NEWS SHORTS FOR FRIDAY

NEWS SHORTS FOR FRIDAY

"Pro-life" Dem candidate denies Obamacare covers abortions



On May 5 candidates Mark Critz (D, pictured above left) and Tim Burns (R, pictured above right) engaged in a debate for the upcoming special election for PA's 12th congressional district, the seat formerly held by the late Congressman John Murtha.

On the topic of health care reform, both candidates agreed that abortion should not be funded by taxpayer dollars. Or did they?
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An Annual Display Of The Abortion Divide



The people filing into the once-a-year public board meeting at Abington Memorial Hospital knew just where to sit. On one side of the room, an 81/2-by-11 sheet of paper had been taped to the wall with "Pro Life" printed on it. The 50 people crowding into that side, sitting on folding chairs, didn't need to look at the sign. They had done this for years. A few spilled over into the folding chairs on the other side of the room, chairs that had been largely empty. On the wall above those chairs was a sheet of paper with the words "Baby Killers Are Damned and Going to Hell." Abortion is the most divisive issue in America. It nearly sank the health care bill in Congress.
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5-Year Old Albino Son, Mother Killed for Body Parts Believed to Bring Wealth, Success in Africa

Activists: Mother, Son Albinos Killed in Burundi



Attackers in Burundi chopped off the limbs of a 5-year-old albino boy and pulled out his mother's eye, killing them over the belief that their body parts would bring wealth and success, human rights activists said Friday.
 
Those deaths and other recent attacks in Tanzania are part of long pattern of violence against African albinos. At least 10,000 have been displaced or gone into hiding since attacks against them spiked in late 2007, the International Federation of the Red Cross says.
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Florida Gov. Crist Swaying Toward Veto for Abortion Mandate Opt-Out, Ultrasound Bill



Facing immense pressure to veto a measure that both opts the state out of the federal health law's abortion mandate and requires ultrasounds before abortion, Florida governor Charlie Crist has said that, even though he is personally "pro-life," he may strike down the bill out of unwillingness "to impose my will on others."

The controversial bill, HB 1143, requires abortionists to give women an opportunity to view ultrasound images of their unborn children before an abortion, and to provide a "description of the fetus, including a description of the various stages of development." The bill includes an exception in cases where the mother is a victim of rape, incest, domestic violence, human trafficking, or at risk of life-threatening injury due to the pregnancy; it also allows for women to decline to view the ultrasound.
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Dr. Janet Smith blasts AFP for 'inaccurate' contraception article



Responding to a recent Agence France Presse (AFP) article that criticized Catholic teaching on contraception, well-known professor, Dr. Janet Smith, said that in her opinion, the poorly researched piece “was inaccurate and slanted from the beginning.”

In light of the recent 50th anniversary of the Pill being released to U.S. markets, the AFP reported on Thursday that in spite of Church teaching, the majority of Catholic women today use contraception.
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Young people march against abortion in Madrid, carry photos of Martin Luther King



Some 60 young people from pro-life organizations in Madrid took part in a march against abortion in the Spanish capital this week, calling on the government to provide more assistance to families and to reverse the country's new law on abortion.

Jose Maria Blanco, who directs the Nasciturus pro-life organization, told Europa Press the march was the “climax” of a year of activities the pro-life groups have carried out.
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Madison surgical center abandons late-term abortion plans after pro-life protests

Madison surgical center abandons late-term abortion plans after pro-life protests



Reporting a “pro-life victory,” pro-life leaders in Wisconsin have praised the Madison Surgery Center’s (MSC) abandonment of its plans to perform late-term abortions.

The MSC is a joint partnership between Meriter Hospital, the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics and the University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation. At a February 2009 meeting its board voted to allow late-term abortions.

The Center was the target of pro-life petition drives and television commercials opposing the plan to provide late-term abortions.

“It is my understanding based on recent information from the UW (University of Wisconsin) that they have now abandoned plans to provide late-term abortion services at MSC,” Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General Kevin Potter said in a letter to an Eau Claire attorney who asked for an investigation of UW for violating the law by promoting and being involved in the late-term abortion plan.

Peggy Hamill, state director of Pro-Life Wisconsin, reacted to the news.

“We give credit first and foremost to God for this pro-life victory,” she commented. “Pro-life grassroots activism works.”

Hamill said in a press release that thousands of people attended “countless” prayer vigils, tens of thousands of people signed a pro-life petition, and hundreds of pro-life television commercials aired in the Madison area. Hundreds of people also boycotted the MSC.

“We have maintained a daily prayer presence outside the MSC, and our NoUWabortions.com website has served as a virtual hub of resistance,” she added.

Virginia Zignego, Pro-Life Wisconsin communications director and a UW-Madison alumna, said her group was “happy” to announce the end of its boycott.

“When we kill babies, it is a failure of our health care system and a failure of our intellects. When we kill babies it is a sign that consciences are dead. When consciences are dead, there is no limit to what we will do.”

Source: CNA/EWTN News
Publish Date: May 6, 2010
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NY Hospital Apologizes to Nurses Punished for Refusing to Facilitate Abortion

NY Hospital Apologizes to Nurses Punished for Refusing to Facilitate Abortion

Hospital conscience policy still illegal?

 

The president of a New York hospital has reversed punishment against eight nurses who refused to take part in an abortion, and has issued an apology to some of them, reported Newsday on Thursday. However, there remains question as to whether the hospital would have persisted in coercing the nurses, in conflict with New York and federal law, had the patient's case been accurately deemed an "emergency situation."

"We erred in our personnel actions, have apologized to several of the nurses and will do so with the others, as well. They did nothing wrong," Nassau University Medical Center (NUMC) President Arthur Gianelli said Tuesday.

Gianelli said that the nurses were off the hook because the patient was not actually in a life-threatening situation, despite the fact that the director of perinatal nursing had originally believed that she was. The hospital is reportedly refining a new policy that, in the words of Newsday, "defines more clearly when a health care worker can refuse to take part in a nonemergency procedure. It also says the attending physician must declare and document a medical emergency."

The hospital's current policy on staff's right of refusal to perform or assist in certain health services states that, "NuHealth employees have the right not to perform or assist in Health Services that are contrary to their conscience or religious beliefs."

However, it goes on to state in a section entitled "exceptions," that, "The foregoing provisions do not apply during a medical emergency." It also states: "If an individual's conscience or religious beliefs cannot be reasonably accommodated without undue hardship, NHCC may exclude individuals who object to Health Services from employment in positions for which the performance of such services is a necessary and substantial responsibility."

