Half of All US Women Having Abortions Had at Least One Previous Abortion

Victory for Medical Professionals over Attack on Weldon Amendment

Rape Victim: My Child "No Different"

Alabama Hearing On New Abortion Center Safety Rules

Russia Lawmakers Propose Woman's Abortion Must Have Husband's Input

New Study Says Illegal Abortions Kill Women, Legal Abortions Not Better

Chile Congress Rejects Bill to Legalize Abortions for Rape, Incest

Nicaragua President Signs No-Exception Strict Abortion Ban

HALF OF ALL US WOMEN HAVING ABORTIONS HAD AT LEAST ONE PREVIOUS ABORTION. Almost half of all  women who have abortions in the U.S. have already aborted at least one previous pregnancy, according to a recent report by the research affiliate of Planned Parenthood, the Alan Guttmacher Institute.

In the study entitled Repeat Abortion in the United States, released this month, researchers found that 48.2 percent of women who had abortions between 2001-2001 were obtaining repeat abortions. That included 29 percent who had one previous abortion, 12 percent who had two previous abortions, and 7 percent who were aborting their fourth or more pregnancy.

A majority of women aged 25 or older who had abortions had one or more previous abortions. Women having two or more abortions were almost twice as likely to be aged 30 or older, researchers found.

Women who had three or more prior births were more than twice as likely to have repeat abortions. Of the women who had three or more abortions, 33.8 percent had three or more children. Of women who had one or more prior births, a majority reported one or more previous abortions.

However, 43 percent of women obtaining repeat abortions, both those with children and those without, said they wanted to have (more) children, while almost one quarter said they were unsure.  Thirty-three percent said they did not want (more) children.

Women having repeat abortions were somewhat more likely to be married, cohabiting, or to have been married in the past, than women having their first abortion.

The average time span between abortions was found to be three and a half years. Even among women aged 35 or older who had repeat abortions, the average time span between abortions was just over four years.

The more abortions women had, the closer together they occurred. Women who had three or more abortions had repeat abortions within two years of the previous abortion 50 percent of the time.

The study was conducted by researchers Rachel K. Jones, Susheela Singh, Lawrence B. Finer and Lori F. Frohwirth. The report relied on data collected from multiple sources including annual abortion surveillance reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Guttmacher Institute’s Abortion Provider Census, the Guttmacher 2000-2001 Abortion Patient Survey, and the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth.
Guttmacher report:
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/11/21/or29.pdf
[23Nov06, Gudrun Schultz, NYC, LifeSiteNews.com]

Conscience

VICTORY FOR PRO-LIFE MEDICAL GROUPS IN ABORTION GROUP'S ATTACK ON WELDON AMENDMENT: Federal appeals court upholds federal protection for pro-life medical professionals.
A federal appeals court 15Nov06 upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by a pro-abortion group challenging the “Weldon Amendment.” 

The Weldon Amendment is a federal statute that prohibits the federal government or state and local governments receiving certain federal aid from discriminating against medical professionals who refuse to perform or refer for abortions.

“Doctors and nurses should not be forced to participate in abortions against their religious beliefs or conscience.  Under the banner of ‘choice,’ the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association asserted a supposed right to do this, but the court didn’t buy it,” said Casey Mattox, litigation counsel for CLS’s Center for Law & Religious Freedom.  “This decision turns back the effort to enshrine abortion as a right above even the First Amendment.”

NFPRHA challenged the Weldon Amendment just days after it was first signed into law in December 2005.  After a federal district court upheld the law, NFPRHA appealed, arguing that the Weldon Amendment was too vague to enforce and that their member organizations had a constitutional right to force medical professionals to provide abortion referrals.

The ruling today held that NFPRHA lacked standing to challenge the Weldon Amendment.  The decision in National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association v. Gonzales from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit can be read at www.telladf.org/UserDocs/Gonzales-NFPRHAopinion.pdf.

The Christian Medical Association and American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, represented by attorneys from ADF and CLS’s Center for Law & Religious Freedom, intervened to defend the Weldon Amendment on behalf of members of the two medical associations:  over 18,000 pro-life doctors, nurses, physician assistants, and other medical professionals across the country.

CMA and AAPLOG, along with the Fellowship of Christian Physician Assistants, are also defending the Weldon Amendment in California ex. rel. Bill Lockyer v. United States, a case pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Together, ADF, America’s largest legal alliance, and CLS, America’s premier network of Christian legal professionals, defend religious liberty, human life, marriage, and the family.
www.telladf.org              www.clsnet.org
[14November06, ADF Media Relations | 480-444-0020; 15Nov06 N. Valko RN; http://stoptheaclu.com/archives/2006/11/15/federal-appeals-court-upholds-weldon-amendment/]

ALABAMA HEARING ON NEW ABORTION CENTER SAFETY RULES. Neither side in the abortion debate was happy with the newer more stringent rules on abortion businesses the state health department announced during a hearing yesterday. The new rules come after health officials found numerous violations and problems at abortion centers in Birmingham and Montgomery.
Pro-life advocates reacted to the new rules by saying they don't go far enough and that abortion should be eliminated if the state is serious about protecting women.

