LifeNews.com Pro-Life News Report
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
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Current Headlines
• Barack Obama to Offer Defense Wednesday of Pro-Abortion Reconciliation Move
• Pelosi Admits Reconciliation Won't Stop Abortion Funding in Health Care Bill
• Focus on the Family Still Disappointed by NCAA Canceling Post-Tebow Ads
• Martin Luther King Jr's Niece: Congressman Correct That Abortion Hurts Blacks
• The Need for Informed Consent: The Risks of IVF are Becoming Clearer
• Abortion Practitioner Loses License in Delaware After Philadelphia Investigation
• Illinois Planned Parenthood Starts Selling Dangerous Abortion Drug in Springfield
• California Pro-Life Group Takes on Meg Whitman Over Taxpayer-Funded Abortions
• British Pro-Life Group Cautiously Welcome Decision to Not Allow Abortion TV Ads
• Oklahoma House Signs Off On Bill Showing Pre-Abortion Ultrasound Images
• West Virginia Senate Approves Bill Allowing Women Ultrasound Before Abortion
• Alaska Abortion Numbers Up Big in 2009, Teen Abortions Down, 39% Tax-Funded
• Pro-Life News: Students, England, Euthanasia, India, Illinois, Spain, Abortion
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Barack Obama to Offer Defense Wednesday of Pro-Abortion Reconciliation Move
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- President Barack Obama is expected to offer a defense on Wednesday of the use of the controversial reconciliation process to railroad the pro-abortion health care bill thorough Congress. Obama will also offer another set of changes to the Senate health care bill that currently funds abortions.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the Obama announcement, expected tomorrow, would cover both process and policy on the pro-abortion bill.
While Obama has talked up reconciliation in the past, Gibbs and other top Obama administration officials have been hinting that Obama would officially endorse the process following last week's White House health care summit.
The summit saw the top Republican in the House inform Obama that Americans don't want taxpayer funding of abortions and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi mislead participants by claiming the bill doesn't fund abortions.
Under reconciliation, the House would pass the pro-abortion Senate version of the government-run health care bill. That bill, and another both chambers would approve with changes to the Senate bill other than dropping the abortion funding, would go to Obama for his signature.
Yesterday, Gibbs repeated the language Obama has used that doesn't endorse reconciliation but appears to support it -- saying, Obama believes an up-or-down vote is necessary."
What he discusses will point toward not just a policy, but a process moving forward, Gibbs said. I think you'll have a good idea of how we would proceed. Full story at LifeNews.com
Pelosi Admits Reconciliation Won't Stop Abortion Funding in Health Care Bill
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a Democratic senator both admitted today that the expected reconciliation bill Democrats are planning to railroad through Congress won't stop the abortion funding and other pro-abortion problems in the Senate health care measure the House is hoping to approve within the next two weeks.
At a Tuesday afternoon press conference, Pelosi talked about what a reconciliation bill can do and said abortion funding can't be touched because it is not related to the budget.
She responded to a question about whether abortion funding would be affected.
"Under the budget resolution you can only take up issues that are central to the budget. None of these issues..are dealt with in the budget," she said, according to The Hill. "Neither of these issues is central to the bill. This is not an immigration bill, this is not an abortion bill." "In order to be part of the budget bill, it has to be central to the budget....It's a very strict rule," she admitted.
Senator Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, made the remarks in an interview with MSNBC. "I think changes to abortion would probably not be permitted under reconciliation and the Byrd Rule requirement," he said. Full story at LifeNews.com
Focus on the Family Still Disappointed by NCAA Canceling Post-Tebow Ads
Indianapolis, IN (LifeNews.com) -- Focus on the Family officials are still disappointed by a decision by the NCAA to pull ads it paid to air on the NCAA college basketball web site that were part of a package of pro-life ads it purchased including the Tim Tebow Super Bowl ads airing on television via CBS.
The pro-life group had a hit with the ads featuring Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow and it received more than $10 million in free publicity before the Super Bowl ads aired in front of 106 million views.
But the NCAA, two weeks ago, dropped web banner advertisements from Focus on the Family from its championships web site NCAA.com. The ads had been included on several CBS-managed Web sites as part of the package deal Focus purchased that included the Super Bowl ad.
"Focus on the Family did have a banner ad on NCAA.com. Today, it was decided to remove the ad from the web site as a result of concerns expressed by our membership," Bob Williams, an NCAA spokesman, said in a statement.
Focus on the Family president Jim Daly says he is still surprised the ad was scrapped because it wasn't focused on abortion or other contentious issues.
"I should point out the banner ad had nothing to do with the topic of abortion or sexuality or any other 'hot button' issue. It simply pictured a smiling Dad holding his happy son," he wrote in a blog post. "Naturally, those who clicked on the ad were introduced to the resources provided by Focus on the Family to help families thrive." Full story at LifeNews.com
Martin Luther King Jr's Niece: Congressman Correct That Abortion Hurts Blacks
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is coming to the defense of a pro-life congressman who said last week that abortion has hurt the black community worse than slavery. She follows another pro-life African-American leader who says Rep. Trent Franks got it right.
