LifeNews.com Pro-Life News Report
Frisday, February 19, 2010
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Current Headlines
• Obama Pro-Abortion Health Care Reconciliation Bill Expected Monday
• Pro-Life Women Leaders Address CPAC Conference: We're Winning on Abortion
• Governor Tim Pawlenty Promotes Pro-Life, Opposes Obama Health Care at CPAC
• Abortion Practitioner Keeps License Despite Violating Court Order, Med Board
• New Study of PVS Patients Casts Increasing Doubt on Terri Schiavo's Death
• Pope Benedict: Dignitas Personae, Dignity of People Same in Abortion, Bioethics
• Women Really Want Abstinence-Based Empowerment, Not NOW and Casual Sex
• Russian Teenage Girl Dies From Legal Abortion at Moscow Hospital Wednesday
• Nebraska Pro-Life Advocates to Rally Next Week as Leg Hears Abortion Bills
• Virginia Christian Leaders Urge State Officials to Cut Planned Parenthood Funds
• Oklahoma Judge Rules Pro-Life Law on Abortion Unconstitutional
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Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Democrats in Washington are continuing to push for the controversial reconciliation strategy to railroad the pro-abortion government-run health care bill through Congress. And Republicans continue blasting the upcoming health care summit as a charade and "infomercial" for the bill. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama is reportedly writing a revised health care bill that can be attached to a budget bill and receive approval in the Senate on a majority vote.
The idea behind the Obama bill, or a corrections measure that allows the House to adopt the pro-abortion Senate bill, is to rely on the reconciliation process to get around the Republican filibuster and make it so only 51 votes are needed to approve the bill.
As LifeNews.com reported, Obama officials said the bill may be ready by the weekend and now they have updated their prediction by saying it will be posted on the Internet on Monday morning.
"It will be a reconciliation bill," the new York Times quoted a top Democratic staffer as saying. "If Republicans don't come with any substantial offers, this is what we would do."
One Capitol Hill Democrat told the Times abortion remains "a wild card," but pro-life advocates would be surprised if the Obama bill contained the Stupak amendment that appears in the House bill and bans abortion funding. The Senate measure contains massive abortion funding and other pro-abortion problems. Full story at LifeNews.com
Pro-Life Women Leaders Address CPAC Conference: We're Winning on Abortion
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Some of the top pro-life leaders in the country addressed the conservative CPAC conference this morning where thousands of pro-life and conservative activists from across the nation are gathering. They had a consistent message for attendees: the pro-life movement is winning the battle on abortion.
Charmaine Yoest, the president of Americans United for Life, told the audience that polling data bears out the fact that the pro-life movement is ahead.
She said the mainstream media "wants to write our obituary" and tell the pro-life movement "America is pro-choice on abortion so just get over it and move on."
"The truth of the matter is that, despite the fact" that abortion is legal, there is much the pro-life movement can do "right now" to stop abortions and put Roe v. Wade into the "ash heap of history," Yoest said.
She pointed to research from University of Alabama political scientist Dr. Michael New, whose data has shown that laws such as parental consent on abortion and reducing taxpayer funding of abortions have saved lives.
"When you include a two parent parental consent statute," Yoest explained, states see a 31 percent abortion decrease among teenagers -- something she calls "breathtaking."
She said the "pro-life movement is the human rights movement of our day." Full story at LifeNews.com
Governor Tim Pawlenty Promotes Pro-Life, Opposes Obama Health Care at CPAC
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- At the national conservative CPAC conference this morning, Minnesota governor and potential 2012 presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty promoted the pro-life perspective. He also delivered what may be the quote of the day referencing embattled golfer Tiger Woods in opposition to the pro-abortion health care bill.
He said "our Constitution values respect for the sanctity of human life, the values out nation was founded upon."
"God is in charge," he declared. "If it's good enough for the Founding Fathers, then it should be good enough for each and every one of us," he said, adding that they gave us certain inalienable rights such as the right to life.
Pawlenty, who has built a strong pro-life record as the governor of Minnesota, said pro-life advocates could borrow a page from the Tiger Woods story.
"Not from Tiger, but from his wife," Pawlenty said. "She said, 'I've had enough.' She said, 'No more.' I think we should take a page out of her playbook and take a nine-iron and smash the window out of the big government in this country."
