LA Man Arrested for Death of 13 Week Unborn Baby

Sunday, October 25, 2009 (AP)
LA man arrested in death of his unborn child
(AP) --
Authorities say a 37-year-old Los Angeles man has been arrested on
suspicion of murder for the death of an unborn child believed to be his.
Police said in a press release that Joshua Woodward was arrested Sunday in
Los Angeles and is being held on $2 million bail in a county jail.
Police say the arrest came after an investigation on Monday revealed
"suspicious circumstances of a miscarriage." Investigators estimate the
fetus was in its 13th week.
Police released no information on the mother or the circumstances of the
child's death.
The release says Woodward is believed to have ties to Miami and Chicago
and detectives are also seeking information in those cities.
Investigators are set to present the case to prosecutors on Tuesday.
A deputy at the jail had no information on an attorney for Woodward

Pharmacist Give Out Abortifacients: The Totalitarian Face of Obama Nation

Monday, July 13, 2009
The New Freedom of Obama Nation --- Pharmacists Will Now Be Forced to Dispense Abortifacients

Pharmacists lose pill ruling

By Carol Williams, LA Times

Pharmacists are obliged to dispense the Plan B pill, even if they are personally opposed to the "morning after" contraceptive on religious grounds, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
In a case that could herald judicial policy across the Western states, a supermarket pharmacy owner in Olympia, Washington failed in a bid to block 2007 changes to pharmacy regulations requiring all Washington pharmacists to stock and dispense the contraceptive. Family-owned Ralph's Thriftway and two women employed at other pharmacies sued Washington state officials to assert that their Christian beliefs prevented them from dispensing the pills that can prevent implantation of the recently fertilized egg. They claimed that the new regulations would force them to choose between keeping their jobs and heeding their religious objections to a medication they regard as a form of abortion....On July 8, 2009, a 3 judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the injunction, saying the district court was wrong in issuing it based on an erroneous finding that the rules violate the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution....[According to the court], the right to freely exercise one's religion "does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a valid and neutral law of general applicability," [N.B., what pray tell is not a "valid and neutral law of general applicability --- in other words one can never cite the natural or divine law as a justification for not obeying a human civil law --- question: is this not the very essence of totalitarianism] the 9th Circuit panel wrote. [Let us all in the United States admit that we have now entered into a totalitarian democracy. Europe did it a long time ago, let us admit that we have so entered now --- this ruling, with many more like it to come, proves that the United States has so entered this state.]

Cut Plannned Parenthood Funding in California!

ACTION ALERT

CUT PLANNED PARENTHOOD’S CA FUNDING!

Dear friend,

Planned Parenthood in California has had a bad year and it is only getting worse.

First, it was exposed misusing taxpayer dollars.

Then it was shown to protect child rapists.

Now, with your help, the nation’s largest abortion provider may lose up to 90 percent of its “family planning” funding in California.

In the face of a $24 billion shortfall, the state is considering pulling the Family PACT program, the innocently named government funding that fuels Planned Parenthood’s lucrative contraceptive programs.

Even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, no friend to the pro-life movement, recognizes that Planned Parenthood’s huge profits last year – derived in part from a 21 percent increase in abortions – makes it undeserving of taxpayer handouts.

The state of California is desperate for money – it has even floated an idea to legalize and tax marijuana – and yet Planned Parenthood – tax-evading, molester-protecting, abortion-gorged Planned Parenthood – is receiving millions in tax dollars.

In 2006 alone, Planned Parenthood received an estimated $30 million from California’s state funding.

Seventy-four percent of Planned Parenthood clinics in California are medical and surgical abortion facilities. If state funding was taken from Planned Parenthood in this state, imagine how many lives could be saved.

We need YOU to call Gov. Schwarzenegger now! And tell him that Planned Parenthood does not deserve to pad their already gorged coffers with taxpayer dollars.

You can e-mail Gov. Schwarzenegger at http://ss.all.org/link.php?M=38693&N=167&L=1194&F=H

You can reach him by phone at (916) 445-2841.

Thank you for your swift action! Together we can defund Planned Parenthood both in California and nationwide.

In the Lord who IS Life,

Judie Brown
President
American Life League

The Pope's Non-Response to Notre Dame Controversy

Saturday, May. 16, 2009
The Pope's Stand in Obama's Notre Dame Controversy
(Why is the Pope Sidestepping Notre Dame?)
By Amy Sullivan

At the rate things are going, Pope Benedict XVI may find his next trip to the U.S. dogged by airplanes overhead trailing banners with images of aborted fetuses. O.K., that's a bit of hyperbole. But while several prominent conservative Catholics in this country are apoplectic over the University of Notre Dame's invitation of the pro-choice Barack Obama to give the school's commencement address on May 17, the Vatican has stayed completely silent on the matter.

The two very different reactions to the question of whether a Catholic institution should honor anyone who disagrees with the Church's teaching on abortion are just the latest examples of the strikingly divergent responses American Catholic leaders and the Vatican have had to the Obama Administration.

Three-quarters of Catholics either approve of or offer no opinion on Notre Dame's decision to invite Obama, and the same percentage of U.S. bishops have opted to stay out of the fight. However, for a small but vocal group of conservative Catholics, the episode has become an opportunity to draw lines between those who are genuinely Catholic and those whom they accuse of being Catholic in name only — even the head of the country's premier Catholic university.

"It is clear that Notre Dame didn't understand what it means to be Catholic when they issued this invitation," said Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). The conservative Cardinal Newman Society organized a petition calling for Notre Dame president Father John Jenkins to disinvite the President. Professional protesters such as Alan Keyes and Randall Terry have descended on the South Bend campus, pushing blood-covered baby dolls in Spongebob strollers and getting themselves arrested. And Cardinal James Francis Stafford, one of the highest-ranking Americans at the Vatican, has declared Obama an unfit honoree because his statements on abortion reflect "an agenda and vision that are aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic."

This isn't the first time Obama has received decidedly mixed reviews from Catholics. A few months ago, he issued an Executive Order lifting restrictions on federal funding for stem-cell research. The move was immediately denounced by the USCCB as "morally wrong," and even moderate Catholics complained about the way the decision was handled. But the Vatican had a different reaction. L'Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper published under the authority of the Vatican's Secretariat of State, ran an article in late April essentially urging the bishops to chill out.

Under the headline "The 100 Days that Did Not Shake the World," the paper gave Obama a tentative thumbs-up for his policy changes concerning the economy and international relations. "On ethical questions, too — which from the time of the electoral campaign have been the subject of strong worries by the Catholic bishops — Obama does not seem to have confirmed the radical innovations that he had discussed," said the article, which noted that Obama's stem-cell guidelines were "less permissive" than expected.

So is this a schism? Have Cardinal George and the other conservative U.S. bishops gone rogue? Or is the Pope letting them play bad cop while he makes nice with the popular new American President?

The Vatican has a tradition of remaining largely above the fray while allowing — sometimes even encouraging — local bishops to be more aggressive in challenging political leaders. In Italy, for instance, both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have given communion to pro-choice politicians while letting Italian church leaders take the role of lecturing those Catholics on their dissent from church teaching. And this is particularly true of the Vatican's relationships with foreign leaders, whom the Pope views as fellow heads of state. Some observers have interpreted Cardinal George's Oval Office meeting with Obama on St. Patrick's Day to talk about abortion as an emissary visit, speculating that the cardinal was sent by Benedict.

But if the Vatican merely wanted to avoid public unpleasantness in its dealing with the U.S. President, it could do that by essentially ignoring the new Administration. Instead, it has displayed a surprising optimism, bordering on enthusiasm, for Obama's presidency. Breaking with protocol that usually prevents the Pope from addressing heads of state before they take office, Benedict sent a congratulatory telegram to Obama the day after the November election. The Pope noted the "historic" nature of the victory and said he would pray that God would "sustain you and the beloved American people in your efforts to build a world of peace, solidarity and justice." The two spoke directly less than a week later, and the Pope sent yet another telegram on Jan. 20 when Obama was inaugurated.

When reporters at Catholic News Service, the official news agency of the USCCB, talked to Vatican officials just prior to the Inauguration, they found the Holy See mostly focused on economic issues and Middle East politics. "Asked about pro-life issues, on which Obama and the Catholic Church have clear differences, Vatican officials took a wait-and-see attitude," the news agency reported.

