Pro-Life News
Number of Fertility Clinics Larger Than Thought, 400K Embryos Frozen
Washington, DC -- The freezers of U.S. fertility clinics are bulging with about 400,000 frozen human embryos, a number several times larger than previous estimates, according to the first national count ever done, released today.
The unexpectedly high number -- by far the largest population of frozen human embryos in the world -- is the byproduct of a booming fertility industry whose success depends on creating many embryos but using only the best. Although most of the embryos are being held for possible use by the couples who wanted them, a large proportion will never be needed, experts said.
That troubles pro-life advocates who worry that thousands of human embryos -- unique human beings in their earliest stages of life -- will be destroyed.
With clinics concerned about accidental meltdowns and insurance, and storage fees for parents reaching $1,500 a year, many people are wondering what should be done with the nation's prodigious stores of nascent human life.
"None of us really want to hang on to these embryos in perpetuity," said David Hoffman, a fertility doctor and past president of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, the Birmingham-based professional group that conducted the survey with the Rand Corp. of Santa Monica, Calif.
The problem has taken on new twist with the recent some scientists seeking commercial value from the embryos as sources of stem cells. The nationwide survey found that the parents of at least 11,000 embryos have given explicit permission for their embryos to be made available for research. But a pro-life policy imposed by President Bush in 2001 forbids federally funded scientists from doing such research -- a roadblock that left scientists all the more irritated yesterday upon learning just how many embryos are out there.
By contrast, pro-life advocates yesterday chastised the fertility industry for what they described as its profligate overproduction of embryos. Some called for more "embryo adoptions," in which donated frozen embryos are transferred to the wombs of infertile women.
Opponents of embryo research said the report should prompt fertility doctors to find ways to waste fewer embryos. The situation, said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, "bespeaks a mind-set that does not regard these as members of the human family."
More than anything, experts said, the large number of embryos being preserved in icy timelessness is an indicator of the ambivalence many couples feel as they consider what to do with their hard-won but unneeded potential offspring.
"Some people just can't cope with the decision," said Pamela Madsen, executive director of the American Infertility Association, a New York-based patient education and advocacy organization. "Even though their religious or moral perspectives about when life begins are all very individual and different, still most of them will agree that their embryos are very special."
American women underwent about 100,000 fertility treatments in 2000, the latest year for which statistics are available, resulting in the birth of about 35,000 babies. The most common procedure, in vitro fertilization, usually generates more embryos than are immediately needed, and extras are typically frozen for possible use later.
Previous estimates have ranged from the tens of thousands to 200,000 frozen embryos, with many hovering around 100,000. Fertility clinics, which are ineligible for federal funding and so are free of much regulatory oversight, have long sidestepped the question.
The census surveyed all 430 U.S. fertility practices, asking how many embryos they have stored and their "disposition" -- a reference to the fact that virtually all fertility patients must sign a form saying whether they want leftover embryos stored, destroyed or made available for donation, either to researchers or infertile women.
All but 90 doctor's offices and clinics responded, and the team estimated the number of embryos at 58 of the 90 on the basis of their number of clients and other details. The team tallied a "conservative" total of 396,526 embryos.
About 3 percent were earmarked for research; 2 percent for destruction and a like number for donation to women; and 1 percent for quality-assurance studies. Most of the rest -- about 87 percent of the total -- were reserved for ongoing fertility efforts.
The survey, detailed in the May issue of the journal Fertility and Sterility, did not ascertain how long embryos had been in storage -- a detail some experts said would make clear that most embryos saved for further fertility work are unlikely to be used for making babies. Frozen embryos can remain viable for a decade or more, but with each passing year, couples are increasingly unlikely to use them, because they have either given birth or given up.
There are no easy answers to the embryo glut. In the United Kingdom, where 52,000 human embryos were in storage as of 1996, the government triggered an uproar when it imposed a policy of destroying "abandoned" embryos after five years.
Source: Pro-Life Infonet (May 2003)
Back to Pro-Life
Michigan Takes New Approach to Stop Partial-Birth Abortions
May 1, 2003
Lansing, MI -- On Thursday the Michigan Senate passed, 24-12, the Legal Birth Definition Act, S.B. 395. The Legal Birth Definition Act (LBDA), takes a bold new conceptual approach to ending partial-birth abortions. Despite a barrage of attacks by pro-choice legislators, prolife senators - one after another - stood and offered a passionate defense of this bill to end the most heinous of abortion procedures.
Kristen Hemker, legislative liaison for Right to Life of Michigan, said that the legislation is "just defining when a person is born."