NUMC confirmed to LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) the accuracy of the Newsday report, but declined to comment when asked about their policy or whether they would force medical staff to participate in abortion in an "emergency situation."

Matt Bowman of the Alliance Defense Fund, however, pointed out that both New York law and federal law "make it illegal for a regulated hospital to force objecting employees in any circumstances to assist abortions. There is no exception letting the hospital sometimes coerce pro-life health professionals when it wants to, such as if the abortion doctor thinks the abortion is necessary."

"The reason these laws don't sometimes allow coercion against pro-life workers is because abortion doctors believe all abortions are medically necessary," Bowman told LSN in an email.

"Abortion itself was illegal shortly before these laws were passed - it is anathema to American religious freedom to think pro-life workers could sometimes be forced to assist abortion," he continued. "Even in high risk pregnancies where delivery is needed, directly killing the child is never needed, and pro-life health workers are always willing to help try to save both mother and child. There's no medical or legal reason to let hospitals force someone to help kill a child."

While refraining from specific comment on Nassau's policy, Bowman noted that, unlike the policy, "The laws I cited don't have exceptions."

Contact: Kathleen Gilbert
Source: LifeSiteNews.com
Publish Date: May 5, 2010
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Nurse's rights violated, suit filed

Nurse's rights violated, suit filed



The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) has filed suit against New York's Mount Sinai Hospital for not recognizing the conscience rights of a nurse who is a pro-life Catholic.

ADF legal counsel Matt Bowman explains the dispute. "In this case, a nurse, Cathy (Cenzon) DeCarlo, was illegally forced to assist [in an] abortion by a hospital that receives hundreds of millions of dollars of federal funds," he reports. "We filed now two lawsuits against this hospital to make sure that Cathy DeCarlo's rights are protected."

The nurse was threatened with disciplinary action, including possible termination and loss of her license, and the ADF attorney notes that the firm in both suits has "cited federal and state conscience protections that are supposed to protect healthcare workers from having to assist abortions" since the hospital ignored those laws by forcing Cenzon-DeCarlo to assist in a procedure with which she disagreed.

The unborn baby was 22 weeks old, and the case was classified as an "emergency," even though it was not designated as such by the hospital. Administrators and other staff have known of the nurse's religious objections to abortion since 2004, and they have responded to the suits by saying Cenzon-DeCarlo has no right to sue.

Contact: Charlie Butts
Source: OneNewsNow
Publish Date: May 6, 2010
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Support Growing for Overturning Roe

Support Growing for Overturning Roe



Support for overturning Roe v. Wade is the highest among American adults since 2005, according to a Washington Post/ABC telephone survey released Friday. At the same time, however, a significantly larger number of respondents to the survey said that they would like to see Roe kept intact.

The poll presented a series of questions regarding what Americans would like to see in President Obama's choice for the next Supreme Court judge. About 60 percent of adults said they would support a justice who would keep intact Roe, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion in the United States, while 38 percent hoped to see a judge appointed who would overturn it.
 
The question put to those on the telephone survey was: "The Supreme Court legalized abortion 37 years ago in the ruling known as Roe versus Wade. If that case came before the court again, would you want the next justice to vote to (uphold) Roe versus Wade, or vote to (overturn) it?"

Ed Whelan on National Review Online said, however, that the apparent support for Roe may have stemmed from the fact that the question was "drafted in a way that predictably understates support for overturning Roe." "The phrase 'legalized abortion' could easily lead respondents to believe that the effect of overturning Roe would be to make abortion illegal, when it would in fact be to restore abortion policy to the democratic processes," he wrote Wednesday. "Nor, of course, does the question reveal how extreme the Roe/Casey regime is and how it prevents implementation of measures that Americans overwhelmingly support."

Whelan pointed to a survey jointly commissioned by the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Judicial Confirmation Network three years ago that showed "even a brief education about what Roe really means" led to a 16-point shift in opinion against the controversial decision. 

The Post states that the number favoring Roe has varied little in previous polls, but the number against the decision is the highest in the Post-ABC survey since 2005.

The shift was located largely among those identifying as Republicans: when given the same question in reference to Justice Sonia Sotomayor last year, 54 percent of GOP members were against Roe, whereas about 60 percent say they feel the same now. Only about 50 percent of Republicans said they hoped to see Roe overturned when Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. were nominated in 2005.

In addition, the Post/ABC poll found that 26 percent consider the current Supreme Court too liberal, and 21 percent consider it too conservative - a shift from results three years ago, where only 18 percent thought the rulings were too liberal, while 31 percent called them too conservative. Forty-six percent of respondents feel the court is balanced, about the same figure as found in previous polls.

Contact: Kathleen Gilbert
Source: LifeSiteNews.com
Publish Date: May 5, 2010
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Anesthesiologists Instructed Not to Participate in Executions-But Silence on Euthanasia/Assisted Suicide

Anesthesiologists Instructed Not to Participate in Executions–But Silence on Euthanasia/Assisted Suicide



The American Board of Anesthesiologists has determined that any member who participates in a legal execution faces expulsion. From the official notice:

The majority of states in the United States authorize capital punishment, and nearly all states utilize lethal injection as the means of execution. However, this method of execution is not always straightforward (1), and, therefore, some states have sought the assistance of anesthesiologists (2).

This puts anesthesiologists in an untenable position. They can assuredly provide effective anesthesia, but doing so in order to cause a patient’s death is a violation of their fundamental duty as physicians to do no harm.

For decades the American Medical Association (AMA) has been opposed to physician involvement in capital punishment on the grounds that physicians are members of a profession dedicated to preserving life when there is hope of doing so (3). Effective February 15, 2010, the American Board of Anesthesiology (ABA) has incorporated the AMA’s position on capital punishment into its professional standing requirements for all anesthesiologists who are candidates for or diplomates of the ABA (4). Thus, anesthesiologists may not participate in capital punishment if they wish to be certified by the ABA.

I have absolutely no objection to kicking out a doctor that violates his association’s ethical rules.  But it is curious.  If doctors should not kill as part of their professional capacity- -and that’s certainly a reasonable maxim–they should not kill in any context.  The directive should also be applied by the ABA–and the AMA, for that matter–to kick out any doctor assisting suicides or engaging in euthanasia.  Otherwise, all I see is cowardice, posturing, and hypocrisy in this. After all, the Hippocratic Oath explicitly bans participating in assisted suicide but is silent about executions.

The assisted suicide laws in Oregon and Washington prohibit such professional sanctions.  But in my view, since these groups are voluntary associations, such prohibitions are profoundly unconstitutional as they eviscerate the right of free association.  I just wish affected medical associations had the guts to drive that point home.