The starkly different responses of some U.S. bishops and the Vatican could just be a matter of pure politics. As Obama's European tour last month showed, the Pope would hardly be the only head of state eager to start off on the right footing with the new Administration. In addition, Obama is broadly popular among American Catholics, 67% of whom gave him a positive approval rating in a recent Pew poll. At a time when the U.S. Catholic Church is losing members — a separate Pew study found that for every American who joins the Catholic Church, four others leave — Benedict may not be willing to test the costs of opposing Obama.

Of course, the Notre Dame kerfuffle has political roots as well. The protesters aren't accusing the university of violating church teaching but rather of violating a 2004 policy that the USCCB approved in the midst of vigorous debate over John Kerry's presidential candidacy. The statement, titled "Catholics in Political Life," was speedily drafted in response to questions about whether Kerry should be denied communion because of his pro-choice positions. Catholic institutions, it read, "should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles." When the bishops approved the statement, it wasn't clear whether it would carry much weight after the election, much less whether it applied to the case of a non-Catholic like Obama.

Among those most eager to drive a wedge between the President and rank-and-file Catholics are Catholic Republicans, who worry about losing more voters to the Democratic Party. Newt Gingrich wasn't yet a Catholic when the 2004 statement was debated and approved. But the new convert was the first to speak out against Notre Dame's commencement speaker. On March 24, the Republican former House Speaker weighed in on his Twitter account, which appears to have limits on capital letters: "It is sad to see notre dame invite president obama to give the commencement address since his policies are so anti catholic values." There's nothing like the zeal of a convert, but Gingrich may find it's awkward to try to be more Catholic than the Pope.

Pro-Life America? Right Reaction

More Americans “Pro-Life” Than “Pro-Choice” for First TimeAlso, fewer think abortion should be legal “under any circumstances”by Lydia Saad
PRINCETON, NJ -- A new Gallup Poll, conducted May 7-10, finds 51% of Americans calling themselves "pro-life" on the issue of abortion and 42% "pro-choice." This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995.

The new results, obtained from Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs survey, represent a significant shift from a year ago, when 50% were pro-choice and 44% pro-life. Prior to now, the highest percentage identifying as pro-life was 46%, in both August 2001 and May 2002.

The May 2009 survey documents comparable changes in public views about the legality of abortion. In answer to a question providing three options for the extent to which abortion should be legal, about as many Americans now say the procedure should be illegal in all circumstances (23%) as say it should be legal under any circumstances (22%). This contrasts with the last four years, when Gallup found a strong tilt of public attitudes in favor of unrestricted abortion.

Gallup also found public preferences for the extreme views on abortion about even -- as they are today -- in 2005 and 2002, as well as during much of the first decade of polling on this question from 1975 to 1985. Still, the dominant position on this question remains the middle option, as it has continuously since 1975: 53% currently say abortion should be legal only under certain circumstances.

When the views of this middle group are probed further -- asking these respondents whether they believe abortion should be legal in most or only a few circumstances -- Gallup finds the following breakdown in opinion.

Americans' recent shift toward the pro-life position is confirmed in two other surveys. The same three abortion questions asked on the Gallup Values and Beliefs survey were included in Gallup Poll Daily tracking from May 12-13, with nearly identical results, including a 50% to 43% pro-life versus pro-choice split on the self-identification question.

Additionally, a recent national survey by the Pew Research Center recorded an eight percentage-point decline since last August in those saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases, from 54% to 46%. The percentage saying abortion should be legal in only a few or no cases increased from 41% to 44% over the same period. As a result, support for the two broad positions is now about even, sharply different from most polling on this question since 1995, when the majority has typically favored legality.

Republicans Move to the Right

The source of the shift in abortion views is clear in the Gallup Values and Beliefs survey. The percentage of Republicans (including independents who lean Republican) calling themselves "pro-life" rose by 10 points over the past year, from 60% to 70%, while there has been essentially no change in the views of Democrats and Democratic leaners.

Similarly, by ideology, all of the increase in pro-life sentiment is seen among self-identified conservatives and moderates; the abortion views of political liberals have not changed.

"Pro-Life" Up Among Catholics and Protestants

One of the more prominent news stories touching on the abortion issue in recent months involves President Barack Obama's commencement speech and the bestowal of an honorary doctorate degree on him at the University of Notre Dame -- a Roman Catholic institution -- on Sunday. The invitation has drawn criticism from conservative Catholics and the church hierarchy because of Obama's policies in favor of legalizing and funding abortion, and the controversy might have been expected to strengthen the pro-life leanings of rank-and-file Catholics.

Nevertheless, the swelling of the pro-life position since last year is seen across Christian religious affiliations, including an eight-point gain among Protestants and a seven-point gain among Catholics.

Gender Agreement

A year ago, Gallup found more women calling themselves pro-choice than pro-life, by 50% to 43%, while men were more closely divided: 49% pro-choice, 46% pro-life. Now, because of heightened pro-life sentiment among both groups, women as well as men are more likely to be pro-life.

Men and women have been evenly divided on the issue in previous years; however, this is the first time in nine years of Gallup Values surveys that significantly more men and women are pro-life than pro-choice.

Bottom Line

With the first pro-choice president in eight years already making changes to the nation's policies on funding abortion overseas, expressing his support for the Freedom of Choice Act, and moving toward rescinding federal job protections for medical workers who refuse to participate in abortion procedures, Americans -- and, in particular, Republicans -- seem to be taking a step back from the pro-choice position. However, the retreat is evident among political moderates as well as conservatives.

It is possible that, through his abortion policies, Obama has pushed the public's understanding of what it means to be "pro-choice" slightly to the left, politically. While Democrats may support that, as they generally support everything Obama is doing as president, it may be driving others in the opposite direction.

Survey Methods

Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,015 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted May 7-10, 2009.

Vatican Rejects Caroline Kennedy

Vatican blocks Caroline Kennedy appointment as US ambassador
The Vatican has blocked the appointment of Caroline Kennedy as US ambassador, according to reports.

By Alex Spillius in Washington Last Updated: 8:37AM BST 11 Apr 2009

Caroline Kennedy Photo: REUTERS
Vatican sources told Il Giornale that their support for abortion disqualified Ms Kennedy and other Roman Catholics President Barack Obama had been seeking to appoint.
Mr Obama was reportedly seeking to reward John F Kennedy's daughter, who publicly gave her support to his election bid. She had been poised to replace Hillary Clinton as New York senator, but dropped out amid criticism that she lacked enough experience for the job.
The Italian paper said that the Vatican strongly disapproved of Mr Obama's support for abortion and stem cell research. The impasse over the ambassadorial appointment threatens to cloud his meeting with the Pope during a G8 summit in Itay in July.
Ms Kennedy, 53, has said that she supports abortion. Raymond Flynn, a former US ambassador to the Vatican, said earlier this week that Ms Kennedy would be a poor choice.
"It's imperative, it's essential that the person who represents us to the Holy See be a person who has pro-life values. I hope the President doesn't make that mistake," he told the Boston Herald. "She said she was pro-choice. I don't assume she's going to change that, which is problematic."
The White House refused to comment.

