LifeNews.com Pro-Life News Report
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
| For pro-life news updated throughout the day, visit LifeNews.com. |
Current Headlines
Top Stories
• Perry Promises to Name Pro-Life Advocate as Vice President
• Kansas Appeals Ruling Forcing it to Fund Planned Parenthood
• Biden One-Child Policy Comment No Gaffe, Obama Admin Ignores It
• Texas Ultrasound Ruling Blasted by Perry, Pro-Life Groups
More Pro-Life News
• First Lawsuit Filed on Fetal Pain-Based 20-Week Abortion Ban
• British Govt Opposes Move to Stop Pro-Abortion Counseling
• China Builds Special Prison for Forced Abortion Opponent
• Florida Pro-Lifers to Protest Planned Parenthood Funding
• Abortion Practitioner Admits Lying to Utah Officials
• UK Journalist Finds NHS Counseling Promotes Abortion
• Funding Planned Parenthood Doesn t Stop Unplanned Pregnancies
• Legacies of Terri Schiavo, Robert Schindler Inspire My Family
---> LifeNews.com has multiple ways you can add our pro-life news headlines to your web site. Choose from our RSS feed or our Feedburner feed.
Perry Promises to Name Pro-Life Advocate as Vice President
Texas governor Rick Perry has quickly vaulted to the top of the Republican presidential race and he now faces questions from pro-life advocates about what he would do as president. One news report says Perry has answered one question by saying he would name a pro-life Vice President.
A pro-life vice president is important for any presidential administration, as pro-abortion Vice President Joe Biden reconfirmed recently when he failed to condemn the forced abortions and other human rights abuses associated with the one-child policy in China.
Paul Bedard of U.S. News and World Report indicates Perry addressed the question of a potential running mate at a weekend event in Texas, where more than 200 conservative and pro-life advocates gathered.
At a weekend Texas gathering of about 200 conservative leaders, some from Washington, Perry and his wife Anita portrayed themselves as authentic and life-long conservatives who could bring the most pro-life administration ever to Washington, Bardard reports. Key among the questions Perry fielded was who he would pick as a vice presidential candidate if he wins the nomination. Perry is an ally of Giuliani and endorsed him for president during the 2008 GOP primaries. At the time, he cited the former New York City mayor s ability to pull the city together after the 9/11 attacks.
Perry recently signed the Susan B. Anthony List pledge indicating he would press for pro-life legislation to de-fund abortion and the Planned Parenthood abortion business and, with regard to a Vice President, appoint pro-life advocates to key administration positions where abortion policy would be affected. Bedard indicates the attendees at the event said Perry followed up on that point.
Some of those at the weekend conclave said Perry promised to stick to the pledge when considering a vice president and they left believing that meant Giuliani is out of the picture, he reported. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/08/31/perry-promises-to-name-pro-life-advocate-as-vice-president/
Kansas Appeals Ruling Forcing it to Fund Planned Parenthood
The state of Kansas will appeal the latest ruling from a federal judge forcing the state to send taxpayer funds to the Planned Parenthood abortion business. The state announced it will comply with the most recent decision.
Late Tuesday, a judge ordered the state to send taxpayer funds to the abortion business following complaints from it that it lost state public funding. U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten ruled that Kansas must fund the abortion business even though it did not cancel an contracts with the agency that were in effect at the time a new state provision went into place denying taxpayer funding via the family planning program to any agencies that do abortions.
Marten, in his ruling, also rejected the state s request to only give Planned Parenthood taxpayer money on a monthly basis while its lawsuit moves forward rather than in a quarterly lump sum covering three months. Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Western Missouri had complained earlier Tuesday that it would have to close its Hays, Kansas abortion referral clinic by Friday if the judge did not order the stand to fork over tax money to fund it.
The court finds no injury to the defendants in maintaining the prior payment schedule, as they will be providing funding in a manner consistent with prior practice between the parties, and to an organization which has consistently provided satisfactory family planning services, he wrote. Defendants shall resume funding in accordance with this order immediately and shall continue such funding until further order of this court or the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit modifying this order.
