LifeNews.com Pro-Life News Report
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
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Current Headlines
Top Stories
• Scientists Appeal to Stop Obama s Embryonic Stem Cell Funding
• Planned Parenthood: 38.4% of Its Income Comes From Abortions
• Mom: Killing My Baby in Abortion Made Me a Better Mother
• China: 400 Million Fewer People Because of One-Child Policy
More Pro-Life News
• Pro-Lifers Are Winning Battles While Fighting to Defeat Roe
• Stop Obama s Recent Attack on Pro-Life Conscience Rights
• Christian School in Texas Quits Komen Over Planned Parenthood
• Catholic Bishop Offers Pro-Life Support for Father Pavone
• California Republican Party Keeps Pro-Life Platform, For Now
• Michigan State Senate to Vote on Partial-Birth Abortion Ban
• Kenya Pro-Life Advocates Protest Pro-Abortion Medical Event
• Direct Conversion Challenges Embryonic Stem Cell Research
• Ohio Pro-Life Advocates Rally for Heartbeat Abortion Ban
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Scientists Appeal to Stop Obama s Embryonic Stem Cell Funding
Two adult stem cell researchers have filed an appeal in their lawsuit seeking to stop President Barack Obama from forcing taxpayers to spend tens of millions of dollars on embryonic stem cell research that destroys human lives.
In July, a federal judge dismissed one of the lawsuits filed against President Barack Obama s executive order forcing taxpayers to finance embryonic stem cell research that has yet to help any patients.
Last August, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that Obama executive order likely violates that law against federal funding of embryo destruction. But, in April, a federal appeals court ruled Obama can force taxpayers to fund embryonic stem cell research that has never helped any patients.
Responding to that decision, Judge Lamberth dismissed the lawsuit Boston adult stem cell researcher James Shirley filed saying the decision discriminates against researchers who don t use embryonic stem cells. Lamberth said he is bound to follow the appeals court decision and had no choice but to dismiss the lawsuit.
While again affirming the standing of adult stem cell researchers to challenge these regulations, Judge Lamberth dismissed the case saying that it had no choice under the mandate rule but to follow the Court of Appeal s April 29 ruling that Congress ban on human embryonic research was written in a sufficiently ambiguous fashion to ban the use of federal funds that risked the injury or death of human embryos, but not the use of federal funds to do research on the embryonic stem cells that were derived from such injury or destruction.
Now, Shirley and his co-plaintiff, Dr. Theresa Deisher, have filed a Notice of Appeal in the Sherley et al. v. Sebelius et al. case, and Dr. David Prentice, a pro-adult stem cell research scientist and LifeNews bloger who supports the lawsuit, exlpained more about the latest filing. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/09/20/scientists-appeal-to-stop-obamas-embryonic-stem-cell-funding/
Planned Parenthood: 38.4% of Its Income Comes From Abortions
Although Planned Parenthood officials like to talk about how a small percentage of the services it provides women are abortion-related, an analysis from Live Action indicates 38.4 percent of its income is derived from abortions.
Live Action spokesman David Schmidt says Planned Parenthood is misleading the public when it talks about how important and influential its abortion business is to its overall bottom line.
Planned Parenthood likes to talk about how only 3% of their services are abortion, he writes at the Live Action blog. A simple example of how they come to this calculation would be Planned Parenthood aborting 3 children and giving out 97 condoms. They would say that out of 100 services, 3 or 3% were abortion when in reality the significance and cost of the 3 abortions is much higher than 3% of their efforts.
Planned Parenthood s accounting of 3% is misleading and not consistent with the rest of the business world, Schmidt continued.
In college I interned at the airline manufacturer Boeing, which sells a lot of airplanes and also a lot of spare parts for those airplanes. For every airplane they sold for tens of millions of dollars, they also sold lots of spare parts for as little as 25 cents. By looking at TOTAL number of sales, you could conclude that 1% of their business was selling airplanes and 99% was spare parts, which is totally ridiculous, he explained. The reality was the value of the airplanes sales was close to 99% of their business and the spare parts 1%. Looking at the cost and effort of what is being offered is a much more accurate way to measure. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/09/20/planned-parenthood-38-4-of-its-income-comes-from-abortions/
Mom: Killing My Baby in Abortion Made Me a Better Mother
On Sept. 13, 2011, Ann Kingsleigh posted a piece titled How My Abortion Enabled Me to Be a Better Mother. She confesses, in detail, how at 24 years of age, already with one young child, she found herself without a husband, and pregnant by an obviously casual relationship.
