NEW! Babies for Sale: The Scandal of China's Single Child Policy

NEW! New Zealand Right to Life Wins Court Ruling on 1977 Abortion Law

NEW! UNICEF Among Sponsors of New Campaign Promoting Abortion

Pro-Life Memorial Day -- October 1st 

Couple Sues IVF Doctor for Cost of Raising Twin

Israeli Doctor Exposes Nazi Abortion Program

Georgia Singing Group Makes Available Free Pro-Life Song with Sheet Music and MP3 Audio

Poor training 'causes 1,000 stillbirths a year'

Judge says Planned Parenthood unlikely to succeed in having MO abortion business law ruled unconstitutional

Austria Court Refuses to Rule Hiasl the Chimp a Person

Brazilian Baby with Anencephaly Now 10 Months Old 

Heroic Sacrifice for Life: From fighter pilot to courageous mother

ACLU Lawyer Convicted of Child Porn Possession

$7.5 million libel lawsuit against Planned Parenthood...

New Zealand Right to Life Wins Court Ruling on 1977 Abortion Law. Right to Life of New Zealand took the law to the nation's high court saying that it was intended to provide abortion guidelines but has, instead, been used to promote unlimited abortions for any reason.

Right To Life New Zealand filed suit against the Abortion Supervisory Committee saying the agency has misinterpreted the law. The measure was approved "with the objectives of stopping abortion on demand and to provide effective legal protection for unborn children," the group previously told LifeNews.com.

However, the pro-life group said that nation's government since 1978 have failed to correctly apply the act.The group, which also sued the country's attorney general, said 98 percent of abortions have been approved for mental health reasons, even though studies show abortion has a negative impact on a woman's physical and emotional health.

Justice Simon Franc rejected a request from the committee to dismiss the lawsuit.
The judge said Right to Life's claim included questioning the definition of when the law deemed someone to be alive and thus had human rights under the New Zealand Bill of Rights.

According to the Press newspaper, he pointed to common law on the island nation called the "born alive" principle whereby unborn children have no legal rights until after birth.

"Right to Life sees the `born alive' rule to be a potential impediment to its case and wants to be in a position to contest that rule if either committee or the court see it as relevant," he said, according to the newspaper.

In previous comments: "It is our belief that these abortions are for socioeconomic reasons masquerading as psychiatric," the group said. "Evidence will be given by Right To Life that the committee has failed to hold certifying consultants accountable for the lawfulness of their authorizations for abortion."

The Abortion Supervisory Committee released its annual report to the nation's parliament last October on the number of abortions there and indicated that abortions were down in 2005 to 17,531 compared with 18,211 in 2004. The 2004 number was down from the 2003 high of 18,511 abortions. [8Oct07, Ertelt, LifeNews.com Wellington, New Zealand]

Babies for sale: The scandal of China's brutal single child policy
Lying on a spartan bed, feeding her tiny daughter from a bottle, teenager Wai Ling describes her heartbreaking dilemma.

Under China's strict birth-control laws, Wai Ling, 19, and her boyfriend, 21, are too young to get married - and without being married they can't register their daughter's birth.

They could bribe a state official to turn a blind eye, but that would cost far more than they could ever afford - half a year's salary of £1,300.

Sickening trade: A boy like this is worth £1,200 to China's child snatchers

The alternative of a court appearance and swingeing fine for having an illegal child would be equally ruinous - so Wai Ling feels she has little choice but to sell her newborn baby to a child trafficker.

Even the thought of handing over her baby causes her unbearable pain. "Every mother assumes she will be with her child for ever," she cries plaintively. "But soon she will be growing up in another family. As a mother, I really want to watch her grow every day with me. But I know that's not possible."

Twelve years ago, Kate Blewitt and Brian Wood's award-winning documentary The Dying Rooms caused international outrage with its shocking footage of malnourished Chinese babies being left to die of starvation in state-run orphanages.

Now the film-makers have returned to China to find out what effect the country's capitalist explosion is having on Beijing's brutal and unbending Single Child Policy. Wai Ling's harrowing story is revealed in their special Dispatches programme, China's Stolen Babies, which reveals a huge and expanding black market for the sale of children and teenagers.

The Channel 4 documentary, secretly filmed by director Jezza Neumann, discovered that Chinese couples, hampered by the one-child rule, buy and sell babies in order to guarantee a male child to look after them in old age or a bride for their son.
 
Chen Jie's desperate parents

The demand is so high that child traffickers unable to find enough willing parties have resorted to snatching youngsters off the streets - and 70,000 disappear each year.

"Wai Ling and her boyfriend were so lovely and really intelligent," said Mr Neumann. "It's tragic. They had to give up their child because they can't possibly afford the fine."

The Single Child Policy, described by Save The Children as a 'mass, live experiment in family life which is unique in the history of the world', was introduced in 1979 as a bold attempt to stem China's population growth. But, instead of becoming a solution, it has created a bigger problem.

Couples are so desperate for a male child to look after them in old age that an estimated 40million girl babies have been aborted. The result is a hugely skewed population in which there is a massive shortage of women of marriageable age.

"People are buying boys to guarantee they have a son to look after them in old age," added Mr Neumann. "It is easier than selective abortion.

