LifeNews.com Pro-Life News Report
Saturday, February 6, 2010
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Current Headlines
• Obama Administration Forces Military Hospitals to Stock Morning After Pill
• Second Focus on the Family Ad on Tebow, Abortion to Air Before Super Bowl
• Obama Concedes Pro-Abortion Health Care Bill May be Dead Until 2010 Elections
• Poll Shows Americans Favor Pro-Life Tim Tebow Super Bowl Ad by 2-1 Margin
• Congress Put Advancing Abortion Ahead of Promoting Good Health Care Reform
• Abortion Practitioner James Pendergraft Loses License After Botched Abortion
• New Orleans Saints' Scott Fujita Doesn't Agree With Tim Tebow Super Bowl Ad
• Terri Schiavo's Brother Lauds Study Showing PVS Patients Have Brain Activity
• Abortion Practitioner Alberto Hodari Faces Lawsuit Over Improper Abortion
• Pope Benedict XVI Headed to Scotland, Urges Opposition to Assisted Suicide Bill
• Alaska Governor Hails Pro-Lifers But Planned Parenthood Expanding Abortions
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Obama Administration Forces Military Hospitals to Stock Morning After Pill
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Late Thursday, the Obama administration issued a new order for the U.S. military requiring all military hospitals and health centers to stock the morning after pill. The Department of Defense will soon begin having military medical facilities stock the Plan B drug, which can sometimes cause an abortion. The Obama administration's decision came after the Pentagon's Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee, an advisory panel, made the recommendation to stock the drug. The PPTC suggested stocking both Plan B and the Next Choice generic of the morning after pill.
The decision is the latest to have President Barack Obama overturning pro-life policies during the Bush administration and follows him forcing Americans to pay for abortions and embryonic stem cell research with their tax dollars.
Obama's decision is not going over well with Wendy Wright, the president of Concerned Women for America.
"The military needs to focus on its prime mission, yet leftists view it as a means to promote their agenda," she told LifeNews.com. "The morning-after pill is highly ineffective in preventing pregnancies and completely useless in preventing sexually-transmitted diseases. But it's a political tool for abortion advocates."
Wright worries the decision is the first step to pushing abortions at military hospitals. "By making this drug required, the next step will making drugs like RU-486, the abortion pill, mandatory," she said. "And doctors or pharmacists who have objections will be purged from the ranks." Full story at LifeNews.com
Second Focus on the Family Ad on Tebow, Abortion to Air Before Super Bowl
Miami, FL (LifeNews.com) -- If you think you have read all there is on the Focus on the Family commercial featuring Tim Tebow and his mother's decision not to have an abortion -- wait, there's more. Officials at the pro-life group announced today that they are unveiling a second ad that will air before the Super Bowl begins.
The second commercial plans to go further than the first and will reveal more details about Pam Tebow's decision not to have an abortion than CBS would allow in the first ad already planned for during the Super Bowl.
This Super Bowl surprise has Focus unveiling a second ad that will also feature him Tebow and his mother and it was filmed in Orlando at the same time last month as the ad that has garnered so much attention.
Focus on the Family won't reveal the details of this surprise second ad, but CEO Jim Daly confirmed to USA Today that this ad goes further and it appears to be the original ad CBS rejected before it worked with the station on a revised commercial fitting its standards.
In this second ad, Pam Tebow reportedly says "Both of our lives were at risk" when talking about her difficult pregnancy with Tim after suffering from dysentery and entering into a coma.
"They felt that was too much," Daly told USA Today. "So we dropped the line. We didn't fight them." The word "abortion" is never used. Daly says this new ad is "an open discussion on the sanctity of human life -- not just the issue of abortion -- and he indicated it was made for less than $100,000 with "a bit of humor in it -- in fitting with the Super Bowl theme." Full story at LifeNews.com
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Obama Concedes Pro-Abortion Health Care Bill May be Dead Until 2010 Elections
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- President Barack Obama conceded Thursday night in a speech at a Democratic fundraiser that the pro-abortion health care bill may be dead. With the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, the Senate no longer has the votes to pass the House bill and the House doesn't have the votes for the Senate bill.
Obama vowed not to quit his plans for the pro-abortion health care bill but said that the issue may ultimately be decided by what happens in the 2010 Congressional elections.
A Reuters report indicated Obama struck a "defeatist" tone saying he still wanted to promote a government-run health care bill but is bowing to the political reality.
"I think it s very important for us to have a methodical, open process over the next several weeks, and then let s go ahead and make a decision, Obama said.
