Abortion Statistics: Despotic Secrecy or a Right to Know? #prolife

Patricia Maloney at Run with Life:

So how can Canadians “objectively evaluate their government's policy” on our any-time, any-reason, no-reason, taxpayer-funded abortion policy--when we don’t know how many tax payer funded abortions are done every year, how much we are paying for them, where they are being performed, what the gestational age of the babies being destroyed is, what the complications are, the type of abortion procedure, the age of the girl/woman, how many are repeat abortions, and the reasons for the abortions? And we aren’t allowed to ask abortion related questions to the very organization who is collecting the few statistics we do have?

We can’t.

Abortion reporting must again be made mandatory for all hospitals and all clinics. The responsibility for abortion collection must be returned to Statistics Canada.

Otherwise, it’s despotic secrecy.

VIDEO: TimeLapse March for LIFE DC 2011

It's another episode of "abortion is shady business"

Unlicensed Abortionist Pendergraft Operating Secret Late-term “Fetal Lethal Injection Center” in Washington, DC area, Website Shows

Washington, DC – Operation Rescue has learned that disgraced late-term abortionist James S. Pendergraft, IV, whose only active medical remains under a double-suspension order in Florida, has set up shop in a secret late-term mill that can only be described as a “Fetal Lethal Injection Center” in the Washington, D. C. metro area where late-term abortions are being only partially completed.

Pendergraft has put himself in direct competition with another late-term abortionist, Nebraska’s LeRoy Carhart, who also recently relocated is late-term abortion business to nearby Germantown, Maryland, to evade new laws in his home state.

But Pendergraft’s late-term abortion scheme is unique.

Pendergraft has recently launched a web site called LateTermAbortions.net that describes in detail how his new office is soliciting women from all over the nation and from other countries for “intracardiac injection of medication into the fetal heart.”

And if your abortion goes wrong, tough luck ladies!

So...are any abortion supporters going to report him? NAF? Anybody?

No oversight for Delaware abortion clinics

Yet Delaware regulators cannot say if Atlantic Women's Medical Center — where Gosnell worked one day a week for a number of years — suffers from similar health and safety deficiencies because abortion providers are not subject to the kind of routine sanitary and safety inspections that restaurants, beauty salons and tattoo parlors get.

(...)

Abortion-rights advocates say providers should not be singled out for different oversight.

"If there's a concern about physician quality, it should be a larger conversation not just targeting health care clinics that provide abortions," said Emily Knearl, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Delaware, which performs abortions in Wilmington and Dover.

Gee, you'd think abortion clinics would get at least the same level of regulation as tatoo parlours.

I did some research with regards to Ontario abortion clinics.

They are inspected by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

They are treated as "independent health facilities."

It makes you wonder whether this body would give abortion clinics a pass given the political nature of abortion and the perceived need for providers.

My regret is that I don't think anyone is doing any research on what's going on inside Canada's abortion clinics. We don't know if there's another Gosnell lurking around somewhere.

After all, nominally, we don't have a lot of abortionists who will do elective late-term abortions. We send our elective late-term abortion cases to the States (medical ones are done in hospitals).

The theory is that if women do not have access to abortion, they will do all kinds of desperate things to end a pregnancy.

If this is true, then theoretically, there should be Kermit Gosnells in Canada.

But nobody knows the truth.

Pro-aborts won't discover the truth for fear of making abortion look bad.

Pro-lifers just haven't done the research as far as I know.

We should, folks.

We don't know what kind of creeps are working in Canada's abortion clinics.

Is the Internet Filling the Sexual Health Information Gap for Teens? An Exploratory Study.

Newsflash: Adolescents show healthy skepticism about sex-related information on the internet:

Most of the adolescents used the Internet on a daily basis, but few considered it a main source of information about contraception or abstinence. Students were more likely to rely on and had greater trust in traditional sexuality education sources such as school, family members, and friends. Most of the adolescents the authors interviewed were wary of sexual health information on the Internet, and the authors describe strategies adolescents used to sort through the abundance of sex-related material. Formal and informal efforts to provide sexuality education to adolescents should include specific age- and content-appropriate Web sites because many teens are not actively searching on their own, and they express reservations about relying on the Internet as a source of sexual health information.

Facebook removes Adventists for Life page

Washington Post:

On Monday, this blog ran a report that mentioned an Adventists for Life Facebook page for Seventh-day Adventists who oppose abortion.

The SDA headquarters, based in Silver Spring, Md., reacted quickly, asking Facebook to remove the offending page. I contacted Facebook on Wednesday to ask why no one checked with the folks behind the page before killing it. I received a copy of their policy that says once someone lodges a plausible claim of trademark infringement, Facebook removes or disables access, no questions asked.

Mark Price, a Canadian SDA'er who was in charge of the page, alerted the 600 members of the group that he'd been silenced. "The Adventists For Life group is not an organization but an informal gathering of Seventh Day Adventists who are pro-life," he wrote me. "I am very concerned, as you are, about this kind of power that the Adventist leadership have to shut people up."

I called SDA spokesman Garrett Caldwell to see what was up. He told me his organization had complained about trademark infringement; that is, the unauthorized use of the SDA brand.

"We are working hard to try to protect the name and organization associated with the name," he said. "Both 'Adventist' and 'SDA' are trademarked and registered names. We want to make sure the use of the name is connected with our organization."

"When I was a pro-choice atheist"

Karen Edmisten speaks about her past:

Working out the meaning of freedom was clearly central to my position. Because I accepted premarital sex and birth control as givens, everything proceeded from those givens: "If I choose to have sex, and choose to use birth control but my birth control fails, the only way to remain free (i.e., to continue with my life as I have envisioned and structured it) is to remove the pregnancy from the picture." Period. End of story. If I did not have access to abortion, I couldn't do that. And anyone proceeding from the opposite premise ("You shouldn't have been having sex in the first place!") lost me. I wrote them off as religious fanatics. They lived an entirely different morality than I did.

...

For many who hold a prolife position, it may sound absurd to characterize a pro-choice position as compassionate, but that's exactly what I (and many of my friends) did. We saw ourselves as the compassionate ones -- we cared about women. We cared about the fear that accompanied an unexpected pregnancy. We cared about the financial inability to care for a child. We cared about the health concerns that might make carrying a baby to term precarious or impossible.

But what about the baby, you say?

Indeed. What about the baby? As I've said before, the baby wasn't on my radar screen.

Exactly. The baby's existence, pain and suffering are of no consequence to feminists. It interferes with female empowerment.

When power matters more than human beings, there's a problem.

I think she has a point about not labelling people murderers and other epithets. People who support abortion tend to be woefully misguided. Most people support legal abortion because it's the default stance of not recognizing the fetus as a person.

That being said, some people won't listen to you no matter what. I wouldn't label them "murderers" either. But at times, you have to know who's reachable in the circumstances you're in, and who's not.

STUDY: Digoxin injections kill fetus 87% of the time

According to abstract.

Picture this: a doctor injects digoxin into the amniotic sac of a 24-week old fetus. The fetus then drinks this stuff and dies of poisoning.

Yes, the compassion is overwhelming.

VIDEO: Being a Male versus Being a Man

I never learned this growing up:

Canadian Study on Medical Students and Abortion

From the January 2011 issue of The Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology Canada:

Results: One hundred and twenty six of 266 second-year students (47%) and 67 of 170 fourth-year students (39%) completed the survey. Fourth-year medical students scored higher on average than second-year students (P < 0.001), producing mean scores of 45% and 25%, respectively. Abortion epidemiology was the weakest area of performance for all students. Most medical students would either provide an abortion (37% of fourth-year students, 38% of second-year students) or refer to a provider (36% of fourth-year students and 34% of second-year students). There was no significant relationship between overall scores and student readiness to provide abortions.

I'm quite surprised that 27 per cent of these students would neither perform abortions nor refer to an abortion provider.

I'm even shocked.

And seeing that the researcher is from BC, I suspect this study was also conducted in "progressive" BC. You wonder what the rates are in Alberta.

The researcher concludes:

Conclusion: Medical students in both second and fourth year
demonstrated a limited understanding of abortion.