"We're planting the flag on constitutional ground, and if you try to take our freedoms, we will fight back," Pawlenty said during his 25 minute address to the thousands of pro-life and conservative activists at the conference. Full story at LifeNews.com
Abortion Practitioner Keeps License Despite Violating Court Order, Medical Board
San Diego, CA (LifeNews.com) -- Southern California abortion practitioner Andrew Rutland faced a court hearing yesterday, but a judge allowed him to keep his medical license despite violating a court order and the state medical board. Rutland killed a woman during an abortion by administering anesthesia to her and not knowing the proper dosage. The case concerning the woman's legal abortion death is pending and the medical board and a Administrative Law Judge James Ahler told Rutland to stop doing abortions until its conclusion.
However, Rutland was caught in an undercover sting operation scheduling an abortion in violation of the order to stop doing them while his disciplinary case proceeded.
At an emergency hearing yesterday, Judge Ahler allowed Rutland to keep his restricted medical license and indicated that he may continue to dispense the dangerous abortion drug RU 486, also known as mifepristone.
The California Medical Board had asked for the emergency suspension of Rutland's license after one of its investigators caught him scheduling a surgical abortion at a Chula Vista, California, abortion center earlier this month.
Rutland was barred from performing abortions and surgeries in January at his acupuncture clinic in San Gabriel and the board interpreted the order to include drug-induced abortions.
The judge rejected arguments by the Board that medical and surgical abortions pose similar risks. Full story at LifeNews.com
New Study of PVS Patients Casts Increasing Doubt on Terri Schiavo's Death
by Bobby Schindler
During my family's battle to save my sister Terri Schiavo from death by dehydration, a tremendous amount of debate raged over whether or not she was in what the medical profession refers to as a persistent vegetative state (PVS).
Indeed, the PVS diagnosis was used as one of the deciding factors in whether my sister should live or die. It was the core catalyst in the court ordering the removal of Terri s food and water.
When Terri s husband first petitioned the circuit courts to remove her sustenance, my family was naive about PVS and what the diagnosis actually meant, and could not believe a court would ever order her food and water withdrawn. As the battle over my sister s life progressed, however, we learned the hard way.
The more anecdotal testimony we heard about the diagnosis of PVS, the more my family was convinced that Terri simply didn't fit the profile and was never PVS. We also suspected such a diagnosis (typically made at the bedside) was seriously flawed.
This became very obvious by the way Terri interacted with my mother, not to mention the videos which clearly showed that Terri was able to track objects and follow simple commands.
I was oftentimes rather astonished at the number of different and opposing conclusions I heard from neurologists, physicians, speech therapists and so many other medical professionals who tried to determine whether or not Terri was in a PVS. Full story at LifeNews.com
Pope Benedict: Dignitas Personae, Dignity of People Same in Abortion, Bioethics
by Kimberly Baker
In a February 13 meeting with members of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Pope Benedict said, The questions of bioethics often place the reminder of the dignity of the person in the foreground.
The Church s attention to bioethics continues to keep pace with ever-new advancements in medical science. One of the more recent major documents from the Vatican on bioethical issues is Dignitas Personae (The Dignity of a Person). Issued in 2008 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dignitas Personae is an essential follow-up to its predecessor, Donum Vitae (The Gift of Life), from 1987.
Dignitas Personae explores new issues in the area of reproductive technologies over the past 20 years. The first part discusses anthropological, theological, and ethical aspects of human life and procreation.
The second section addresses new problems concerning procreation; it analyzes techniques for assisting fertility, the problem of in vitro fertilization, and the treatment of embryos in such procedures.
The third and final section discusses new treatments which involve the manipulation of the embryo or human genetic material: gene therapy, human cloning, the therapeutic use of stem cells, animal-human hybrids, and the use of human biological material of illicit origin. Full story at LifeNews.com
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Women Really Want Abstinence-Based Empowerment, Not NOW and Casual Sex
by Jennifer A. Marshall 
A group that thinks an ad celebrating Tim Tebow's life is bad news for women might be a little out of touch with what women really want.
That helps explain why the National Organization for Women and other feminist groups have vehemently opposed abstinence education while failing to notice that a culture of casual sex hasn't been so liberating for women.
Just ask the 29-year-old Briton living in America whose anonymous account appeared in her country's left-wing Guardian newspaper.
"(M)y sexual liberation was perversely trapping me in destructive relationships, while intimacy had become something elusive, insubstantial, disappointing, surreal," she writes. Weary of a "burlesque comedy where we all pretended we were emotionless and cool," she decided to stop having sex because "I wanted sex to be, quite simply, special again."