Earlier, Marten issued an injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law after Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri argued that it would suffer irreparable harm if the law was allowed to stand and that it would be forced to close one or more of its facilities because Kansas would direct hundreds of thousands of taxpayer funds to non-abortion medical clinics that provide the same services without also destroying the lives of women and unborn children in abortions.
Today, the Kansas Attorney General s Office issued a statement to Kansans for Life: The state will comply with the Judge s order but will continue its appeal to the Tenth Circuit United States Court of Appeals. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/08/31/kansas-appeals-ruling-forcing-it-to-fund-planned-parenthood/
Biden One-Child Policy Comment No Gaffe, Obama Admin Ignores It
The Vice President is being hammered for seeming to condone Chinese-style population control. Answering a question about the one-child policy, he seemed to go out of his way to be noncritical, saying that he fully understands the one-child-per-family policy and was not second-guessing it.
His defenders maintain that this does not constitute an endorsement of the policy, tacit or otherwise, and that Biden was merely being diplomatic. Of course, this is not much of a defense since, even if this is the case, then the Vice President is guilty of whitewashing the worst ongoing human rights abuse of our century, one which costs millions of lives each year.
Others believe that the sitting Vice President suffers from a chronic case of foot-in-mouth disease. His misstatements should not be taken seriously, they say, because they are just the latest in a long line of gaffes. (This suggests that Biden should never be allowed to open his mouth without a teleprompter in front of him.)
Still others believe that Biden was simply ignorant of the way that Beijing s one-child policy is enforced by means of forced abortions, forced sterilizations, and other coercive measures. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/08/31/biden-one-child-policy-comment-no-gaffe-obama-admin-ignores-it/
Texas Ultrasound Ruling Blasted by Perry, Pro-Life Groups
Texas officials say they will appeal a judge s ruling late Tuesday striking down a new law the state approved allowing women considering an abortion a chance to see the ultrasound the abortion center does of their unborn baby.
Meanwhile, two leading pro-life groups and pro-life Gov. Rick Perry responded to the judge s decision and say they are not happy about it.
As LifeNews reported, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks issued an injunction in advance of the September 1 date the law is supposed to go into effect. He ruled in a two-page order that parts of the state s new sonogram law are unconstitutional and prevented Texas officials from issuing any fines or penalties against abortion practitioners who do not follow the law while the lawsuit continues.
Judge Sparks claimed Texas has no right to tell abortion practitioners they should allow women a chance to see an ultrasound of an abortion even though one is typically done to determine the age of the baby at the time of the abortion. Judge Sparks also claimed the law is supposedly vague and contradictory and makes it so abortion practitioners who think they are following the law could be running afoul of it.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott plans to appeal the decision and Governor Perry, who is a Republican presidential candidate, called the ruling a great disappointment to all Texans who stand in defense of life. Every life lost to abortion is a tragedy, he said in a statement. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/08/31/texas-ultrasound-ruling-blasted-by-perry-pro-life-groups/
First Lawsuit Filed on Fetal Pain-Based 20-Week Abortion Bana
An Idaho woman has filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn a law in Idaho that bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy based on the scientific evidence showing unborn children feel pain during pregnancy.
Idaho Governor C. L. Butch Otter signed the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act into law in April, making Idaho the third state to protect from abortion the life of the pain-capable child. The law is a new trend in pro-life legislation that prohibits abortions and places the focus on the unborn child as a victim during the abortion procedure and this suit is the first lawsuit brought against any of the similar laws state legislatures have passed.
Jennie Linn McCormack, a 33-year-old Pocatello resident, is behind the lawsuit and she brought it, according to a Reuters report, because she faced prosecution for engaging in a self-abortion using an abortion drug she purchased off the Internet.
McCormack s attorneys brought a class action lawsuit against an older law, from 1972, that makes it a crime for a woman to self-abort her own pregnancy. McCormack was charged under that law but the charge was later dismissed due to lack of evidence. The lawsuit claims the law discriminates against women living in rural Idaho who don t have each access to urban-based abortion facilities.