Obama Nation threatens Catholic Hospitals

Could St. Louis lose its Catholic hospitals under new federal abortion legislation?
By Tim Townsend
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
03/06/2009
A proposed bill promising major changes in the U.S. abortion landscape has Roman Catholic bishops threatening to close Catholic hospitals if the Democratic Congress and White House make it law.
Blog: Will Obama's nominee for HHS be able to present herself for Holy Communion?
Forum: Catholic hospitals have far more to lose by closing than they do by simple civil disobedienceThe Freedom of Choice Act failed to get out of subcommittee in 2004, but its sponsor is poised to refile it now that former Senate co-sponsor Barack Obama occupies the Oval Office.A spokesman for Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said the legislation "is among the congressman's priorities. We expect to reintroduce it sooner rather than later."FOCA, as the bill is known, would make federal law out of the abortion protections established in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade ruling.
document.write('');
The legislation has some Roman Catholic bishops threatening to shutter the country's 624 Catholic hospitals — including 11 in the Archdiocese of St. Louis — rather than comply.Speaking in Baltimore in November at the bishops' fall meeting, Bishop Thomas Paprocki, a Chicago auxiliary bishop, took up the issue of what to do with Catholic hospitals if FOCA became law. "It would not be sufficient to withdraw our sponsorship or to sell them to someone who would perform abortions," he said. "That would be a morally unacceptable cooperation in evil." But even within the Catholic community, there is disagreement about the effects FOCA might have on hospitals, with some health care professionals and bishops saying a strategy of ignoring the law, if it passes, would be more effective than closing hospitals.Ilan Kayatsky, Nadler's spokesman, said he anticipates that the bill's other original sponsor, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., will introduce FOCA in the U.S. Senate. "We expect it to be more or less the same bill with some minor tweaks," Kayatsky said.Boxer's office declined to comment.Rep. William Lacy Clay, a Roman Catholic, and Rep. Russ Carnahan — both St. Louis Democrats — were co-sponsors of the legislation. Neither responded to requests for an interview. Bishop Robert Hermann, acting head of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, was unavailable for comment.In its last incarnation, FOCA defined abortion as a "fundamental right" that no government can "deny" or "interfere with." That language, FOCA's opponents warn, would help overturn abortion restrictions such as parental notification, laws banning certain procedures and constraints on federal funding.Some abortion rights groups say a friendlier Congress and White House makes FOCA less of a priority for them, and they say religious conservatives who oppose abortion rights are using FOCA as a scare tactic."Anti-choice groups know that there are not enough votes to move the Freedom of Choice Act, yet they continue to engage in a divisive campaign demonizing FOCA to distract the public from their opposition to birth control and accurate sex education," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.The nation's Catholic bishops have been among the most vocal opponents of FOCA and Obama's abortion-rights positions. In the days before the November elections, one called Obama "the most committed" abortion-rights supporter to head a presidential ticket since Roe. Obama had promised during his campaign he would sign FOCA if he were elected. Along with the 11 Catholic hospitals within the Archdiocese of St. Louis, the Catholic Health Association of the United States says there are another seven in the St. Louis area within the borders of the Belleville and Springfield, Ill., dioceses.According to the CHA, Catholic hospitals make up 13 percent of the country's nearly 5,000 hospitals, and employ more than 600,000 people. CHA says one of every six Americans hospitalized in the United States is cared for in a Catholic hospital. Not all bishops or Catholic health care professionals see closing down hospitals as a realistic option. Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, Fla., a member of CHA's board of trustees, wrote on his blog last month that "even in the worst-case scenario, Catholic hospitals will not close. We will not comply, but we will not close." Instead, he advocated a strategy of "civil disobedience."Sister Carol Keehan, president and CEO of CHA, said in an interview that she did not believe the language in the most recent version of FOCA — despite its definition of abortion as a fundamental right — would force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions. But she also said that if it did, the church would look to the historical example of racial segregation as a model for civil disobedience."From the other side we hear consistent talk about being pro-choice," Keehan said. "If FOCA passes, the concept of being pro-choice will not be incompatible with our position — our choice would be not to participate."Seven of the 11 hospitals in the Archdiocese of St. Louis are run by SSM Healthcare. In a statement, the company said it opposes FOCA "because it attempts to increase access to abortion and remove restrictions to abortion."If FOCA were to become law, it continued, "We do not believe our Catholic hospitals would be forced to participate and we would advocate strongly for our right of conscience to refuse to provide abortion services."While the Catholic Church has been most vocal on the FOCA issue, it's not alone. As Obama prepared to take the oath of office in January, the National Right to Life Committee warned its members that congressional Democrats were poised to work with the new president "to push an expansive pro-abortion agenda." "The pro-life movement," the organization declared in its monthly newspaper, "is bracing for battle." Pam Fichter, president of Missouri Right to Life, called FOCA "a top priority" for her group, which is working to pass a resolution in both houses of the Missouri Legislature that urges Congress to reject FOCA. The resolution has passed the Missouri House and is scheduled for a hearing in the Senate, and Missouri Right to Life is holding its Pro-Life Action Day in Jefferson City on Tuesday .FOCA opponents have been discouraged by two moves made by Obama's administration in recent weeks. In January, the administration repealed a Bush policy that restricted federal dollars for international groups that perform or promote abortion overseas.And this week, Obama nominated Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Sebelius is a Roman Catholic who has been chastised by Kansas City, Kan., Archbishop Joseph Naumann for her positions supporting abortion rights. Naumann called Sebelius' nomination this week "troubling."After Sebelius' nomination, HHS hinted that it would soon repeal another Bush administration rule — enacted in December — that allowed health care professionals to opt out of providing abortion or birth control procedures on moral grounds.In order to combat what its sees as inevitable, the Catholic Church launched a "Fight FOCA" postcard campaign aimed at Congress in January. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., who participated in an anti-FOCA rally last month at St. Anthony's Catholic School in Sullivan, said he has received "thousands" of postcards over the last month including "a stack 2 feet high" Wednesday."People have worked 30-some years to protect the rights of the unborn and FOCA would undo many of their efforts," Luetkemeyer said. Keehan said shutting down Catholic hospitals would tear the fabric of the American health care system. "Catholic health care plays such an important role in communities across this nation," she said, that Americans are "not going to sacrifice their health care facility, which employs so many, cares for so many, and has been part of their community for many years by forcing them to do abortions."ttownsend@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8221

North Dakota Stands Up for Life

North Dakota House Passes Abortion Ban
Feb 17 2009 7:37PMKXMCTV Minot
North Dakota's House of Representatives has passed a bill effectively outlawing abortion.The House voted 51-41 this afternoon to declare that a fertilized egg has all the rights of any person.That means a fetus could not be legally aborted without the procedure being considered murder.Minot Republican Dan Ruby has sponsored other bills banning abortion in previous legislative sessions - all of which failed.He also sponsored today's bill and says it is compatable with Roe versus Wade - the Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion.(Rep. Dan Ruby, -R- Minot) "This is the exact language that's required by Roe vs. Wade. It stipulated that before a challenge can be made, we have to identify when life begins, and that's what this does." VO CONTINUES But Minot Democrat Kari Conrad says the bill will land North Dakota in court, trying to defend the constitutionality of a law that goes against the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.(Rep. Kari Conrad, -D- Minot) "People who presented this bill, were very clear that they intended to challenge Roe versus Wade. So they intend to put the state of North Dakota into court defending Roe vs. Wade"The bill now goes to the North Dakota Senate. watch the video save this article / add to your favorites list
VOTE! - Job Approval Rating: U.S. Congress

New announcement

Please note that this blog has nothing to do with the website Pelicanproject.org. Some persons have taken that name without our permission. We do not endorse their positions, nor any statements that they may make on that site. We do not in any way identify with them. We will continue to maintain this blog under this name and continue to publish as we have been under the name Pelican Project.

Kansas Planned Parenthood Clinic Charged

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - A Planned Parenthood clinic was charged Wednesday with providing unlawful abortions and other crimes by a county prosecutor who had engaged in a high-profile battle with the clinic when he was Kansas attorney general.

Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline charged the Overland Park, Kan., clinic with 107 counts, 23 of them felonies. Besides 29 misdemeanor counts of providing unlawful late-term abortions, the clinic is charged with multiple counts of making a false writing, failure to maintain records and failure to determine viability.

Case documents have been sealed, according to a court order. The first hearing is set for Nov. 16.

Kline's office did not immediately comment on the charges.

Peter Brownlie, Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri's president and chief executive officer, said Wednesday that the group hasn't had any contact with the district attorney's office but has heard rumors for months that Kline, an abortion opponent, was planning to file criminal charges.

"I've heard nothing at all about specific charges that have been filed," Brownlie said. "We always provide high-quality care in full accord with state and federal law."

As for allegations that Planned Parenthood performed illegal late-term abortions, Brownlie said its clinic doesn't perform any abortions past the 22nd week of pregnancy.

Attorney General Paul Morrison previously reviewed all of the allegations upon which Kline's criminal charges are based and found no wrongdoing, Morrison spokeswoman Ashley Anstaett said.

"We are skeptical that these charges have any merit, and we continue to wonder how much politics influenced Mr. Kline's decision to file these charges," Anstaett said.

Planned Parenthood, Kline and Morrison are embroiled in another lawsuit pending before the Kansas Supreme Court. Planned Parenthood sued Kline, and Morrison later successfully intervened on the state's behalf.

Documents in that case remain sealed as well, and neither Kline nor Planned Parenthood have discussed it, but Morrison warned Planned Parenthood's attorneys in June that Kline appeared to still have access to copies of patient records he had obtained as attorney general. Morrison said those records were forwarded from the attorney general's office to the district attorney's office a few days before Kline left the attorney general's office.

As attorney general, Kline fought for two years to get abortion records from the Overland Park clinic and a Wichita clinic operated by Dr. George Tiller. He said he was investigating whether clinic doctors performed illegal abortions and failed to report suspected child abuse; the clinics alleged he was on a "fishing expedition."

Portions of the sealed documents were leaked to Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who discussed them in a segment where he interviewed Kline days before Kline lost his re-election bid in November. Kline has denied being the source of the leak.