Contact: Wesley J. Smith
Source: Secondhand Smoke
Publish Date: May 6, 2010
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Girl's 'forced' abortion blamed on government 'death panel'

Girl's 'forced' abortion blamed on government 'death panel'

'This is what happens in China. Girls are taken kicking and screaming'



A longtime veteran of the battle against abortion in the United States says the case of a Philadelphia teen who reportedly was coerced into a late-term abortion by a social services agency can be blamed on government's so-called "death panels."

The issue of "death panels" came up during discussion of President Obama's now-approved nationalization of health care services in the country, and critics said the plan included government boards that simply would approve or refuse certain medical services for some patients – or decide life or death.

Obamacare supporters vocally denied that such panels existed or would exist, but Troy Newman, chief of the pro-life Operation Rescue organization, said the Philadelphia case is documentation that they already exist and are operating.

The Philadelphia Daily News apparently was the first to document the case, in which social workers took a teen for an abortion even though the teen had been looking forward to having the little boy and even had picked out a name.

Further, the teen's mother had opposed the abortion, as had the foster mother with whom the teen was staying. The newspaper even reported that one social worker, Marisol Rivera, who said she didn't want to take the teen for an abortion, later was dismissed by the social services agency.

"This is what happens in China," Newman told WND. "Girls are taken from their homes, kicking and screaming, thrown in a van, taken to abortionists and they undergo a forced abortion."

He said it's also not that much of a rarity in the United States, citing cases he's witnessed where girls and women under direct supervision of various governmental agencies, from detention centers to foster care settings, were delivered to abortionists.

"It's something we've been following for years. We've seen forced abortions in prison settings. We've seen these women in chains brought to abortionists. We've seen foster care parents, and the whole system, force teens into abortion," he said.

He said the nuance now is that Obamacare will be installing in the nation a long list of new government oversight boards.

"Once you have these government oversight boards, the Health and Human Services Secretary, whomever he or she may be, with a radical pro-eugenicist mindset, all of a sudden the only money available is for abortion. There's no money for prenatal care. Then you have doctors who are not allowed to operate outside the government system," he said.

Many of the impacts of Obamacare remain to be determined because even members of Congress admitted they hadn't read the bill before they voted for it.

But Newman said the goal appears to be a "Big Brother utopia" with massive government controls over medical treatments that are available.

And he said there is no question about what the priorities will be under the current HHS secretary, Kathleen Sebelius. She was governor in Kansas, where Operation Rescue has its headquarters, before Obama picked her for the national post, and Newman long has documented her intimate ties to the abortion industry, from massive campaign donations she accepted from abortionists to parties she threw in the governor's mansion for abortion practitioners.

Likewise, abortion is rampant for those in the foster care system, Newman said.

"It's draconian. It is one of the most manipulative and oppressive systems," he said. In many cases, he said, the case worker "makes up the law and enforces the law."

"For all intents and purposes they are above the law," he said. "They do not have the best interests of the children at heart. They have their agenda as the first and foremost issue."

The Daily News reported the pregnant teen was told by a social worker either to get an abortion or have her 1-year-old toddler removed from her care.

The newspaper the social services agency obtained a court order for the abortion because the girl's birth mother refused to approve the plan, and by the time social workers made all the arrangements, they had to take the girl out of state because she was 24 weeks pregnant, and in Pennsylvania they are illegal at that stage.

The social worker who had not wanted to accompany the teen to the abortion, Rivera, then told the newspaper she was fired after the March abortion because of her decision.

"They hired me to work in child protection, not to kill children," she told the newspaper. Department of Human Services officials refused to talk about the case with the newspaper, citing privacy laws.

The social worker who stepped in to follow Rivera, Cynthia Brown, also wouldn't talk about the case.

Donald F. Schwarz is the city's deputy mayor for Health and Opportunity and confirmed that 335 minors under DHS care between September 2006 and March of this year became pregnant. Of those cases, 119 resulted in abortions, 54 by judge's order, the report said.

Both state and federal law ban the use of public money for abortions but Schwarz said while the agency does get that money, it wasn't used for abortions.

Art Caplan, of the Center of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said there are questions of ethics that should be answered.

"You can't or shouldn't be threatening to break up a family depending upon whether somebody gets an abortion or not," Caplan told the newspaper. "That is . . . unethical practice, it's not even common sense."

According to LifeNews, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council says he worries the Pennsylvania incident may become more commonplace under the government-run health care plan President Barack Obama signed that funds abortions.

"What can we expect from the new federal health care plan? Well, if this story from Pennsylvania is any indication, a multi-state pro-abortion campaign," he said.

"She was smuggled to New Jersey for the appointment – alone. Because the young mom didn't have the proper paperwork, she had to return a second time for the abortion, this time with a state government worker, who ensured that the baby never came home," Perkins continued.

"As for conscience rights of those involved? Forget it. The girl's original social worker was fired for refusing to participate in the abortion," he said. "And while the state insists it didn't pay for the abortion (the city of Mayfair did), a state worker did accompany her and most likely paid for her transportation."

American Family Association of Pennsylvania also is calling for a formal investigation of the circumstances.

Richard Wexler, of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, told the Philadelphia newspaper, "If DHS's behavior is as described, it is shameful and inexcusable."

The foster mother reported the teen was excited about her son, and had told her 1-year-old daughter she was going to have a brother. The teen's birth mother, who identified herself to the newspaper as Deborah M., said, "Someone who went to go get an ultrasound, [found] out it's a boy, they give the boy a name, that's somebody who wants to have that baby."

But the foster mother reported Brown had talked about the pregnancy with the teen in her presence. She said Brown told the teen DHS would separate her children if she had the second child.

"She said that if she decided to have the infant she wasn't going to let her have both babies," the foster mother told the newspaper.

The foster mother said the teen was taken without her knowledge for the abortion. She had called the social agency in a panic when the girl didn't return from school that day.

About 8:30 p.m., she did arrive home.

According to the Daily News, the foster mother asked, "What happened?"

"The baby is dead," the teen answered.