Here's our chance, pro-life movement. We have to make them understand what an abortion is.

Women's responsibility

“You will see me on the news.” Stella* said this with complete seriousness, the gravity of her statement not hitting me at once.

“What do you mean?” I asked cautiously.

“I’ll throw myself down the stairs. I’ll do what it takes. I need to get rid of this baby.”

Stella presented at my clinic at 28 weeks in her pregnancy. She had no insurance, had become pregnant as a result of rape, and because she had still been getting her periods until about one month prior, had no idea that she was past the legal abortion limit in Pennsylvania.

Doesn't Stella know that she could cause herself serious injury by doing this?

Of course she does.

If she wants to get rid of the pregnancy, why not wait 10 weeks? It'll be gone by itself.

She seems to be okay with killing herself and her unborn child, but will not consider placing the baby up for adoption.

This is called being irrational.

We do not need to based public policy decisions on irrational desires.

Especially when another human being-- in this case a fetus-- will have to suffer and die for the sake of another. But what do feminists care? If another human being has to suffer and die for the sake of preserving female autonomy, tough luck, baby.

Nobody wants to say it so I will: although the woman in question is deserving of all manner of compassion, she is responsible for her own fate. It doesn't mean she "deserved" to die. It means that you are responsible for the predictable and likely consequences of your actions.

And her lack of responsibility should not be the basis for social policy.

Bill in India would regulate surrogacy

Talk about reducing women to incubators!

Other clauses included in the Bill are- no surrogate mother shall undergo embryo transfer for the same couple for more than three times. If the woman posing as a surrogate mother is married, the consent of her spouse is mandatory. Only Indian citizens can be considered for surrogacy. No Indian citizen should be sent abroad by an ART bank or clinic for the purpose of surrogacy abroad. Strict confidentiality about the donor's identity has to be maintained. Any act that could harm the fetus during pregnancy or after birth should not be done by the would-be surrogate mother. As parents, the birth certificate of the baby will bear the names of the individual who had commissioned the surrogacy and these commissioning parents will have to accept the child's custody irrespective of any congenital abnormality.

The Bill made another important point that during one cycle of the treatment no woman can be treated with gametes or embryos derived from the gametes of more than one man or woman. Lesbians and gays cannot opt for IVF treatments as these relations are not legal in India. While live-in couples can go in for IVF only if the woman cannot bear a child due to biological reasons or it is medically risky for her to bear a child.

I just find it ironic that in the name of reproductive autonomy, rich Westerners ask these poor, vulnerable women to sign away what (relatively) little autonomy they have.

But it's all about choice, right?

QUOTATION: Obedience and Liberty

All the good of creatures consists in the fulfillment of the Divine Will. And this is never better attained than by the practice of obedience, in which is found the annihilation of self-love and the true liberty of sons of God. This is the reason why souls truly good, experience such great joy and sweetness in obedience.

--St. Vincent de Paul

Knee-slapper of the day

From an interview with Kermit Gosnell:

Gosnell was soft-spoken, but very sure of himself, very sure that he had done nothing wrong.

When I asked him about the numerous women who had sued him over botched abortions, some of which nearly killed them, he responded that no one was perfect, but that he sure tried.

I laughed so hard when I read that line.

I get the distinct feeling this man is disconnected from reality.

Via: Real Choice

Another abortionist surrenders his license

It's time once again for "abortion is a shady business".

Andrew Rutland, a southern California abortion practitioner, has agreed to give up his medical license a second time over a case involving his killing a woman in a botched abortion. Rutland killed an Asian woman in a failed abortion — as the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office ruled the death of Ying Chen a homicide.

The botched abortion was done in July 2009 at a filthy and ill-equipped acupuncture clinic in San Gabriel that Rutland ran where he also did abortions.

(...)

Chen’s boyfriend, Zixiang Hu, on behalf of their 2-year-old daughter, filed suit against Rutland for malpractice and wrongful death in the case. The lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court and alleges the abortion center was not properly equipped to perform an abortion and that Rutland did not have proper training to care for patients. [Sounds familiar!]

Every other month, an abortionist is charged with a crime or loses his license. What other field of medicine has so many crooks and incompetents?

Mother Convicted of a Felony for Sending Kids to a Better School .

EVIL!!!

Kelley Williams-Bolar lives in subsidized public housing with her two daughters in Akron, Ohio. Her father lives in the nearby suburb of Copley. In Akron, the schools are barely scraping by in meeting basic state standards. In Copley, the schools receive an “excellent with distinction” rating from the state.

Ms. Williams-Bolar made the kind of decision many of us might when faced with how to educate her children: she used her father’s address to get them into the good school district.

But the district hired a private investigator to follow her home and find evidence of what she was doing. After two years in the Copley schools, her daughters were ousted and Williams-Bolar was arrested. Last week, she and her father were both convicted of felonies. For “defrauding the school district” Williams-Bolar was sentenced to five years in jail, all but ten days of which were suspended. She’s been in jail for a few days now. I haven’t seen a report on where her children are while they wait for her to get home.

When I was an Anglo growing up in Quebec City, I had a good amount of school choice. I could attend an English Catholic public school; an English Protestant public School; a French Catholic public school (or if I was feeling really daring) a French Protestant public school.

And that's not counting all the numerous subsidized private schools in the Quebec City area. Okay, maybe my French was not quite up to snuff to pass the exams, but I theoretically had the possibility of being admitted. (And my parents couldn't afford those schools, but that's another issue).

Here, my kid's choices are English Catholic or Public school. I could send my children to unsubsidized private schools if I found $20 000 or so. Ottawa doesn't have a whole lot in the way of private schools (not like I was used to in Quebec City.) I might be able to send my kids to French Catholic or public school, but there are restrictions.

I feel bad for poor unilingual English non-Catholics. The school system is not fair.

You should not basically have one choice of school based solely on geography.

Just like this lady in the report, sometimes your choice of living areas is restricted. That shouldn't mean your choice of school is restricted.

I don't understand why I can't send my kids to the school in the next catchment area if I want to. My taxes go to the school board one way or the other. The competition between the nearby schools would be good for achievement.

Being able to send a child to a school of one's choice-- and not being restricted in one's choices, should be a basic right.

This is why I support a voucher system.

I also support reducing or eliminating school boards. Besides being large bureaucracies, they are often undemocratic, trying to impose a politically correct agenda that the voters never voted for.

IUD: The Pro-Aborts' Panacea?

I read quite a bit of the medical literature related to life issues.

Pro-aborts are now seeing that throwing condoms at the problem of teen pregnancy/abortion is not a solution.

So they've been pushing IUD quite a lot. In every study on the topic of contraception and abortion, the conclusions read like a refrain: women need reversible but "reliable" contraception, i.e. IUD.

In light of this, this abstract about the side effects of IUD's is very interesting.

It was a three-year study, and the mean duration of use was 331.3 days.

Less than a year. That's a resounding endorsement.

So what were some side effects:

Nine per cent got an infection. So 1 in 11 users got an infection from the procedure. Way to jump start your sex life!

Twenty-eight per cent had pain. Another ringing endorsement.

In nine per cent of the cases, the partner felt the strings. Bleccch!

Thirty per cent experienced bleeding. Like your period is not enough.

Only twenty-five per cent of those who got the IUD removed claimed side effects as a reason. Which suggests to me that there probably a lot of women "putting up" with it because it's a "reliable form of contraception."

Three per cent got their IUD's removed because of "expulsion". Blecch again.

Two per cent claimed pregnancy was a cause, and those were in the group with the copper implant.

So what do you suppose happens when these women stop using the IUD after 331 days because they can't stand the pain, the bleeding and the partner feeling the strings (oh that's so sexy)? They will use condoms. Or maybe the pill. Unreliably.

Leading to more pregnancies.

Leading to more abortions.

Contraception, on a collective scale, cannot be the solution to teen pregnancy and abortion.

Progressive Fantasy

H/T: Free Canuckistan

Study: Length of life and treatment intensity in infants diagnosed prenatally or postnatally with congenital anomalies considered to be lethal.

Just interesting, that's all. It's about the cost of treatment of babies who are diagnosed with lethal anomalies prenatally, perinatally and after birth.