I am filled with compassion and sympathy for Ann, and the situation she found herself in, as I am for so many women who find themselves in similar predicaments. It probably seems offensive to some to refute her opinion that she is a better mother since she aborted one child in order to better care for another. Popular wisdom and reason would wonder, How could a woman in such a situation as this, an unwanted pregnancy at a time when she is already overwhelmed financially and emotionally, not consider an abortion? (I noted that Ann, like most women in similar circumstances, did not even briefly mention adoption.)
I am here to say that, sadly, however, aborting one child in order to care for another, does not make one a better mother. Ann s problems go back much further and deeper than this incident of an unwanted pregnancy (which has ended tragically). Ann s predicament is what has become a not unusual result of the plight of women in our western culture, which, more and more, proclaims itself free from morality, free from living purely, and free from answering to any higher authority or sense of right and wrong than one s own, often poorly-formed conscience.
Ann proclaims her sense of this false freedom in the ending sentences of her post, where she states that she is glad that she had the right to choose what was right for her family. Ann has an interesting, and all too prevalent, idea of truth, rights and freedoms. But is choosing abortion really freedom? http://www.lifenews.com/2011/09/20/mom-killing-my-baby-in-abortion-made-me-a-better-mother/
China: 400 Million Fewer People Because of One-Child Policy
During a members-only meeting today with members of Congress at the Capital, a former health secretary in the Chinese government admitted the one-child policy has cost the nation as many as 400 million people.
That figure includes not only people who were likely not born because of the promotion of birth control and contraception, but the deaths of unborn children in abortions, forced abortions and infanticides. China sees as many as 37,000 abortions a day under the population control policy.
In a Budget Committee members-only meeting on Tuesday, Congressman Tim Huelskamp, a pro-life Kansas Republican, asked Gao Qiang, who served for two years as the Party Secretary for the Ministry of Health of the People s Republic of China, about the country s population control policy. Through an interpreter, Gao told members in attendance that the population of China has 400 million fewer people that had the coercive family planning policy not been in place.
Gao also pointed out that China has lost more people than the overall population of the United States, estimated at 312 million.
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I was shocked to hear a Chinese official admit how many people have been lost as a result of the country s population control policy, Congressman Huelskamp said. The fact that this policy has resulted in the loss of more people than the overall population of the United States is an eye-opening figure. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/09/20/china-400-million-fewer-people-because-of-one-child-policy/
 Announcing: National Association of Pro-life Nurses announces its 2011-2012 scholarship for student nurses. Scholarship application deadline is Feb. 15, 2012. Application can be found online at http://www.nursesforlife.org |
Pro-Lifers Are Winning Battles While Fighting to Defeat Roe
For years, Christians and other people of conscience have worked to undo the great damage done (53 million unborn lives lost, and countless women deeply scarred) by the 1973 Supreme Court ruling known as Roe v. Wade.
Thus far, we have been unsuccessful in correcting Roe, which is why, after nearly four decades, there are those who say we should evacuate the public square, abandon political activism, support our local pregnancy care centers, and admit legislative and jurisprudential defeat. Focus on personal and ecclesial acts of charity, they say, but let politics alone.
Such an attitude betrays a weak understanding of the nature of political change. Such change is almost always incremental, involving two steps forward and one step back, over and over again. This process is tedious and sometimes discouraging. It is also necessary and intrinsic to any system of representative self-government.
At some point in the future, a Supreme Court that honors life might end Roe s legacy of death. Until then, however, conservatives and champions of life will have continued opportunities to hem-in unrestricted access to abortion on demand.
For example, under President Bush, we were successful in enacting the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act, a ban on partial-birth abortion, and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. We ended U.S. funding for organizations that perform abortions in the developing world and prevented federal funding of embryo-destructive stem cell research. Mr. Bush appointed a series of pro-life judges to the federal courts and actively fought efforts to clone human beings. This is only a partial list. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/09/20/pro-lifers-are-winning-battles-while-fighting-to-defeat-roe/
Stop Obama s Recent Attack on Pro-Life Conscience Rights
Americans have expressed many different views about contraception and sterilization. But just about everyone has been able to agree on one thing: Government should not force anyone to act in accord with someone else s view rather than his or her own.
