LifeNews.com Pro-Life News Report
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
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Current Headlines
• Republicans May Boycott Kagan Supreme Court Hearings Over Lack of Docs
• Study Confirms Abortion Triples Breast Cancer Risk Among Sri Lanka Women
• Pro-Life Women's Group Issues More Endorsements of Candidates for Congress
• Case of Maryland Practitioner Killing Woman in Failed Abortion May Get Probe
• Pro-Life Advocates May Have to Accept Inferior Health Plans to Avoid Abortion $
• Stopping Abortion: A Different Take on Legislation Promoting Ultrasounds
• Pro-Life Student Group Launches New Outreach for Pro-Life Medical Students
• Washington Post Laments 'Tragic Consequences" of Pro-Life Catholic Church
• New Pro-Life Harrisburg, Penn Bishop Serious About Opposing Abortion
News Briefs:
• Pro-Abortion Charlie Crist Clings to Lead Over Rubio in Florida Senate Race
• Billboards Focusing on How Abortion Targets Blacks Head to Little Rock
• Arizona GOP Primary for Senate Sees McCain Leading Hayworth in Race
• Pro-Life Law Firm Will represent Church Challenging Limits on Free Speech
• Pregnancy Counselling Group Launches Project on London Underground
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Republicans May Boycott Kagan Supreme Court Hearings Over Lack of Documents
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are considering boycotting the hearings planned next week for pro-abortion nominee Elena Kagan because they still have not received the documents they requested from her tenure s Solicitor General for pro-abortion President Barack Obama.
Other documents concern Kagan's time as a top aide during the Clinton administration, and some already made public show her providing him political cover for vetoing a ban on partial-birth abortions.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, a pro-life lawmaker from Alabama, told Politico Monday evening that GOP lawmakers on the panel may boycott the hearings if the documents are not provided beforehand.
"I don't feel like we're prepared yet," Sessions said. "It's becoming more clear that this is not an easy thing to get ready this quick."
If we feel like we can't go forward with the hearings because we don't have sufficient documents, then yes, we may feel compelled to do whatever it takes to try to insist that the process be done right," he added.
Sessions told the news web site that there are at least 1,600 documents on Kagan from the Clinton administration that have not been released. He also said lawmakers should have the ability to privately view the records from her Obama administration time if there are concerns about confidentiality.
Study Confirms Abortion Triples Breast Cancer Risk Among Sri Lanka Women
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A new study coming from researchers in Sri Lanka finds women who had abortions more than triple their breast cancer risk compared with wome who carry their pregnancy to term. The study was published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology and found a 3.42 odds ratio against women having abortions compared with those who kept their baby.
Abortion was the most significant factor in the study on breast cancer risk and researchers found a significantly reduced risk associated with prolonged duration of breastfeeding a newborn.
Malintha De Silva and colleagues from the University of Colombo led the study.
The Sri Lankan study is the fourth epidemiological study in fourteen months to report an abortion-breast cancer link, including studies from the U.S., China and Turkey. Other studies have shown the protective effect a full-term pregnancy has for women.
In this case, having a baby and subsequent breast feeding between 12-23 months after birth had researchers finding a 66.3% risk reduction in comparison to those who had never breastfed and those who had breastfed between 0 and 11 months.
The risk reduction climbed to 87.4% for the 24-35 months group and 94% for the 36-47 months group.
"Obviously, women who abort forfeit the protective effect of breastfeeding," said Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, a gorup that educates women about the breast cancer risk from abortions. "The loss of that protective effect is incurred in addition to the effect of abortion leaving the breasts with more places for cancers to start," she said. Full story at LifeNews.com
Pro-Life Women's Group Issues More Endorsements of Candidates for Congress
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The Susan B. Anthony List, a nationwide pro-life women's group, has issued more endorsements -- this time supporting pro-life incumbents seeking re-election this November. The organization is behind six pro-life women in states form across the nation who have consistently voted pro-life.
SBA informed LifeNews.com that it is supporting Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee, Virginia Foxx in North Carolina, Cynthia Lummis in Wyoming, Cathy McMorris Rodgers in Washington, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in Florida and Jean Schmidt in Ohio.
