. This right — or its absence — has a profound effect on the fundamental welfare of nearly every individual and family in the nation during the most vulnerable moments of their lives. If the Montana Supreme Court guarantees citizens the right to aid in dying, and I am both hopeful and confident that the court will do so, then it is also incumbent upon the justices to ensure a mechanism by which patients can exercise their rights. To do otherwise — to offer a theoretical right to die that cannot be meaningfully exercised — will be both a hollow gesture and a cruel taunt to the terminally ill.

No, it is to support their intrinsic human dignity and the Hippocratic "do no harm" values of medicine. And under that theory, I should be able to have the government force everyone in the country to read this blog.

Don't think it can't happen here. Medicine is being quickly transformed into an order-taking technocracy. Victoria, Australia law requires doctors to perform abortions on request or refer to a doctor who will. Assisted suicide legislators in California tried to pass a law that would have required doctors to sedate and dehydrate terminally ill patients on demand.

Appel's advocacy is a glimpse of a possible future in which any physician seeking to adhere to traditional Hippocratic values will be kicked out of medicine.

Contact: Wesley J. Smith
Source: Secondhand Smoke
Publish Date: September 3, 2009
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NHS Meltdown: Death Panels!

Pallliative care experts in the UK are charging that terminally ill patients are being intentionally misdiagnosed as being close to death in order to enable doctors to stop treatment and instead dehydrate the patient to death. My contacts in the UK have been warning me about the "Liverpool Care Pathway" for some time and now, here it is in the Telegraph. From the story:

Patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help end their lives, leading doctors warn today. In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death. Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn. As a result the scheme is causing a "national crisis" in patient care, the letter states. It has been signed palliative care experts including Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, Dr Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke's cancer centre in Guildford, and four others.

"Forecasting death is an inexact science,"they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death "without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong. As a result a national wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients."

Here's the thing: Every hospice expert I have spoken with say that palliative sedation is rarely necessary to stop suffering. If some 16% of dying patients die under sedation as the story states, something is very wrong.

I am sorry, but this is a direct consequence of the rejection of human exceptionalism and the embrace a quality of life ethic. Indeed, it shows where utilitarianism leads, where in the drive to stop suffering we end up turning on the sufferer. Think about it: How often these days do we hear bioethicists bemoaning the "drawing out of the dying process," when what we are really discussing is extending life?

Not coincidentally to our discussion of Obamacare, it was pushed by the NICE utilitarian bioethics board–the very kind that the highly influential former Sen. Tom Daschle wants for America–which could arise from the proposed cost/benefit boards in the current health care plans:

Developed by Marie Curie, the cancer charity, in a Liverpool hospice it was initially developed for cancer patients but now includes other life threatening conditions. It was recommended as a model by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), the Government's health scrutiny body, in 2004. It has been gradually adopted nationwide and more than 300 hospitals, 130 hospices and 560 care homes in England currently use the system.

If these allegations are true, it is a scandal of virtually unprecedented proportions: A detailed investigation should be conducted. And if people were truly sedated and dehydrated to death without consent before their time, heads should, figuratively roll, medical licenses should be revoked, and–if the facts warrant–criminal charges filed.

Contact: Wesley J. Smith
Source: Secondhand Smoke
Publish Date: September 2, 2009
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The Negro Project: 'Initiated by Margaret Sanger, Perpetuated by Barack Obama' says Day Gardner of National Black Pro-Life Union

n a time when America is spiraling down into an abyss of debt, joblessness and economic turmoil, President Barack Hussein Obama is continuing his big push to kill as many children as possible -- a disproportionate number of them black.

In less than nine months he has overturned the Mexico City policy which means American tax dollars will be used to pay for foreign abortions. Most of those killed will be the children of my beautiful brothers and sisters in Africa.

He has also been working tirelessly to force physicians to either kill "unwanted children" or refer their patients to other baby killers.

He has worked to ensure that even more children are killed by removing the ban from embryonic stem cell experiments where children are used as lab rats--their little bodies cut up and sold to the highest bidder.