Franks, who has sponsored legislation responding to the high rate of abortions in the African-American community, released a video last week.
"Far more of the African American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by policies of slavery. And I think, What does it take to get us to wake up?" he says in it.
Franks has come under attack from abortion advocates and the mainstream media, but Dr. Alveda King, whose uncle was the famed civil rights leader, told LifeNews.com today that Franks has a good point.
"Congressman Franks' comment that 'far more of the African American community is being devastated' by abortion 'than were being devastated by the policies of slavery' makes a quantitative distinction," she said. "It's not a judgment as to which of the two brutal, inhumane practices is worse, but rather which has impacted more people."
King says raw data clearly shows abortion has adversely affected more black Americans.
"Examining the statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and the Alan Guttmacher Institute, one can estimate that 14 million African Americans were killed by abortion between 1973 and 2005," she said. Full story at LifeNews.com
The Need for Informed Consent: The Risks of IVF are Becoming Clearer
by Mailee Smith
For decades now, women have been undergoing the process of in vitro fertilization (IVF) without truly knowing the risks that IVF might hold for their health or the health of their children. This is due in significant part to lax informed consent requirements. There are no universal informed consent requirements for facilities where IVF is performed and most states have not enacted comprehensive regulations.
Notably, there is also very little data on the complications arising from IVF, especially for unborn children. We know that the hormones women typically receive during IVF can cause them to develop cancer and other health issues in the future. But the percentage of women affected and its impact on their unborn children, as well as other types of potential complications, are not fully understood.
However, last week Europe s leading reproductive health medical journal, Human Reproduction, published a study demonstrating that women who become pregnant with a single child (as opposed to multiples) following IVF or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) have an increased risk of stillbirth.
The study involved over 20,000 pregnancies between 1989 and 2006 a massive study. After adjusting for all relative factors such as age, smoking habits, alcohol and coffee intake, and others it was revealed that women who conceived using IVF or ICSI had a significant four-fold increased risk of stillbirth.
Importantly, the researchers found that this increased risk is not likely due to the underlying infertility issues that drove women to IVF in the first place; rather it is likely due to other factors, such as the technology involved in IVF.
This stunning conclusion begs the question: Do women undergoing IVF know of such risks? Full story at LifeNews.com
Abortion Practitioner Loses License in Delaware After Philadelphia Investigation
Dover, DE (LifeNews.com) -- The abortion practitioner in Pennsylvania who lost his medical licensed after local officials raided his abortion facility after a woman died in a botched abortion has lost his licensed in another state. Abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell, who runs the Women's Medical Society, lost his Delaware license, too.
As LifeNews.com reported, authorities were prompted to investigate Women's Medical Society after an abortion patient died last November. Massive amounts of drugs found in the victim's system led authorities to suspect Gosnell was illegally prescribing pain-killers.
They found dozens of unborn children killed in abortions who were frozen for decades. CBS 3 indicates they are now determining whether or not they may have been victims of illegal late-term abortions.
Gosnell's medical license has been temporarily suspended, but he has not yet been charged with anything illegal. His abortion center is temporarily closed while the investigation proceeds.
Today, the Delaware Board of Medical Practice said it worked out an agreement with Gosnell's attorney to temporarily suspend his medical license there as well.
The Philadelphia Daily News indicated Gosnell also agreed to stop distributing controlled substances and he waived his right to a board hearing normally scheduled for within 60 days. Full story at LifeNews.com
Illinois Planned Parenthood Starts Selling Dangerous Abortion Drug in Springfield
Springfield, IL (LifeNews.com) -- The abortion drug RU 486 has killed more than a dozen women worldwide and injured more than 1,100 in the United States alone according to FDA numbers from a few years ago. But that hasn't stopped Planned Parenthood Springfield from putting women at risk by selling the mifepristone abortion pill.
The central Illinois abortion business is starting to sell the abortion drug this week at its 1000 E. Washington St. facility for $435 each.
"It's a legal service," Stephani Cox, a nurse practitioner who represents Chicago-based Planned Parenthood of Illinois, told the State Journal Register. "I'm hoping that women in the area who need this service will quickly realize that they can get it locally."
About 400 women get surgical abortions every year in Springfield, but the closest facilities selling the dangerous abortion drug are in Peoria, Champaign, Granite City and St. Louis.
The mifepristone abortion drug is a two-part process with a pill that causes the unborn child to starve to death and another that causes a miscarriage of the dead baby's body. Full story at LifeNews.com
California Pro-Life Group Takes on Meg Whitman Over Taxpayer-Funded Abortions
Sacramento, CA (LifeNews.com) -- A California pro-life group is taking on Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, who is blanketing the airwaves with ads calling herself a "Reagan conservative." But the director of the California Pro-Life Council says Whitman doesn't resemble that because she supports taxpayer-funded abortions.