SBA List president Marjorie Dannenfelser said of the endorsements: "Supporting these faithful pro-life leaders was an easy decision."
"Each one of them stands as an example of an authentic, pro-life woman leader who knows that the rights of one are not built on the broken backs of another. We will need their continued leadership in the months ahead as we fight abortion subsidization in the health care reform law and the recent attempt to legalize abortion on military bases," she added.
The SBA List Candidate Fund previously endorsed each of the women for their congressional seats in 2008.
"These women have been leading the fight to reclaim an authentic feminism that includes a pro-life platform. We are proud to put our support, once again, behind these faithful pro-life women leaders who have laid the groundwork for more to join their ranks," Dannenfelser said. Full story at LifeNews.com
Case of Maryland Practitioner Killing Woman in Failed Abortion May Get Probe
Annapolis, MD (LifeNews.com) -- Local officials may investigate a case involving a Maryland abortion practitioner who killed a woman in a failed abortion. A state attorney for Anne Rundle County, Maryland has referred an abortion death case involving Romeo A. Ferrer to the local Police Homicide Unit for a possible criminal investigation.
The move comes after pro-life advocates held a press conference earlier this month asking the Maryland Board of Physicians to take strong action against Ferrer.
The complaint against Ferrer revolves around a February 2006 abortion he did on a 21-year-old African-American woman, Denise Crowe, at Gynecare Center in Severna Park.
The woman sought a second trimester dilation and evacuation abortion procedure but it eventually claimed Crowe's life and left her three-year-old son without a mother.
Ferrer is accused of failing to properly administer pain medications, failing to monitor the patient s respiration and ventilation, and failing to employ standard methods of care to resuscitate the patient. He is accused of giving her a fatal overdose of meperidine, a narcotic also known as Demerol.
The case was stagnant for years until the Maryland Board of Physicians, in April, filed a petition against Ferrer for "failure to meet the standard of quality care" in his negligent treatment of Crowe that resulted in her death. That case is still under consideration and could take months to resolve.
At the same time, local and national pro-life groups, including Operation Rescue, banded together to call for the revocation of Ferrer's license. Coordinated by the Maryland group, Defend Life, a complaint was filed with the State Attorney's office through attorney Matt Paavla. Full story at LifeNews.com
Pro-Life Advocates May Have to Accept Inferior Health Plans to Avoid Abortion $
by Christopher Tollefsen
Under the new health-care law, pro-lifers may have to accept inferior health plans, rather than wrongly pay into abortion providing ones.
Defenders of the rights of unborn humans are often accused of a double standard that calls into question their commitment to the lives of all human beings. Opponents will point to the willingness of pro-lifers to rescue a five-year-old from a burning building, rather than liberate a crate of embryos.
Similarly, the problem of early embryo loss is held up as indisputable proof that pro-lifers, who do not treat this as a health emergency of overriding priority, do not really accept that these lost embryos are truly human persons with full moral worth.
In many of these cases there are good reasons for the apparent asymmetries between our treatment of the born and the unborn, reasons which do not vitiate in the slightest our claim that as regards killing, there should be no asymmetry: it is equally wrong deliberately to kill an unborn human being and a human being at any other stage of development.
But even the asymmetries have limits, and one is prominently on display, I shall argue, in the recently passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
As has been widely noted, one difference between the Senate version of health-care legislation (which was passed) and the House version, is that the latter hewed more closely to the Hyde Amendment s restriction against any federal dollars being used, not only to pay for any abortions (except in cases of danger to the mother s life, rape, or incest), but also against any funding of a plan that covers abortion. PPACA does fund such plans, through an elaborate mechanism designed to screen federal dollars from the actual financing of abortions. Full story at LifeNews.com
Stopping Abortion: A Different Take on Legislation Promoting Ultrasounds
by Tom Glessner
The use of limited ultrasound by medical Pregnancy Resource Centers (PRCs) to confirm the presence of a viable intrauterine pregnancy for abortion-minded and abortion-vulnerable clientele has a powerful impact upon women contemplating abortion. Because of this, efforts have been made in various state legislatures in the last few years to pass laws that would mandate that information about the availability of ultrasound be given to a woman before she can obtain abortion.