Abortion activists said the new health and safety rules would close down abortion centers that put women's health at risk and would lead to illegal abortions.

The new rules include requiring each abortion facility to have a licensed physician on staff or through a contract who is board certified in obstetrics and gynecology and has admitting privileges at a hospital not more than 30 minutes away.

That way a doctor can admit a woman who suffers from a botched abortion to a local hospital for emergency surgery to repair the damage.

Rev. Jack Zylman, a retired Unitarian minister and a member of Alabama Clergy for Choice, told the panel he doesn't like that idea, according to a Decatur Daily report. He also brought up illegal abortions, saying legal abortions are safer for women even with the numerous problems at the abortion facilities.

"Abortion clinics are there because hospitals have knuckled under to the anti-abortion forces," Zylman said.

Planned Parenthood of Alabama President Larry Rodick said the admitting privileges rule would be difficult for some abortion centers because hospitals rarely want to work with a facility whose sole purposes is to do abortions.

Tamer Middleton, who does abortions in Alabama and Georgia, also testified, according to the Daily. She complained that most doctors in the state don't know how to do abortions.

But a Montgomery obstetrician/gynecologist said abortions are medically unnecessary and indicated he doesn't know of any physician who would not treat someone injured by an abortion.

He said regulations are needed to force abortion centers to disclose the name of the person doing the abortion because they often refuse to provide that information and make it difficult for physicians who provide emergency care following a botched abortion.

According to the Decatur newspaper, Rick Harris, director of the Bureau of Health Provider Standards for the health department, said the department would look into additional rules and regulations in the months ahead.

The hearing came after one abortion business closed down and two were suspended after health officials found violations.

Last week, the Birmingham New Woman All Women Health Care abortion facility agreed to go on probation over several violations found by state health inspectors including tests not being done on women before abortions and the abortion facility's administrator taking narcotics from the facility for her own personal use.

Some of the violations included patients who were not given medications on time, failing to verify if ultrasound or pregnancy tests had been conducted before abortions, and the administrator's personal use of the abortion center's drugs.

The administrator has since been fired and state health inspectors are monitoring the abortion facility's misuse of the drugs.

The center hadn't been inspected since July 2004 but State Health Officer Don Williamson said staffing increases have made it so he can begin doing annual inspections of the state's nine abortion centers.

Earlier this month, Diane Derzis, the director of the New Woman abortion facility, told AP, it had "nothing to hide" from state inspectors.

New Woman isn't the first abortion business to have health violations as three other Alabama abortion centers have come under fire.

The Summit Medical Center abortion center in Birmingham closed down in July after a nurse illegally gave a woman late in pregnancy the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug. Afterwards, it fabricated its health records in an attempt to cover up what happened.

The woman Summit gave the abortion drug to had a severely high blood pressure and needed medical attention, and later gave birth to a stillborn baby. According to the suspension order LifeNews.com obtained, the woman had a "critical and dangerously high" blood pressure reading of 182/129.

Only a doctor is supposed to dispense the dangerous abortion drug and the mifepristone pills are only intended to be used in the early stages of a pregnancy. The woman went to an emergency room six days later and gave birth to a 6-pound, 4-ounce stillborn baby.

The state medical board has also temporarily prohibited abortion practitioner Deborah Lyn Levich and Summit Medical Center nurse Janet F. Onthank King from practicing.

Levich and King have been prohibited from working with each other again after Levich allowed King to dispense the abortion drug.

At Summit, state health officials said they found "egregious lapses in care, including non-physicians performing abortions, severely underestimating the gestational age of a fetus, failure to appropriately refer or treat a patient with a dangerously elevated blood pressure, and performing an abortion on a late-term pregnancy." Summit Medical Centers operates seven abortion businesses in five states and has another abortion center in Montgomery, Alabama. It is the abortion business that employed Malachy Dehenre, who lost his medical license in both Alabama and Mississippi because of botched abortions.

Following the incident at Summit, the state began inspecting the state's other abortion facilities, which led to finding problems at Reproductive Health Services in Montgomery. The Alabama Department of Health suspended RHS's license in August saying that the abortion business did not have a backup physician on hand kept inadequate medical records and conducted poor follow-up abortion care.

State health officials postponed a September hearing on the suspension. Because the facility says it is working on making improvements, State Health Department attorney Pat Ivie said the agency decided to postpone a hearing. Previously, the health department had set up a September 18 hearing on the suspension but Ivie told the Associated Press that the abortion center showed a plan for correcting the abuses.