Kline filed charges against Tiller in December, while he was still attorney general, but a judge threw out the case, saying Kline didn't have the jurisdiction to file it.

In June, Morrison filed charges against Tiller that Morrison described as technical violations. Morrison said he found no wrongdoing at the Planned Parenthood clinic.

Morrison, an abortion-rights supporter, was a Republican serving as Johnson County district attorney when he became a Democrat to challenge Kline, a Republican, for the attorney general job. After Morrison won, local GOP activists picked Kline to take Morrison's old job.

---

New Study Wrongly Claims Dangerous Abortion Drug RU 486 is Safe

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
August 16, 2007

Copenhagen, Denmark (LifeNews.com) -- The dangerous abortion drug RU 486 has killed thirteen women worldwide and injured more than 1,100 in the United States alone. Yet, a new study in Denmark claims the abortion pill is safe, though it only studied whether the abortion drug caused problems in future pregnancies. The study did not appear to address any of the more immediate medical issues the abortion drug causes women -- such as the lethal infections that have claimed the lives of several American women. Danish and American researchers examined a Danish database of more than 12,000 women who had abortions there and published a paper on their findings in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. They looked at the number of tubal pregnancies that occurred in subsequent pregnancies after both a surgical abortion and one done with the mifepristone abortion pill. They found that about 300 women in the group suffered from tubal pregnancies in subsequent pregnancies -- a percentage of 2.5 percent that the researchers claimed is low enough that abortions don't cause problems. The rates of miscarriages, early deliveries, and babies born with low birth weights were similar for women with both types of abortions. According to an AP report, the researchers admitted they were not able to take into account a woman's history of smoking, a history of tubal pregnancies, or other factors which may have thrown off the results. But they said they didn't think those factors affected the conclusions of their report. Still, the abortion drug appears to pose significant medical problems for women, and could present a myriad of emotional and spiritual issues as well. According to FDA reports as of December, there have now been eight known deaths associated with RU 486 in the U.S., nine life-threatening incidents, 116 blood transfusions, and 232 hospitalizations. In total, more than 1,100 women have had medical problems after using the drug. The first victim of RU 486 was a Tennessee woman who died after using the abortion drug. She had an undetected ectopic pregnancy, and the drug is not supposed to be used in such situations. Following her death, four California women died from using the abortion drug and the FDA announced last year that a Colorado woman had died as well. Women have died from using the abortion drug in Canada, England, France and Sweden. Abortion advocates and others were quick to respond to the study and claim it proves the abortion drug is safe for women. Dr. Matthew Reeves, who studies reproductive medicine issues at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine but was not involved in the study, told AP "This kind of squashes any concerns." Currently, about 8 to 10 percent of the 1.3 million abortions done in the United States involved the RU 486 abortion drug.

Men and the Abortion Aftermath

8/30/2007 - 5:40 AM PST

Interview With Kevin Burke of Rachel’s Vineyard

KING of PRUSSIA, Pennsylvania, AUG. 30, 2007 (Zenit) - One man's sharing gives other men permission to examine their own role in abortion and the impact it has had on their lives, said counselor Kevin Burke.

Burke, the associate director of Rachel's Vineyard Ministries, and pastoral associate at Priests For Life, has co-edited a new book, "Redeeming a Father's Heart," along with David Wemhoff and Marvin Stockwell, about healing the wounds of post-abortive men.

In this interview with us, Burke discusses the type of wounds men experience when they have been involved in an abortion, avenues for healing, and how to help the women they love also find healing after an abortion.

Q: Your new book, "Redeeming a Father's Heart," addresses the suffering men experience from abortion. Why do you think this issue has gotten so little attention until now?

Burke: We have all heard the exhausted phrase repeated over the years that "abortion is a private personal decision between a woman, her health care provider and her God."

Men were seen to be peripheral figures in the process, detached and unaffected by the woman's "choice."

The reality is that men are involved in 95% of all abortion decisions, and they are profoundly impacted by their participation in the abortion of their child.

In our work as counseling professionals, my wife Theresa and I have worked with many individuals and couples who came to us for healing after abortion.

In the last eight years we have seen a steady increase in men who attended our Rachel's Vineyard Retreats seeking healing.

Many came with their wives or after their partner had attended. As they shared their experiences of abortion we quickly recognized the devastating impact it had on their lives.

Similar to women, when men experience deep healing of post abortion pain, they are freed from the shame and guilt that feeds silence and isolation.

There is a willingness to share their experience with others because they finally recognize that their feelings are normal, they are not alone.

Abortion hurts, and it impacts relationships in the home and workplace.

When one man shares his experience with close friends and family, it gives other men permission to examine their own role in abortion and the impact it has had on their lives and come forward to find healing.

Q: Aside from the absence of the physical suffering caused by the actual abortion, how does the psychological pain and healing process in post-abortive men differ from the experience of women?

Burke: The majority of men encourage, manipulate and even force their girlfriends, partners or wives to abort.

Many other men physically and/or emotionally abandon the mother of their child when they learn she is pregnant.

She is left alone to carry the full burden of the decision and the physical and emotional aftermath of the abortion.

Often the man may rationalize that abortion is in the best interest of the mother and deny her post-abortion grief.

An important part of healing for many men begins with an agonizing repentance of their role in the abortion procedure and the failure to protect mother and baby from harm.

This act of humility opens the door for them to acknowledge that they have also lost a son or a daughter.

This recognition gives them permission to examine how this loss has impacted their lives, how it has injured their father's heart, and encourages them to reach out for reconciliation with God and their child on the journey to healing, peace and restoration in Christ.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are those men who have an instinctive desire to prevent the mother of their child from having an abortion. They do everything they can to offer support to care for both mother and baby.

If they are powerless to prevent the death of their son or daughter, they typically experience serious depression, rage and grief following an unwanted abortion that can be turned inward in self destruction or acted out in numerous unhealthy ways including the abuse of drugs/alcohol/gambling addictions, anger management issues, pornography, etc.

Such men need immediate counseling and an effective emotional and spiritual healing process like the Rachel's Vineyard Retreat.

Keep in mind that men who participate in and support the abortion decision will also experience post abortion symptoms such as shame, guilt, complicated grief, anxiety, depression and relational problems.

Other men suffer from sexual dysfunctions, addictions to pornography and related problems.

The place of the wound is typically where symptoms emerge -- and those symptoms then are likely to occur in future relational difficulties or obsessions and compulsions surrounding sexuality.

Jonathan Flora's story in Redeeming A Father’s Heart reveals that symptoms can be hidden beneath a very successful businessman who is emotionally detached and involved in transitional physical relationships for many years ... yet whose heart is wounded, closed off from deeper intimacy and love that we all hunger for.

Men often do not connect these symptoms with an abortion loss unless they are guided to explore this with a counselor, clergy, friend, through a post-abortion Web site, or a book like "Redeeming a Father's Heart."

Q: One of the chapters, “I Married A Post Abortive Woman,” looks at a man who married a woman who had an abortion before they met. The woman, knowing her husband was not involved in the abortion, was reluctant to share with him her suffering. In what ways can men who find themselves in this situation help the women they love?

Burke: This is a powerful account of a husband growing in his marital promise to love his wife as Christ loves the Church.

However, you can see how tenuous the relationship is in the early stages of their marriage as she struggles with depression, feeling unworthy to embrace motherhood and thoughts of cutting herself -- a commonly diagnosed symptom of Borderline Personality Disorder which is not uncommon among those traumatized by abortion.

The wife exhibits another symptom of post-abortion trauma: marital infidelity. This symptom is rooted in the common experience after abortion of struggling to fully trust and bond with one's spouse.

She feels unworthy of her spouse's love and she is fearful of embracing motherhood. Sadly, she acts out by having an extramarital affair. Many other relationships would have ended by this point.

Fortunately, the couple attended a marriage encounter weekend and later a Rachel's Vineyard Retreat, which led this couple to embrace the healing journey together.

What a blessing this was for their marriage! You see in this couple the redemption of their marriage as they grow to fully live the moral teachings of the Church, which are experienced not as a legalistic burden, but as a gift that offers healing, liberation and freedom.

This husband learned to grow in his role as Christ to his spouse. It is a beautiful example for all men.

It is important to note that this couple would likely have come to healing sooner if they had been gently introduced to a healing program like Rachel's Vineyard and had received information on how abortion might impact their relationship.

So many couples and families are wounded by misuse of the gift of sexuality and abortion loss.

They desperately need the healing found in the Church, and the gift of the Church's teachings on marriage and family life and the good news of abortion healing.