Similar world-weary statements have been recorded by researchers such as Dr. Miriam Grossman, author of "Unprotected," and Laura Sessions Stepp, author of "Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both."
Only a third of young women say they truly wanted to have sex the first time they did, Stepp reports. Young women, she writes, "are trying to make sense of what is arguably the most confusing sexual landscape any generation has ever faced." Full story at LifeNews.com
Russian Teenage Girl Dies From Legal Abortion at Moscow Hospital Wednesday
Moscow, Russia (LifeNews.com) -- A teenage girl died from a botched legal abortion at a hospital in Moscow on Wednesday, local sources indicate. The death is yet another casualty of a Russian abortion industry that has produced some of the highest abortion rates in the world and has caused significant infertility problems.
The Pravda news service indicates the woman began suffering problems immediately following the abortion, lost consciousness and eventually died.
Hospital officials took the unnamed woman to a larger hospital located next door and immediately transferred her to an intensive care unit, where she eventually died from the abortion complications.
Emergency physicians told the Russian web site Life News, not affiliated with this pro-life news service, that the woman was dead by the time they arrived to care for her.
They said the woman died from acute cardiovascular insufficiency and intensive blood loss, why typically happens when the abortion has caused damage to the woman's uterus or other internal parts and she suffers intense bleeding. Full story at LifeNews.com
Nebraska Pro-Life Advocates to Rally Next Week as Legislature Hears Abortion Bills
Lincoln, NE (LifeNews.com) -- Nebraska pro-life advocates will rally at the state capitol next week as the legislature holds hearings on bills that will help reduce abortions. Nebraska Right to Life is sponsoring the pro-life legislative day next Thursday with several activities for families from across the Cornhusker State.
Citizens attending the special event will receive a morning briefing by Senators Mike Flood, Cap Dierks and Colby Coash and Mary Spaulding Balch of National Right to Life.
"We host Pro-Life Legislative Day to provide an opportunity for pro-life Nebraskans to learn the legislative process and get briefed on current pro-life issues before the Unicameral," Nebraska Right to Life director Julie Schmit-Albin told LifeNews.com.
"We have packets of information with the bills and bill background for each participant. In addition we divide the attendees up by legislative districts and have them present each senator a packet of information as well," she added.
The event takes place just before the Judiciary Committee holds an afternoon hearing on LB 1103, the Abortion Pain Prevention Act. That's a bill to help women considering an abortion understand how much pain their baby could feel during the abortion procedure. Full story at LifeNews.com
Virginia Christian Leaders Urge State Officials to Cut Planned Parenthood Funds
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Dozens of Christian pastors and religious leaders signed a new petition to the state legislature and top state officials asking them to end state funding for the Planned Parenthood abortion business. The petition also went to the state's governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.
Rev. Pat Robertson and Rev. Jonathan Falwell joined the other pastors and clergy who signed the petition sponsored by the Virginia Christian Alliance.
The petition said state taxpayer funds should no go to an abortion business and it accuses Planned Parenthood of "unethical, immoral and racist practices." The pastors also cited a quotation from the 1939 book written by Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, supporting eugenics.
Republicans Gov. Bob McDonnell, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, all pro-life, were asked to help stop the funding.
Rev. Joe Ellison, vice president of the Council on Biblical Principles, also joined the call. Full story at LifeNews.com
Oklahoma Judge Rules Comprehensive Pro-Life Law on Abortion Unconstitutional
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- An Oklahoma district court judge has ruled a comprehensive state pro-life law unconstitutional because he believes it deals with more than one subject. However, the legislature is moving ahead with separate bills on each of the pro-life issues to be able to counter the ruling.
District Judge Daniel Owens placed a temporary restraining order on the law that he issued the ruling on today.
The Statistical Reporting of Abortions Act, set to go into effect on November 1, received the support of large majorities of the Oklahoma House and Senate.
Governor Brad Henry signed the bill into law in May but it was challenged by the Center for Reproductive Rights, a pro-abortion law firm based in New York City.
The law requires a report for each abortion be sent to the Oklahoma State Department of Health. The questionnaire gathers demographic information including age, race, marital status and educational level and gathers information on the method of abortion used. The law also bans sex-selection abortions and helps women by making sure abortion centers follow certain health and safety requirements. Full story at LifeNews.com
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