That consensus may have ended August 1, when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced it will require virtually all private health plans in the U.S. to cover the full range of contraceptive drugs and devices and sterilization procedures, as well as education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity to promote these. HHS will require this under the new health care reform law s mandate for covering preventive services without co-pays or out-of-pocket expenses. Even the great majority of religious organizations must comply, or stop providing health coverage.
Fortunately HHS is allowing public comment on its decision until September 30. All concerned about government s respect for freedom of conscience need to raise their voices now.
The Catholic bishops conference has made it easy to do so by visiting the web page www.usccb.org/conscience. Visitors can send a prepared e-mail message to HHS, add their own personal comments as they wish, and learn more about the issue. The prepared message and related materials focus on three points. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/09/20/stop-obamas-recent-attack-on-pro-life-conscience-rights/
Christian School in Texas Quits Komen Over Planned Parenthood
A Christian school in Texas has severed its ties with Komen for the Cure because affiliates of the breast cancer research and support organization has donated millions of dollars to the Planned Parenthood abortion business.
Trinity Christian School officials tell the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal newspaper the school will no longer back the Lubbock Area Susan G. Komen for the Cure s Race for the Cure because of the ties to Planned Parenthood. As LifeNews has reported, figures from August directly from the Komen for the Cure foundation show 18 affiliates of the breast cancer charity gave a total of more than $569,000 to the Planned Parenthood abortion business in 2010 alone.
Trinity Superintendent Rob Winkler told the newspaper those numbers make leaders of the school uncomfortable even though he appreciates the other work of the local Komen group, which is not one of the affiliates that has made donations to the abortion business recently. However, the newspaper indicates Lubbock Area Komen executive director Ashley Hamm said it made a donation to Planned Parenthood in 1999.
It s a very valuable thing that the Komen group is doing, Winkler said. We know what happens on a local basis, and it s very positive. To us it s not a local issue. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/09/20/christian-school-in-texas-quits-komen-over-planned-parenthood/
Catholic Bishop Offers Pro-Life Support for Father Pavone
As Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life awaits word from a Catholic bishop in Texas about whether he will be permitted to continue his full-time pro-life ministry for Priests for Life, a Catholic bishop in Ohio is offering support. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/09/20/catholic-bishop-offers-pro-life-support-for-father-pavone/
California Republican Party Keeps Pro-Life Platform, For Now
The California Republican Party has turned back efforts by pro-abortion members to water down the current pro-life platform of the GOP, which, nationally, supports a Human Life Amendment to protect unborn children. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/09/20/california-republican-party-keeps-pro-life-platform-for-now/
Michigan State Senate to Vote on Partial-Birth Abortion Ban
Michigan could be the next state to ban partial-birth abortions following a Supreme Court decision in April 2007 upholding a federal ban on them. States are banning the abortions to allow local officials to assist federal authorities in enforcing the law and in case the federal law is ever repealed. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/09/20/michigan-state-senate-to-vote-on-partial-birth-abortion-ban/
Kenya Pro-Life Advocates Protest Pro-Abortion Medical Event
Human Life International (HLI) Kenya led several student organizations in a peaceful protest last week of a conference convened in Kenya to develop strategies on implementing stealth abortion-legalizing provisions from Kenya s year-old revised constitution. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/09/20/kenya-pro-life-advocates-protest-pro-abortion-medical-event/
Direct Conversion Challenges Embryonic Stem Cell Research
The Scientist has a great article called Skipping Pluripotency. What is pluripotency? Pluripotent is a term used to describe a cell that is undifferentiated. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/09/20/direct-conversion-challenges-embryonic-stem-cell-research/
Ohio Pro-Life Advocates Rally for Heartbeat Abortion Ban
Hundreds of pro-life advocates gathered at the state legislature today to support a pro-life bill that has been introduced in Ohio and may be heading to other states that would ban abortions at the point when a unborn child s heart starts to beat. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/09/20/ohio-pro-life-advocates-rally-for-heartbeat-abortion-ban/
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