Q: In your book, most of the relationships involving abortions end in divorce, or breaking up. Is this common, and if so, how can couples who have had abortions save their relationships?

Burke: Yes, this is the most common outcome.

Tragically, a person will abort with the hope of salvaging their relationship, but the toxic aftereffects of abortion are like a radioactive seed planted in the heart of the relationship that will, at varying speeds, kill the relationship.

Keep in mind that the relational pain, the damage to trust and intimacy will continue to be present in future relationships and lead to further dysfunction and divorce.

That is why a trauma-sensitive healing process like Rachel's Vineyard is so important to treat the complicated grief, shame, guilt of abortion, so an individual is healed and free to fully trust and embrace the love of another.

Q: What resources are available to help men deal with post-abortion pain both at Project Rachel and elsewhere?

Burke: I am the co-founder with my wife Theresa of Rachel's Vineyard, an international post abortion healing ministry of Priests For Life.

We are blessed to be partnered with Father Frank Pavone, who serves as the pastoral director of Rachel's Vineyard, as we work together to build a culture of life. Over 500 healing retreats were offered around the world in the last year alone.

Men and couples do beautifully on the retreats and provide a special blessing to all participants. It is a special gift for many women to see a man grieving his role in an abortion decision, and the loss of his child.

It's also a great joy to see a man embrace his child with love as the weekend progresses.

Project Rachel, or other diocesan ministries, such as family life offices, sponsor about one-third of our weekend retreats in the United States.

We provide training and treatment models and work cooperatively with Project Rachel, parish-based ministries, retreat houses and all the other groups who reach out with the compassion and mercy of Christ to those suffering after abortion.

Another resource for post-abortive men is The Fatherhood Forever Foundation, founded by Jason Baier, also a contributing author to "Redeeming a Father's Heart."

New Study Wrongly Claims Dangerous Abortion Drug RU 486 is Safe

by Steven Ertelt
August 16, 2007

Copenhagen, Denmark (LifeNews.com) -- The dangerous abortion drug RU 486 has killed thirteen women worldwide and injured more than 1,100 in the United States alone. Yet, a new study in Denmark claims the abortion pill is safe, though it only studied whether the abortion drug caused problems in future pregnancies.

The study did not appear to address any of the more immediate medical issues the abortion drug causes women -- such as the lethal infections that have claimed the lives of several American women.

Danish and American researchers examined a Danish database of more than 12,000 women who had abortions there and published a paper on their findings in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

They looked at the number of tubal pregnancies that occurred in subsequent pregnancies after both a surgical abortion and one done with the mifepristone abortion pill.

They found that about 300 women in the group suffered from tubal pregnancies in subsequent pregnancies -- a percentage of 2.5 percent that the researchers claimed is low enough that abortions don't cause problems.

The rates of miscarriages, early deliveries, and babies born with low birth weights were similar for women with both types of abortions.

According to an AP report, the researchers admitted they were not able to take into account a woman's history of smoking, a history of tubal pregnancies, or other factors which may have thrown off the results.

But they said they didn't think those factors affected the conclusions of their report.

Still, the abortion drug appears to pose significant medical problems for women, and could present a myriad of emotional and spiritual issues as well.

According to FDA reports as of December, there have now been eight known deaths associated with RU 486 in the U.S., nine life-threatening incidents, 116 blood transfusions, and 232 hospitalizations.

In total, more than 1,100 women have had medical problems after using the drug.

The first victim of RU 486 was a Tennessee woman who died after using the abortion drug. She had an undetected ectopic pregnancy, and the drug is not supposed to be used in such situations.

Following her death, four California women died from using the abortion drug and the FDA announced last year that a Colorado woman had died as well.

Women have died from using the abortion drug in Canada, England, France and Sweden.

Abortion advocates and others were quick to respond to the study and claim it proves the abortion drug is safe for women.

Dr. Matthew Reeves, who studies reproductive medicine issues at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine but was not involved in the study, told AP "This kind of squashes any concerns."

Currently, about 8 to 10 percent of the 1.3 million abortions done in the United States involved the RU 486 abortion drug.

Planned Parenthood 'education' shut down

WND MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH
Planned Parenthood 'education' shut down
Law bans abortion providers from teaching sex ed in schools
Posted: July 12, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern By Chelsea Schilling © 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt has signed a bill into law that prevents abortion providers from teaching sex education in schools and makes a state Alternatives to Abortion Services Program permanent.

"All life is precious and needs to be treated with the utmost dignity and respect," the Republican governor said in a press release. "I commend Rep. Therese Sander and Sen. Delbert Scott on their work to protect the rights of the most vulnerable members of our society. I will continue working with the Missouri General Assembly to pass strong pro-life legislation that respects the sanctity and dignity of all human life."

Blunt said House Bill 1055 is "one of the strongest pieces of pro-life legislation in Missouri history" as he spoke during a signing ceremony at Concord Baptist Church. The legislation prohibits school districts and charter schools from providing abortion services or allowing abortion providers from offering, sponsoring or furnishing course materials related to human sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases.

Missouri Right to Life, the pro-life group backing the measure, told WND that abortion providers like Planned Parenthood should not be allowed to supply sex education materials to schools. President Pam Fichter said the organization is pleased to see HB 1055 signed into law.

"This legislation is going to protect women, save lives and also protect our school children," she told WND. "It is going to keep out of the classroom those who have a conflict of interest because this disallows those who are abortion providers from teaching sex ed. You wouldn't ask tobacco companies to come to schools and teach about smoking cessation, so why would you ask abortion providers to teach sex education?"

Blunt echoed her concern, claiming materials provided by Planned Parenthood constitute a "significant source of revenue" for the organization. However, Planned Parenthood claims to provide sex education materials to schools at no cost. It also says staff members who teach sex education in 41 Missouri schools are told not to discuss abortions.

In addition to preventing abortion clinics from providing sex education in schools, the new bill permanently establishes the Missouri Alternatives to Abortion Services Program to provide services or counseling to pregnant women and assistance to mothers in caring for their children or placing them up for adoption. Counseling and services are available to women during pregnancy and for one year after the birth of the child.

Missouri law requires departments administering the program to develop an advertising campaign publicizing alternatives to abortion and to prioritize federal, public and private money for such programs first. Funds will not be used to perform, induce or assist in abortions.

The legislation has Planned Parenthood personnel concerned that new surgical standards could cause clinic closures. HB 1055 places a large number of abortion facilities under government oversight, classifying them as ambulatory surgical centers. According to Associated Press reports, Planned Parenthood has said the law could force it to spend up to $2 million to remodel one of its clinics and halt medical abortions at another.

Paula Gianino, president of Planned Parenthood for the St. Louis region, estimated the new standards under HB 1055 could leave only one abortion facility in the state. However, Fichter expressed little apprehension for Planned Parenthood's financial hardships.

"Well that certainly wouldn't cause us any concern," Fichter told WND. "This requirement is a common sense medical safeguard requiring abortion clinics to adhere to the same regulations as other clinics that perform surgery. So, this is just setting some common sense standards for abortion clinics. If they have problems adhering to that, you have to ask why they aren't currently maintaining those types of standards."

The AP reported a similar reaction from Gov. Blunt regarding hardships for abortion clinics: "I say if they can't meet the same basic requirements that other (medical) providers do, then they should shut down."

New Push Likely for Restrictions Over Abortions

DENVER, April 19 — Both sides of the abortion debate expect a new push for restrictions as state lawmakers around the country digest the implications of the Supreme Court decision Wednesday upholding a federal ban on a type of abortion.

But such legislation could face headwinds in states where voters in the last election sent large numbers of Democrats — many of them abortion rights advocates — into office for the first time.

Seventeen houses or senates in the states shifted position on abortion after the November elections — 15 toward more abortion rights and 2 toward greater restrictions — according to an analysis by Naral Pro-Choice America. The group says six new governors supporting abortion rights were elected, compared with one who had voiced strong views against abortion.

“Something this drastic is going to energize both sides,” said Katherine Grainger, the director of the state program at the Center for Reproductive Rights, an abortion rights legal advocacy group based in New York. The organization represented some of the doctors involved in the Supreme Court case decided Wednesday.

The reasoning of both the court’s majority opinion upholding the restrictions and the dissent gave encouragement to opponents of abortion. The ruling, they said, will bolster their argument that the issues raised by abortion — among them defining fully informed consent by women who want to end pregnancies and the question of when a fetus feels pain — are legitimate topics for state legislation.

“The case does not give us a new issue, it reinforces the issue and gives us an opportunity to use it,” said Mary S. Balch, the director of for state legislation at the National Right to Life Committee.