Study Design:This is a retrospective cohort study of all fetuses and neonates with congenital anomalies classified as lethal who were diagnosed or treated at the University of North Carolina Hospitals from January 1998 to December 2003.Result:The cohort consisted of 192 fetuses and infants: 160 were diagnosed prenatally, 2 were diagnosed perinatally, and 30 were diagnosed postnatally.

In all, 115 (72%) pregnancies were terminated. Of the liveborn infants, 75% died before 10 days of age and 90% before 4 months of age.

Compared with postnatally diagnosed infants, prenatally diagnosed infants received less intense treatment (median average daily Neonatal Therapeutic Intervention Scoring System score 8.3 versus 14.0; P=0.02), at less cost (median direct cost of hospitalization $1550 versus $8474; P=0.03) and died sooner (median age at death <1 day versus 4 days; P=0.01).

Greater treatment intensity did not correlate with longer survival (r=-0.04; P=0.66).

Conclusion: Although some kinds of medical therapy may be appropriate for newborns with lethal congenital anomalies, highly aggressive interventions did not prolong survival and should not be offered. Even when pregnancy termination is not elected, infants diagnosed prenatally receive less intense care.

I wouldn't want a hospital to waste resources, but do you get the feeling that the study authors are trying to push a mentality of "don't waste your time on these babies?" I fear this kind of study would reinforce a laissez-faire attitude about handicapped babies and discourage research.

Pro-abort tries to show what abortion looks like. Fails. #prolife

I suspect some poor-choicer would attempt to show what an abortion looks.

"Not Guilty" tries to do that by invoking a pro-abort website's pic.

What does an early abortion look like?

Abortionaccess.info would have you believe that it's just a bunch of tissue in a petri dish.

The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada also tried that same trick.

Here's the problem.

Nobody shows that happened to the embryo that was aborted.

All we see is tissue. Now with early abortions, there is more other tissue-- like placenta, yolk sac or whatever-- than embryo. So the idea is to show that really what is removed are "products of conception".

Not a human life.

But the moral diffficulty with regard to abortion is not whether placenta tissue is eliminated.

It's whether a human life is eliminated.

But the pro-aborts will not show you what an aborted embryo or fetus looks like.

Because that would undermine their moral stance.

The Abortion access website got the picture of the 5 week embryo correct, as well as the relative size. If you consider that it's probably 5 weeks, zero days.

At five week six days, the embryo looks much more human. Hand plates have begun to form. By seven weeks, the embryo looks distinctly human.

But we don't see pictures of abortions of seven week old embryos on the website. Or any other period subsequent to that.

Because then the aborted fetus could be visible.

In that sense, the website is deceptive, because it makes an abortion of a 5-week embryo appear to be representative of abortions of later periods.

And it's not.

Consider that with regards to surgical abortion, 5 weeks is the earliest a provider will undertake the procedure, because the embryo has to be big enough for him to see on the ultrasound and so that he can see what's he's doing.

Admittedly, for a manual vaccuum-aspiration abortion, it's possible to perform before 5 weeks, but not typical. A woman would have to know ahead of time she was going to be pregnant; then she would have to take the pregnancy test close to her period; then she would have to get the appointment at the abortion clinic as soon as possible for her appointment to be at the five-week mark.

Not impossible, but not likely, considering the wait times.

So the picture by itself can be misleading.

And the picture of the gestational sac is totally useless, as it does not reveal the inhabitant inside.

You also have to wonder what happened to all the blood. Abortions don't happen with some kind of bloodflow.

So once again, we have a case of a pro-abort not trying to show you the reality of abortion, but instead trying to mask it.

Abortion pictures are legion on the internet. Most types of abortions are represented. I've seen abortions from 7 weeks to well past the third trimester.

It appears that this pro-abort website only wants to present a small slice of abortion reality, one that isn't really relevant to the debate. Nobody's arguing over yolk sacs.

Not Guilty writes:

I can't say exactly where all those pictures are from but I know some are from miscarriages.

I don't know how she knows this.

But given that chemical abortions are becoming more common, the distinction between natural and induced miscarriages will become moot, as induced miscarriages look exactly like natural ones.

Not guilty writes:

Combat anti-choice fiction with fact. This is what a fetus looks like, not a person.

Strictly speaking, at 5 weeks, we're talking about an embryo.

Personhood is not a matter of looks. Throughout history, personhood has been denied based on appearances.

Personhood is based on the belief that all people have intrinsic worth. As this worth is intrinsic, it exists when a human being exists.

Human beings exist at conception.

Pictures of 1st trimester abortions can be found here.

Troubled Baton Rouge Abortion Mill Has Disturbing Ties to Gosnell

Another item for the "abortion is a shady business" file. From Operation Rescue:

Delta has a long history going back at least to 1998 of violations and filthy conditions of a similar nature found at Gosnell’s “house of horrors” in Philadelphia. Two women, Ingar Weber and Shelia Hebert, are known to have died from botched abortions they received at Delta. Attorneys threatening to sue the DHH say that not much has changed at the clinic, and it still poses a danger to the public.

Delta was accused last year by the DHH of failing to ensure the clinic had a “quality assurance program.” The report indicated that the clinic did not provide women adequate protections for their privacy and did not monitor patients receiving sedation “regarding their cardiac status, respiratory status and level of consciousness during the medical procedure.”

“These violations are of the same kind that Gosnell stands accused. The grand jury was troubled by medical records laying about his clinic that could be accessed by anyone including other patients. It was a similar lack of monitoring of patients under sedation that contributed to the death of Karnamaya Mongar,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “There are disturbing similarities between the Delta Clinic and Gosnell’s operation.”

Aside from sharing a similar history of dangerous abortion practices, there are disturbing connections between Delta and Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society.

Gosnell co-defendant Eileen O’Neill worked for the Delta Clinic from 1998-roughly 2000, during the time when the clinic was exposed as a danger to the public. She told the Philadelphia grand jury that her work at the Delta Clinic was a “side job” while she was living in Texas and that she had relinquished a medical license she held in Louisiana due to what she called “post traumatic stress,” which speaks volumes about her time at Delta.

This advice applies to Canadian pro-lifers as well

In the wake of the Kermit Gosnell case, Christina Dunnigan writes:

We need to stop being just an echo chamber. We need to be listening to Lila and Abby. We need to make sure every abortionist in America has somebody who's watching him, doing docket searches, checking medical board and health department records, visiting his facility, and just making it plain that even though prochoice leaders are willing to let the Kermit Gosnells of the world thrive at the expense of women and children, we're not.

I did a lot of soul-searching when that case came out.

How come there wasn't a sidewalk counsellor on the street? How come we were not there offering alternatives? (Or were we-- don't want to falsely blame the locals).

What if someone had handed out the list of lawsuits to potential clients, the way Joe Scheidler does?

And why aren't we doing any of this in Canada?

Study: College students who attend alcohol-fuelled parties more likely to have sex with a stranger

WELL DUH.

But this is a serious subject, though.

I think we underestimate the impact of alcohol abuse on abortion.

How many women get pregnant after getting drunk and having sex?

There must be hundreds if not thousands of them every year.

If you get into a pattern of getting drunk and sleeping around, eventually you will get pregnant or a disease.

Why? Because even if contraception reduces the individual risk of pregnancy, you get sloppy when you get drunk.

That's a no-brainer.

And if you're the kind of gal who likes to get splashed, you are probably more likely to support abortion.

And if you get pregnant, your first option will be abortion.

I haven't heard too many CPC stories of college-aged girls who got pregnant while drunk but decided to keep their babies. There's a reason for that.

If we could reduce college drinking (and especially drunkenness) that would probably cut the abortion rate by a significant amount.

Abortioneer says: Abortion is sacred

Daughter of Wands relates how in the first month of her job, she was handed a couple of plastic fetuses. She thinks that handing these out to post-abortion clients is tasteless. She says:

In my case, I can only imagine that abortion protestors are absurdly humorous people

And here's the kicker...

who are unable to conceive that abortion is a sacred (and deeply private) rite of passage.

Sure, having your fetus sucked out of your uterus is such a rite of passage.

Especially for the millions of women who grieve over their abortions.

