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News and commentary from the Pro-Life Action League
News and commentary from the Pro-Life Action League
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Two basic tenets of the pro-life position are: (1) abortion destroys the life of a genetically distinct, whole human being; and (2) abortion is psychologically harmful to women.
Conversely, two basic tenets of the “pro-choice” position are: (1) abortion does not destroy the life of a genetically distinct, whole human being; and (2) abortion is not psychologically harmful to women.
With this in mind, I was interested to read this recent post by Jill Filipovic at the stridently “pro-choice” blog Feministe, in which she starts off referring to some “fun facts” from Jena Pincott’s book Do Chocolate Lovers Have Sweeter Babies?, as highlighted in the popular mom blog Mommyish:
Well here are some fun facts: Pregnant women’s bodies are basically swimming with the cells of their fetuses. And even when they give birth, some cells remain. By the end of the first trimester of pregnancy, cells from the fetus account for one in every 50,000 cells in the woman’s body. Further along in the pregnancy, it increases to one in 1,000. Six percent of the DNA in her blood plasma also comes from the fetus. Which is interesting given some standard pro-life arguments like this:
Here is the “standard pro-life argument” Jill linked to: [Continue reading ...]
Planned Parenthood recently released their annual report [PDF] for the 2009-2010 year, and the numbers revealed some very interesting information.
Jill Stanek reports the downward trend in most of their numbers, making Planned Parenthood look like a company in decline. And, as usual, Jim Sedlak at STOPP has an intricate breakdown of everything the numbers can tell us.
But if you’ve only been listening to Planned Parenthood’s rhetoric for the last year or so, you’d never know they were the largest abortion chain in America. You might think they were a breast exam and cancer screening business who did an abortion once a few years back. [Continue reading ...]
What could cause pro-life Christians to join forces with Planned Parenthood?
Lies. Planned Parenthood’s go-to move, and, I believe, the largest reason why Mississippi’s Initiative 26 ballot measure was defeated at the polls yesterday.
The measure, a proposed “Personhood” law, would have declared “every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof” to be a person deserving of the full protection of the law. Resulting laws the measure would require, would likely ban all forms of abortion.
There were strong indications prior to yesterday’s vote that the measure stood a very good chance of passing and that many, even most, Mississippians supported the idea. So what happened? [Continue reading ...]
Josh Brahm blogged recently at Live Action about a new video produced by the Human Development Resource Council (HDRC) about RU-486 — also known simply as “the abortion pill” — that’s definitely a cut above the average YouTube video:
It shows a scene of an abortionist in a counseling session with a young woman who wants RU-486. But this counseling session is very unlike the dishonest marketing and misinformation that was shown during Live Action’s Rosa Acuna sting. This is what would happen if an honest abortionist told a woman the truth about her embryo and what RU-486 would do to both her and her child. I’m sure pro-choice people will cry “propaganda” when they see this video, but there’s a documented medical citation for every single sentence the abortionist utters!
Here it is:
Josh has a great idea: Whenever someone does a YouTube search for “abortion pill,” what if this was the first video that showed up? [Continue reading ...]
Swedish Hospital in Seattle, Washington
A strange story emerges out of Seattle, brought to our attention by Catholic blogger Mark Shea, that finds Planned Parenthood pitted against their longtime allies at the National Organization for Women (NOW) as well as the hospital establishment.
Swedish Health Services, a secular healthcare organization, and Providence Health & Services, a Catholic healthcare organization, have tried over the last decade to find a way to join forces to provide the best possible medical services at Seattle’s Swedish Hospital. A detailed account of the situation can be found here.
They’re poised to come to a historic agreement that would allow both organizations to do the most good for everyone, but controversy has crept in because, as part of the agreement, Swedish is committing to not perform elective abortions.
NOW is in an uproar that any hospital anywhere would dare to not provide abortions. But Planned Parenthood is actually excited about the move. Why? Why else: money. [Continue reading ...]