Court documents Reuters cited show McCormack, a mother of three, didn t want to drive to Salt Lake City for an abortion and she ordered the mifepristone and misoprostol pills that combine to form the RU 486 abortion drug, off the Internet. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/08/31/first-lawsuit-filed-on-fetal-pain-based-20-week-abortion-ban/
British Govt Opposes Move to Stop Pro-Abortion Counseling
The government of Prime Minister David Cameron says it will oppose an amendment to a health by MP Nadine Dorries to stop the biased counseling in favor of abortion done at abortion centers that received taxpayer funds.
Members of the British Parliament are looking at a plan to require that all women in England considering an abortion undergo pre-abortion counseling a move they say could stop as many as 60,000 abortions annually.
Abortion counseling is currently only offered by abortion businesses, which have a financial incentive to ensure they do not talk women out of having an abortion by emphasizing the numerous alternatives available to them or offering any non-abortion pregnancy assistance. However, the proposed legal changes would have abortion businesses following laws similar to those in the United States that require them to mention other options. Such laws have proven to reduce abortions.
However, the London Guardian newspaper reports that the government has reversed its position and will now vote against the amendment and urge other Tory MPs to do the same on the vote expected next week. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/08/31/british-govt-opposes-move-to-stop-pro-abortion-counseling/
China Builds Special Prison for Forced Abortion Opponent
Chinese officials are building a special prison to house forced abortion opponent Chen Guangcheng, who has been subjected to home detention and monitoring since his release from prison earlier this year.
Chen, who exposed a massive campaign of forced abortions and sterilizations in Linyi, China to the western world in an interview with the Washington Post, spent more than four years in prison for his crime. Family planning officials held a bogus trial on charges that Chen supposedly destroyed property in a local protest he never attended. During the trial, Chen s attorneys were prevented from appearing.
Now, Reggie Littlejohn, an American human right activists who works closely with dissidents in China as the president of Women s Rights Without Frontiers, reports that Chen, a blind attorney, and his wife, Yuan Weijing, will be transferred to a small prison built specifically for them. She cites a Radio Free Asia report which interviewed activist He Peirong, who stated the couple will be forcibly removed from their home and transferred to a building which basically amounts to a jail so that authorities can keep tighter controls on them.
They will be separated from their five-year-old daughter in the move, Littlejohn indicates, and their young son, who was living with relatives, was reportedly strip-searched leaving the family home. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/08/31/china-builds-special-prison-for-forced-abortion-opponent/
Florida Pro-Lifers to Protest Planned Parenthood Funding
Organized under the banner of St. Lucie Taxpayers Against Planned Parenthood Funding, local pro-life advocates in Florida re protesting the taxpayer-funding of the abortion business in their community. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/08/31/florida-pro-lifers-to-protest-planned-parenthood-funding/
Abortion Practitioner Admits Lying to Utah Officials
Nicola Riley, an embattled abortion practitioner who has lost her medical license in Maryland already, has admitted to lying to Utah officials when it comes to her own record as a physician there. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/08/31/abortion-practitioner-admits-lying-to-utah-officials/
UK Journalist Finds NHS Counseling Promotes Abortion
Just days after a report that the UK Department of Health plans to create a new system of independent pre-abortion counseling, an undercover investigation of the counseling afforded by abortion providers and crisis pregnancy centers reveals the powerful impact of pre-abortion counseling. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/08/31/uk-journalist-finds-nhs-counseling-promotes-abortion/
Funding Planned Parenthood Doesn t Stop Unplanned Pregnancies
Last week, the Guttmacher Institute announced the publication of an analysis of the rate of unintended pregnancy in the United States from 2001 to 2006. The report unwittingly makes the case for defunding Planned Parenthood. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/08/31/funding-planned-parenthood-doesnt-stop-unplanned-pregnancies/
Legacies of Terri Schiavo, Robert Schindler Inspire My Family
The passing of both Terri and my father is what helps inspire my family and the work we do at Terri s Life & Hope Network to continue fighting for our most vulnerable every day. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/08/31/legacies-of-terri-schiavo-robert-schindler-inspire-my-family/
Encourage Friends to Sign Up for Free Pro-Life News From LifeNews.com