No, killing preborn human beings is NOT sacred. She says she's not a mom. I'm not suprised. I often find that the women who make the most ludicrous statements about abortion are those who have no children of their own. Once you've had a human being inside of you, even if you continue to support abortion rigths, you see things very differently.

QUOTATION: Simplicity

The office of simplicity is to make us go straight to God, without regard to human respect or our own interests. It leads us to tell things candidly and just as they exist in our hearts. It leads us to act simply, without admixture of hypocrisy and artifice - and, finally, keeps us at a distance from every kind of deceit and double-dealing.

--St. Vincent de Paul

"It's all the anti-choicers' fault!"

In response to the Kermit Gosnell case, Clarke Forsythe of Americans United for Life says that because of Roe v. Wade:

(...) the Justices then empowered the federal courts and attorneys for abortion providers to thwart every effort by public health officials to regulate. Federal courts across the country spent the next decade implementing that edict, and by the end of the 1980s, the federal courts had struck down attempts by Chicago and many other cities to regulate clinics in the first trimester. As Edward F. King, the Deputy Director of the Chicago Medical Society told the Chicago Sun Times in 1978, “The courts very effectively knocked the Department of Health out of the picture.

We’re not even entitled to cross the threshold of these clinics.”

This is how the Justices have hobbled public health officials for the past 38 years in dealing with abortion clinic conditions, in Philadelphia and many other cities.

The Supreme Court compounded the problem in 1983 by extending its edict in Roe and invalidating regulations even in the early second trimester.

Roe also empowered any back-alley abortionist with an M.D. to go into court after January 22, 1973 to challenge clinic regulations as an “unconstitutional burden.”

In Chicago, for example, the federal appeals court struck down Chicago’s clinic regulations, and three years later, in November 1978, the Chicago Sun Times published a 12 part series on terrible abortion clinic conditions, based on an undercover investigation with the Better Government Association.

When Illinois tried to enact new regulations to deal with the findings of the Sun Times and the BGA, an abortion provider again challenged those regulations and got the federal courts to strike them down in the 1980s.

The Justices also empowered abortionists to challenge clinic regulations in court and to speak for women about the care that women want and need, as though the interests of abortionists and those of women are identical.

Is that true for any other area of medicine?

So feminists: how late is too late when it comes to abortion?

William Saletan:

I asked the feminist writers whether, in the name of women's autonomy, those charges should be dropped. haven't seen an answer to my question. Instead, I've been challenged by other pro-choice writers who see the Gosnell case very differently. They think I've misunderstood the scandal and its lessons.

...

We don't have solid data on elective abortions late in the second trimester, much less the third, but we do have well-informed estimates concerning so-called "partial-birth" abortions. I'm one of many journalists who bought the initial pro-choice claim that these abortions were mostly for medical reasons. Investigative reports subsequently debunked this claim and corroborated the confession of Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, that "in the vast majority of cases" the patient was "a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along."

...

So here's my challenge to these pro-choice writers: I agree with you on most abortion policy questions. Contraception or abstinence is best, emergency contraception is next best, early abortion is next best, and we should make these options more accessible, not less. But we'll still be left with some women who, for no medical reason, have run out the clock, even to the point of viability. Should their abortion requests be granted anyway? I've answered your questions. Now it's your turn to answer mine.

So: pro-choice supporters-- would you have been happier if Gosnell had snapped the babies' necks inside the womb?

I await your answer.

Abortion activists oppose regulations that, if enforced, could save women's lives

Melinda Henneberger, on the Kermit Gosnell cases:

This is where those of you who are pro-choice may well want to cross your arms over your chest, but the kind of regulation that if enforced might have prevented this atrocity is in all cases seen as an infringement by abortion rights advocates, and thus is strenuously opposed. In Evansville, Indiana, for instance, the pro-choice community was outraged in 2008 after county commissioners passed an ordinance requiring abortion clinic doctors to have hospital admitting privileges. As an Evansville Courier editorial decrying the ordinance put it, "Abortion rights groups see it as an attempt to harass abortion providers and to limit women's access to legal abortions.'' But wouldn't such a requirement also provide a degree of protection to women – particularly the poor, immigrant population Gosnell preyed upon? Not surprisingly, Gosnell had no such hospital admitting privileges, though he was well known to local hospital doctors who, the report says, regularly had to clean up after him, and treat patients like the 19-year-old who had to have a hysterectomy after Gosnell punctured her uterus.

Abortion-rights activists call such regulations "TRAP laws" – short for Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers; these laws attempt to regulate abortion clinics at the same level of other outpatient surgical centers, for instance by requiring that hallways be wide enough to get a gurney through if something goes wrong. What difference could that possibly make? Well, it took Emergency Medical Service workers 20 minutes to get Karnamaya Mongar out of Gosnell's clinic and into an ambulance because the hallways were blocked and the emergency exit padlocked. (Here, Tarina Keene, the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, registers the standard complaint that such regulation is too costly and is "really just designed to shut these places down. It has nothing to do with medical care.")

Only, on the day of the annual marches marking the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I want to ask my pro-choice friends whether opposing all regulation is in fact in the best interest of the women I know you care about. Wherever you stand on this issue – and I am a liberal Catholic who is not pro-choice – we agree that what Gosnell is accused of doing exceeds all bounds of decency. But without regulation and enforcement, how can we be sure there aren't other Gosnells out there?

Even if there were no abortion laws, no abortion regulations, how do you know there isn't a Kermit Gosnell out there preying on women?

Even in a world of perfect access, there would always be a criminal out there ready to pounce on women and exploit their vulnerability.

It makes me wonder whether there isn't a Kermit Gosnell in Canada. Even if he worked in socialized medicine, who's to say no one would tell on him, or enforce the regulations?

VIDEO: Bishop Athanaisus Scheneider denounces lack of wise and intrepid bishops as source of spreading of Vatican II errors

ATTENTION CATHOLIC BISHOPS! This means YOU!

Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan (yes, Kazakstan!) is reported to have denounced the lack of courage among the bishops in denouncing and correcting erroneous interpretations of Vatican II.

Well my good bishop, the thing is they were part of the problem.

It's hard for them correct what they themselves accept.

How can bishops who accept contraception denounce contraception?

They can't.

Someone should take Bishop Athanasius' denunciation one step further. Still...it's a start...




H/T SoCon or Bust

Kermit Gosnell worked for NAF clinic one day a week

The NAF is trying to cover its butt in the wake of the Kermit Gosnell arrests.

But as Jivin' Jehoshaphat reveals, Kermit Gosnell worked for Atlantic Women's Services, an NAF certified clinic, which performs abortions up to 20 weeks.

It makes you wonder what kind of shady things were happening at Atlantic Women's Services. Should they be investigated next? Did Gosnell make women give birth in the toilet there as well? One wonders.

VIDEO: Ann Coulter vs. John Stossel on Drug Prohibition

Why should we criminalize drugs?

Because of the nature of freedom.

What makes humanity free?

Because of its ability to reason.

The less able you are to reason, the less able you are to exercise liberty.

And the nature of addiction is such that it enslaves you.

Drug laws are not and should not be the only response to addiction.

But our laws should reflect our projet de société to borrow a Quebec term-- our societal vision.

If our societal vision is to create individual freedom, then we must ban those things that are a hindrance to that freedom.

Addiction deprives people of their ability to think clearly, and it does not only affect themselves as individuals, but also the people around them and their community. It affects their families. It leads to crime. Even when you're not high at the moment, it reinforces irrational thinking because of how you think when you are high.

Now some people might say that this does not apply to marijuana because it is not addictive. Bull. There are plenty of people who use marijuana who cannot control their usage. Any drug that affects your mood can be addictive. When something like shopping is addictive, it's bad, but it doesn't kill brain cells and it doesn't completely deprive you of your ability to reason.

Getting high deprives you of your ability to reason.

And so, if we allowed the population to deprive themselves of their freedom, we would, in effect, enslave ourselves. We would no longer be free. This occurred during the days of China's Opium War. Opium was so widespread that China became a grossly dysfunctional society.

It is true that by itself, prohibition does nothing. If you don't discourage drug use from a moral and health perspective, people will take it up simply on the premise that it feels good. However, prohibition is one tool among many to get people to stop.