And it may be that if Congress decides, if Congress decides we're not going to do it, even after all the facts are laid out, all the options are clear, then the American people can make a judgment as to whether this Congress has done the right thing for them or not," Obama added. "That's how democracy works, and there are elections coming up." Full story at LifeNews.com
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- When CBS airs a Super Bowl commercial produced by Focus on the Family that honors Tim Tebow and his family for their pro-life convictions, the ad will have the support of a majority of Americans. By a 2-1 margin, a new Marist College poll finds strong support for the commercial. The Super Bowl ad, and a second more revealing one that will air four times during the pre-game coverage, will focus on the story of Tim Tebow's birth.
As most Americans know by now, Pam Tebow suffered from dysentery and entered into a coma during her pregnancy with Tim. She refused a doctor's advice that she consider an abortion because of the medication she was receiving. Tebow was born and he went on to take the Florida Gators to the national championship and win the Heisman Trophy.
The poll surveyed 1,003 Americans and asked: "A pro-life, pro-family commercial sponsored by the advocacy group Focus on the Family will air during the Super Bowl. It features a Heisman Trophy winner, Florida Gators Quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother. Do you agree or disagree with the decision by CBS to air this commercial during the Super Bowl?"
Some 60 percent of Americans agreed with CBS' decision to air the ad while just 30 percent said no and 10 percent were undecided. Full story at LifeNews.com
Congress Put Advancing Abortion Ahead of Promoting Good Health Care Reform
Due in part to a Senate seat switching parties in a recent special election, health care reform legislation may be stalled in Congress for now. Many had hoped that long-overdue reform, extending affordable health coverage to tens of millions of people who lack it now, was on the horizon. And some, disappointed at the current impasse, are looking for scapegoats.
One charge is that the Catholic Church doomed health care reform by its opposition to federally funded abortion coverage. One New York Times reporter, commenting on the bishops new letter urging Congress not to give up on authentic reform, described the bishops as switching to the other side of the issue after helping to bring the legislation near death.
The charge runs counter to a number of well-established facts.
First, the Catholic bishops have supported national health care reform for decades. Catholic teaching sees health care not as a commodity, but as a support for life and health that every human being deserves as a matter of right.
The bishops wrote to Congress numerous times in the past year, urging progress toward authentic reform reform that would make health care more affordable, ensure access to health care for immigrants, and respect life from conception to natural death while upholding rights of conscience. Full story at LifeNews.com
Abortion Practitioner James Pendergraft Loses License After Botched Abortion
Tallahassee, FL (LifeNews.com) -- Embattled Florida abortion practitioner James Pendergraft is facing more problems with the state medical board. He's lost his medical license before and, now, Florida Department of Health has again suspended his medical license -- this time for a period of two years.
Operation Rescue informed LifeNews.com of the decision, which had the department issue an order on January 26.
After Pendergraft serves his suspension he will be required to serve an additional three years of probation. Then, he will only be allowed to operate under the direct supervision of a board certified OBGYN, who must also share an office with Pendergraft to ensure he operates properly.
The medical board also decided that Pendergraft must pay $20,000 in administrative costs by February 25.
The suspension is the result of a complaint filed April 14, 2008, that states Pendergraft illegally prescribed controlled substances without proper DEA licensing, OR indicated. The board also said Pendergraft committed medical malpractice in a botched abortion of a 19-week-old unborn child in February 2006.
The botched abortion saw Pendergraft inadequately dilating a patient's cervix for a D&E abortion. He then ruptured her uterus and shoved the unborn child's body into the abdominal cavity. Full story at LifeNews.com
New Orleans Saints' Scott Fujita Doesn't Agree With Tim Tebow Super Bowl Ad
Miami, FL (LifeNews.com) -- Most Americans and even many NFL football players are on board with their support for the Focus on the Family Super Bowl ad depicting Tim Tebow and his mother Pam's decision not to have an abortion when pregnant with him. But New Orleans Saint's player Scott Fujita is not one of the ad's supporters.
Fujita, a linebacker for the football team representing the NFC in Sunday's Super Bowl, told the New York Times he doesn't exactly agree with Tim Tebow's pro-life message or the FOTF ad.
"The idea of focusing on the family -- who wouldn't agree with that?" Fujita told The Times. "But the means of doing so, he and I might not see eye-to-eye all the way."