Contact: Bob Unruh
Source: WorldNetDaily
Publish Date: May 6, 2010
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NEWS SHORTS FOR THURSDAY

NEWS SHORTS FOR THURSDAY

DHS Coerced Teenage Mom to Get Late-Term Abortion



A Department of Human Services caseworker pressured a pregnant Mayfair teenager to undergo a late-term abortion by threatening to take away either her toddler or her unborn baby if she had the child, according to the teen's foster mother. The alleged strong-arm tactic happened one day after DHS learned of the pregnancy, when the girl was about 22 weeks pregnant, according to her foster mother and the girl's social worker, Marisol Rivera. The foster mother did not want to be identified in order to protect the girl's identity. The Daily News also learned that: * DHS got a Family Court judge's order allowing it to take the girl for an abortion, after the girl's birth mother refused to approve the procedure.
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Whitehead Institute Scientists Kill More Human Beings By Destroying Embryos to make Embryonic Stem Cells



Whitehead Institute researchers have converted established human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells and human embryonic stem (ES) cells to a base state of greater pluripotency. “This is a previously unknown pluripotent state in human cells,” says Jacob Hanna, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Whitehead Member Rudolf Jaenisch. “It’s the first time these cell types have approached the flexibility found in mouse ES cells.”
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Tennessee Law to Ban Taxpayer-Funded Abortions in State-Run Health Insurance Now In Effect



Legislation went into effect barring coverage of abortion in health plans offered through the state-run health insurance exchange to be created under the health reform bill. Two weeks after the General Assembly easily passed the legislation, Gov. Phil Bredesen declined to either sign or veto the bill. So the measure -- SB 2686 -- still goes into effect. The move makes Tennessee the second state, after Arizona, to enact legislation prohibiting abortion coverage in the state-run health exchanges. Legislation is pending in eight other states. Legislative Democrat leaders have questioned whether the law was needed since the federal law already includes anti-abortion language.
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UGA Scientists Discover How to Use Stem Cells from Pigs In Treating Human Diseases



Two University of Georgia scientists have accomplished what others have failed to do for 20 years. Steven Stice and Dr. Franklin West have been able to figure out a way to potentially help people with diabetes using stem cells from adult pigs. Stice and West used adult pigs to develop pluri-potent stems cells that can turn into any cell in the body. These cells, in the case of treating diabetes, can work in the body as insulin to fight the disease. "We were really surprised that it worked. It touches so many facets. It's going to help domestic livestock species. It's going to help human disease modeling. It's going to help stem cell therapies and endangered species. It's such a wide topic that touches on so many subjects. I'm so excited on what's going on here," Dr. Franklin West tells WNEG News.
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Abortion Concentrated Among Poor Women



Abortion patterns in the United States remain broad; women from their teens through 40s seek abortion, and they represent a spectrum of ethnic, educational, religious and economic groups. The rate of abortion among poor women, however, has risen in the last decade, according to a report Tuesday from the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-rights organization. The overall proportion of women who were poor increased by 25% in the United States from 2000 to 2008, according to the report. The proportion of abortion patients who were poor increased from 27% in 2000 to 42% in 2008.

49% of U.S. pregnancies are unintended, and 22% end in abortion. Increasingly, the role of poverty is becoming more apparent in the incidence of both unintended pregnancy and abortion.

The report also notes:

•58% of abortions were among women in their 20s
•85% of abortion were among unmarried women
•61% of women having abortions already had at least one child
•33% of women having abortions lacked health insurance
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Pro-Abort Group Lost Funding Over Performance Issues, Not Policy

 

The Canadian government has explained that a feminist and pro-abortion group working in the Third World lost federal funding due to questions about their ability to deliver their programs - an explanation that contradicts claims by the Liberal Party that the funding cut is evidence of the government's effort to silence critics of its decision not to include abortion in the G8 maternal and child health initiative.

Kim Bulger, executive director of MATCH International, claimed Tuesday that her group and ten other feminist groups have been defunded as part of the government's “ideologically driven” agenda against those who have pushed for abortion in the maternal and child health initiative.
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Notre Dame Prez Accuses ND 88 of Threatening Peace and Order on Campus

Notre Dame Prez Accuses ND 88 of Threatening Peace and Order on Campus



In what may be his first public statement on the situation of 88 pro-life protesters arrested on campus last May, University of Notre Dame President Fr. John Jenkins has suggested that the protesters deserve to continue facing up to a year in jail and a $5,000 fine because they were unruly and led by individuals who "threatened peace and order."

The protesters, known as the "Notre Dame 88" (ND88) were arrested for trespassing on Notre Dame's campus as they peacefully prayed or otherwise symbolized their disagreement with the university for honoring President Obama with the commencement address and an honorary law degree May 17.

Witnesses state that the pro-lifers were arrested while pro-Obama protesters were allowed to roam free - which the ND88's defense attorney says indicates the pro-lifers were selectively punished simply because of their message.

While the ND88 are now in the hands of the county prosecutor, and not Notre Dame, Fr. Jenkins has been urged by pro-life leaders to request leniency for the group, something he has steadfastly refused to do.

Jenkins released his recent statement at the same the South Bend Tribune published an article following up on an investigation by the Sycamore Trust, a Notre Dame alumni watchdog group, which discovered that previous protesters trespassing on Notre Dame's campus were treated much more leniently. The Tribune article largely confirmed the Sycamore Trust report, saying that "there have been variations in how some protesters were handled at the university."

Yet in the attending statement, Fr. Jenkins simply reiterated the argument he has repeated in response to various email inquiries, despite its apparent conflict with the findings of the Tribune report. Jenkins claimed that the ND88 were treated they were because "the University cannot have one set of rules for causes we oppose, and another more lenient set of rules for causes we support. We have one consistent set of rules for demonstrations on campus - no matter what the cause."

Jenkins implied that the ND88 deserved arrest because "we require that any campus demonstration ... be peaceful and orderly," be approved by the university, and be organized by a student, staff, or faculty member. However, "those who were arrested last spring met none of these criteria and, in particular, were led by individuals who threatened peace and order by promising upheaval on our campus."

William Dempsey, president of the Sycamore Trust, told LifeSiteNews.com Monday that Jenkins' statement was a "puzzle," inasmuch as it appeared to ignore the findings of the Tribune article altogether.

"I'm mystified by it. I really am," he said. "I'm delighted they did it (the investigation), but judging by what Jenkins' reaction was, it didn't make any impact on him."

Dempsey also took issue with Jenkins' characterization of the ND88, which witnesses attest, and videos show, were a largely, if not entirely peaceful presence on campus. "My goodness sakes, these people are mainly septuagenarian women," he noted.

Jenkins' statement about the group’s leadership was evidently a reference to activist Randall Terry, who had threatened to make the commencement ceremony a "circus" in response to Obama's invitation. Terry had already been arrested at least once for trespassing at Notre Dame prior to commencement, but the extent and nature of Terry's activity on commencement day is unclear. Many, if not most, of the Notre Dame 88 were not associated with Terry, having arrived from states across the nation.

