LifeNews.com Pro-Life News Report
Friday, November 26, 2010
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Current Headlines
Top Stories
• United States Sees 53 Million Abortions Since Roe in 1973
• Survey: 300 Doctors Do Late Abortions, 140 When Baby Feels Pain
• Women Should Know Abortion Linked to Premature Birth
• Canadian Woman in Forced Abortion Ordeal, Parliament Votes on Bill Soon
More Pro-Life News
• New Jersey Planned Parenthood Biz Closes Another Center
• Abortion Backers Science Resides in the Dark Ages
• Abortion Vote Couple Should Join Christians Seeing Value in The Unborn
• United Nations Partners With NGOs to Push Abortion in Africa
• Pro-Abortion CEDAW Treaty Lacks Support in Senate Hearing
• Pro-Life Advocates Bury Babies Found in Maryland Abortion Center Raid
• British Pro-Life Group Upset by White Paper on Sex Education
• European Court to Decide if German Woman Has Assisted Suicide Right
• Portland Planned Parenthood Finishes Tax-Funded Effort to Build Abortion Center
• Alaska Planned Parenthood Lawsuit Ignores Will of the People
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United States Sees 53 Million Abortions Since Roe in 1973
Americans saw a political milestone this month as more pro-life lawmakers were elected to the House of Representatives than ever before, but the nation also quietly reached a less joyful mark.
In January, the National Right to Life Committee provided a new analysis of the total number of abortions done in the 37 years since the Roe v. Wade decision.
The Supreme Court handed down its controversial ruling allowing virtually unlimited abortions at any time throughout pregnancy in January 1973. The NRLC analysis found that 52 million unborn children had been killed in abortions as of January.
The analysis also found that the best estimate for the current number of annual abortions in the United States involving both the surgical abortion procedure as well as the dangerous abortion drug RU 486 is 1.2 million.
As a result, the United States likely passed the 53 million abortion mark on November 1 the day before Americans went to the polls to vote in a pro-life House majority and target President Barack Obama s pro-abortion allies for defeat.
Obama has done everything in his power to advance abortion and continue that pro-abortion legacy of the Supreme Court, including naming two more pro-abortion jurists in Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. He has also expanded that 53 million abortions by authorizing abortion funding in various instances and decreasing funds for abstinence education. Full story at LifeNews.com
Survey: 300 Doctors Do Late Abortions, 140 When Baby Feels Pain
With controversial late-term abortion practitioner LeRoy Carhart getting national attention over plans to expand his abortion business, a little-known 2008 study is gaining new attention.
The Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion research organization previously affiliated with Planned Parenthood, released a study in 2008 titled Abortion in the United States: Incidence and Access to Services, 2005.
The study found there were at least 1,787 abortion doctors in the United States but it revealed stark numbers when it comes to those who do abortions later in pregnancy.
Of the 1,787, the study found that [t]wenty percent of providers offered abortions after 20 weeks [LMP], and only 8% at 24 weeks [LMP].
Though the numbers seem small, that translates to at least 300 doctors who who will perform abortions after 20 weeks LMP like LeRoy Carhart and, of those, 140 willing to perform abortions at 24 weeks LMP.
Mary Balch, an attorney who handle state legislation for the National Right to Life Committee, says the numbers are important because mainstream media outlets have attempted to make it appear there are very few practitioners willing to do late or late-term abortions. Full story at LifeNews.com
Women Should Know Abortion Linked to Premature Birth
November is Prematurity Awareness Month, dedicated by activists to highlighting the risks of and impact created by preterm birth. According to the March of Dimes, more than half a million babies are born prematurely in the United States alone each year.
Yet most people including women at risk of abortion and their loved ones are unaware that abortion has been linked to an increased risk of preterm birth among subsequently born babies.
In a paper published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in 2009, a Canadian research team examined data from 37 studies and found that having a prior abortion increased the risk of subsequent preterm birth by 35 percent, while having more than one prior abortion increased the risk by 93 percent.1 (Preterm birth is defined as a birth that takes place before 37 weeks gestation.)
In other words, children whose mothers had a previous abortion were more likely to be born prematurely, putting them at greater risk for problems such as low-birth weight (which has been linked to physical and developmental problems), epilepsy, autism, mental retardation2 and cerebral palsy. A research team looking at data from 2002 estimated that prior abortions led to 1,096 cases of cerebral palsy among babies born prematurely that year.3 Full story at LifeNews.com
Canadian Woman in Forced Abortion Ordeal, Parliament Votes on Bill Soon
A Canadian woman testified in court on Thursday about how she killed her boyfriend after he viciously attacked her following her refusal to have an abortion.
The court hearing comes just weeks before members of the Canadian Parliament are slated to hold the second hour of debate on a bill addressing coerced abortions.
Melinda Morin told the court she had no choice but to resort to deadly violence when she was forced to defend herself from Barry Neil Godwin when he became enraged by her decision to refuse an abortion.
I was telling him I didn t want to go through with the abortion, Morin said, according to the Edmonton Sun, adding that she told her boyfriend she planned to raise the child herself. He didn t want a kid out there that was his. He was upset, he wanted me to have an abortion. There was no way around it.
Morin says she tried to leave her apartment but Godwin wouldn t let her. Full story at LifeNews.com
New Jersey Planned Parenthood Biz Closes Another Center
The New Jersey Planned Parenthood has closed another center thanks to pro-life Gov. Chris Christie cutting off the taxpayer funding the abortion business receives through the state s family planning program.