Sign posted by NIWC landlord Wayne Webster before its license was suspended Sept. 30 [Photo via Pro-Life Corner]
One of the most bizarre, macabre abortion facilities in the country—Northern Illinois Women’s Center, in Rockford—has had its license indefinitely suspended by the State of Illinois.
According to a notice issued September 29 by the state’s Department of Public Health, an inspection conducted at NIWC June 6 through 8 “found conditions that are directly threatening to the public health, safety and welfare requiring immediate, emergency action.”
Although the facility was permitted to remain open while it received a plan of correction, a follow-up inspection conducted on September 15 found that the NIWC failed to clean up its act: [Continue reading ...]
Kameron and Kaydon Manns
A few weeks ago, League Vice President Ann Scheidler posted an entry about Kameron and Kaydon Manns, conjoined twin baby boys who died on August 13 at the University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago.
The first comment in response to the story was posted by one Olivia Dunham, who wrote:
Call me heartless and I know you will, but abortion would have been my choice. I wouldn’t want to watch my babies suffer.
A few comments have been posted in response, but one comment in particular, submitted by Yolanda Butler — Kameron and Kaydon’s grandmother — is so moving that it deserves to be re-posted here for all of our readers to see: [Continue reading ...]
There’s a heartwarming story this week in the Chicago Sun-Times about Amanda Schulten, a 21-year old woman from Marengo, Illinois, who is seven months pregnant with conjoined twin daughters, whom she has already named Faith and Hope.
In spite of her daughters’ very low chance of survival, Amanda’s Catholic faith guides her to believe that there is no other option but to let nature its course. In the article, she is quoted as saying, “He has a plan for me, and for them. We never know when our last day will be. We have to enjoy it, and appreciate health while we have it.”
(Reading these words of Amanda’s, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the beautiful video “99 Balloons” — which has received nearly 3.5 million views on YouTube) about a young couple who gave birth to a son with Edwards Syndrome.)
What struck me most about the article was the stunning contrast between, on the one hand, Amanda’s attitude of selflessness and unconditional love for her daughters, and, on the other, the absolutely cruel and heartless comments that she has had to endure from others who think she should just get an abortion instead. [Continue reading ...]
Kameron and Kaydon Manns
On March 31, 2010, Kameron and Kaydon Hayes were born to Brianna Manns at the University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago.
They were identical twins—closer than most. Kameron and Kaydon were conjoined twins, joined at the thorax and sharing a heart and liver. From the beginning their mother and medical professionals knew that their lives would be short and fraught with difficulties.
But Kameron and Kaydon defied odds. Everyone was surprised that they survived to celebrate their first birthday. But on Friday, August 13, they finally lost the battle they had fiercely fought. Their heart was beating erratically, and there was nothing more that the medical team could do.
When doctors discovered the complication during Brianna Manns’ pregnancy they talked to her about aborting them. But their mother said abortion was never an option. “I am a strong believer in not having abortions — very, very strong,” said Manns. “They are my babies. I had the feelings that any mother would have,” I wanted my children to experience life to the fullest, to whatever extent that it might be.” [Continue reading ...]
This week the New York Times Magazine has a long article entitled “The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy” about women who are pregnant with twins after undergoing IVF, and who decide to have one of them aborted.
The painfully obvious subtext of the article is to get you to believe that women “need” this particular type of abortion to be better mothers — a talking point the “pro-choice” movement has been using more and more in recent months.
The first thing that struck me as I was reading the article was the verbal gymnastics employed by the writer, Ruth Padawer, in referring to what is so coldly called “selective reduction” (but which in laymen’s terms might be better called “killing one or more babies in a multiple pregnancy”).
In the opening paragraph, we’re introduced to a 45-year old woman named “Jenny,” who was “choosing to extinguish one of two healthy fetuses, almost as if having half an abortion.”
Wow. It’s bad enough that the word “abortion” is so often replaced by vacuous euphemisms like “termination of pregnancy” or “voluntary interruption of pregnancy”, but it’s perhaps even more insane to see a professional writer speak of an abortion of a human baby er, fetus “almost [!] as if” it’s “half an abortion”. [Continue reading ...]