The LBDA is a straightforward effort to create a boundary for abortion by declaring birth, and the commencing of legal rights, to be at the point where any portion of a child is vaginally delivered outside the mother's body. Clearly the "right to abortion" defined by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe vs. Wade never imagined abortion to include the live birth and subsequent killing of the child.
The LBDA will redefine legal birth so that a child has the protection of legal personhood once any part of that child is visible outside of the mother's body. The bill does not restrict a specific abortion procedure but will effectively prohibit partial-birth abortion.
The Michigan House is scheduled to address the Legal Birth Definition Act, H.B. 4603, beginning on May 6.
Liz Boyd, a spokesperson for pro-abortion Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D), said that it is "too early" to say whether the governor will veto the legislation, adding, "Any legislation affecting women's reproductive rights will have to undergo a thorough and thoughtful review."
If the bill becomes law, Wendy Wagenheim, spokesperson for the pro-choice American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, said that the organization would file a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality.
Source: Associated Press/Right to Life of Michigan/Pro-Life Infonet
Back to Pro-Life
Court Deems Handicapped Girl, "Wrongful Life"
By Angie Vineyard
A Dutch court has ruled that the life of a severely handicapped girl was not worth living and has ordered a hospital responsible for her care to pay compensation to the family because she was born. The wrongful life claim was the first of its kind in the Netherlands.
Dr. Alexander von Schmid, philosopher and ethics instructor at Rotterdam Business School, agreed with the ruling.
"If a baby is denied contact with other human beings, it will never become a real human being," von Schmid told Radio Netherlands. "So for me, the starting point of human life is not the conception but the moment at which a baby enters relationships with other human beings. Usually this process starts on the day of birth."
Mirjam den Boer, director of a crisis pregnancy care center, argued, Pregnant women already experience interaction with their unborn children adding that religion should be considered in such a decision.
"It is well known that many women who were pro-abortion because they thought, 'Its my body. I have the right to decide not to have a child' change their values when they are pregnant," she told Radio Netherlands. "Then they feel it's their child and they have a relationship with the child and they feel responsible for the child."
But von Schmid disagreed, claiming, "You can never mix religious arguments in legal or ethical debates in society. You don't need religion to see that, for example, murdering your neighbor is really bad. You don't need religion to justify that it is a crime, that it is bad for society."
But what if your neighbor is a severely handicapped little girl? And what if a court has ruled that child should never have been born and a hospital should be faulted for delivering the baby and giving her the best medical attention possible? If her parents chose to murder her, how could they be faulted for killing a "wrongful life?" Wouldn't they just be righting a wrong?
Von Schmid isn't just willing but has already fallen headlong down a slippery slope.
At the heart of this issue, aside from mankind's devious attempt to play God, is the question of an individual's worth. What makes a person worthy of living? Is it one's ability to become a productive member of society? Is it intelligence or character? Is it the level of pain a person struggles with?
Imagine you are having dinner with your family when, all of a sudden, your father gasps for air and clutches his chest. Filled with fear, you rush to the phone and dial 9-1-1. You quickly explain to the operator that your father is having a heart attack and beg for an ambulance to come. The operator tries to calm you down, asking for your father's symptoms and your address. And then she asks, "How much does he make?"
"What?"
"Has he been a good husband, a good father?"
"I'm sorry, I don't understand what that has to do with...Please send an ambulance!"
"O.k. ma'am calm down. First we have to determine if he's worth saving."
Ridiculous, isn't it? Why?
Life is never about the person, their characteristics or relationships. Rather, life is given to a person. The Creator bestows life upon all human beings, which is why every person's life has intrinsic and unalterable value. This reality is what propelled hundreds of New York City firefighters not only to enter the World Trade Center on 9/11, but sacrifice their lives to save others. A Dutch court that views a severely handicapped child as a "wrongful life" has disregarded the value of that life but it has not altered it.
Source: CWFA
Back to Pro-Life
Early Bonding
Researcher: We Recognize Mom's Voice from the Womb
By Lee Dye
Special to ABCNEWS.com
May 22 - Even before we were born, we knew our mother's voice and could distinguish it from other voices.
That's one of the key findings of an ongoing research project by Canadian and Chinese researchers who are studying infant development.
The research suggests that while still in the womb, our brains were learning speech patterns and laying the groundwork for language acquisition.
"Before birth, the brain is being set up to learn language," says Barbara Kisilevsky, a nursing professor at Queens University in Ontario, who conducted the research with a team of psychologists from Queens, and obstetricians in Hangzhou, China.