NIFLA applauds these legislative efforts to ensure that women who are contemplating abortion be given the opportunity to see an ultrasound image of their unborn children. However, we believe that most of these well- intended laws are deficient in major areas and are not the most effective means to insure that an abortion-minded mother benefits from the powerful impact of ultrasound.
Specifically, all of these laws require that certain ultrasound information be given to the woman, by the abortionist doctor the one who is going to financially benefit from the decision to abort! How objective and credible is such a person going to be? The abortionist doctor clearly wants the mother to choose abortion because he gets paid for that service. It is likely that any requirement that this person provide ultrasound information will be skewed and distorted by the abortionist to actually encourage the mother to abort her baby.
A second criticism of the laws passed is that they compel a mother to receive information that she may not wish to have. This creates difficult public relations problems. Of course, we believe that such information is necessary for a mother to make an informed choice and thus, compelling her to receive it is in the best interests of both her and her baby. Full story at LifeNews.com
Pro-Life Student Group Launches New Outreach for Pro-Life Medical Students
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The national organization for pro-life college and university students is launching a new national outreach to medical students. Students for Life of America is launching their Medical Students for Life program designed to give support to pro-life medical students in a manner they've never experienced.
Kristan Hawkins, the director of Students for Life of America, tells LifeNews.com Medical Students for Life aims to unite pro-life students at medical schools around the country at a time when many are facing pressure to learn abortions.
The program is designed to give them the resources they need to spread the pro-life message to their peers, she said.
Never before has there been such a program to help pro-life medical students organize on their university s campus. Medical professionals are on the front lines of the pro-life movement, and it is important for us to train the next generation of pro-life physicians," Hawkins told LifeNews.com.
Students for Life of America has hired Dominique Monlezun to lead the initiative to network and training pro-life med students as the National Coordinator for Medical Students for Life.
Dominique was accepted to Tulane School of Medicine during his sophomore year at Tulane University and is set to graduate summa cum laude in spring of 2011 with a double major in Philosophy and English. Full story at LifeNews.com
by Sarah Knoploh
Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, was The Washington Post s On Faith guest columnist on June 21. Predictably, she used the opportunity to bash the Catholic Church s abortion policy. In Should Church control access to health care? Northup charged that the Catholic Church wields too much influence over policy decisions dealing with abortion. Northup complained, This year at home, we saw the U.S. government give the Conference on Catholic Bishops veto power over the health-care reform bill, and in the end, millions of American women were left with a policy that restricts insurance coverage for abortion services even for those who pay for their insurance with their own hard-earned dollars.
She also sympathized with Sister Margaret McBride, who was demoted and excommunicated when she gave permission for an ill woman to have an abortion at a hospital. Northup questioned why more people didn't wonder about her secular punishment.
And the problem, Northup suggested, was world-wide.
She wrote in other countries, we repeatedly confront the tragic consequences of the Catholic Church s sustained hostility to reproductive health service when it imposes its theology on public policy and the provision of health services to the public. Full story at LifeNews.com
New Pro-Life Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Bishop Serious About Opposing Abortion
by Maria Vitale
From the very start of his news conference in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, it was clear where the diocese s 10th bishop will stand on the right to life.
In his opening statement, Bishop-Designate Joseph P. McFadden said he wanted to thank God first and foremost for the gift of life itself.
Later, McFadden was asked if he, like his predecessor Bishop Kevin Rhoades, would make proclaiming the sanctity of human life a top issue as bishop of Harrisburg.
He answered that he would make it a priority to proclaim respect for all human life from the moment of conception to natural death. He added that to snuff out life at its very beginning is an absolute crime.
McFadden has been serving as auxiliary bishop of Philadelphia, a post he has held since 2004. During that time, he gained the respect of the pro-life community through his tireless advocacy of the right to life.
