LifeNews.com Pro-Life News Report
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
| For pro-life news updated throughout the day, visit LifeNews.com. |
Current Headlines
Top Stories
• Obama Admin May Face Probe on Funding of Pro-Abortion Kenya Groups
• President George W. Bush: Seeing Unborn Baby Shaped Pro-Life Views
• University of San Francisco Honors Catholic Enabler of Pro-Abortion ObamaCare
• Planned Parenthood Abortion Center Closes in Kansas, Three Left in State
More Pro-Life News
• Practitioner May Have Done Abortions in North Dakota With Invalid License
• Pawlenty: Repealing Pro-Abortion ObamaCare Potential Presidential Bid Priority
• Washington Post Wrong: Abortion Hurts Women s Mental Health
• Poll: Canadians Moving Away From Support for Assisted Suicide, Euthanasia
• Major Scientific Advance: Blood From Skin Without Stem Cells
• Fetal Pain Should Prompt Abortion Backers to Reconsider Their Position
• NPR Board Dominated by Liberal Abortion Advocates
---> Please click here to become one of the 100 monthly donors LifeNews.com needs.
Obama Admin May Face Probe on Funding of Pro-Abortion Kenya Groups
With the House of Representatives in pro-life hands starting next January, the Obama administration may find itself the subject of a congressional investigation related to the potentially illegal funding of pro-abortion groups.
The Obama administration has repeatedly come under fire from pro-life Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican who leads the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus.
Smith has been concerned about a USAID report indicating the Obama administration spent $61.2 million related to the vote on the August vote on the new Kenya constitution. The report shows 12.6 million going to efforts to directly promote the pro-abortion constitution.
The constitution Kenyans adopted contained a clause making it so abortions would be legalized in any case in which medical professionals say it is somehow necessary for women.
As a result, the funding of groups promoting it appears to violate the Siljander Amendment a federal law Congress approved decades ago that prevents the federal government from spending taxpayer funds promoting abortions in other nations.
Before the mid-term elections, Congressman Smith told LifeNews.com one of the consequences of Republicans taking over the House is the ability of pro-life advocates leading committees and subcommittees to the their powers to hold the Obama administration accountable on subject like this. He said the investigatory and subpoena powers the committees have would be useful in following up on the question of whether the Obama administration broke the law in funding the pro-constitution and pro-abortion groups.
Last week, he said the elections resulted in the victory of many new pro-life lawmakers who can support a potential investigation. Full story at LifeNews.com
President George W. Bush: Seeing Unborn Baby Shaped Pro-Life Views
In a new interview to be aired tonight with NBC s Matt Lauer to promote his new book, Decision Points, pro-life former President George W. Bush explains a startling conversation that resulted in forming and solidifying his pro-life views.
After his mother Barbara Bush suffered an emotional miscarriage, she said to her teenage kid, Here s the fetus, Bush told Lauer.
During the interview, President Bush gestures as if he is holding a jar saying the former First Lady showed him the jar containing the baby and that made a tremendous impact on him.
I never expected to see the remains of the fetus, which she had saved in a jar to bring to the hospital, Bush says. There was a human life, a little brother or sister.
The New York Post reports that, in the interview, Bush tells Lauer, There s no question that affected me, a philosophy that we should respect life. Full story at LifeNews.com
University of San Francisco Honors Catholic Enabler of Pro-Abortion ObamaCare
Later this month, the University of San Francisco will honor the Catholic Health Association president who has received the scorn of pro-life Catholics across the country for enabling passage of the abortion-funding ObamaCare law.
Sr. Carol Keehan, the president and CEO of the CHA, is credited with giving Rep. Bart Stupak and other supposedly pro-life Democrats the political and religious cover they needed to reverse their positions against the measure because it lacked any bill-wide language prohibiting abortion funding with taxpaper dollars.
The Catholic bishops, who wanted to support a health care bill but couldn t do so because of the taxpayer financing of abortion, says Keehan s compromise resulted in a wound to Catholic unity.
The Cardinal Newman Society is urging USF to rescind the scheduled honor.
It is unspeakable that the University of San Francisco should choose to honor someone who severely damaged pro-life efforts in this nation and undermined the express will of the U.S. bishops, said Patrick Reilly, the president of the Catholic watchdog group. The Cardinal Newman Society calls on the President of USF to rescind the offer of this honor and speaking platform to Sr. Keehan. Full story at LifeNews.com
Planned Parenthood Abortion Center Closes in Kansas, Three Left in State
Planned Parenthood of Lawrence quietly closed its abortion facility nine weeks ago located near the University of Kansas, where it did abortions on college students attending the university.
With the closing, Kansas is now down to three abortion centers left in the state, which is good news for Kathy Ostrowski of Kansans for Life.
Like other abortion centers across the nation, Ostrowski said the Planned Parenthood abortion business in Lawrence put women s health at risk in addition to ending the lives of unborn children.
The Lawrence Planned Parenthood street-mall facility was not licensed or inspected by the state, she said. It provided contraceptives and chemical abortions with no doctor onsite.
A notice posted on the door that KFL obtained a picture of attributes its closure to a lack of need and recommends the county and KU clinics as well as the Planned Parenthood clinic one-half-hour away. Full story at LifeNews.com
Practitioner May Have Done Abortions in North Dakota With Invalid License
In what is the latest in a string of health and safety abuses at abortion centers across the country, North Dakota officials are looking into whether abortions were done by a practitioner without a valid medical license.