The notion that people should be allowed to do what they want unless it directly harms someone else is ludricous. What is ludicrous is legalizing drugs in a society where drugs are rampantly available, and then not expecting there to be more drug use. Prohibition may make some things glamourous, but legalization takes away important deterrents to drug use.

If we want our societies to be truly free and truly functional, you can't have rampant drug use. It's as simple as that. That's why for its own self-preservation, a government has every right and even a duty to prohibit the free use and traffic of narcotics.

Abortioneer in denial about abortion hurting women

Mr. Banana Grabber at The Abortioneer blog stumbled upon a pro-life protest yesterday. In the crowd, he noticed women holding signs saying:

ABORTION HURTS WOMEN
WOMEN DESERVE BETTER THAN ABORTION
WOMEN REGRET ABORTION

He writes:

I was struck by how much the rhetoric has changed over the years. Immediately post-Roe, women who had abortions were demonized as "sluts." They were attacking the women themselves. When they realized this type of demonization would never work and ended making themselves look unstable, they began to reframe the debate.

Or maybe they don't call these post-abortive women "sluts" because many of them were the "sluts" who had the abortions.

He thinks deep down that we all treat women who seek abortions as recklessly promiscuous.

Honestly, I don't know anyone who assumes that about women who want an abortion. But whatever.

They have done a pretty amazing job. Women are now the victims of abortion. Abortion is a big mean monster out to hurt them. They are no longer blaming women, and instead making a very emotionally evocative statements, however untrue they may be.

Again, maybe they are not into condeming women because many of them were the women who had abortions, and they were pressured into one, and felt like they had no choice but abortion.

And had there been a Crisis Pregnancy Centre in their lives to dissuade them of their choice, maybe they wouldn't have undergone the trauma.

But is he listening to the voices of millions of women? Of course not:

Abortion does NOT hurt women.

Sure, bud, all the women holding up the "I regret my abortion" signs are LYING to you.

Or maybe you deny their truth because you can't handle the truth. How feminist.

Women don't regret abortion. The greatest indicator of a woman's mental health post-abortion is her health pre-abortion. Either way, relief is the most commonly reported emotion post-abortion

Isn't this rich? A "feminist" man patronizingly telling these women that they don't REALLY regret their abortion. He also implies that if they were mentally disturbed by their abortion, they were mentally disturbed to begin with. And that the feelings of relief one experiences could never dissipate into regret and depression.

Feminism: it's all about women's experiences. NOT.

QUOTATION: Virtue and Worldliness

When you see anyone who desires esteem and honors and avoids contempt, and who when contradicted or neglected, shows resentment and takes it ill, you may be sure that such a one, though he were to perform miracles, is very far from perfection, for all his virtue is without foundation.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

VIDEO: The Social Justice Scam

ARE YOU LISTENING CATHOLIC BISHOPS???

This is supposed to be a counter-argument

PZ Myers, the militant anti-Christian science blogger, is totally not impressed with images of aborted fetuses:

Secondly, the standard bullying tactics of waving bloody fetuses might cow the squeamish, but I'm a biologist. I've guillotined rats. I've held eyeballs in my hand and peeled them apart with a pair of scissors. I've used a wet-vac to clean up a lake of half-clotted blood from an exsanguinated dog. I've opened bodies and watched the intestines do their slow writhing dance, I've been elbow deep in blood, I've split open cats and stabbed them in the heart with a perfusion needle. I've extracted the brains of mice…with a pair of pliers. I've scooped brains out of buckets, I've counted dendrites in slices cut from the brains of dead babies.

You want to make me back down by trying to inspire revulsion with dead baby pictures? I look at them unflinchingly and see meat. And meat does not frighten me.

Demonstrating one's complete indifference towards animal (and human suffering) is a real asset to the pro-choice movement.

NOT.

Contrary to what he says showing people the product of abortion is not a "bullying" tactic.

How can showing people a picture be bullying?

Are there bullies in the school yard going: Hey you, if you give me your lunch money, I'M-- I'M-- I'M-- GONNA SHOW YOU A PICTURE!

Are there bully victims pleading NO! DON'T SHOW ME A PICTURE! ANYTHING BUT A PICTURE!

Trying to persuade people of your point of view is not bullying.

Trying to get people to see an ugly truth is not bullying.

Even if people don't WANT to see the truth, it's not bullying.

He says that showing a picture of a fetus is "intimidation"?

What intimidation? Showing people the truth is intimidation?

Perhaps he means that if we produce unwanted guilt in others, that's intimidation.

But don't leftists do that all the time? Tell people they're horrible for doing this or that and try to shame them into rejecting their actions or views?

But continue to be completely heartless towards the unborn. That's what has advanced our cause.

During the partial birth abortion debate, the public saw how abortion supporters were completely indifferent to babies having their heads stabbed and their brains sucked out. The public woke up to the horrors of abortion.

And it's the same thing all over again with the Gosnell case.

They talk about the infant newborns being stabbed as being atrocious.

But nary a word about the late-term babies-- of the same gestational age-- being killed in the wound.

It poses no moral or intellectual problem for them. If babies have to die in the name of feminist empowerment, their attitude is: well tough luck little babies. You were on the wrong side of the uterus.

Like this scientist, feminists think these aborted babies were no more special than guilltoned rats, dissected cats, or lobotomized mice.

Parsing "pro-choice" langugage

Joe Campbell:

When I learned that pro-choicers are against sex-selective abortion, I was really puzzled. I always thought ‘pro’ meant ‘for’. I never imagined ‘pro’ could mean ‘against’.

It’s not that they’re against aborting daughters. Rather they’re against using abortion to discriminate against daughters. The distinction, when explained to me, seemed like a novel approach to morality.

Even in a just war, moralists condemn indiscriminate killing. In abortion, pro-choicers condone it. Discriminate killing is what they condemn. Apparently, discrimination is worse then killing.

But not always. Although they reject prenatal discrimination on the basis of sex, pro-choicers accept it on the basis of disability. So if you discover that your unborn daughter is disabled, you can go ahead and kill her. Just make sure you do it because of her disability, not her sex. I’m sure she’ll understand.

"Everything You Think You Know About the Dark Ages is Wrong"

..is the title of an article featuring an interview with Nancy Marie Brown, who wrote The Abacus and the Cross: The Story of the Pope Who Brought the Light of Science to the Dark Ages

The Pope in question is Gerbert of Aurillac, known to history as Pope Sylvester II.

QUOTE:

Nothing in my many years of reading about the Middle Ages had led me to suspect that the pope in the year 1000 was the leading mathematician and astronomer of his day.

Nor was his science just a sidelight. According to a chronicler who knew him, he rose from humble beginnings to the highest office in the Christian Church “on account of his scientific knowledge.”

To my mind, scientific knowledge and medieval Christianity had nothing in common. I was wrong.

I felt as if I had stumbled into a parallel universe, an alternate history of the Middle Ages that had been perfectly crafted for me: For most of my career, I have worked as a science writer, but my heart had first been captured by medieval sagas. The story of The Scientist Pope—one scholar called him “the Bill Gates of the end of the first millennium”—was a story I needed to tell.

(...)

A professor at a cathedral school for most of his career, Gerbert of Aurillac was the first Christian known to teach math using the nine Arabic numerals and zero. He devised an abacus, or counting board, that mimics the algorithms we use today for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. It has been called the first counting device in Europe to function digitally—even the first computer. In a chronology of computer history, Gerbert’s abacus is one of only four innovations mentioned between 3000 BC and the invention of the slide rule in 1622.

Like a modern scientist, Gerbert questioned authority. He experimented. To learn which of two rules best calculated the area of an equilateral triangle, he cut out square inches of parchment and measured the triangle with them. To learn why organ pipes do not behave acoustically like strings, he built models and devised an equation. (A modern physicist who checked his result calls it ingenious, if labor-intensive.)

Gerbert made sighting tubes to observe the stars and constructed globes on which their positions were recorded relative to lines of celestial longitude and latitude. He (or more likely his best student) wrote a book on the astrolabe, an instrument for telling time and making measurements by the sun or stars. You could even use it to calculate the circumference of the earth, which Gerbert and his peers knew very well was not flat like a disc but round as an apple.