Brian Johnston, the head of the pro-life group, tells LifeNews.com "Meg Whitman is no Ronald Reagan and her candidacy is unacceptable to millions of California Pro-Life voters."
"Whitman's position that there should be no limitations on taxpayer funding of abortion is clear repudiation of Ronald Reagan's commitment to the value of individual human lives," he added. "Even by her own rhetoric, if this is an issue of 'privacy' or 'individual choice' the government should not be involved as the financial sponsor of the procedure and underwriter of the state's abortion industry."
The state spends more than $23 million to pay for the abortions of poor women even though main abortion business Planned Parenthood brought in $1 billion in revenue last year.
Every year, pro-life advocates have tried to amend the state budget to remove the funding for as many as 80,000 abortions annually. That's about 7 percent of the total number of abortions done nationwide -- and all paid for at the expense of California taxpayers. Full story at LifeNews.com
British Pro-Life Group Cautiously Welcome Decision to Not Allow Abortion TV Ads
London, England (LifeNews.com) -- A British pro-life group is cautiously welcoming a decision by Britain's broadcast regulator BCAP (Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice) shelving a proposal for advertising by abortion businesses on television.
The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has given the decision a cautious welcome.
Last year, BCAP received 4,000 letters and other communication from UK residents after announcing in March that it would consider watering down the rules to allow the abortion ads.
Some of the letters included petitions with either hundreds or thousands of signatures from British people opposed to the idea.
BCAP announced yesterday that ads for commercial abortion centers will not be permitted in new rules to be published soon. However the rules on television advertising could still be altered after the General Election.
John Smeaton, the director of the pro-life group, told LifeNews.com the decision is a welcome one.
"BCAP's statement suggests there was overwhelming opposition to TV abortion advertising in response to their consultation," he said. Full story at LifeNews.com
Oklahoma House Signs Off On Bill Showing Pre-Abortion Ultrasound Images
Oklahoma City, OK (LifeNews.com) -- One way to lower the number of abortions in Oklahoma is to present women considering an abortion with information they don't normally receive from abortion centers like Planned Parenthood. The state House says one good piece of information is seeing an ultrasound of the baby beforehand.
The Oklahoma House, on an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote, approved a bill 87-7 Tuesday that now goes to the state Senate for consideration.
The bill requires allowing a mother considering an abortion a chance to view an ultrasound one hour prior to the abortion. The abortion practitioner must explain the development of the unborn child and ensure the woman can see the ultrasound images.
House Bill 2780, by Rep. Lisa Billy, expands on pro-life legislation passed in 2006 that required abortion practitioners to provide helpful information to women.
"This legislation is about giving mothers as much information as possible in advance about this irrevocable, life-altering decision. We must do all we can to ensure every woman has all the facts so she can make the most informed decision possible," said Billy, R-Purcell.
West Virginia Senate Approves Bill Allowing Women Ultrasound Before Abortion
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The West Virginia state Senate today approved a bill that will allow women a chance to see an ultrasound of their unborn children before an abortion. With ultrasounds showing the humanity of the unborn child, pro-life advocates in the state expect the bill to change minds and help women choose life.
The Ultrasound Option bill (SB 597) faced a vote in the chamber and will now likely go to the House Health and Judiciary Committees before it goes to the House floor for passage.
Senators voted 25-7 with sponsor Sen. Jeff Kessler, a Democrat from Marshall, speaking in favor and Sen. Dan Foster, a Democrat, opposing it.
The legislation, which easily cleared the Senate Health and Judiciary committees last week, amends the existing Women s Right to Know Act which helps women get information about abortion's risks and alternatives.
West Virginians for Life is strongly supporting the bill while the pro-abortion group WV FREE calls the bill allowing women more information about the development of their unborn child an attempt to coerce them. Full story at LifeNews.com
Alaska Abortion Numbers Up Big in 2009, Teen Abortions Down, 39% Tax-Funded
Juneau, AK (LifeNews.com) -- The number of abortions in Alaska increased for the third straight year, according to the annual report from the Alaska Bureau of Vital Statistics. The bureau s figures are based on reports from abortion practitioners across the state.
In 2009, there were 1,875 reported abortions, up from 1,759 in 2008 and 1,701 in 2007.
Teens, ages 15-19, accounted for 326 abortions last year 17 percent overall. That represents a slight drop from previous years. Additionally, seven abortions were performed on girls younger than 15.
Since the state began reporting abortion statistics in 2003, teens have accounted for nearly 20 percent of the overall number. During those seven years, total abortions performed on girls age 19 or younger stands at 2,575.
A total of 12,961 abortions have been reported in Alaska since 2003. Full story at LifeNews.com
LIFENEWS.COM NEWS BRIEFS
• Students for Life of America Releases New Web Site for Pro-Life Law Students
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• Spain King Challenged Not to Sign New Spanish Law Expanding Abortions
• Pro-Life Attorneys Fighting Abortion Bubble Zone in Rockford, Illinois
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