The case follows others in Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey where a chain of abortion businesses have various abortion practitioners under investigation by state officials.
In the North Dakota case, abortion practitioner Tami Lynn Holst Thorndike has medical licenses in Colorado and in South Dakota but her north Dakota license expired on June 30.
Tammi Kromenaker, the director of the Red River abortion center, the only one in the state, tried to dismiss any concern and told the Bismarck Tribune it was merely an administrative oversight.
This is a paperwork matter and not a reflection of her abilities or competency as a physician, Kromenaker said. She has never had a black mark on her record. Full story at LifeNews.com
Pawlenty: Repealing Pro-Abortion ObamaCare Potential Presidential Bid Priority
If pro-life Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty decides to run for president in 2012, he said over the weekend that repealing the pro-abortion ObamaCare health care scheme would be one of his top priorities.
Pawlenty told CNN s Candy Crowley on Sunday that he will campaign on repealing the law.
I think ObamaCare is one of the worst pieces of legislation passed in the modern history of the country, he said. I m doing everything I can in Minnesota to stop, delay or avoid its implementation in my state, including signing an executive order saying we re not going to participate unless required by law or approved by me.
I hope between now and 2014, when it s fully kicked in, that as many states as possible do what they can to reel that program back, or that the new Republican Congress, better yet, can repeal it, because it s dragging stuff into Washington, D.C., creating a new bureaucracy, spending a new a lot of new money that they don t have, isn t going to work. We should have market-based solutions, the governor added. Full story at LifeNews.com
| Looking for a Low-Cost Pro-Life Speaker? |
| Looking for a pro-life speaker for your next banquet, conference or convention? LifeNews.com editor Steven Ertelt is a low-cost speaker who can entertain and educate your audience as well as help you with a fundraising pitch if necessary. For more information: news@LifeNews.com. |
Washington Post Wrong: Abortion Hurts Women s Mental Health
by Michael New
A long time ago, pro-lifers realized that humanizing the unborn was not always an effective strategy, so they adopted other rhetorical and legislative strategies to protect the unborn. One such strategy has been to appeal to women s self-interest by documenting the emotional pain that many women face after obtaining an abortion. (The Silent No More Campaign has been very effective at this.)
In Sunday s Washington Post, Brenda Major responded to this strategy by arguing that it is based on faulty science.
The article makes three specific points. First, Major argues that the best available research indicates that abortion fails to increase the likelihood of mental-health problems.
Second, studies that do show a correlation between abortion and mental-health problems wrongly compare women whose pregnancies were unintended (and resulted in abortion) with women whose pregnancies were intended. Finally, the powerful testimonies of regretful post-abortive women cause people to overestimate the frequency with which post-abortive women suffer from depression. Full story at LifeNews.com
Poll: Canadians Moving Away From Support for Assisted Suicide, Euthanasia
A new poll finds Canadians are moving away from supporting legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia.
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition has been contracting an annual poll for several years to measure public opinion on the contentious practices, but the recent survey provides the group some good news.
The recent Environics group survey shows that the EPC strategy not only convinced MP s to vote against legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada, but has also helped to shift public opinion against the legalization of euthanasia in Canada, says EPC director Alex Schadenberg.
Bill C-384, which would have legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide was defeated by 228 to 59 in April and the survey on euthanasia was based on 2025 Canadians who were questioned in mid-September. Full story at LifeNews.com
| Please Help LifeNews.com |
| Please consider a donation to LifeNews.com, PO Box 270841, Fort Collins, CO 80527. We also accept donations through PayPal at news@LifeNews.com. |
Major Scientific Advance: Blood From Skin Without Stem Cells
by Dr. David Prentice
Scientists at McMaster University in Canada have shown that they can transform human skin cells directly into blood cells, without going through an intermediate stem cell stage.
This is the first evidence for human cells of what is termed direct reprogramming turning one type of cell directly into another type of cell.
The scientists repeated the experiments, published online in Nature on Sunday, several times using human skin cells from young and old volunteers, to show that the process works no matter the age of the person. Full story at LifeNews.com
The science of fetal pain remains uncertain, but we still have a duty to avoid the possibility of inflicting undue suffering.A much-discussed new law in the state of Nebraskahas banned abortion after the 20th week of pregnancy, citing the contested notion of fetal pain. Of course, everyone can agree that we have a duty not to cause pain to others without a just cause. Bioethicists endorse the relieving of pain as an expression of the principle of beneficence.
And international bodies concur that access to pain relief without discrimination is a fundamental right. As a society we even take efforts to eliminate pain from the process of executing capital offenders whose guilt is manifestly established. But how do we approach the possibility of fetal pain when the science remains uncertain? Full story at LifeNews.com.
NPR Board Dominated by Liberal Abortion Advocates
An examination of both the board of NPR s non-profit foundation and its national board of directors recently found that their members are overwhelmingly almost uniformly adherents to various left-wing ideologies.
National Review s Matthew Shaffer conducted the examination. He found that nearly all have demonstrably liberal political sympathies, with heavy support for the Democratic party, pro-abortion-rights groups, and environmental activism in particular.
It is important to remember that these two boards do not dictate content. Still, even if their politics are only incidental to NPR s liberal slant, the near-uniformity of their political views suggests that NPR attracts people with those views. That fact alone makes an interesting addition to the debate over the organization s public funding.Full story at LifeNews.com
Encourage Friends to Sign Up for Free Pro-Life News From LifeNews.com