In his statement Jenkins also repeated previous statements indicating that members of the ND88 have been offered "pre-trial diversion." Under this agreement, members of the ND88 could avoid criminal charges and a criminal record if they have no previous criminal record, agree to obey the law for one year, and stay off Notre Dame's campus for a year.

Most of the ND88 have refused the offer of pre-trial diversion however, which amounts in practice to an admission of guilt.  Thomas More Society President Tom Brejcha told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) last year that while some of the arrested protestors have accepted the offer "because of the coercive impact of the fact that they have to pay for expenses and have this thing hanging over their heads," the rest have refused to do so because "they don't think they did anything wrong."
  
William Dempsey expressed confusion that Jenkins would persist in not seeking leniency for the pro-lifers: the case for doing so, he said, would appear easily grasped from Notre Dame's perspective.

"I'm just talking about the interests of Notre Dame University, and it's all downside here if you support these prosecution, and it's all upside if you don't," said Dempsey. "What do you lose?"

Contact: Kathleen Gilbert
Source: LifeSiteNews.com
Publish Date: May 4, 2010
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Aborted baby DNA - 'environmental factor' in autism

Aborted baby DNA - 'environmental factor' in autism



AMA research institute is drawing a relationship between autism and the use of cells from unborn babies in vaccines.

In searching for an "environmental factor" that could be related with autism, a study by the Environmental Protection Agency pins 1988 as the year that an increase in autism was noted. That is the same year a second dose of the MMR vaccine, which included cells derived from aborted baby tissue, was being recommended.

"The only environmental event that can be associated with the rise in autism that's seen in many different countries and that occurred at specific and distinct times has been the introduction within those countries of human fetal cell line-produced vaccines," explains Therese Deisher, president of the Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute (SCPI).

When animal sources are used in a vaccine, the human body recognizes the foreign DNA and disposes of it -- but using cells of unborn babies, according to Deisher, can have several results. She reports one possibility is that "the immune response can lead to an attack on cells, what we call an autoimmune response. There's some evidence that autoimmunity may be involved in the etiology of autism," she adds.

There are other factors as well, she says, but the SCPI president believes there is enough evidence that the federal government should look into it. Meruvax, MMR2, and Chickenpox are other vaccines that have been cultivated with the use of tissue from aborted children.

Contact: Charlie Butts
Source: OneNewsNow
Publish Date: May 5, 2010
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Pro-Life Women Urge Lobbying of G8 Members on Abortion Push at G8 Summit

Pro-Life Women Urge Lobbying of G8 Members on Abortion Push at G8 Summit



Click here for contact information for members of the G8.

Background

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as President of the G-8 this year, stated in January 2010, that maternal health care would be a priority at the G-8 meeting. He has stated that maternal health would include only positive assistance to women and children, which includes clean water, inoculations and better nutrition, as well as the training of health workers to care for women and deliver babies.
 
Canadian feminists and population control groups, however, have now formed an organization called “White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood” to lobby members of the G-8 countries to include sexual and reproductive health and rights, i.e., abortion, in the proposed maternal health care plan.
 
They are currently circulating a 13-page “Call to Action: Maternal and Child Health at the G-8 Summit.”  This document is being distributed to development, human rights and feminist organizations around the world in the hope that the latter will pressure their respective governments to keep “sexual and reproductive health and rights” in the Summit’s agenda, so as to facilitate abortion, i.e., a population control policy in developing countries.

Maternal Health and Abortion

The UN World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank, and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have repeatedly asserted that access to abortion reduces maternal mortality, which they claim has not decreased in decades.
 
However, the leading British Medical Journal Lancet, in April 2010, reported that maternal mortality has decreased an average of 35% globally since 1980 and that the UN agencies have significantly overstated maternal mortality rates.
 
The study in Lancet cites the increasing availability of basic medical care, including “skilled birth attendants” – people with some medical training to help women give birth - as one of the reasons for the decline in maternal mortality.
 
To include abortion in the G-8 proposal is to impose western values and practices on developing nations, contrary to their culture and religion.  Such a policy correctly can be described as elitist western imperialism in that it imposes population control under the guise of maternal health.
 
The G-8 countries are: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, the United States, and, in addition, the European Union.  (It has a total of nine participating members – but it’s still referred to as the G-8.)

The names, addresses, fax numbers and email addresses of the G-8 officials listed found here (click here) do not necessarily include all the faxes and email addresses.  Where no email address is available, there is included the web mail address which normally includes a “contact us” section with a pop up email form.

Contact: Gwen Landolt and Cecilia Forsyth
Source: LifeSiteNews.com
Publish Date: May 4, 2010
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Second Thoughts Among Pro-Abortionists About Bashing Canadian Premier for Not Pushing Abortion in Foreign-Aid Initiatives

Second Thoughts Among Pro-Abortionists About Bashing Canadian Premier for  Not Pushing Abortion in Foreign-Aid Initiatives

I am as little an expert on abortion in Canada as I am fascinating by a country which so reminds me of the United States a number of years ago. From what I can tell from my location here south of the border, support for abortion is the rigid and unyielding orthodoxy in virtually all precincts of the chattering classes and established organs of power.

 

If you read the disdainful and mocking tone which runs through so much coverage, you'd think that there is no chance that respect for all human life could ever make a comeback. And then there comes along fissures and cracks in the ranks which give you much cause for hope.

Last week Canadian Premier Stephen Harper refused to funnel foreign-aid money into abortion--and the heat he took for it, including from our own pro-abortion zany Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Harper calmly replied to her all-out attack: "We want to make sure that our funds are used to save the lives of women and children, and are used on the many, many things that are available to us that frankly do not divide the Canadian population." This only made his critics madder. To intimate that not everybody is as fanatically pro-abortion as they are just illustrates how out of touch Harper supposedly is.

Well, that was then, and this is now. Even some pro-abortionists are expressing doubts, either on political grounds or because (dare they admit it?) the evidence does not support the Clintonesque argument that you improve maternal health by increasing the number of dead babies.

Most of the derisive attention in the Canadian press has been paid to an obscenity voiced Monday by an exasperated pro-abortion member of Parliament. She was fed up with the militancy of "women's groups" who were relentlessly attacking Harper.

According to CBC News, "Ruth sponsored the Ottawa meeting at which a panel discussion turned to the government's intention to omit funding for abortion from its maternal health aid for developing countries. The panelists said it was a matter they couldn't ignore, but Ruth said pushing the abortion issue is not the right strategy to advance progress on maternal health." Except in telling her pro-abortion associates to stifle it, Ruth used much blunter language.