Listening In
Earlier research by Kisilevsky revealed that fetuses hear sounds at 30 weeks, although that won't come as much of a surprise to mothers who may have felt their baby jump when someone slammed a door. But now she has taken it a step farther with an interesting experiment that reveals just how well the fetus is prepared to get on with its life as the pregnancy nears its end.
It had already been known that newborn infants show a preference for their mother's voice, but her latest research shows they also prefer that familiar sound while still in the womb. Kisilevsky carried out the first leg of the research in China, because she already had a research project under way there and this fit nicely with that work.
It's important in developmental research to determine whether the results are culturally based, or universal and applicable to all cultures. And the research shows that fetuses learn to distinguish their mother's voice in all cultures, because she got the same result in Canada that she got in China.
"This study could have been done anywhere," she says. But China was convenient because of her other projects there, and of course there is a vast difference between Chinese and Canadian cultures.
"It's good to know that in both cultures, we got the same results," she says.
Working with researchers at Zhejiang University, Kisilevsky tested 60 women in the final stage of pregnancy. All the mothers were tape-recorded as they read a poem out loud. Then the mothers were divided into two groups. Half the fetuses heard the recording of their own mother. The other half heard another mother, but not their own.
Heart Quickens
In both cases, the poem caused a change in the baby's heart rate. The heart rate accelerated among those who heard their own mother's voice, and decelerated among those who heard a voice other than their mother's.
Deceleration of the heart rate is "an attention mechanism," Kisilevsky says. The heart-beat among fetuses who heard an unfamiliar voice slowed down, she says, because they were paying close attention to a voice they did not recognize. In other words, they were trying to figure out who was talking.
The fact that the heartbeat changed in both cases, up for mom, down for someone else, shows the fetuses "noticed both voices," she says, and could tell one from the other.
By the way, the poem is immaterial here. Kisilevsky suspects she would have had the same results if the mothers had been reading a phone book. It's not that the fetuses recognized the content. What they recognized was the speech patterns that distinguish one voice from another.
"We all have our own way of talking," she says. "We stop at different times, we take breaths at different times, and that's what they are recognizing."
Dad in the Background
OK, but what about old dad? He's also been yakking away during the pregnancy. Can a fetus recognize his voice as well?
Maybe, but that's not known yet. That's the next phase of the research, Kisilevsky says. Of course, dad isn't around the fetus as much as mom, and whether the baby recognizes pop may depend on how much the kid has heard him talking.
There may be a threshold at which the fetus learns to recognize dad, thus sending the heartbeat up, but that isn't known yet.
Incidentally, we begin losing some of our innate ability as soon as we are born.
According to Kisilevsky, other research shows that a newborn infant can discriminate different sounds in virtually all languages.
"Over the course of the first year you lose discrimination ability and you then become only able to discriminate the sounds in your language," she says. "It seems that infants really are set up to learn language, and it doesn't really matter which language it is."
But as we learn one language, it gets much more difficult to understand the sounds of other languages, as any adult who has struggled to learn a foreign language knows all too well.
Maybe it just shows that those tiny humans, so frail and vulnerable, are also banging at the starting gate, well equipped for at least part of the task ahead.
Lee Dye's column appears weekly on ABCNEWS.com. A former science writer for the Los Angeles Times, he now lives in Juneau, Alaska.
Source: ABC News
Back to Pro-Life
Study Suggests Abortions Increase Preterm Delivery Risk in Future Pregnancies
Vancouver, Canada -- The U.S. has a very high preterm birth rate of nearly 12%. Preterm births are the number one cause of neonatal death and disease.
In an article in the Summer issue of Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, authors Brent Rooney and Dr. Byron Calhoun present an overwhelming case that prior induced abortions boost a woman's risk of a preterm delivery. (Induced Abortion and Risk of Later Premature Births, Brent Rooney and Byron C. Calhoun, M.D., JAPS 2003;8(20:46-4) A copy of the abstract is
below.
To download, see http://www.jpands.org/jpands0802.htm
The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is the publication of the Tucson-based Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS).
---
Induced Abortion and Risk of Later Premature Births
Brent Rooney and Byron C. Calhoun, M.D.
Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons 2003;8(2):46-49
ABSTRACT
At least 49 studies have demonstrated a statistically significant increase in premature births (PB) or low birth weight (LBW) risk in women with prior induced abortions (IAs). This paper will focus on the risk of early premature births (EPBs) (< 32 weeks gestation) and extremely early premature births (XPBs) (< 28 weeks gestation).