Ms. Balch and other legislative experts said that North Dakota, Missouri, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas and Alabama, where legislators are still meeting and anti-abortion legislation is on the table, were probably the places to watch for now.

Only hours after the Supreme Court’s ruling, a lawmaker in Alabama introduced a measure that would ban almost all abortions in the state. Most states have adjourned their legislatures for the year or passed the deadline for introducing new bills.

Some scholars of the abortion debate say that all the tilting and jousting of politics and the technical legal issues raised by the Supreme Court in upholding, by a 5-to-4 vote, the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Act are beside the point.

What the court really did, said Anne Hendershott, a professor of sociology at the University of San Diego, was reframe the debate about how abortion should be discussed.

The court did not talk about big concepts and issues like privacy, but about the small, gripping details of how abortion works, said Professor Hendershott, author of “The Politics of Abortion” (Encounter, 2006).

Focusing on such details, she said, is how so-called “incrementalists” are trying to chip away at the availability of abortion. These opponents try to make women, doctors and other health professionals talk more, in some cases a lot more, about the actual consequences and mechanics of abortion.

With the court’s ruling and the new fuel it gives to the strategy of encouraging those discussions, Professor Hendershott said, the incrementalists have won the debate — if not over abortion, then at least over how to fight it.

“This case changes the conversation,” she said. “The battle between the incrementalists and those who wanted a constitutional amendment was won by the incrementalists.”

Some lawmakers who are backing anti-abortion bills in their states said the ruling helped them by declaring that some specific restrictions are constitutional. The Supreme Court has never before upheld a ban on a specific kind of abortion.

The emphasis in the court’s ruling was also much less on the health or well-being of the pregnant woman, but on the risks and consequences of an abortion to her and her fetus. This makes discussion of an abortion’s potentially negative consequences easier, the lawmakers said.

“It certainly doesn’t hurt,” said James Mills, a Republican state representative from Gainesville, Ga. Mr. Mills is the chief sponsor of a bill in the Legislature that would require doctors to offer patients seeking abortions the choice of viewing an ultrasound image of the fetus.

In South Carolina, lawmakers are also debating a law involving ultrasound. One approach would have required a woman to view the ultrasound image of her fetus before the abortion could be performed. The other says the option must be offered to the woman by her doctor.

State Senator Kevin Bryant, a Republican from Anderson and a sponsor of one of the bills, said abortions of the sort addressed by the Supreme Court were already illegal in South Carolina. But Mr. Bryant said the ruling could provide some momentum to other restrictions.

“We may also look down the road and end up seeing some other procedures that should be restricted too,” he said. “We don’t want to do too much at one time.”

Legislators in North Dakota are looking at legislation that would immediately ban abortion statewide if Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that made abortion legal, is overturned.

The Mississippi Legislature passed just such a bill earlier this year, banning nearly all abortions if the ruling is overturned. The law was signed Thursday by Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican.

But some winds are blowing the other way.

In Oklahoma, the Democratic governor, Brad Henry, vetoed legislation Wednesday that would ban state facilities and workers from performing abortions except to save the life of the pregnant woman. Mr. Henry, who has supported some restrictions on abortion in the past, said the bill went too far. Supporters of the bill, which passed overwhelmingly in both houses, hope to override the veto.

Last month, Gov. Dave Freudenthal of Wyoming, a Democrat, vetoed a bill that would have created a new category of homicide if a pregnant woman was murdered and her unborn fetus died. Mr. Freudenthal said in his veto message that he thought the bill was probably unconstitutional.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York, a Democrat, told an abortion rights group Thursday that he would fight to keep abortion legal in his state.

Some opponents of abortion said that, until the Supreme Court’s ruling, this had not been a particularly good year for their cause.

In part this may have been because of the changed composition in state legislatures and in part because of what many politicians saw as a backlash when South Dakota tried to ban most abortions last year. The Legislature passed a sweeping ban, only to see the public repeal it in a statewide referendum.

“This particular legislative session was a tough year for us,” said Ms. Balch of the National Right to Life Committee. “We had some victories, but we would have liked more.”

She said lawmakers in South Dakota seemed to be taking a year off after last year’s defeat. Virginia, often a hotbed of anti-abortion discussion, has been quiet too, she said.

Dan Frosch contributed reporting from Denver.

Supreme Court OKs Abortion Procedure Ban

Apr 18, 3:48 PM (ET)
By MARK SHERMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court's conservative majority handed anti-abortion forces a major victory Wednesday in a decision that bans a controversial abortion procedure and set the stage for further restrictions. For the first time since the court established a woman's right to an abortion in 1973, the justices upheld a nationwide ban on a specific abortion method, labeled partial-birth abortion by its opponents. The 5-4 decision written by Justice Anthony Kennedy said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion. The law is constitutional despite not containing an exception that would allow the procedure if needed to preserve a woman's health, Kennedy said. "The law need not give abortion doctors unfettered choice in the course of their medical practice," he wrote in the majority opinion. Kennedy's opinion, joined by Bush's two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, was a long-awaited resounding win that abortion opponents expected from the more conservative bench. The administration defended the law as drawing a bright line between abortion and infanticide. Reacting to the ruling, Bush said that it affirms the progress his administration has made to defend the "sanctity of life."

"I am pleased that the Supreme Court has upheld a law that prohibits the abhorrent procedure of partial birth abortion," he said. "Today's decision affirms that the Constitution does not stand in the way of the people's representatives enacting laws reflecting the compassion and humanity of America."

It was the first time the court banned a specific procedure in a case over how - not whether - to perform an abortion. Abortion rights groups as well as the leading association of obstetricians and gynecologists have said the procedure sometimes is the safest for a woman. They also said that such a ruling could threaten most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy, although Kennedy said alternate, more widely used procedures remain legal. The outcome is likely to spur efforts at the state level to place more restrictions on abortions.

"I applaud the Court for its ruling today, and my hope is that it sets the stage for further progress in the fight to ensure our nation's laws respect the sanctity of unborn human life," said Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, Republican leader in the House of Representatives.

Said Eve Gartner of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America: "This ruling flies in the face of 30 years of Supreme Court precedent and the best interest of women's health and safety. ... This ruling tells women that politicians, not doctors, will make their health care decisions for them." She had argued that point before the justices. More than 1 million abortions are performed in the United States each year, according to recent statistics. Nearly 90 percent of those occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and are not affected by Wednesday's ruling. The Guttmacher Institute says 2,200 dilation and extraction procedures - the medical term most often used by doctors - were performed in 2000, the latest figures available. Six federal courts have said the law that was in focus Wednesday is an impermissible restriction on a woman's constitutional right to an abortion. The law bans a method of ending a pregnancy, rather than limiting when an abortion can be performed. "Today's decision is alarming," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in dissent. She said the ruling "refuses to take ... seriously" previous Supreme Court decisions on abortion. Ginsburg said the latest decision "tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists." Ginsburg said that for the first time since the court established a woman's right to an abortion in 1973, "the court blesses a prohibition with no exception safeguarding a woman's health." She was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens. The procedure at issue involves partially removing the fetus intact from a woman's uterus, then crushing or cutting its skull to complete the abortion. Abortion opponents say the law will not reduce the number of abortions performed because an alternate method - dismembering the fetus in the uterus - is available and, indeed, much more common. In 2000, the court with key differences in its membership struck down a state ban on partial-birth abortions. Writing for a 5-4 majority at that time, Justice Breyer said the law imposed an undue burden on a woman's right to make an abortion decision in part because it lacked a health exception. The Republican-controlled Congress responded in 2003 by passing a federal law that asserted the procedure is gruesome, inhumane and never medically necessary to preserve a woman's health. That statement was designed to overcome the health exception to restrictions that the court has demanded in abortion cases. But federal judges in California, Nebraska and New York said the law was unconstitutional, and three appellate courts agreed. The Supreme Court accepted appeals from California and Nebraska, setting up Wednesday's ruling. Kennedy's dissent in 2000 was so strong that few court watchers expected him to take a different view of the current case. Kennedy acknowledged continuing disagreement about the procedure within the medical community. In the past, courts have cited that uncertainty as a reason to allow the disputed procedure. "The medical uncertainty over whether the Act's prohibition creates significant health risks provides a sufficient basis to conclude ... that the Act does not impose an undue burden," Kennedy said Wednesday. While the court upheld the law against a broad attack on its constitutionality, Kennedy said the court could entertain a challenge in which a doctor found it necessary to perform the banned procedure on a patient suffering certain medical complications. The law allows the procedure to be performed when a woman's life is in jeopardy. The cases are Gonzales v. Carhart, 05-380, and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, 05-1382.