But the more substantive point was made by pro-abortion columnist Jonathan Kay in the National Post. Contrary to the haughty dismissals of many politicians and columnists, the (two-fold) long and the short of it begins with the fact that Harper has a point: "[T]here is no abortion 'consensus' in Canada," Kay wrote. "So stop talking about the issue as if it's settled."

More interesting to outsiders is that while Kay believes that access to abortion does (or could) account for some tiny improvement ("a small chunk") in maternal mortality, he understands that "A much larger problem, in terms of the number of female lives affected, is the decidedly less headline-grabbing subject of hemorrhages - which include antepartun hemorrhages (bleeding from the genital tract during the last three months of pregnancy) and primary postpartum hemorrhages. Then there is sepsis (which in this context means infection of the genital tract or surrounding areas following childbirth), blood-pressure disorders associated with pregnancy, and obstructed labour. On the infant side of the equation, life-threatening conditions in need of G8 attention include low birthweight, birth asphyxia, and infections."

Kay adds, "Of course, you don't hear Harper-bashing leftist politicians talking about sepsis and hemorrhages and such--no votes to be had in Toronto and Montreal on such issues. But statistically speaking, these are the real big-league killers."

National Right to Life has been making the case for years (as Jeanne Head, R.N. has written) that "The lack of modern medicine and quality health care, not the prohibition of abortion, results in high maternal mortality rates. Legalized abortion actually leads to more abortions--and in the developing world, where maternal health care is poor, legalization would increase the number of women who die or are harmed by abortion." All of the recent data is bearing out the facts that we can reduce maternal morality rates with clean water, a clean blood supply and an adequate health care system.

In fact, in documenting a 35% decrease in worldwide maternal mortality, a recent report published in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet did not once mention the word abortion. The explanation for the improvement lay in improved medicine, better medical care deliverers ("skilled attendants"), and increased education for women.

Very much worth noting is that The Lancet study showed that two countries that are doing exceptionally well in decreasing maternal mortality rates are Bolivia and Egypt -- both of which have kept their pro-life laws intact while decreasing the deaths of pregnant women.
Meanwhile Harper continues to get skewered by the pro-abortion press and opposition parties. But Kay--himself pro-abortion--says it all in his last paragraph;

"Only in Canada could such a sensible approach become the subject of such extreme criticism."

Contact: Dave Andrusko
Source: NRLC
Publish Date: May 4, 2010
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The slimy task of pro-abort men

The slimy task of pro-abort men



The April 29 issue of Newsweek featured a conversation among liberal feminists about the future of the abortion movement.

Surprising to me was a recurring lament about the shortage of outspoken pro-abort men. Hasn't the mantra for almost 40 years been, "My body, my choice"?

Only last week pro-abort Florida Rep. Janet Long told fellow legislators to "stand down if you don't have ovaries" when voting on a bill requiring mothers seeking abortions to undergo ultrasounds.

The message has been loud and clear ("hear me roar") that if you don't have female reproductive organs, you have no say in abortion either personally or corporately.

But while pro-abort women have always despised and disparaged pro-life men, they apparently have begun to see value in their counterparts. From Newsweek:

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon: [O]nly women are held accountable for fighting for reproductive rights. When the anti-choice side pulls energy from both men and women who are eager to halt sexual liberation and control female bodies, and pro-choicers can only look to women, we're already running at half capacity. ...

Nancy Keenan of NARAL: I agree with Amanda's point about needing men to become more vocal on our issue. … The perception is that men are the loud, boisterous and ever-present faces of the anti-choice movement (Mike Huckabee, Randall Terry, Rick Santorum), while women are the leaders of the pro-choice movement. And yet, if we are to win in the political arena, we simply cannot move pro-choice legislation, defeat anti-choice attacks, and protect Roe v. Wade unless we engage both genders. ...

How schizophrenic. How hypocritical. What, now that they're losing the abortion battle they admit they can't handle it on their own? They need men's help, seriously?

Over 37 years ago feminists outlawed giving fathers any say whatsoever when aborting children they may want while forcing fathers to financially support children they may not want – and feminists are now calling on men to help uphold the status quo?

Feminists are demanding that male pro-life legislators butt out because they have no ovaries while demanding that male pro-abort legislators intervene – on what grounds?

Feminists decry male pro-life activists outside abortion mills but ignore that most abortionists inside the mills are men. They find pro-life men creepy but not male specialists in the field of gynecologic child killing?

Is it any wonder men don't know how to behave around feminists?

Even homosexual men, more in touch with their feminine side than straights, are having a hard time. Wrote gay AJ on the Feminists for Choice blog:

As a "dude for choice," I find it difficult sometimes to negotiate space in the movement for reproductive justice. This isn't to say that I don't feel welcome. Hell, the feminist pro-choice movement is the one place that I have truly felt accepted for exactly who I am. But, I do think it's important for us to constantly challenge our preconceived assumptions.

I have no preconceived assumptions about pro-life men.  I know exactly what kind of men they are. They are stand-up, not stand-down men. They respect women. They love children. They take responsibility. They are protective. Unlike pro-abort men, pro-life men have no selfish stock in the pro-life movement.  They don't exploit women as sex objects where consequences are dealt away with.

I love pro-life men. They bring valuable, unique God-given gifts to the table to help in the abortion battle. Feminists have no trouble bragging about strengths women have that men don't, but they cannot admit men have strengths women don't.  I have no problem there.

Come to think of it, the abundant male-female mixes within our movement never have gender struggles.  If ever there were an egalitarian social movement, this is it, and believe me, I am very sensitive on this subject.  It may only come up that women are better spokespersons in various situations, and the men always defer.

Pro-lifer Gerard Nadal commented on my blog:

Pro-choice men have been effectively neutered by the feminists. Now that they've created an army of lap dogs, they decide that they really want attack dogs.

It's easier being a pro-life male. We get to be and act like men ought. And we get great women who aren't at war with their own nature, which means they aren't at war with the men who complement that nature and whose nature is complemented by women's.

One other reason pro-abort men may have trouble taking initiative. It must feel pretty slimy to grandstand killing one's own progeny.

Contact: Jill Stanek
Source: WorldNetDaily
Publish Date: May 5, 2010
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Thousands of Women Forcibly Sterilized in Uzbekistan

Thousands of Women Forcibly Sterilized in Uzbekistan



When doctors told a 28 year-old Uzbek woman that she had been sterilized after her first pregnancy without her knowledge or consent by government order, her husband left her. “Not a day passes without me crying,” said Gulbahor Zavidova. “I was outraged when I found out what they had done. How could they do such a horrible thing without asking me?”