Large studies have reported a doubling of EPB risk from two prior IAs. Women who had four or more IAs experienced, on average, nine times the risk of XPB, an increase of 800 percent. These results suggest that women contemplating IA should be informed of this potential risk to subsequent pregnancies, and that physicians should be aware of the potential liability and possible need for intensified prenatal care.
Brent Rooney is the research director of the Reduce Preterm Risk Coalition; Byron C. Calhoun is a doctor of maternal-fetal medicine.
Source: Pro-Life Infonet; June 9, 2003
Back to Pro-Life
Pediatricians' Group Issues Strong Pro-Life Statement
The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) has issued a courageous position statement on abortion that upholds the "inviolability of all human persons from conception to natural end" and recommends that "elective abortions not be performed."
The position of the newly formed ACPeds, which was founded last fall, stands in stark contrast to other pediatric groups, including the influential American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which have never questioned the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade.
According to Joseph Zanga, M.D., president of ACPeds, the group issued its statement at this time because of legislation banning partial-birth abortion, which passed Congress and will soon go to President Bush for his signature. "We'd like the White House and the bill's sponsors to know that ACPeds supports this legislation and would like it to go further."
An AAP policy statement in 1972, Age Limits of Pediatrics, stated: "[T]he pediatrician's responsibility for the child [extends] from conception through young adulthood." However, Roe switched averted that priority, because it centered on the mother's "health," rather than on the life of the unborn baby.
When the Roe decision created the "right" to abortion, it was uncommon to save babies born before 30 weeks, and even up to 35 weeks. Now, babies born at 22 or 23 weeks often survive, Zanga said: "As the clock of viability moves to earlier and earlier stages of pregnancy, it becomes clearer that there is a life [before birth]."
In addition, the statement refers to a 1997 report of the American Medical Association, Late Term Pregnancy Termination Techniques, which acknowledges that third-trimester abortions are not usually necessary to save the life or health of the mother.
The ACPeds statement concludes with the following recommendations:
"(1) In recognition of the constitutional principles regarding the right to an abortion articulated by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, but with higher regard for the advance of science and the values of medicine, we recommend that elective abortions not be performed. Although some abortions are said to be performed to preserve the life of the mother, they are in fact, rarely necessary for those purposes. Maternal health factors that are said to demand termination of the pregnancy can also be accommodated without sacrifice of the fetus. When there is possibility of independent viability of the fetus, we argue for ending the pregnancy by appropriate delivery.
2) All pre-term deliveries should be done with the health and safety of both mother and infant in mind, and, whenever possible, with a second physician present to safeguard the life and health of the fetus.
3) Decisions regarding the provision of life-sustaining medical treatment for the newly born infant should then proceed as for any other infant or child."
Source: Concerned Women for America
Back to Pro-Life
Senate Committee Hears Testimony Supporting Adult Stem Cell Research
Washington, DC -- Scientists told a Senate panel Thursday that alternatives to human embryonic stem cells, including adult stem cell treatment and umbilical cord blood transplants, have had
proven success in helping people with crippling and ordinarily fatal diseases.
"There is abundant evidence that adult stem cells can be used as a therapy and are readily available in people," Dr. Jean Peduzzi-Nelson of the University of Alabama at Birmingham told
the Senate Commerce science subcommittee. "The conclusion from the preclinical studies is that adult stem cells work just as well, if not better, than embryonic stem cells and are probably safer."
The hearing was lead by the subcommittee chairman, pro-life Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), who has questioned the ethical propriety and the necessity of embryonic stem cell research.
President Bush also opposes using human embryonic stem cells in medical research because it involves the death of an embryo, and the Bush administration has put in place strict guidelines
prohibiting the use of federal dollars for new embryonic stem cell research.
Brownback trumpeted the "amazing results" from alternative methods, inviting to the witness stand 17-year-old Keone Penn of Snellville, Georgia, who five years ago became one of the first to be successfully treated for sickle cell anemia with unrelated umbilical cord blood stem cells.
Penn was treated at the National Cord Blood Program at the New York Blood Center, whose director, Dr. Pablo Rubinstein, said cord blood banks have provided transplants for more than 3,500 patients worldwide, and 1,370 at his center.
He said blood left behind in the placenta and umbilical cord after birth and usually discarded has resulted in less immune reactions, greater availability in less time and less risk of virus infection.
Brownback promised to push for federal funds for a national cord blood bank system.
Dr. David Hess, head of the neurology department at the Medical College of Georgia, cited the advantages of obtaining adult stem cells from bone marrow, saying they are easily isolated, will not be rejected by the patient from which they are taken and avoid the ethical concerns of embryonic stem cells. "The field is moving fast. Bone marrow derived stem cells are already being tested in small numbers of patients with heart attacks."