The opposition is surprising because, like Tebow, whose mother went against suggestions from doctors to have an abortion despite taking heavy medication for dysentery, Fujita comes from a situation where his life could also have ended in abortion. Fujita's biological mother decided to give birth even though she didn't have the financial resources to raise her son -- and he was eventually adopted by a Japanese-American father and white mother.
"I'm just so thankful she had the courage and the support system to be able to carry out the pregnancy. I wouldn't expect that of everybody," Fujita said, appearing to realize he could have become a victim of abortion. Full story at LifeNews.com
Terri Schiavo's Brother Lauds Study Showing PVS Patients Have Brain Activity
St. Petersburg, FL (LifeNews.com) -- The brother of Terri Schiavo, the disabled woman whose husband won authority form a court to take her life, responded positively to a new study showing researchers using a novel technology to establish limited communication with patients in so-called persistent vegetative states.
Bobby Schindler said the new study is bittersweet because it would have been helpful for his sister to receive such a test to show proof that she could communicate with him and his family.
Terri's former husband Michael Schiavo would not allow her to be tested in a similar way prior to getting a court order to subject her to a 13-day starvation and dehydration death. "It's upsetting to me when I see this type of research," Schindler told ABC News. "We were looking to afford these kinds of tests for Terri, but the court did not allow us to perform these kinds of tests."
Schindler told ABC he wonders how many other patients have been subjected to death or a removal of treatment or food and water because they didn't get this advanced test to show they have brain activity.
"I think it shows that if you just use the conventional bedside-type of exam [to determine consciousness], you can get it wrong," Schindler said. Full story at LifeNews.com
Abortion Practitioner Alberto Hodari Faces Lawsuit Over Improper Abortion
Lathrup Village, MI (LifeNews.com) -- Michigan-based abortion practitioner Alberto Hodari is facing yet another lawsuit related to a woman who suffered a botched abortion at one of his Detroit-area abortion centers. The lawsuit filed last week sues Hodari for negligence and incompetence.
The suit says he subjected a woman to an unnecessary abortion procedure after failing to diagnose an ectopic pregnancy.
This lawsuit follows on the heels of notification that Hodari is officially under investigation by the Michigan Bureau of Health Profession for his involvement in forcing a woman to have an abortion.
According to information Operation Rescue provided to LifeNews.com, Marcia Lanqua, 33, went to Hodari s Womancare of Southfield abortion clinic on May 6, 2009, for an abortion. She had been refused an abortion by another clinic in Deerfield because an ultrasound performed on her did not reveal an intrauterine pregnancy, which is an indication of the possibility of an ectopic pregnancy.
The pro-life group says Lanqua s lawsuit indicates that Hodari lacked the skill to diagnose the ectopic pregnancy and instead he negligently did an unnecessary uterine abortion on her. Full story at LifeNews.com
Pope Benedict XVI Headed to Scotland, Urges Opposition to Assisted Suicide Bill
Glasgow, Scotland (LifeNews.com) -- Pope Benedict XVI is headed to Scotland where he will urge members of the Scottish Parliament to oppose a bill that would legalize assisted suicide. The head of the Catholic Church told Scottish bishops today that euthanasia "strikes at the very heart" of Christianity.
The pope said assisted suicide a sign of "the increasing tide of secularism" in Scotland and he urged Catholics to take a more active stand in speaking out against it.
Pope Benedict will visit England, Wales and Scotland in mid-September and he said in a statement that "support for euthanasia strikes at the very heart of the Christian understanding of the dignity of human life."
"Recent developments in medical ethics and some of the practices advocated in the field of embryology give cause for great concern," he added.
Benedict XVI also encouraged Scottish bishops in his meeting with them today at the Vatican to make their voice heard in public society. Full story at LifeNews.com
Alaska Governor Hails Pro-Lifers But Planned Parenthood Expanding Abortions
Juneau, AK (LifeNews.com) -- Last month, Governor Sean Parnell issued a statement praising the work of pro-life leaders in Alaska for their activism and prayers. A spokesperson read the governor s statement at the annual pro-life prayer vigil at the Anchorage Memorial Cemetery on January 23.
Today we gather, people of all faiths, to recognize the sanctity of each human life, the governor wrote. We recognize that each human child is a miracle and has a right to live. I thank you for making your voice and your prayer heard today.
The governor s statement was heard by more than 130 of Alaska s pro-life advocates and leaders who were gathered for the 10th annual Interdenominational Prayer Service Jan. 23, the day after the 37th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court s ruling in Roe v. Wade which legalized abortion throughout the country.
Gov. Parnell wrote that protecting Alaska s children and families was important work. Full story at LifeNews.com
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