You can always spot a cathophobe by his insistence that the Church was the enemy of science.

So...Blogs for Choice...

Tell me...

Is this a source of feminist empowerment for you?

Is this how you purport to "liberate" women...allowing them to do this?

Please, speak to the poster above.



VIDEO: Country Club Christianity

Report of the Grand Jury Regarding the Kermit Gosnell case #prolife

Read it.

It is so unbelievably shocking. Every other page contains a new, astounding detail of Kermit Gosnell's criminal enterprise.

* Flea-ridden cat allowed to roam the premises and defecate everywhere;

* Blood-stains EVERYWHERE;

* Underpaid, untrained staff administering anesthesia without the faintest clue of what they were doing;

* High school senior running the clinic alone at night, waiting for babies to be born. She had the presence of mind to take a picture of the 30 week baby whose picture was featured in the report;

* Hiring an untrained worker with Heptatis C; never forcing her to use gloves.

* Hiring a nurse to work during an NAF evaluation to fool an evaluator into thinking the clinic was up to snuff;

* Routine murder of viable babies, including crushing of heads.

* Gosnell took pictures of women's genitalia without their permission, particularly those women who had had clitorectimies;

* Gosnell's participation in a sick 1972 abortion trial of an abortion coil that was supposed to rip up babies, but it didn't work and it maimed 9 women.

I'm surely missing stuff here.

It was sick from A to Z.

Horrible as it is, perhaps someone should make a movie out of this. This is the kind of story that will make people's blood curl against abortion.

I had to stop at about page 113. There's only so much mention of death to babies that I can stand. I wanted to scream "DID NO ONE HAVE MERCY ON THE BABIES!!!" Someone must've known SOMETHING was not right. And in fact a few people former employees tried to report him but nothing happened.

Why is lack of abortion accessibility the fault of pro-lifers?

If women would otherwise die if they don't have access to abortion, as pro-aborts claim...

Why don't pro-aborts just break the law and provide them with abortions?

If the only way to prevent a Kermit Gosnell is to make "safe" abortions accessible...

Why don't they just do that?

There was a collective in Chicago that provided illegal abortions, once upon a time.

And we know that some abortionists alive today were doing illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade.

So we know that breaking the law is not an issue: in fact these illegal acts are celebrated among activists.

So what's the problem?

Some might argue that it would deprive more women of abortions if abortionists went to jail.

Okay. But if they don't break the law, they can't change the law.

Henry Morgentaler went to jail and his efforts led to the Supreme Court striking down the law.

I suspect that abortion accessibility is a strawman in this issue. It's not like people cannot get abortions in the US.

If pro-aborts want to provide women with abortions, it is completely within their power to do so, whether they are legal or illegal. If it's a matter of life and death-- if they really want to reach the women who threaten to stick a coathanger up their crotch or commit infanticide, it is entirely in their power to do so and offer that abortion. Laws should be of no concern in that case.

Somehow they just never do that, do they?

Female Beauty

ProWomanProlife's Brigitte expressed her irritation with a male critique of Miss America Pageant contestants.

I saw the same article linked at Kathy Shaidle's blog. And when I read that article, I was a bit miffed, too.

The author wonders: where are female curves? Why are women loading up on muscle? How come they no longer have narrow waists (as opposed to solid abs)?

I said to myself: these women are healthy.

And what women look like when they are healthy is feminine.

My complaint with female beauty is that unhealthy models are upheld and that there is such a lack of variety of who is considered beautiful.

If you look at the catwalks of fashion shows, the models are all tall, toothpick thin and don't look that different from one another.

Now, fashion models are people who are supposed to make clothes look good, and fashion designers make clothes that look good on these women (and tall thin women do make clothes look good).

But even in the popular media, it's tall, thin women everywhere.

I'm not saying that we have to worship fat. That would be ridiculous. Obesity is not good for you. But there's nothing wrong with being a size 8 or 10.

But to tell you the truth, I don't really pay that much attention to popular culture glitz and glam. Which is maybe why I think this is all kind of ridiculous. Practical is better than seductive.

Showing again the heartlessness of pro-aborts towards babies

I have to laugh at a lot of the information presentedin this article about Kermit Gosnell.

Because otherwise I'd have to cry.

According to clinic worker Kareema Cross, Gosnell resorted to regularly killing babies after birth because he was not skilled enough to kill the baby in utero with a digoxin injection, a usual means of late-term abortion.

(...)

The report noted that one unlicensed worker at the clinic attempted to justify Gosnell’s practice of cutting of the newborns’ spinal cords as a “partial-birth abortion.” The Grand Jury concluded that the two procedures were different, however, because sucking the brains out of the baby’s head in a partial-birth abortion occurred while the head was still inside the mother, and thus served to make delivery of the evacuated head easier, whereas Gosnell’s victims were killed “when there was clearly no need or medical reason to collapse the skull.”

(...)

“Despite his various efforts to fool her, the evaluator from NAF readily noted that records were not properly kept, that risks were not explained, that patients were not monitored, that equipment was not available, that anesthesia was misused,” states the report. “Of course, she rejected Gosnell’s application.

So let's get this straight....

If Kermit Gosnell had been able to inject potassium chloride into the baby's heart;

... or if he had snapped the baby's neck while the body was half out of the birth canal (and had a 'medical' reason to do it);

... if he had been licensed and board certified--

... if he had kept proper records, monitored patients, informed them about abortion, used proper equipment and anesthesia...

THEN all the killing would have been permissible.
But because he didn't kill the babies the right way, didn't have the right credentials, didn't use the right equipment and didn't apply correct bureaucratic procedures...

He did a bad thing.

The babies would have been just as dead and suffered just as much if all the criteria had been fulfilled.

Do the pro-aborts care?

Noooooooooo. Of course not. Caring is such a darn burden on one's reproductive autonomy.

Abortion Gang Poster (and Commenters) Fail to Address the Obvious in the Gosnell Case

I was looking for poor-choice commentary on the Kermit Gosnell case and didn't find it. Today I found this post from The Abortion Gang.

Naturally, they use this sitaution to argue for better abortion services.

But they don't make the link.

What exactly would have been the difference to the babies if Gosnell had snapped their necks with scissors while they were in the womb? What if he had performed a partial birth abortion (which they support)?

If Gosnell had been accused of partial birth abortion, these feminists would have been outraged.

But they only start caring about the suffering of these babies once the umbilical cord is cut.

Which is ludicrous, because the umbilical cord would not have changed who these babies are, and what they would have suffered.

A mother's will and her right to control her body is not more important than these babies' lives.

You have to laugh out loud when you read the comments.

JenInCanada writes:

So many women put in harms way, and so many babies. What a horror

But if Gosnell had stabbed their necks in the womb (which would have been completely legal in Canada) she would have shown no concern and she would have been outraged at the suggestion that such an act be prosecuted.

Tenya writes:

Because this will inevitably bring up the “late-term elective abortion is still wrong!” argument, I wonder how many of these women would have been likely to commit infanticide had they carried to term?

Oh, like that makes ALL the difference. Kill them in the womb so they don't have to be killed when the umbilical cord is cut.

Maybe the mothers wouldn't have committed infanticide. Maybe they would have looked into their babies' eyes and spared them. Maybe they would have dropped them off in a safe haven.

Julie writes:

Kill the Tillers of the world, and we’re left with the Gosnells.

Yeah, because Tiller stabbing a baby in the neck through partial birth abortion is no different than Kermit Gosnell stabbing a newborn in the neck.

Once again: mother's autonomy and "right to control her body" is more important than a baby's life.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's feminist supremacy. One woman's will is more important than her own baby's life.

Operation Rescue posted pictures of some of the baby victims. Tell me, pro-abortion feminists, what is the difference between these dead babies and those dead in the womb?

Image: We're All Human Beings

I decided to post this because I liked it and I thought it was about time someone made a poster like this.

Announcing the “Ask Them What They Mean By ‘Choice’ Blog Day,” January 21!

This is a social media campaignh to dispel the ambiguity around the word "choice". It will take place on Friday, January 21st.