Proponents of embryonic stem cells say they have greater potential for regenerative medicine because they are less developed than adult cells and thus can more easily be cultured into new tissue that can be used to replace or repair diseased organs. One witness, Dr. John McDonald of the Washington University School of Medicine neurology department, stressed that no research door, including that leading to embryonic stem cell research, should be closed.
Peduzzi-Nelson, however, cited studies that adult stem cells from the brain, the upper nose, the cornea and other parts of the eye, teeth and skin are capable of forming neurons.
Source: Associated Press/Pro-Life Infonet, June 12, 2003
Back to Pro-Life
Life Chain 2003: A Pro-Life Tradition Continues
by Maria Gallagher
LifeNews.com Staff Writer
September 8, 2003
Yuba City, CA (LifeNews.com) -- Pro-lifers around the nation will be standing up for unborn children --literally -- this October.
They'll be taking part in an event known as Life Chain, a pro-life tradition that has been attracting media attention for years.
Tammy Packer is one of the organizers of the Life Chain in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Packer expects some 2,000 people to take part in the event in her community.
"This is really a pro-life area," Packer said. "The NOW (National Organization for Women) gang comes out every year and stands beside us, but they can't even get a dozen people rounded up."
Packer believes Life Chain is popular because of its emphasis on non-confrontational, prayerful witness.
"It's a peaceful event and we stress that you are to pray and at three o'clock everyone is supposed to kneel down for a moment of silent prayer," Packer told LifeNews.com.
The idea for the annual event was born back in 1985, when organizer Royce Dunn was inspired to get people together in the rural town of Yuba City, California, to show support for the sanctity of human life. More than 2,000 people turned out for the event.
In the years since, Dunn estimates that millions of people in cities and towns across North America have come together to form human chains to show their opposition to abortion.
According to Dunn, more than 900 cities and towns were involved in last year's Life Chain. This years event is scheduled for Sunday, October 5, although some communities will be hosting Life Chains on Sunday, October 26.
Dunn defines Life Chain as "a public witness for Life that devoted pro-lifers build for God to anoint and work through in their local area."
Dunn believes Life Chain is important to the success of the pro-life movement. "Life Chain is only a first step into pro-life activism, but it is a serious first step that has led thousands of participants into productive pro-life work.
"While Life Chain's first duty is to minister to its own participants during an hour of public prayer and meditation, that hour has presented the Life message to tens of millions of American motorists, through the Life Chain signs and the solemn witness of their holders," Dunn said.
"Life Chain employs seven different signs, but the original message 'Abortion Kills Children' is the foremost life-saver. Today many Americans will defend abortion passionately, but rare indeed is one who will tell you that he (or she) supports the 'killing' of unborn children (try finding one)," Dunn added.
Dunn tells LifeNews.com that Life Chain is a faith-based effort.
"Life Chain is church-oriented and pastor- focused," he said. "The Church leads our nation, either with apathy and indecision or with integrity and commitment. Legalized abortion will end in America when the pastors of our nation resolve to end it with the leadership God has entrusted to them. Accordingly, Life Chain asks pastors to please 'lead' their congregations to their local prayer chain."
Life Chain has no paid staff or budget. The national office does not request donations, and it urges local coordinators to rely solely on freewill offerings to cover their expenses. Life Chain is not a political organization; Dunn believes that political activity would lead to division among its volunteers.
Those interested in finding out more information about Life Chain can call 530-671-5500 or go to http://www.nationallifechain.org.
Source: Life News
Back to Pro-Life
Doctors' Group Takes Pro-Life Position on Abortion
Tucson, AZ (LifeNews.com) -- The American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, at its 60th annual
meeting, has approved a pro-life resolution stating that the Hippocratic Oath does not allow doctors to perform abortions. The new platform "clearly opposes" abortion and recognizes the "teachings of the major religions of the world have [also] opposed abortion of a developing human child until very recent times."
"The purpose of abortion of a human child is to destroy the life of the child, in contradistinction to other terminations of pregnancy to save the life of the mother, in which an attempt would also be made to save the life of the child," says the AAPS resolution.
Source: LifeNews.com
Back to Pro-Life
Partial Birth Abortion Ban Heads for Bush
By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - President Bush said he would sign newly passed legislation to end the "abhorrent practice" known by critics as partial birth abortion, giving abortion foes a victory that had eluded them for close to a decade.
Abortion rights advocates said they would immediately go to court to stop what they said was a dangerous incursion against the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.