President Obama's most recent effort is to push a health care bill that will mandate taxpayer funding of abortions. He has gone on record to deny this fact which leaves many Americans wondering if he has bothered to read the 1000 plus-page monster circulating Congress. I can't help wondering if he has any idea what an abortion looks like. Does he understand that little babies, many of them very close to being born are gruesomely killed by suffocation, decapitation or dismemberment?

Since 1973, when Roe vs. Wade was decided, abortion has killed more than 50 million of America's children-17 million of them were black. Today, for every black baby born, another black baby is killed by abortion.

The Alan Guttmacher Institute and the Center for Disease Control, (CDC), show that Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion chain, has planted its clinics -- more than 75 percent --strategically in our urban and minority dense neighborhoods.

I find Mr. Obama's abortion push especially strange because the abortion industry purposefully targets black people. Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger, initiated the Negro Project in 1939 to ensure that black people like President Obama and me were killed off before being born.

Every day Planned Parenthood manages to convince pregnant black girls, especially in urban areas to abort by making them believe their pitiful lives will be better if their unwanted, unloved, worthless black ghetto child dies. They are wrong! We come from a strong stock of people who survived slavery and Jim Crow. We don't have to kill our children to have better lives!

So, how can President Obama support an industry that goes to such great lengths to kill black children? Could it be that he owes favors to the abortion industry? Unfortunately, the answer is he was bought off during his campaign. He climbed onto his White House throne by stepping on the backs of aborted babies.

Abortion is wrong, Mr. Obama and it's wrong to expect tax payers to fund the blatant killing of children.

If we are truly the America that holds life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness so dear -- then we must obliterate the scourge of abortion from our midst otherwise we are no better than the those who perpetrate the conflict in Darfur, Rwanda, or any other country where human beings are enslaved, butchered or denied their rights just because they are meeker or weaker.

Mr. President--abortion is not healthcare. There is nothing healthy about a procedure that mentally, emotionally and physically scars women--and there is nothing healthy about a dead baby.

Contact: Day Gardner
Source: National Black Pro-Life Union
Publish Date: September 3, 2009
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Mexican State of Michoacan Approves Living Wills that Exclude Euthanasia

The Mexican state of Michoacan has approved a new "Anticipated Will" law that allows families and patients to opt out of extraordinary medical treatments in the case of terminal illness, while guaranteeing basic medical and palliative care.

The law, which received multi-party support and was endorsed by Archbishop of the state's capital, Morelia, reportedly excludes assisted suicide and both active and passive euthanasia, including the withholding of food and fluids.

The law gives terminal patients the right to substitute curative treatments for palliative care and to determine the limit of treatments they are to receive. If a terminally ill patient is unable to make such decisions, family members are permitted to do so.

Doctors who administer deadly doses of medications or otherwise undertake procedures to cause the death of the patient are punished under the law, as well as those who refuse to give palliative care.

The legislation, initiated by the socialist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) received the general support of the liberal Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the right-wing National Action Party (PAN). The vote reflected a growing trend for parties at the state level to work together on human life issues. Recent votes in favor of pro-life constitutional amendments have also received support from across the political spectrum.

However, representatives of the smaller New Alliance (NA) and Green Ecologist (PVEM) parties refused to vote for the measure, expressing concern over provisions allowing relatives to withhold treatment.

Contact: Matthew Cullinan Hoffman
Source: LifeSiteNews.com
Publish Date: September 1, 2009
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Britain's New End of Life Protocol = Death Sentence for British Patients

Practice causing "national wave of discontent" as family members watch loved ones killed by dehydration.

A group of British physicians specializing in palliative and end of life care has sounded the alarm that some terminally ill patients are being killed under an ethics protocol recently approved by the country's health care rationing body. Patients in Britain are being misdiagnosed as "close to death" and sedated and dehydrated to death the doctors said in a letter to the Daily Telegraph this week.