The announcement was lost in the news that the state Assembly passed a bill on Monday in an attempt to restore the funds, though Christie is expected to veto that bill as well.
Also on Monday, Planned Parenthood of Greater Northern New Jersey announced that it would be closing its Dover, New Jersey center. Although the facility did not do abortions it makes abortion referrals like all Planned Parenthood centers do to its abortion clinics.
We sincerely regret the impact that this decision will have on the Dover community and individuals in this service area, said Triste Brooks, President & CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Northern New Jersey, according to NJ.com. Our Dover Health Center has been providing much-needed reproductive health care services to this community for over forty years. Full story at LifeNews.com
Abortion Backers Science Resides in the Dark Ages
by Luis Zaffirini
Tt s becoming more clear to the American public that one of the greatest threats to the supposed right to abortion is science.
Consider how far modern medicine is removed from the practice of medicine in 1973 when Roe v. Wade was decided. Unfortunately, pro-abortionists are stuck in the past. Way in the past.
I recently read a pro-abortion blog, arguing against an upcoming speaking engagement with a local pro-life college group.
The writer said, given that the idea that a zygote is a human being only dates to two hundred years ago with the Catholic Church, it is hard to imagine what they mean by human rights beginning when human life begins. What should we say? Full story at LifeNews.com
Abortion Vote Couple Should Join Christians Seeing Value in The Unborn
After experiencing two miscarriages, Pete and Alisha Arnold said they created the web site Birthornot.com and claimed they would decide whether to keep their unborn child or have an abortion based on the final vote count of visitors to their web site by December 9.
Before the couple finally revealed the site was a hoax, comments on the site indicate that many took it very seriously. Its casual approach to such a life and death decision was shocking but believable to many. Over one million visitors voted and the controversial web site became an international story.
Stories like these detailing our culture s twisted views of unborn human life continue to become more and more disturbing. Yet despite a steady and often demoralizing stream of reports chronicling the downward spiral of our culture s regard for human life, unborn children always seem to find a way to voice their humanity from the womb.
Pete and Alisha s baby is so active they have named him or her Wiggles, and the baby seems to be trying everything to make the world take notice. In recently posted 17-week ultrasound photos, Wiggles appears to be waving and giving a thumbs-up sign. Full story at LifeNews.com
United Nations Partners With NGOs to Push Abortion in Africa
Earlier this month, a UN office partnered with abortion heavyweights to push for widespread legal abortion at a conference in Ghana, Africa.
Conference participants insisted that access to safe and legal abortion is central to reducing maternal mortality, and attacked organized religion and restrictive laws as being obstacles to preventing maternal deaths.
Aissatou Gaye of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) delivered the keynote address. Gaye stressed that restrictive policies and laws were major contributors to unsafe abortion, since most unsafe abortions occur where abortion is illegal.
Gaye lamented the fact that many African countries still have restrictive abortion laws: Despite the fact that the Beijing Platform for Action called on countries as long ago as 1995 to review laws that discriminate against women which restrictive abortion laws clearly do, since men cannot get pregnant very little change has happened in this arena. Full story at LifeNews.com
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Pro-Abortion CEDAW Treaty Lacks Support in Senate Hearing
Last Thursday, a Senate subcommittee humored feminist activists by holding a hearing on possible U.S. ratification of a controversial women s treaty.
Senator Dick Durbin was the only senator present, save for a brief cameo by one other, which led one observer to remark that the hearing was nothing more than a dog and pony show.
Despite longstanding and widespread opposition in the U.S. to the thirty year-old treaty, the hearing was decidedly one-sided, as five of the six speakers spoke in favor of ratification.
The hearing was held to promote the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The CEDAW treaty was signed by President Jimmy Carter but has never been ratified by the U.S., and has not even been voted on by the full Senate, which would require a two-thirds majority for ratification. Full story at LifeNews.com
Pro-Life Advocates Bury Babies Found in Maryland Abortion Center Raid
In response to an abortion facility raid which yielded thirty-five bodies of abortion children, pro-lifers in Cecil County seek to bring dignity to their short lives. The unborn children were buried in a funeral ceremony at the Immaculate Conception Cemetery in Cherry Hill, Cecil County.
Reverend Joe Piekarski of Immaculate Conception Parish worked with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to have the bodies released to the church for a proper burial. Each unborn child was individually named by the church. Full story at LifeNews.com.
British Pro-Life Group Upset by White Paper on Sex Education
The British government released a White Paper on Schools yesterday that is troubling the pro-life group SPUC.
The organization says the government s approach to sex and relationships education included in the White Paper is deeply concerning.
The Schools White Paper refers to high-quality sex and relationships education, apparently ignoring the corrupting and depraved kind of lessons to which very many children are now subjected, Paul Tully, the general secretary of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said. Full story at LifeNews.com.
Portland Planned Parenthood Finishes Tax-Funded Effort to Build Abortion Center
The $12.5 million fundraising campaign that was responsible for building the new Planned Parenthood abortion facility in a historically African-American neighborhood in Portland has come to a close. Full story at LifeNews.com.
Alaska Planned Parenthood Lawsuit Ignores Will of the People
Like a pesky fly that keeps buzzing around and won t go away, Planned Parenthood has once again proven that it cares less about the will of the Alaskan public. Full story at LifeNews.com.
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