The Senate voted 64-34 Tuesday to ban a type of abortion, generally carried out in the second or third trimester, in which a fetus is partially delivered before being killed. The House approved the legislation this month, and Bush has urged Congress to get it to his desk.
"This is very important legislation that will end an abhorrent practice and continue to build a culture of life in America," he said in a statement. "I look forward to signing it into law."
That signature would end a legislative crusade that began when Republicans captured the House in 1995. President Clinton twice vetoed similar bills, arguing that they lacked an exception to protect the health of the mother, and in the first year of the Bush administration a Democratic-controlled Senate stopped its advancement.
In the final Senate vote, 17 Democrats joined 47 Republicans to support the ban. Three Republicans voted against the legislation.
With the outcome never in doubt, at least three groups supporting abortion rights prepared lawsuits to stop the law from going into effect and to challenge its constitutionality.
Talcott Camp, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the case could take two to three years to work its way through the courts. The ACLU will represent the National Abortion Federation (news - web sites) in its lawsuit.
There was a wide divergence of views about what the procedure encompasses or how frequent it is used, but the opposing sides agreed the legislation was of major consequence.
"Today we have reached a significant victory as we continue to build a more compassionate society and a culture that values every human life," said Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., the bill's sponsor.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a heart surgeon, said the ban could save the lives of thousands of soon-to-be-born babies.
"I can say without equivocation that partial birth abortion is brutal, it is barbaric, it is morally offensive, and it is outside the mainstream practice of medicine," he said.
Another physician-politician, Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, said it is the women who need the procedure whose lives were put at risk by Tuesday's Senate vote.
"As a physician, I am outraged that the Senate has decided it is qualified to practice medicine," said Dean, a former governor of Vermont. He said the legislation "will endanger the lives of countless women."
Other opponents decried a bill they said would criminalize a safe medical practice and subject doctors who violate it to up to two years in prison. The bill "for the first time in history bans a medical procedure without making any exception for the health of the woman," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. "This is a radical, radical thing that is about to happen here."
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said the bill was a clear threat to the future of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide. "I say to the women of America: this is step one," Harkin said.
Key to the court battle will be a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling in 2000 that a similar Nebraska state law was unconstitutional because the definition of "partial birth" was too vague and left doctors unsure of what practices were illegal. The court also found fault with the legislation because, while it provided an exception when the life of the mother was in danger, there were no protections for a woman's health.
The new bill defines partial birth abortion as delivery of a fetus "until, in the case of a headfirst presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother, or, in the case of the breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother for the purpose of performing an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus."
Santorum argued that supporters had met the constitutional questions by tightening the definition and offering extensive findings that the procedure was never needed to protect the health of the mother.
But the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Gloria Feldt, said the bill remained unconstitutional because it "prevents women, in consultation with their families and trusted doctors, from making decisions about their own health."
Tony Perkins, president of the anti-abortion Family Research Council, urged Attorney General John Ashcroft to put up a stiff legal defense. "Given an activist judiciary, the prospects for the ban surviving a court challenge are dim unless the attorney general is ready to pour resources and energy into the fight to defend it," he said.
Source: Yahoo News
Back to Pro-Life
The predators of Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood's outspoken activists remain stone-cold silent about Holly Patterson. She's the teenager who died of tragic complications from taking the abortion drug cocktail RU-486, which she obtained from a northern California Planned Parenthood clinic in September. Holly and her unborn child suffered a painful, bloody and prolonged death.
Patterson was seven weeks pregnant when she received the chemical abortion regimen. After seven days and two desperate trips to a hospital emergency room seeking help for intense cramping and bleeding, she succumbed to "septic shock, due to endomyometritis (inflammation) due to therapeutic, drug-induced abortion," according to an Alameda County coroner's report. The silence of the abortion lobby speaks volumes:
Ho-hum. Just one (sic) more innocent casualty in pursuit of the almighty "right to choose." Nothing to see here. Move along.
While Patterson's family mourns and the Food and Drug Administration investigates, Planned Parenthood continues to dispense the abortion kill pills to pregnant teens � and it continues to entice young people to its
abortion clinics with a glitzy, MTV-like website offering "sexuality and relationship info you can trust." Called "Teenwire," the Planned Parenthood site is chock-full of colorful graphics, hip jargon, voluminous health advice, and lots of exclamation points:
"Check out our interactive color diagrams of female and male anatomy!"
"SEX TALK LIVE!"
"Got Lube?"
"I want both guys!"
"MASTURBATION: Go there!"