Under a National Health Service (NHS) protocol called the Liverpool Care Pathway, patients are being labelled as dying "without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong" the physicians said in their letter. Under the guidelines, the diagnosis that a patient is close to death must be made by the entire medical team, including a senior doctor. This diagnosis, under existing rules, then allows a patient to be sedated and to have food and hydration and other treatment, such as antibiotics, withdrawn until death.

Under the Pathway protocol, patients can be diagnosed as "close to death" if they become confused or have difficulty swallowing. But the doctors warn that these symptoms can be caused by the sedating medication and dehydration, creating a self-fulfilling diagnosis.

In the letter, Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics at the University of London, Dr. Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke's cancer centre in Guildford and four others, said that the practice is causing a "national wave of discontent" as family members watch their loved ones killed by dehydration.

John Smeaton of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children commented that the "practice of consigning vulnerable patients to a death pathway" is the result of years of changes to the legal system that is building up to the effectively legalisation of euthanasia.

"The government's 2005 Mental Capacity Act," Smeaton said, "extended the possible scope of this practice. The inherent right to life of all patients, whether they are terminally ill or not, must be defended in the face of the government's war against the weak."

Barbara Wilding, Britain's longest serving female chief constable, said last month that the growing public approval of assisted suicide is a threat to elderly people. Wilding said that "a growing rift" between the generations is becoming a significant challenge for police who are concerned that increasing relaxation of assisted suicide laws could be exploited by families to kill "burdensome elderly relatives".

Wilding told the Daily Telegraph, "From a policing perspective we need to be very careful on this to make sure it does not become a way of getting rid of a burden. I will be watching any change in legislation very carefully".

The Liverpool Care Pathway, described by its formulators as a "template" to guide the care of the dying, was approved in 2004 by the notorious National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), the Government's health scrutiny body in charge of rationing health services. The NICE is known to be heavily biased in favour of dehydrating patients to death, as was revealed in the case of Leslie Burke, a British man who attempted unsuccessfully to obtain court guarantees that he would not be killed by this method once his motor neurone disease had rendered him unable to communicate.

The Pathway has been adopted nationwide with more than 300 hospitals, 130 hospices and 560 care homes in England using it to allocate health care resources.

In August, the BBC reported that some physicians in Britain and abroad are concerned with the increasing use of "continuous deep sedation" in treating the terminally ill. Deep sedation, in which a patient is kept continuously unconscious or at a low level of consciousness, is ethically used in cases where pain is treatable by no other means. It can have the effect of reducing life expectancy by suppressing respiration but classical ethics allows this if it is an undesired and unintended secondary effect to the relief of pain.

But reports from the Netherlands show that the use of continuous deep sedation until death was becoming more widespread in that country where direct euthanasia is legal. In 2001, researchers found that in six European countries deep sedation was used in 8.5 percent of all deaths in patients with cancer and other diseases. In most cases patients under deep sedation were also denied fluids.

In the Czech republic, where assisted suicide is illegal, it was revealed that some doctors were using large doses of morphine to kill patients in order "not to prolong" patients' suffering.

Contact: Hilary White
Source: LifeSiteNews.com
Publish Date: September 3, 2009
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Britain's New End of Life Protocol = Death Sentence for British Patients

NEWS SHORTS FOR THURSDAY

NEWS SHORTS FOR THURSDAY

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.

Pregnant Women Express Fears Over Swine Flu Vaccine

Almost half of all pregnant women say they will refuse to be vaccinated against swine flu once the jab is available, suggesting there is widespread concern about its safety, a poll has revealed. Pregnant women are one of the target groups for vaccination identified by experts advising the government. In July, a study in the US showed they are more at risk of complications if they get the virus and more likely to end up in hospital than other people. Six pregnant women in the US died of swine flu complications between 15 April and 18 May.
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Fifteenth Mexican state protects unborn by changing its constitution

The Queretaro State Congress in Mexico reformed its constitution Tuesday with a 21-0 vote guaranteeing protection for human life from conception to natural death. The decision makes it the fifteenth Mexican state to enact such legislation.

The new law, which was supported by some 60,000 signatures from Queretaro voters,establishes the right to life as "the first of all fundamental rights" and declares that the State has the duty protect human life from all attacks.