More young doctors oppose abortions on ethical ground

thisislondon.co.uk
London, Tuesday 17.04.07

The NHS abortion service is heading for a crisis because increasing numbers of doctors refuse to carry out terminations, it was claimed. There has been a big rise in young medics with 'conscientious objections' to abortion. The increase has been revealed by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. It says there is evidence of a 'slow but growing problem' of young doctors opting out of abortion training on moral grounds. Some senior doctors have blamed declining interest on the lack of 'glamour' involved in the work. This has been dubbed 'dinner party syndrome' where doctors don't want to admit to their friends that they do abortions. In addition, changes to training schedules and reductions in working hours mean trainee doctors are opting out of a branch of specialist work that may not enhance their career prospects. RCOG spokesman Kate Guthrie, who is head of abortion services in Hull, said: "You get no thanks for performing abortions, you get spat on. Who admits to friends at a dinner party that they are an abortionist? It is not a sexy area - it is a bog standard area of women's care. "There is an increasing number of young doctors who are not participating in the training. The college and the Department of Health are really worried." She said abortion care must become part of core training in a new curriculum being introduced in August, although it should not be compulsory. The college was not able to produce any figures to back up its claims, however. But the situation has prompted abortion groups to call for a change in the law which would allow nurses to carry out early surgical and medical abortions - procedures which are technically simple. A spokesman for Marie Stopes, Britain's biggest private provider of abortions, said this would dramatically increase provision. Spokesman Tony Kerridge said: "Ninety per cent of terminations take place before 12 weeks when they are simple, low-tech procedures. "It's not glamorous work for doctors which may partly explain the increasing difficulty in recruitment over the last five or six years, and younger people no longer understand or recall the time when abortion was illegal. "Our research published in The Lancet shows nurses and paramedics in Vietnam and South Africa do the work extremely successfully, but they are not allowed to here. This must change." Marie Stopes currently carries out one in three British abortions, with two-thirds funded by NHS contracts. Mr Kerridge said surveys show one in five GPs oppose abortiontion but most do not let it stand in the way of caring for their patients. Julia Millington of the ProLife Alliance, agreed that doctors are turning away from the work on moral grounds. She said: "We have been hearing for some time now that young doctors, in particular, do not want to work in this field. Those choosing to go into medicine presumably do so because they want to cure sickness and disease not end the lives of innocent human beings. "Public and Parliamentary opinion on the abortion issue has shifted in recent years and this is further evidence that the law must be reviewed." But the British Pregnancy Advisory Service said it was not aware of any documented rise in conscientious objections where a doctor refuses to work in abortion or IVF services on the grounds of moral conviction. Chief executive Ann Furedi said "The current crop of medical students have not themselves seen women dying slowly and painfully after self -induced and unsafe aborneurosurgeryin the UK- but if they went to the many countries overseas where abortion is still illegal or only available to rich people, they would see this. "Abortion is an absolutely essential, life-saving part of medical care - it may not be the most glamorous medical speciality on the face of it, compared to stem cell research or - but it is seen as heroic work by the women that it helps." Dr Kate Paterson, a consultant obstetrician working in abortion care, said: "There are an awful lot of doctors already working helping women to get pregnant in the NHS and in the private IVF sector. "There are a hell of a lot less who want to help women when they are pregnant and can't cope. "There is a desperate need for this kind of work and women can be in really extreme situations." A Department of Health spokesman said "We are aware that a minority of doctors choose to opt out from performing abortions, as they are legally entitled to do. "However, this is not preventing women from accessing abortion services. The statistics show that the number of abortions being performed remains stable year on year and that more abortions are being performed earlier." She said the Department of Health would be discussing the issue of training with the college.

Botched procedure shuts down abortion business

One of the closures was the Summit Medical Center in Birmingham, shut down after a nurse was accused of illegally giving out a fatal abortion drug

State investigators looking into woman's allegations of negligence

Another abortion business has been closed down, this one while an investigation is conducted into the treatment of a woman who suffered two strokes, a collapsed lung and neurological damage as a result of her abortion, officials say.

The woman also has filed a lawsuit against the Metropolitan Medical Associates of New Jersey and the two abortionists who treated her, alleging "negligent, careless and reckless care."

It brings to 18 the number of abortion businesses closed over the past year because of investigations of deaths or injury, as well as investigations into unlicensed and other inappropriate activity.

The newest closure happened over just the last few days – after Rasheedah Dinkins went to Metropolitan Medical Associates on Jan. 27 for what she thought would be a routine abortion.

However, a report from Operation Rescue, one of the nation's front-line pro-life organizations, said after Dinkins returned home that day, she collapsed.

"Family members summoned an ambulance to transport her to Newark Beth Israel Medical Center where she slipped into a coma lasting four weeks. When she awoke, Rasheedah learned that she had suffered massive blood loss, two strokes, a collapsed lung, neurological damage, and the removal of her uterus. She finally regained her ability to speak on Tuesday," the report said.

She remains hospitalized in critical care, officials said.

The Metropolitan Medical Center was closed by the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services for the investigation after a hospital worker reported to authorities the botched abortion, officials said.

The business also had been ordered closed in 1993 after a 20-year-old college student died following a perforated uterus during an abortion there.

In the new case, the woman also has sued Metropolitan Associates, which is affiliated with the National Abortion Federation, and abortionists Keith Gresham and Nicholas Kotopoulos, the report said.

"Rasheedah showed remarkable courage in first being willing to admit that she should not have had the abortion, and second in her willingness to publicly discuss what happened to her," said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. "We pray her lawsuit succeeds in helping to permanently close this high-volume child-killing center."

He said, however, the situation is "not unique."

"We urge other women who have been injured [at] this and any other abortion mill to come forward and report their stories to their local authorities," Newman said. "The abortion industry is a predatory one, and the so-called standards that groups like the NAF impose on themselves are a joke.

"As long as women remain silent, they will continue to subject women to shoddy, dangerous conditions and substandard care. Now is the time to speak out to prevent other women from making the same tragic decision," Newman said.

As WND has reported, the pursuit of legal action against various abortion businesses is being encouraged by pro-life concerns, because of the potential for damage to the industry.

The issue is that the federal laws require abortion businesses to follow all state laws in order to obtain the millions of dollars a year taxpayers provide to the industry. If they are documented as having failed, not only could future subsidies be endangered, but past subsidies might have to be repaid.

Mark Crutcher, the chief of Life Dynamics, has told WND that with the industry's "heavy reliance" on tax subsidies, "losing that money would be nothing less than a financial catastrophe."

"Needless to say that could literally cripple the entire abortion industry," he concluded.

The possible offenses include negligent care, not filing the proper reports or other offenses.

"If you're not following state law, you're not entitled to Title X funds," Newman agreed. "As soon as you defund abortion clinics, they dry up and blow away."

In a separate simultaneous report, Jim Sedlak of the American Life League noted that Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion providing in the country, also has seen significant declines in the number of its clinics.

"In our study, we found the organization has 817 'health' clinics. The number of 'health' clinics is the lowest it has been since 1987," he said. "Americans are rejecting Planned Parenthood and its agenda…"

He said corporation's number of outlets in 1987 was 816, and it rose to 938 in 1995, when the company announced a campaign to have 2,000 clinics in 2000. Since then, however, it has been downhill, with only 875 clinics in 2000 and 825 in 2005.

Operation Rescue has been active on several pro-life fronts, including the purchase and shutdown of an abortion clinic in Wichita, Kan. It also has been on the leading edge of public concern over the allegedly inappropriate activities at another Wichita clinic, run by abortion George Tiller, who specializes in late-term procedures.

He was charged by the Kansas attorney general with 30 criminal counts in December, but the charges later were dropped under suspicious circumstances.