In fact, McFadden celebrated Mass at the 2005 Pennsylvania Pro-Life Conference, which was held in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Full story at LifeNews.com
Pro-Abortion Charlie Crist Clings to Lead Over Rubio in Florida Senate Race
Tallahassee, FL (LifeNews.com) -- Florida Governor Charlie Crist, running as an independent, still leads the race to replace retiring Sen. George LeMieux (R), nearly two months after a party switch many expected would cost him his chances.
The latest survey, conducted for the Florida Chamber of Commerce Political Institute by Cherry Communications, shows Crist leading pro-life ex-FL House Speaker Marco Rubio (Republican) and pro-abortion Rep. Kendrick Meek (Democrat) 42%-31%-14%.
Political observers have speculated Crist's numbers would drop after his switch, as both parties' bases revert to backing their own candidates. But Crist has not trailed in a single poll; he was tied with Rubio in only one Rasmussen survey, and he has led by small margins in polls conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs, in May, and by Quinnipiac University, earlier this month.
Meek benefited from a brief boom when Crist left the GOP as strategists calculated the governor would take more GOP votes than Dem votes. And DSCC chair Bob Menendez told reporters earlier this month that he's "committed" to Meek. "I'm focused on having Democrats support Kendrick Meek," Menendez said at a briefing earlier this month.
Billboards Focusing on How Abortion Targets Blacks Head to Little Rock, Arkansas
Little Rock, AR (LifeNews.com) -- The Georgia billboards that have received national attention for showing how abortion targets the black community are now heading to Arkansas. The Radiance Foundation, which sponsored the Atlanta billboards, is partnering with Arkansas Right to Life.
The billboards in Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pine Bluff feature a photo of a black baby with the words Black & Unwanted" and the web site TooManyAborted.com.
The abortion rate in the African-American community is three times higher than that of white women, a fact that most African-Americans find shocking, Rose Mimms, executive director of Arkansas Right to Life, told the Arkansas News.
The billboards will appear through the end of July.
Arizona GOP Primary for Senate Sees McCain Leading Hayworth in Heated Race
Phoenix, AZ (LifeNews.com) -- Longtime Senator John McCain continues to lead Arizona s Republican Primary by double digits but remains in the same narrow range of support he s drawn since January.
The latest Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of likely GOP primary voters shows McCain picking up 47% support, while challenger J.D.Hayworth earns the vote from 36%.
Navy veteran and Tea Party activist Jim Deakin picks up seven percent (7%) support. One percent (1%) like another candidate in the race, and eight percent (8%) are undecided.
Any incumbent who earns less 50% support is considered potentially vulnerable, and McCain has been hovering around that mark all year. Since January, McCain s support has fallen in a narrow 47% to 53% range. Hayworth's support has generally been in the low 40s.
Last month, McCain led Hayworth 52% to 40%.
Pro-Life Law Firm Will represent Church Challenging Limits on Free Speech
Rapid City, SD (LifeNews.com) -- Alliance Defense Fund attorneys have agreed to represent a South Dakota church reported to the Internal Revenue Service by Americans United for Separation of Church and State because the church s pastor engaged in free speech from the pulpit.
Pastors and churches shouldn t live in fear of being punished or penalized by the government, yet that s precisely what Americans United wants, said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley. Under the First Amendment, a pastor, not the IRS, determines what his sermon will say. Groups like Americans United intentionally trigger IRS investigations that will silence churches through fear, intimidation, and disinformation. It s a contradiction for groups that say they believe in separation of church and state to say it s the role of the IRS to decide what pastors can talk about in church without being investigated.
Pregnancy Counselling Group Launches Life-Saving Project on London Underground
London, England (LifeNews.com) -- The Good Counsel Network, a London-based pregnancy counselling organisation, are planning to take out advertising on the London Underground. On their blog, they say:
We would like to increase our outreach to women in trouble in a pregnancy which maybe wasn t planned or where they suddenly find themselves in crisis. Using the title Maria Stops Abortion, we plan to reach out to women who would otherwise only see adverts for the help offered by abortion providers. Tube and rail adverts are extremely expensive, but we feel the need to launch out into the deep and experiment with this type of outreach with the hope that any woman seeking an escape from abortion will find us.
John Smeaton of SPUC comments: "I applaud this excellent venture and hope that it will save many lives."
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