It's organized by Jill Stanek and there are already a couple of dozen blogs on board. I encourage you to lend your support and email her to say that you will participate.

I think we should be a little more in your face about it...

I can predict that some feminists will say that it's not about abortion but "choice".

Except the blog campaign coincides with the date of the legalization of abortion in the US. And, among reproductive choices, that is the one that happens to be the most difficult-- the most difficult to justify, the most difficult to keep legal, the most difficult to provide access to.

Feminists would have you believe that their use of the word "choice" for the philosophy that motivates in their almost total focus on abortion on the "reprodutive rights" front is strictly coincidental. Abortion takes up all their time because that's the choice most people oppose.  They can't help it if birth and adoption are unopposed and easily accessible. It's not being "pro-abortion" to fight for all these abortion-related issues, it's "pro-choice". In spite of the fact that all their efforts go towards promoting abortion as a choice. But it's not pro-abortion!

What a self-serving use of the language. I would say it's a kind of amphiboly.

New Pro-Abort Phone Line To Open

To stop women from feeling guilty from for killing their unborn children, I suspect.

If abortion is no big deal, why is this even necessary?

I remember when post-abortion depression was dismissed as the reactions of women who were already ill.

So now the next question is: what are the women telling you?

Somehow, I doubt they will tell. It's like the actual abortion operation-- it's all kept secret for fear of bad PR.

People who have nothing to hide hide nothing.

Pro-aborts hopping mad at Government of Macedonia's anti-abortion campaign

From the European Pro-Choice Network blog:

In the Government campaign titled as “Chose life – You have a right to chose”, including a video spot about the procedure of the termination of pregnancy, infertility, sepsis, perforations of the uterus, complications from the anesthesia and severe mental problems are suggested as consequences of abortion.

Give me a government like that.

First we heard about Hungary, now this program in Macedonia. And I suspect Russia will get on the anti-abortion bandwagon?

Could we see a pro-life backlash in Europe?

Philadelphia abortion doctor charged with 8 murders, including 7 babies killed with scissors

Yet another item for the "abortion is a shady business" file:

Gosnell "induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord," Williams said.

Of course it's natural that some abortionist would be caught doing that. It's only a short step from killing six-month fetuses in the womb and six-month fetuses who are completely born.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: feminists do not care about the fetuses being killed. They might recoil in horror at the account of a newborn have his spinal cord snapped with a pair of scissors. But had the same newborn had been ripped limb from limb in the womb, that wouldn't matter to them because the fact that the baby is inside the mother makes all the difference and justifies that pain and suffering. As if the mother had no responsibility towards that child.

Some women came from across the mid-Atlantic for the illegal late-term abortions, authorities said. White women from the suburbs were ushered into a separate, slightly cleaner area because Gosnell believed they were more likely to file complaints, Williams said.

Question: if there is a demand for these illegal late-term abortions, where are the coathanger abortions that are supposed to take place when abortion is criminalized?

It makes you wonder what kind of illegal late-term abortions we are talking about, because abortions for fetal malformation are generally legal even in the 3rd trimester in the US-- I could be wrong. It's elective third trimester abortions that tend to be criminalized.

And in the eyes of feminists, they should be legal. If a baby has to suffer and die because of some woman's choice, their attitude is: tough luck, baby.

On the Necessity of Mass

Why the Mass is a Must:

Most rationalizations about skipping Mass on Sunday – it’s boring, I get nothing out of it, I don’t feel like it, I can just pray to God on my own, I don’t like the priest or the music or the people or something else – all revolve around a single axis: me.

...

We’ve heard it often, but it bears repeating: The cross is the heart of Christian existence, and it follows that so is the Mass, the re-lived sacrifice of the cross. We cannot be saved without the cross, and therefore we cannot be saved without the infinite graces of the Eucharist. We cannot be Christian without accepting the reality of the cross, and therefore we cannot be Christian without the sacrament that makes the cross real to us.

To return to our initial argument: By rejecting the Mass you make yourself your own savior. But you cannot save yourself; try as you may, no matter what you do or what prayers you say. Without the cross and the Mass, you stand alone, empty and aimless, with no chance or hope beyond the drudgeries of the current moment

Chemical abortions slow in making inroads in the US

Says poor choice author.

As I had expected, though the clinical aspects of medication abortion were quite simple, the social aspects were not. New providers also had to deal with protestors, as it became clear that one could not inform one’s patients of this new service without protestors finding out. Also, those primary care providers who only planned to offer a few abortions each month found that the costs of malpractice, the cumbersome procedure the FDA established for offering the drug, and the need to comply with various state regulations (such as parental notification or consent) made incorporating medical abortion into one’s practice appear just too burdensome.

I'm not sure chemical abortions will ever really be as popular as surgical abortions.

In France, about half of abortions are chemical procedures. One thing this author overlooks (or fails to mention) is that abortion is a poorly paid procedure there. Numerous public abortion facilities have closed in that country because abortion does not pay the bills. It's far cheaper to send women home with abortion pills than to have a surgical centre.

Chemical abortions are the cheap abortions. All you need is a nurse to hand you the first dose, and then send you home with the rest of the prescription and you come back for a check up.

And there being cheap is, in my opinion, the reason they are preferred in Europe (or at least France) but not in the US.

The reason I say they are cheap doesn't necessarily have to do with the overhead. I am also talking about the actual quality of the experience. If you go into a decent abortion clinic for a surgical abortion, you get out in about two hours. Your abortion is done in five minutes. A nurse might hold your hand. If something goes wrong, medical professionals are on hand to assist you. You are the centre of attention and the presence of medical experts reduces the likelihood of physical problems or bad experiences. It's an efficient way to deal with your problem and potential consequences, and it's relatively not unpleasant.

But with chemical abortions, you go home, by yourself, to bleed for a couple of days. For those who have never had a miscarriage, it hurts worse than a regular period and the bloodflow is heavier. And I had mine very early. I shudder to think of nulliparous women having abortions at 7 or 8 weeks of pregnancy. Now, as you are bleeding, life doesn't stop. Children must be fed, housework completed, etc. True, you do get adequate. You probably have to take time off your job for a few days--I can't imagine a woman working through that kind of bloodflow or pain.

And this is besides the experience of passing clots and possibly seeing your dead unborn child. And the side effects: nausea, vomitting, chills.

And then you have to return for your follow up. What a pain!

Chemical abortions can be started earlier than surgical abortions, but they are not an efficient way to carry out the objective of terminating a pregnancy. And the woman is on her own to deal with her abortion, with no on hand access to medical expertise. The medical side of the equation does not have to invest as much involvement in the abortion, and on the woman's side, this unpleasant experience is drawn out.

This is what makes them cheap to me (as compared to surgical abortion), and I suspect to many others.

Who wants to spend three days bleeding when you can have it over in two hours?

Abortion pays relatively well in the US. So abortionists are going to
give women what they want.Which is a quicker, less unpleasant abortion. When abortion pay starts to be decrease to the point that it's not so financially attractive (especially considering the stigma), I suspect that more chemical abortions will be offered, as fewer doctors will offer to do abortions, and chemical abortions will seem like the viable alternative (sorry for the pun!).

A beautiful thing: Dr. Carlo Bellieni’s mission to the unborn

Rome, Italy, Dec 20, 2010 / 05:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Dr. Carlo Bellieni, a neonatal doctor in Siena, Italy, is working tirelessly to change the way the world looks at unborn children.

In more than 20 years of work and study he has developed new channels of understanding the unborn and the newborn child and new methods of giving them medical assistance.

He is an avid researcher, often collaborating with other scientists and doctors internationally to produce books, scientific papers and new studies examining pre-born and newborn babies. The Italian Neonatology Society, the European Society for Pediatric Research and the Pontifical Academy for Life count him as a member. He is a frequent contributor to the Vatican’s newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.

His particular passion is researching the way an unborn or a newborn child feels pain and finding ways to alleviate it through pioneering medical methods and strategies that don't use pharmaceutical drugs.

There are many things that go untold about neonatal medicine from the "horrendous" to the "beautiful," the doctor told CNA in November.

His research has led him to make the "very strange" discovery that modern medicine has often created a harsh environment for the prematurely born child due to a lack of understanding and research.