The actual closures include:

• Aradia Women's Health Center of Seattle, which had operated for 34 years, announced it was closing because of finances. A statement from an executive said its clients are "too poor."
• Springfield Health Care Center in Springfield, Mo., was closed down by regulators.
• Summit Women's Health Organization in Milwaukee, Wis., shut down with no announcement, and no explanation.
• Summit Medical Center in Birmingham, Ala., was closed down this year when a nurse was accused of illegally prescribing abortion drugs to a mother who was eight months pregnant. The nurse later was charged with three counts. The corporation declared bankruptcy.
• Central Women's Services, an abortion clinic in Wichita, Kan., closed when Operation Rescue itself bought the building and evicted the tenant abortion clinic.
• Falls Church Healthcare Center in Falls Church, Va., lost its lease and locked its doors.
• Women's Services PC, a clinic in Omaha, Neb., also was closed because the land was purchased from underneath the business and the owners couldn't find another facility to rent.
• A Gynecologists Diagnostic Center, a business in Hialeah, Fla., was closed by an investigation into allegations a baby was born alive, then killed and placed on the roof of the building to avoid detection by police.
• Orlando Women's Center, in Orlando, Fla., was owned by James Pendergraft and was shut down when the abortionist was found to be providing illegal late-term abortions and dispensing drugs without a license.
• EPOC Clinic, another operation in Orlando owned by Pendergraft, was closed for "flagrant" violations of state law.
• In Daytona Beach, Fla., the Family Planning Center abortion business was closed down by abortionist Randall Whitney, who said the state had no right to regulate his business and he wouldn't comply with state rules.
• The Center for Women's Health in Cleveland, Ohio, was shut down by regulators after they discovered more than a dozen violations of the law.
• In Aurora, Illinois, sheriff's deputies hauled away "medical equipment" and office supplies as a clinic run by abortionist Louis S. Myers was closed down on orders from the landlord, who evicted the business. The property owner, who ran the abortion business for years himself before retiring, said the new business operator simply disappeared.
• Reproductive Health Services, a business in Montgomery, Ala., was closed when authorities found the abortionist didn't have hospital privileges, in violation of state laws. It later reopened on a provisional license.
• Three other clinics owned by Pendergraft were closed, but reopened later.

Several other abortionists not affiliated with a particular clinic also have lost their licenses over regulatory violations.

Giuliani on public funding of abortion

Texas Man Gets Death for Killing Fetus

Feb 7, 7:35 PM EST

Texas Man Gets Death for Killing Fetus

By ELIZABETH WHITE
Associated Press Writer

SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- A former youth pastor was sentenced to death Wednesday for killing a teenager and her fetus in what is believed to be the first such order in Texas, the nation's busiest death penalty state. Adrian Estrada, 23, was convicted Friday of one count of capital murder for the death of Stephanie Sanchez and the fetus, of which he was the father. "This is a significant case," said Bexar County prosecutor Susan Reed. "This is significant for the state." A 2003 Texas law amended the definition of the word "individual" to include an "unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth." The death sentence is Texas' first in the death of a fetus, said Dave Atwood, founder of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, which monitors capital cases. Sanchez, 17, was three months pregnant Dec. 12, 2005, when her body was found in her family's home. She had been choked and stabbed 13 times. During the trial, DNA evidence was presented to show Estrada was the father. Estrada, a former youth pastor for a church, admitted to the stabbing the day after the killings. Prosecutors also said he worked out at a gym and went shopping after the crime. He showed no emotion when his punishment was read. "The bad guy that you don't suspect is the one that you can't protect your loved one from," said Scott Simpson, Bexar County assistant prosecutor. "And that's what he was and that's what he is." Estrada's attorney, Suzanne Kramer, had argued that her client made bad decisions. "It that enough to execute him? Is that enough to kill him?" she asked the jury. According to the Web site of the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least 36 states have homicide laws defining a fetus as a person.

Man facing charges over attempted abortion

GOTHENBURG, Sweden, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- A 26-year-old man in Sweden will face assault charges and abortion law violations after he allegedly slipped his pregnant girlfriend abortion pills.

The Local said that the unidentified man allegedly mixed some of the prescription pills into his girlfriend's food after learning she was pregnant, leading her to nearly suffer a miscarriage.

Once the woman ingested the pills, she required medical attention after becoming nauseous and starting to bleed.

The paper said the man will now face the charges in Vanersborg District Court in western Sweden's Vastra Gotaland County.

Anti-abortion protesters took to the streets of Lisbon

LISBON (Reuters) - Thousands of anti-abortion protesters took to the streets of Lisbon on Sunday urging Portuguese to reject a referendum aimed at lifting the ban on abortion in this deeply Catholic country.

Up to 15,000 people joined a "walk for life" that began in front of a Lisbon maternity hospital, police and organizers said. "The law has to defend the defenseless, the one that has no voice, the child that is inside his mother's womb", said Jose Bagao Felix, a conservative former government minister. Portugal, one of a few countries in Europe that bans abortion, will hold a vote to decriminalize abortion in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy on February 11. The number of Portuguese in favor of legalizing abortion has fallen to 59 percent from 72 percent in recent months, according to a poll by Portugal's Catholic University. And with the number of undecided voters rising, the result of the referendum is difficult to predict. The referendum, proposed by the ruling Socialists, needs more than 50 percent of the electorate to vote to be valid. A referendum on the issue in 1998 failed when too few voters turned out. A recent poll found the number of those who will definitely vote has fallen to 58 percent from 68 percent, suggesting a repeat of 1998 is possible.

Supreme Court Hears Arguments on Partial Birth Abortion Law

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court justices Wednesday sharply questioned attorneys on both sides of the legal battle over so-called partial birth abortions as the high court weighed whether to uphold Congress's ban on the procedure.

In an intense morning of arguments, lawyers for the Bush administration and supporters of abortion rights gave starkly contrasting views the medical procedure that opponents call partial-birth abortion. A law passed by Congress labels it a gruesome and inhumane practice. Supporters argue that such late-term abortions sometimes are the safest for women.

A man in the audience began shouting midway through the proceedings, disrupting the hearing briefly before security guards dragged from the premises.

Before that incident, Chief Justice John Roberts joined Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter, Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens in questioning whether the court should defer to congressional findings that these late-term abortions are never medically necessary. Proponents disagree, saying there is strong medical evidence to the contrary.

"We have no evidence in the record" as to how often such a situation arises? Roberts asked.

"No, your honor," replied attorney Priscilla Smith, arguing on behalf of the supporters of the abortion method being debated in the case.

At issue is the fate of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003.

The Bush administration urged the court Wednesday to uphold the nationwide ban, marking the high court's most contentious foray into the abortion issue under Roberts' leadership.

Six federal courts on both coasts and in the Midwest have struck down the law as an impermissible restriction on a woman's constitutional right to an abortion that the Supreme Court established in its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973.

A long line of people hoping for a seat inside stretched across the court's plaza hours before the session was to begin. Dozens of people camped through a rainy night in Washington to ensure their place near the head of the line.

A day earlier, abortion was on several state ballots. In South Dakota, voters repealed a state law that virtually outlaws abortions, an issue that itself could end up before the court.

California and Oregon voters rejected measures that would have required that teenagers get their parents' consent before having an abortion.

Partial-birth abortion is not a medical term, but abortion opponents say it accurately describes "a rarely used and gruesome late-term abortion procedure that resembles infanticide," as Solicitor General Paul Clement said in court papers. Clement will argue the case for the administration.

Abortion-rights proponents dispute almost every aspect of the government's case, including the name for the procedure. They say the law has a much broader reach than the government claims and would threaten almost all abortions that take place after the third month of pregnancy.

Doctors most often refer to the procedure as a dilation and extraction or an intact dilation and evacuation abortion. It involves partially extracting a fetus from the uterus, then cutting or crushing its skull.

The procedure appears to take place most often in the middle of the third trimester. There are a few thousand such abortions, according to rough estimates, out of more than 1.25 million abortions in the United States annually. Ninety percent of all abortions occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and are not at issue.

By a 5-4 vote, the court invalidated a similar law in Nebraska in 2000 because it encompassed other abortion methods and did not contain an exception that would allow the procedure to preserve a woman's health, an underpinning of Supreme Court abortion rulings.

Two things have changed in the past six years, the composition of the court and Congress' involvement in the issue by tailoring a law to overcome the objections raised by justices in the Nebraska case.

Abortion opponents are optimistic the court will uphold the law because Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, part of the majority in the 2000 case, has retired and her place was taken by Justice Samuel Alito.

Bush appointed both Roberts and Alito, and most legal analysts believe that neither man will be especially supportive of abortion rights.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court's swing voter following O'Connor's departure, dissented so strongly in the Nebraska case that many court observers believe he is unlikely to switch sides.

The congressional ban attempts to define the type of abortion more precisely and also declares that the procedure is never medically necessary, eliminating the need for a health exception.

Planned Parenthood of America and other abortion-rights supporters are hopeful that the court's respect for its own prior rulings and substantial evidence presented at three trials will overcome the administration's contention that Congress' pronouncements on abortion should carry special weight.

As it does in other high-profile cases, the court will release audio tapes of the proceedings shortly after the arguments conclude.

The cases are Gonzales v. Carhart, 05-380, and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, 05-1382.