Human rights groups have said that a government program of stealth sterilizations is part of larger systematic human rights abuses and oppression being perpetrated by the Uzbekistan government. The Times reports that a program of systematic sterilization of poor farmers’ wives is a policy of the Uzbek dictator President Islam Karimov.

Karimov is an old-style soviet ruler who has been in power since 1990, when the country was part of the Soviet Union. The CIA World Fact Book describes the government of Uzbekistan as an “authoritarian presidential rule, with little power outside the executive branch.” The country maintains a strictly government-controlled health system in which decrees of the government are carried out directly by doctors.

Recently, human rights activists condemned a decision by the Asian Development Bank to hold its four-day annual meeting in Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent. The decision “risks sending a signal about the bank and its shareholders somehow approving of the Uzbek government's policies, and will no doubt be exploited by the host government for internal and external PR purposes,” Veronika Szente Goldston, Human Rights Watch’s advocacy director for Europe and Central Asia, told EurasiaNet.org.

Human Rights Watch has pointed the finger at the U.S. and the European Union for their increasing silence on human rights abuses in the country. Goldston said the event creates “an impression of the EU and the U.S. effectively giving up any serious effort to promote human rights as part of their engagement with Uzbekistan.”

The country was recently named one of the most oppressive states in the world by a United Nations report. The report by the UN’s Human Rights Committee also listed “limitations and restrictions on freedom of religion and belief, including for members of non-registered religious groups” and “persistent reports on charges and imprisonment of such individuals.”

The Times quoted a local human rights campaigner, who was not named for fear of reprisal, saying, “We estimate that since February, about 5,000 women have been sterilized without consent.”

Activists say that mass sterilizations began in 2003, eased for a time and were started again in February this year. According to the UN, Uzbekistan’s fertility rate has fallen from 4.4 babies per woman to 2.5 since Karimov came to power.

The Times report told the story of Hidojat Muminova, a 26-year-old cotton picker who said that doctors tricked her into agreeing to surgery, during which she was sterilized.

“They scared me into believing I needed an urgent operation,” she said. “I was surprised as I’d never had any pain but I was worried and agreed to the surgery. When it was over they told me they’d performed a sterilization. I could not stop crying. They tricked me and treated me like an animal.”

While Uzbek authorities have denied it, a number of human rights groups have reported that a recent decree requires doctors to persuade at least two women a month to have a hysterectomy. In March the Expert Working Group, an independent think tank based in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, reported that a Health Ministry decree issued in mid-February orders district doctors to recommend hysterectomy as an effective contraceptive.

The Expert Working Group’s coordinator, Sukhrobdzon Ismoilov, told the Boston Globe in a phone interview that physicians who do not comply face reprisals and fines from their superiors.

“We’re talking about at least tens of thousands of women,’’ Ismoilov said.

Contact: Hilary White
Source: LifeSiteNews.com
Publish Date: May 4, 2010
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NEWS SHORTS FOR WEDNESDAY

NEWS SHORTS FOR WEDNESDAY

Abortion becoming more common among poor women, racial minorities in US



Among American women who obtain abortions, the proportion living under the federal poverty level has jumped from 27% in 2000 to 42% in 2008, according to a new study.

The study by the Guttmacher Institute, which is an affiliate of Planned Parenthood, suggests that tight economic circumstances may contribute to the increase in the number of poor women seeking abortion. The report does not analyze the campaign by Planned Parenthood to encourage abortion among impoverished women and members of racial minority groups. It does note, however, that just 36% of the women procuring abortions were white.

Regarding payment for the abortions, the Guttmacher study found that roughly one-third of the women had private insurance, one-third had no insurance, and one-third of the abortions were covered by the federal Medicaid program.
Click here for the entire article.


Most Women Pay For Abortions Out Of Pocket, Guttmacher Survey Finds



Fifty-seven percent of women who obtained abortions from April 2008 through May 2009 paid for the procedure out of pocket, while Medicaid paid for 20% of the procedures and private insurers paid for 12%, according to a new survey by the Guttmacher Institute, the Wall Street Journal reports. Thirteen percent of the 9,493 women surveyed reported receiving financial assistance, such as support from a not-for-profit group. One-third of respondents were uninsured, one-third received health coverage through Medicaid and one-third were privately insured.

Among women with private insurance, 63% paid for the procedure out of pocket. Rachel Jones, a senior research associate at Guttmacher, said those women might not have wanted abortion care to appear on their health insurance records, or they might have been unaware that their health plan provided abortion coverage.
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Several House Dems Plan To Support Bill To Increase Abortion Restrictions In Health Reform Law



Seven House Democrats in the bipartisan Congressional Pro-Life Caucus say they will support a bill (HR 5111) by Rep. Joe Pitts (D-Pa.) that includes language similar to an antiabortion amendment that caucus Co-Chair Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) attached to the House health reform bill (HR 3962), CQ Today reports. Pitts said he might offer the measure as a stand-alone bill or try to add it to an unrelated bill on the floor, which could prompt a divisive vote during an election year.

The abortion-related provisions in the health reform law (PL 111-148) reflect the Senate's version of the legislation. Under the law, to ensure that no federal funds are used to pay for abortion in plans sold through the health care exchanges, customers purchasing health plans that offer abortion coverage are required to write two checks each month: one for abortion coverage and another for all other coverage. The law also requires insurance companies to keep the payments in separate accounts.
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Abortion providers challenge Oklahoma ultrasound requirement



Abortion providers in Oklahoma have won a delay in the implementation of a new law requiring an ultrasound examination before abortions. Attorney General Drew Edmondson accepted a court order blocking the enforcement of the law while the Center for Reproductive Rights makes a court challenge. The pro-abortion Center argues that the requirement for an ultrasound is intrusive, and a doctor's description of the unborn child may include information that the abortion-minded woman does not want to hear.
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Child Vaccine Refusals Increase in U.S.



More parents in the U.S. are refusing or delaying the vaccinations for their babies, a study suggests. Between 2003 and 2008, the percentage of parents who refused or delayed vaccination doses "increased significantly from 22 per cent to 39 per cent," according to a study presented Tuesday at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting in Vancouver. Philip Smith of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and his colleagues analyzed data from the 2008 National Immunization Survey, which asked parents if they had delayed or refused a vaccine, and if so, why. The child's health-care provider reported whether the patient was up-to-date on six vaccines.
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Kansas Senate Fails to Override Abortion Bill Veto



The Kansas Senate has failed to override Gov. Mark Parkinson's veto of a bill rewriting the state's late-term abortion laws.
 
The vote Wednesday was 26-14 to override, one vote short of the two-thirds majority needed to overturn Parkinson's veto. Abortion rights opponents have said they did not expect to ask the Senate to reconsider its action.
 