State representatives said the reform was in accord with the Mexican Constitution and with the international treaties ratified by Mexico.
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Texas Physician Opens Online Service to Combat Abortion Industry

Twenty years ago a young resident physician was called in to save the life of an aborted baby boy. The memories of the child's fight for his life stirred Ron Bryce, M.D., and his wife Lydia, to join the pro-life movement in earnest with financial and political support.

"Abortion became deeply personal to me after that experience," Bryce recalls. "My little patient gave it a human face." Now the Bryce's are taking their war to the streets by helping individuals directly fight the abortion industry. "It's very frustrating for regular citizens who are repulsed by abortion to watch what's going on in Washington," said Bryce. "We decided to create a service that would empower them to save babies' lives, one property at a time."

That is when Pro-Life Properties of Texas, LLC, was born. It is an online document preparation service to help individuals prepare, and file, pro-life deed restrictions on their properties.
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Abortion doc reports threat; arrest follows

Warren Hern said he has received multiple death threats since entering the abortion business in 1973 but began taking them more seriously after fellow late-term abortion doctor George Tiller was killed at his Wichita, Kan., church in May.

Hern, of Boulder, Colo., reported the latest threat to authorities, resulting in the arrest of a senior citizen in Spokane, Wash.

Donald Hertz, 70, arrested Aug. 26 for threatening Hern's family, has been charged with communicating a threat via interstate commerce and violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. If found guilty, Hertz could receive a prison sentence of as much as six years and a maximum fine of $350,000.
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September 2, 2009

Illinois pro-life clinic to offer women alternative to Planned Parenthood

The Waterleaf clinic being blessed by Fr. Thomas Milota

Pro-life advocates in Aurora, Illinois are planning to open a women's center in a strip mall a block away from a Planned Parenthood clinic to counsel women who have had abortions and to help pregnant women continue their pregnancies and raise their children.

The Waterleaf Women's Center was dedicated on Sunday afternoon by Catholic clergy and about 75 supporters. It plans to open for business in several weeks, the Naperville Sun says.

Three local women began searching for office space and raising funds for the project in January.

Waterleaf board president Kelly Gorsky told the Naperville Sun that the center's core mission is to urge pregnant women not to have abortions. It has set a goal of preventing one abortion per week.

Gorsky said fundraising for the project has gone well. The center will offer pregnancy tests and free counseling services.

The center's clients will speak to professional or volunteer counselors who can refer them to services such as adoption agencies or financial assistance programs.

"We want women to know that there's a whole network of people that can help," Gorsky continued, adding that the center will work closely with Project Gabriel, a Catholic-run program that provides needy mothers with anything from cash assistance to free babysitting.

Waterleaf board member Maura Marcotte, a trained counselor, said financial hardship is a significant reason women consider abortions. Providing post-pregnancy support will be a key task.

Cyndi Crane, a Waterleaf board member who will work as a full time counselor, said the center will give clients information about the risks of abortion but will never try to frighten or intimidate clients.

"We're a resource center that's here just to present the facts and let (clients) know what kind of help is available," she told the Naperville Sun.

Crane added that the center will also offer counseling to women who have had abortions, pledging that she would not abandon a client "no matter what choice they make."

According to the Waterleaf Women's Center website, Crane is president of the center and a single mother who eighteen years ago chose to give birth to her daughter, Jillian, despite doctors' recommendations to have an abortion.

Board members acknowledged that proximity to the abortion clinic was a major factor in their work to open the center.

The Planned Parenthood clinic opened amid controversy in 2007. Opponents charged that the building had been deceptively presented as an office complex when in fact it was an abortion clinic.

The Waterleaf Women's Center website is at http://www.waterleafwc.org

Source: CNA
Publish Date: September 2, 2009
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FDA delays embryonic stem cell trial

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's postponement of a human trial using embryonic stem cells resulted from the development of cysts in animals undergoing tests.