Amid explicit discussions of "dry humping," oral sex, masturbation and encouragement for "queer and questioning" teens, the Teenwire site issues a stern note to parents who might be trying to monitor what kind of sex-education propaganda their kids are reading. Planned Parenthood lectures mothers and fathers that "this website is for teens. This is their place. Take a look around the site if you like, but please do not register on the site."
Translation: We're the experts. You are meddling parents. Bug off and butt out.
Teenwire.com's readers are advised by Planned Parenthood legal experts to call a free hotline number for confidential pregnancy tests and private abortion counseling. Responding to a 14-year-old girl nicknamed "devilchik" who writes a letter asking the experts if she can get an abortion without her mom's permission, the Planned Parenthood advisers supply a list of state laws regarding parental notification and consent. California, where Holly died, has no parental involvement requirement. In a section titled "Yikes!" the experts enthusiastically explain the "judicial bypass" process for circumventing parents altogether when a teen wants to take RU-486 in secret.
The website pounds home the blithe message that "abortion is a very safe procedure" akin to taking an aspirin or getting tonsils removed. Shamelessly courting repeat customers, the website also mentions several times to
its teenage audience that second abortions are no big deal. Ignoring the untold number of American women who suffer from post-abortion trauma, the Planned Parenthood experts also tell young girls that abortion "poses little danger to a woman's emotional and mental health. Although a woman may feel some regret or remorse, the most common emotion after an abortion is relief."
Teenwire.com's section on abortion pills (mifepristone and misoprostol) reads like a cheerleading pharmaceutical press release. "It's finally here!" crows Planned Parenthood writer Susan Motamed. "It's time-tested and super-safe," she informs teens. "Not one woman has died from using mifepristone with
misoprostol to end pregnancy," Teenwire.com falsely asserts. Unmentioned are the approximately 400 adverse events linked to RU-486 by its manufacturer, including hemorrhaging, bacterial infections and the deaths of three women in North America, including 18-year-old Holly.
Predators win the trust of their victims by luring them away from their closest loved ones, speaking their language and telling them what they want to hear. Planned Parenthood subverts parents and dispenses death pills to vulnerable teens like candy � cheap! easy! super-safe! But as Holly's dad, Monty, sobbed at a press conference after his daughter's RU-486-induced homicide: "There's no quick fix for pregnancy, no magic pill ... They told her it was safe, and it killed her."
Put that in capital letters, Planned Parenthood experts. File it on your website under "Yikes!" in memory of Holly Patterson and her child who never had a chance.
Source: http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35930
Back to Pro-Life
President Bush Signs Pro-Life Unborn Victims of Violence Act
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 1, 2004
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- In a touching ceremony in the East Room of the White House, President Bush signed a bill that will afford additional legal protections to pregnant mothers and their unborn children. The Unborn Victims of Violence Act will allow criminals to be punished twice when they kill or injure an unborn child as a result of attacking a pregnant woman.
"As of today, the law of our nation will acknowledge the plain fact that crimes of violence against a pregnant woman often have two victims," President Bush said. "And therefore, in those cases, there are two offenses to be punished.
"Under this law, those who direct violence toward a pregnant woman will answer for the full extent of the harm they have done, and for all the crimes they have committed," the president added.
Pro-life groups applauded President Bush's latest pro-life action.
"We applaud the President for bringing justice to women and their children who are victims of violent crime," said Cathy Cleaver Ruse, Esq., spokesperson for the U.S. Bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities.
"Thanks to him, and to a bipartisan majority of Congress, a woman who loses her child to a brutal attacker in a federal jurisdiction will no longer be told that she has lost nothing," Ruse added.
Family Research Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins said the law "merely recognizes what common sense tells us all: there are two victims when a pregnant woman is harmed."
Sharon Rocha and her husband, Ron Grantski, the parents of Laci Peterson, attended the ceremony along with the families of other women who have been victimized during their pregnancy.
Laci Peterson was eight months pregnant when she disappeared. Authorities later discovered she had been killed and the bodies of her and her unborn son Conner washed up on the shores of San Francisco Bay.
Laci's husband Scott is undergoing the second week of a double-murder trial against him in their deaths. Prosecutors are able to use a California unborn victims law to charge him with two crimes.
"They have laid to rest their daughter, Laci, a beautiful young woman who was joyfully awaiting the arrival of a new son. They have also laid to rest that child, a boy named Conner, who was waiting to be born when his life, too, was taken," Bush explained.
"His little soul never saw light, but he was loved, and he is remembered," the president said. "All who knew Laci Peterson have mourned two deaths and the law cannot look away and pretend there was just one.''