The bill would have required doctors to report more detailed information to the state about the late-term abortions they perform.
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Aborting Facts for Political Purposes

Aborting Facts for Political Purposes


A couple of recent studies that reflect negatively on abortion have come to our attention. We in turn want to make you are aware of them—not because they are shocking, but rather because the secular “news” media has once again found it not in their best pro-death interest to report them objectively. For the most part, there has been no mention of them.

The first deals with the congressional briefing hosted by Congressman Chris Smith this past week, a well-known advocate for human rights, truth and life. The purpose of the Smith briefing was to discuss the global decline in maternal death rates and the reasons why improved prenatal care, rather than abortion, holds the key to continued success in this area.

During the briefing, Dr. Donna Harrison, president of the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), focused attention on a recent study published in the British medical journal, Lancet, entitled “Maternal mortality for 181 countries, 1980—2008: a systematic analysis of progress towards Millennium Development Goal 5.”

It credits these four reasons for the improvement in maternal health: declining pregnancy rates in some countries, higher per capita income, higher education rates for women and the increasing availability of basic medical care including “skilled birth attendants.” 

As Dr. Harrison explained, the Lancet report “never mentioned legal abortion as a factor in bringing down maternal mortality ratios. In fact, pro-life nations such as Poland, Malta and Ireland had just as low or even lower ratios of maternal mortality than the United States, Norway, and Canada, which all have very liberal abortion laws.”

Harrison pointed out that induced abortion actually puts women in danger of bleeding/hemorrhage, infection, and damage to reproductive organs, especially if not all the pieces of the destroyed unborn child are completely evacuated. The risks are even greater for medical abortion, Harrison said, highlighting a study published in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, which found that women having a medical abortion had an eightfold risk of bleeding, fivefold risk of incomplete abortion, and twofold risk of (re)evacuation than surgical abortion. The study concluded that medical abortion was likely “to result in an elevated incidence of overall morbidity related to termination of pregnancy.

While this comes as no surprise to anyone involved in the pro-life apostolate, it is not us who need to hear these facts, but rather the general public who is still being spoon-fed the lie that abortion is “safe and legal” and childbirth can be deadly for the mother. So where is the media, you might ask?

Well, as the New York Times reports:

[S]ome advocates for women’s health tried to pressure The Lancet into delaying publication of the new findings, fearing that good news would detract from the urgency of their cause, Dr. Horton said in a telephone interview.

“I think this is one of those instances when science and advocacy can conflict,” he said.

Dr. Horton said the advocates, whom he declined to name, wanted the new information held and released only after certain meetings about maternal and child health had already taken place.

He said the meetings included one at the United Nations this week, and another to be held in Washington in June, where advocates hope to win support for more foreign aid for maternal health from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Other meetings of concern to the advocates are the Pacific Health Summit in June, and the United Nations General Assembly meeting in December.

“People who have spent many years committed to the issue of maternal health were understandably worried that these figures could divert attention from an issue that they care passionately about,” Dr. Horton said. “But my feeling is that they are misguided in their view that this would be damaging. My view is that actually these numbers help their cause, not hinder it.”

All I can say to that is, Dr. Horton, GIVE ME A BREAK! Who do you think you are kidding? Or are you so naïve you do not understand that those who equate maternal health with killing preborn children before birth don’t want any kind of good news being touted in the media that will undermine their heinous agenda.

If it were truly the case, that advocates for maternal health were committed to protecting expectant mothers and their babies from dreadful disease, difficulties, birth anomalies and death, they would be staunch advocates for both patients and never recommend killing as a healthy response!

However, as we know, such is not the case here or in any of the developing nations where the United States has been funding the culture of death for so many years.

Further, these very same advocates, if they were honestly committed to women and children, would have been first in line with the news that researchers at the University of Manitoba have shown a distinct link between abortion and mental illness including thoughts of suicide: 

The researchers, from the departments of psychology and psychiatry, as well as obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences, found that abortion was associated with mood disorders, anxiety disorders, substance abuse and suicide attempts.

They report that depression and drug dependence followed abortion in about half of the women studied. Additionally, women with a household income of $75,000 or more were more likely to report an abortion than those with household incomes under $25,000.

They used data from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Drug Abuse to look for correlations between a number of factors, including abortion, anxiety, substance abuse, eating disorders, disruptive behavior and suicide attempts. They then checked for evidence of mental disorders following abortions.

“This was the first study to examine associations between abortion and several mental disorders,” says Dr. Jitender Sareen, psychiatry. “We found a higher likelihood of lifetime mood disorder in women who had experienced an abortion compared with those who had never had an abortion.”

But even those involved with this study were rather hasty to tell the secular media no conclusions can be drawn linking abortion to mental illness! The Canadian news agency reports that “[a]bortion providers worry the study's findings could be misinterpreted and become fodder for anti-abortion groups.”

In other words, regardless of the actual clinical information that exposes the deleterious effects of abortion on the mother, let alone the child, the political advocacy of abortion is what is most important.

Rather than being objective, the news media must rush to see what those negatively affected by such studies have to say because, as far as I can tell, the act of abortion is not in the same category as other surgical procedures when it comes to telling the truth to the public.

The protection of the sacred act of abortion is clearly what is most important to far too many who should be dedicated to honest and fair reporting.

For many years, I have known that the relatively naïve pro-life activities of the late seventies and early eighties that ultimately put abortion into the framework of “political issues” were bound to backfire.

Today, as these two studies and the public reaction affirms, this is in fact the case. We are not dealing with honesty in the media or the medical profession when we discuss abortion today. No, it is all about politics. 

And frankly, the only solution for all this is an ongoing discussion about the humanity of the preborn child with a specific focus on his human personhood.

As advocates for these people, we are not and should not be involved in a partisan political discussion. Nor will we patiently wait for the medical world to own up to the truth and admit that those who commit abortion are committing murder.

We are the ones who are going to repeat the truth about what abortion really is, regardless of our popularity, our social status or our opportunities to be welcomed into the wider community of secular thoughts and ideas.

We know that abortion is evil. We know that those who advocate it are literally working for the father of lies, and we will continue to say it. Abortion is an act that takes the life of a person and the antidote is human personhood. A focus on that child’s humanity is the only educational tool that has lasting power to turn the tide. 

God does not expect us to engage in political bickering, nor does His Word give us permission to relegate His babies and their fate to nothing more than a mere political issue! God expects us to tell the truth. If not us, who? Personhood now!

Contact: Judie Brown
Source: CNSNews.com
Publish Date: May 4, 2010
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