In the 1990s, he found that sound levels and the strength of magnetic fields in incubators were off the charts, for example. Pain scales and pain relief measures for those premature babies needing surgeries were non-existent or inadequate, he said.

These and other examples led him to ask, "Why didn't anyone realize this before?"

According to available research, the unborn child experiences sensations of pleasure, taste, hearing and pain. In a world where these possibilities are often neglected, these studies give the fetus "a human face," said Dr. Bellieni.

At 20 weeks from conception the baby's brain is developed to the point where it begins to process painful stimuli. The fetus responds to pain by releasing the same hormones and exhibiting changed heart-rate frequencies just as adults do in the presence of pain, said Bellieni.

One study has even recorded a baby crying in the womb.

Under normal development, by the time a baby is born, he can feel not only pain but has also begun to prepare for the outside world.

When a baby is born, he is already accustomed to the voice, cadence and even the language of his mother. Her diet will have influenced his food preferences and he will recognize the sound of his mother's favorite sitcom, music and other common ambient sounds.

Bellieni described the studies that relatively recently uncovered these details as "bellissimi," using the Italian word for beautiful, because they shed light on the small world of the womb.

Babies' senses are so advanced when they are born, in fact, that a heel-prick, an injection or other medical interventions that are minor for adults are "devastating" for them, said Dr. Bellieni.

Still, few people are studying the way the unborn child and the newborn feel. According to Dr. Bellieni, the lack of investigation is the result of science treating them as second-class citizens.

That a fetus is alive and has human DNA give the child membership in the human species "and therefore give them the right to be a human being," said the neonatologist, refuting such claims.

He explained his case in simple terms. “There is no reasonable person who can say that 'I was never an embryo'.”

"It's clear that I was once an embryo, just as I am a human being. There was never a moment in which I was not me, but some say that certain states of the human being are worth less than others."

Knowing that the fetus is also a human being is not a question of religion, he said, but of science and biology. No university student who answered to the contrary would be passed by a professor of any creed or none at all, he said.

Bellieni blamed ideologies for stacking the deck against the unborn child.

He cited the influence of philosophers who argue that a child has neither sufficient self- awareness nor an adult's pain level up to one year old. And lacking these [qualities], they say, it does not have the dignity of personhood.

"In sum," said Dr. Bellieni, "they deny that someone who does not have self-awareness can feel pain."

This philosophy extends to those with senile dementia and the mentally handicapped and is on the way to including those with serious and debilitating diseases, he said.

He warned that there is an ever-growing pool of candidates for those who don't qualify for the "right of citizenship" under these standards.

To explain, he divides human beings into type-A and type-B. Those who have self-awareness and those who are unable to fully exercise their own rights.

Trends show a continual erosion of citizenship, he warned. Being type-B means achieving statelessness, becoming a person that has lost his "citizenship."

"It's as if they came from a foreign state and were blocked at the border. Fetuses, the elderly and the mentally handicapped are blocked at the border of personhood," he said.

There is "no reason" to treat one form of human being with less dignity than another, said the doctor. In the current context, however, "barriers are being created, which means terrible discrimination between equal persons."

In medicine, this discrimination translates into official protocol against treating vulnerable fetuses or premature babies for diseases, malformations, or to help them survive because it could put their future quality of life at risk.

Such questions would never come into play for an adult with a heart attack or stroke, Bellieni noted. They also have a high risk of ending up disabled, yet "any doctor" would rush them in for treatment.

And, he explained, the treatment would be solely in the patient's interests. For the very premature baby, on the other hand, his parents' interest is taken into account and unless they explicitly plead on his behalf, "many doctors and many protocols of many hospitals avoid treating him. They leave him to die."

He called this policy "absurd," citing a fundamental discrimination between two equal human beings in such action.

Much of the problem comes down to ethics, and a lot of the literature out there promotes "the myth of autonomy," said Dr. Bellieni. This "says that you can do everything you decide, you just have to decide it and it's automatically ethical."

What is needed is an ethic of solidarity, he said, one that considers the baby another human being and utilizes current scientific research.

Doctors have seen that babies born just 22 weeks after conception have a hope of survival. In many places including parts of the U.S., however, children are still untreated if born before 25 weeks.

They must be given a chance, Bellieni said, and if the baby does not respond "one mustn't insist in an unreasonable manner."

The point is that standard protocol needs to keep up with research, he said.

He praised the recent legislation in Nebraska protecting unborn children from abortion after 20 weeks of gestation because of their ability to feel pain. This is an "optimal" piece of legislation, he said, because it takes scientific study into account.

However, many laws and protocols continue to be based on old research, he said, while "in the meantime science has moved ahead."

Advances in medicine come little by little, but they are steady. All told, there has been a "huge leap" in progress from the 1970s to today, he said. Most premature babies born under two pounds died at birth back then, while today 90 percent of them survive.

Ten years ago it was possible for babies to survive if born at 25 weeks, now studies show that it's possible, although with a low probability, that they can survive after birth at 22 weeks.

"It seems little, but it's a grand step ahead," said Bellieni.

There are many studies out there that show how science is "always an ally of reason when it says yes to life," he observed.

Advances like operating on a fetus in the womb for certain diseases and malformations so that it is given a better chance of surviving, are "not a fantasy of the future," but today's reality, he underscored.

It all comes down to the fact that when you treat someone who is sick, "è una cosa bellisima," he said. "It's a beautiful thing."

VIDEO: Sex, Sex, Sex (Catholic Teaching on It Constantly Ignored)

If you are a Catholic clergyman, a religious, or a member of the Catholic elite with the responsibility to hand on the Catholic Faith-- this is for you:



And here's that link to Humanae Vitae

Anonymous Convicted Offenders

This morning I read a story about an Ottawa man (I presume it's an Ottawa man) who was convicted of sexually molesting his four-year-old step-daughter.

There are no details about this man.

If I cannot know who this man is, what is the point of this article? I don't know the victims, I don't know the offender. I'm not even sure he lives in Ottawa.

Shouldn't people know the identity of convicted sexual molesters?

I know that protecting the offender's identity is supposed to be a means of protecting the victim's identity. If you happen to know that family, then you know their dirty laundry.

That being said, isn't the whole point of reporting these events to protect the public?

I don't want a convicted child offender within 100 feet of my kids.

How are we supposed to protect our children if we don't know who has offended?

I also have a problem with our Justice System protecting the identity of youth offenders.

I don't mind the anonymity when it comes to minor crimes like vandalism and graffiti. Kids do dumb things and most of them smarten up by age 21.

I do mind that the names of murderers and sex offenders are not revealed.

They will probably five years (at the most) and be out.

Doesn't the public have the right to know who poses a potential threat?

Wouldn't it be in the interest of victims that people do know who the guilty parties are so that we can look out for them? Suppose I happen to live in the same community as this convicted offender and I see him near his step-daughter. Aren't I in a better position to protect her if I know that he has a history of molesting her?

I can understand that a child might not want to reveal to the world these things and have the whole community know his business, but on the other hand, if a crime is being committed against a child, shouldn't we know that a certain child is vulnerable and in need of protection?

I think these notions of anonymity are really dated and don't really serve the public interest.

STUDY: Women need "existential support" in abortion care

Gee, ya think?

Swedish abortion care was described as rational and neutral, with physical issues dominating over existential ones. For some women, the medical procedures triggered existential experiences of life, meaning, and morality. While some women abstained from any form of existential support, others expressed a need to reflect upon the existential aspects and/or to reconcile their decision emotionally. Conclusion. As women's needs for existential support in relation to abortion vary, women can be disappointed with the personnel's ability to respond to their thoughts and feelings related to the abortion. To ensure abortion care personnel meet the physical, psychological and existential needs of each patient, better resources and new lines of education are needed to ensure abortion personnel are equipped to deal with the existential aspects of abortion care.

The author of this study works in a theology department of a Swedish university. You get the feeling that perhaps some religious poor-choicers are trying to co-opt religion for their purposes.

But what aspect of the procedure could possibly require "existential support"?

Could it be that maybe taking human life is just not as banal an act as some abortion supporters think it is?