"The success of this legislation is due in large part to the work of those families who have lost their pregnant daughters to violent crimes," FRC's Perkins said. "They have used their tragic experiences to bring about a monumental positive change in our legal system."
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry opposed the bill. He voted against it and for a substitute opposed by families of women who have died that said there was only one victim when both mother and child perished.
Related web sites:
President Bush's remarks - http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040401-3.html
Source: LifeNews.com
Back to Pro-Life
Australian Abortion Business Objects to Nearby Child Care Center
by Maria Gallagher
LifeNews.com Staff Writer
July 30, 2004
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- In a move that pro-life activists say is clearly "anti-child," an Australian abortion center has objected to the opening of a child care center in its neighborhood.
Marie Stopes International Australia, which operates the Perth abortion business, says it's wrong to establish a day care center near the abortion facility because the sight of children might upset patients.
In a complaint filed with the city of Swan, the abortion center's operators said that the sight and sound of children playing on nearby property might cause emotional strain for women undergoing abortions.
The city's mayor, Charlie Gregorini, told the Australian press, "The main reason (for the objection) was that their clients would be hopping out of their car to enter the back door of the clinic and would hear the voices of children and I guess they felt that was going to emotionally upset them."
Gregorini added that the council does not normally address such objections.
"But I could see the argument from all sides," Gregorini told an Australian reporter. "It would be an emotional situation for someone who's decided to have an abortion and then the last thing they hear before they enter the clinic is the happy voices of children."
However, Gregorini noted that the application met all planning requirements, and that the government could not make a decision based on moral or emotional grounds.
The city helped to arrange a mediation meeting between the developers of the child care center and a representative from Marie Stopes International Australia.
The two sides agreed to erecting a brick fence between the properties in order to soothe tensions.
"They are now very happy to be neighbors," Gregorini told the Australian press.
Marie Stopes had also claimed that the weekly pro-life protests staged outside the abortion facility might upset the children at the day care center -- a claim pro-life advocates deny.
Source: http://www.lifenews.com/nat690.html
Back to Pro-Life
Planned Parenthood Defends "I Had an Abortion" Shirts Despite Backlash
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
July 30, 2004
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Criticism from pro-life groups, women who have had abortions, and even from their own local affiliates hasn't stopped the Planned Parenthood Federation of America from selling t-shirts with the slogan, "I Had an Abortion."
In a statement responding to the national outrage, PPFA president Glora Feldt, says, "The shirt is not a cavalier statement, but a way to challenge the silence and shame around an experience many women have shared, however difficult that decision may have been."
Feldt blames pro-life groups for making it necessary to sell the t-shirt.
"One in three American women will have an abortion before the age of 45, and anti-choice extremists are doing everything they can to turn that choice into a scarlet letter, and ultimately to criminalize this option," Feldt explains.
"In that effort, some anti-choice activists have publicly disclosed that they had an abortion, only to cast this option in shame," Feldt added.
But Feldt comments are offensive to many women who have had abortions, suffered from extreme physical and emotional consequences, and regret their decision.
At age 18, Pennsylvania resident Karen Bodle learned she was pregnant from her first sexual encounter and had an abortion when she felt she had no other options.
The abortion experience left Karen depressed and confused and plagued her ability to develop a relationship because she was continually haunted by her experience.
"I want America to know that abortion hurts women. Women are created to love and nurture their children, not have them ripped from their wombs and thrown away," Bodle says.
"I did not want more women to go through the intense pain and suffering that I had experienced," Bodle added.
In defending the shirts, Feldt also said, "Women who have abortions are the same women who have children, and they make both of those decisions with thought and heart and moral deliberation."
However, according to a report by the Illinois-based Elliot Institute, which researches the effects of abortion, an estimated 30 to 60 percent of the women who have abortions feel as if they are being pressured to do so.
In fact, eight out of every ten post-abortive women say they would have given birth, if there had been someone around to support their decision, according to the research institution.
"When I told him (the father of the child) he was furious and insisted that the child be aborted as soon as possible," said Cynthia Greenwood, a woman quoted in an Eliot Institute report on the subject of coerced abortions.
"I did not want to kill this baby, but my co-dependence and addiction to this man won out. I finally made an appointment with the abortion clinic," Greenwood said.
Another woman, Jane Crawford, told the research group, "My mother arranged my abortion. She didn't like my boyfriend and wanted to protect my 'reputation' ... our pastor had assured her that having an abortion was fine. No one helped me."
Source: http://www.lifenews.com/nat691.html
Back to Pro-Life