The Geron Corp. acknowledged the reason for the delay in an Aug. 27 news release, saying cysts had developed at the injury sites in lab animals. The Menlo Park, Calif., biotechnology firm announced Aug. 18 the Food and Drug Administration had placed a hold on the proposed trial on human beings with spinal cord injuries but did not provide details regarding the reason for the postponement.

Geron received the FDA's permission in January to proceed with the first U.S. embryonic stem cell experiments in human beings. At the time, the company announced its plan to inject embryonic stem cells at the point of damage in as many as 10 paralyzed patients. The injections would occur within 14 days of the patients' spinal cords being injured.

Pro-life advocates and others oppose embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) based on what it does to donor embryos and potentially to patients. ESCR's drawbacks include:

-- Extracting stem cells from an embryo destroys the tiny human being.

-- ESCR, unlike trials with adult stem cells, has yet to produce any therapies in human beings.

-- It has been plagued by the development of tumors in lab animals.

Southern Baptist bioethicist C. Ben Mitchell said the FDA hold on Geron's trial "shows once again that not only is it unethical to destroy embryos for their stem cells" but ESCR "results in serious worries about safety."

"To conduct human trials would be morally unconscionable," said Mitchell, Graves professor of moral philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn., and a consultant to the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

In its Aug. 27 announcement, Geron said earlier experiments with animals showed a "very low frequency of injected animals developed microscopic cysts" at the injury site. The cysts did not proliferate, were limited to the injury site and did not affect the animals negatively, according to Geron. Also, no teratomas, which are tumors that may or may not be malignant, developed in the animals.

Geron reported, however, a "just completed animal study showed a higher frequency of cysts." Another recently finished animal trial did not produce any cysts, according to Geron.

The firm is cooperating with the FDA in an effort to begin the human trial, Geron said.

Because of their ability to develop into other cells and tissues, stem cells provide hope for producing cures for a variety of diseases. The biotech industry has long promoted research with embryonic stem cells because of their pluripotency, which means they can transform into any cell or tissue. ESCR has not proven nearly as effective as experiments with other types of stem cells, however.

Trials using adult stem cells have produced therapies for at least 73 ailments in human beings, despite the fact such cells are not considered pluripotent, according to Do No Harm, a coalition promoting ethics in research. Among the afflictions treated by adult stem cells are cancer, juvenile diabetes, multiple sclerosis, heart damage, Parkinson's, sickle cell anemia and spinal cord injuries, according to Do No Harm.

Scientists have discovered induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells in the last two years, producing great promise for cures without the ethical problems of ESCR. In iPS research, scientists convert adult cells into cells that have nearly the identical properties of embryonic ones.

Neither procuring stem cells from non-embryonic sources nor transforming adult stem cells into embryonic-like ones harms the donor.

Since the FDA gave Geron the go-ahead to conduct a human trial with embryonic stem cells, President Obama has overturned a ban on federal grants for stem cell research that results in the destruction of an embryo. President Bush issued the ban in 2001, but he permitted funds for experiments with stem cell lines, or colonies, already in existence at the time of his order.

At the time the FDA approved a human trial with embryonic stem cells, the lines used by Geron were eligible for federal money, according to the Associated Press.

Guidelines issued by the National Institutes of Health in July limit federal funds to research involving embryos produced by in vitro fertilization for reproductive purposes and donated by couples who no longer want them. The couples must provide voluntary, written permission.

A suit filed Aug. 19 in federal court contends the guidelines violate a 13-year-old congressional ban on funds for research that destroys embryos. The plaintiffs say the guidelines violate the 1996 Dickey-Wicker Amendment, a rider to the spending bill for the Department of Health and Human Services. The amendment prohibits federal funds for "(1) the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or (2) research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero...."

Contact: Tom Strode
Source: BP
Publish Date: September 1, 2009
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America's youth guide debate on abortion issue

America's youth guide debate on abortion issue

A recent study shows support for legal abortion has dropped in the United States.

Michael Dimock is a spokesman for Pew Research Center, who conducted the study earlier this year. "Today about the same number of people [46 percent] side with keeping abortion legal in most cases, as opposed to illegal in most cases [44 percent]," he notes. "In previous polls, the pro-choice position outweighed the pro-life position by a substantial margin."

Pollsters broke down the results according to religious groups where there is more of a shifting of views than in politics. "But you're seeing more of a shift in a conservative direction among Protestants, both evangelical and mainline Protestants, more so than among Catholics or other religious groups," Dimock points out.

Dimock believes America's youth will establish the future on the abortion issue. He tells OneNewsNow young people are more liberal on such issues as homosexuality.

"[However,] when it comes to abortion, there's not an overwhelming age disparity," Dimock says. "Younger people aren't substantially more supportive of abortion rights or pro-life than [are] older folks."

Contact: Charlie Butts
Source: OneNewsNow
Publish Date: September 2, 2009
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Attorney General Needs to Examine Abortion Industry for Civil Rights Violations

Dr. Alveda King, Director of African American Outreach for Priests for Life and niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said today that the Justice Department's new drive to investigate the possibly racist policies of federal fund recipients should include Planned Parenthood.

"The acting head of the Obama administration's Civil Rights Division wants to crack down on groups that receive federal money and whose policies have a negative impact on minorities," said Dr. King. "I can save her a lot of time. All she has to do is look at the abortion industry and its leading money maker, Planned Parenthood, to find suspicious characters."

"I would say wiping out one-quarter of the African American population qualifies as a negative impact on a minority group," added Dr. King. "There is no greater violator of civil rights than the abortion industry and if the Obama Justice Department is serious about investigating discrimination perpetrated by recipients of federal money, it should start with the billion dollar abortion giant, Planned Parenthood."

Contact: Margaret
Source: Priests for Life
Publish Date: September 2, 2009
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Family Attacked for Too Many Children: "Thrilled to be Preparing for Baby Number 19

Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar told US news service MSNBC they are delighted to discover the impending arrival of their 19th child. Described by the Today program as "glowing," Michelle Duggar said, "I'm feeling sick and tired, which is a good way to be feeling about right now."

"I always tell myself that's a good way to be because that means good things are happening."

The baby is due to arrive around March 18, 2010.

The family stars in the reality TV show "18 Kids and Counting" airing on TLC. The family are members of the Quiverfull movement among US Protestants that rejects the modern anti-child philosophy and allows God to decide how large their families will be.

The news of Michelle's pregnancy, only eight months after the birth of their last child Jordyn-Grace, was followed by that of the family's eldest son, Josh, who announced that his new wife Anna is expecting their first child, who is due on October 18. "Children are a blessing and a gift if you raise them right, and I think my parents have definitely shown that," Josh Duggar said.

But not everyone is smiling. When the story was published on the website of the left-leaning Huffington Post, commenters did not hesitate to express their hostility to the Duggar's openness to life. 1081 commenters responded with nearly uniform outrage that the Duggars, who have no financial problems, live in a large house they built themselves and are not in debt, have the audacity to be happy with their large family.

"Nothing but pure selfishness," said one. "How about adopting a klan of white children who actually NEED homes?" followed another.

Commenters focused on the "threat" the Duggar children posed to the environment and accused the Duggar parents of using their older children as "unpaid servants and de facto parents" calling them "greedy and slothful." Some called the Duggars' religious beliefs a cult that "expounds the subjugation of women."

"You should pity these poor children with no childhood and no future, who pay everyday for their parents' desire to collect children the way the crazy lady down the street collects cats."

But one writer was more skeptical: "Funny how my fellow liberals preach tolerance and choice until they disagree with someone else's decisions."

The Duggars have produced a book about their experiences, including their decision to stop using artificial hormonal birth control, and have been featured on several US television documentaries. They have also appeared on numerous national and international TV shows including The Early Show, The Today Show, The View, Fox & Friends, Italian Public Television, the Korean Broadcasting System, Discovery Home & Health in the UK and Australia, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Fox News Network and CNN.

Click here for a video of the Duggers.

Contact: Hilary White
Source: LifeSiteNews.com
Publish Date: September 2, 2009
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