"Richer families are buying young girls to marry their sons and save the dowries that go with marriage. They buy the child, pay the backhander to officials and bring up the child until she is ten when she is old enough to work and earn back the money they have invested in her. Then at 20 they marry her to their son."

He continued: "Older girls are sold to become instant wives. Once they have been sold it is very hard to get them back. They are taken to completely different provinces, miles away. There is no way for their families to trace them and they can't afford the fare to get back home.

"They may be in better environments and just accept they are going to be abused. But a detective we interviewed in the programme told us about some of the women that he had rescued.

"They were beaten up by their husbands. The fear of God was put in them. They were told that if they left, they were dead."

One of the most haunting stories in the film, narrated by actor Ben Kingsley, is that of the Chens whose only son, five-year-old Chen Jie, disappeared after helping his grandmother on her vegetable stall at the local market.

He was being taken home by a neighbour, Zhang, who is believed to have sold him. The going price for a blackmarket boy is around £650 - six months' wages for an average Chinese worker.

Chen Jie's father Chen Lung, a plasterer who lives with his wife Li in a tiny flat in the migrant workers' ghetto of Kunming, Yunnan province, has spent the past 18 months searching for him.

The couple have notified police, joined a support organisation made up of other parents of missing children, broken the law to plaster 'missing' posters on lampposts, paid £40 to include his picture in a set of poker cards which feature missing children and hired a private detective.

"Someone who has never lost their child will never understand this kind of pain," Chen Jie's mother said, tears streaming down her face.

"It is like a knife through my heart. When I'm with other people, I can stay composed and calm. But on my own, I just can't stop thinking about it.

"When it's raining, I wonder if he is getting wet. When it's cold, I wonder if he is shivering. I don't know how he is feeling. Is he calling someone else Mummy and Daddy? Is he dreaming of us? I used to joke when he was naughty that I'd send him away or sell him. Now that he's gone, he probably thinks that I meant it. He'll be saying, "Mummy, I'll be good, I'll be good."

His father added: "It's torture. We don't know if our child is dead or alive. Is he being fed, is he being beaten, is he being looked after, is he at school?"

Mr Neumann, who has a son the same age as Chen Jie, said he found the interview particularly harrowing. "Their life must have been all about Chen Jie in the same way as my life revolves around my son Michael."

Only one in 20 parents from the Chen's support group have ever found their children. One lucky child was Jong Jang, who was kidnapped outside his house when he was just four. He was finally rescued after his father and other parents from the group went to Beijing and lobbied the Ministry of Public Security.

The Beijing police used traffickers' mobile phone records to trace the couple who had taken Jong Jang to Guandong province, 800 miles away. But Jong Jang's father is now paying the price. He has been ordered to report to his local police station daily - to ensure he doesn't make any other unauthorised 'protests'.

In Britain, it is illegal to buy or sell a child. But in China it is against the law only to abandon, steal or sell a child - not to buy one. Though traffickers do sell children, many of them do not think they are doing anything wrong.

Wang Lee started trading in people in 1985 when he was offered money for his girlfriend. After his wife died, he sold his toddler son. "There's plenty of demand everywhere," he said. "You can sell anywhere, anytime. Demand isn't the problem. The problem is supply.

"When I started you could hook eight out of ten girls, just by having sex with them. It was easy to trick them. Now I'm not selling women so much, mainly just children. If it's a pretty girl then maybe I can get £500 or £600.

"But girls who are ugly, you can't give them away. A boy - goodlooking, a few months old - £700 to £800. But a one or two-year-old boy can fetch an even higher price: £1,100 to £1,200. If the boy's cute and the buyer is rich, maybe more. It's all about negotiation."

He insists he does not get involved in trading, but acts only as an agent between buyers and sellers. "I just introduce people. They do the buying and selling. I don't have any other skills and I know how to do this so I'll continue.

"But I'm not sure how long I can carry on. That depends on when the Government solves this issue. I think there must be something wrong with treating children as goods. But I can't figure out what it is."

The trafficker's attitude, of course, is an uncanny fusion of the callous expedience of the old Communist regime, which ignores human misery in favour of grand social experiments, and the new, capitalist culture of modern China.

"People are being encouraged to make money and, of course, they are going to do it any way they can," Mr Neumann said. "While some build factories or sell goods to the newly wealthy, others will sell children, rob or cheat people."

Meanwhile Beijing has pledged to continue its Single Child Policy at least until 2010. And while Chinese state officials can be bribed to officially register stolen children, the black market in human life will continue.

"That's the thing the Governmentis most guilty of - allowing parentswho have bought children to register them," explained Mr Neumann. "Yet they remain so sensitive to criticism that we had to pose as tourists to film undercover, move hotel every three days and change SIM cards after every phone call.

"Had we been caught, our Chinese crew faced eight to ten years in jail."

He added: "The timing of the film is very interesting because of the comparisons that can be made with the case of Madeleine McCann," he added.

"The difference between the McCanns and the Chens is that nobody cares. We always like to think that all children are equal and that a little boy in China has no less right to be cared about than a little boy in England or a girl in Portugal.

"All credit to the McCanns for getting so much newspaper and television coverage to help in the hunt for their daughter. But what a shame that all the publicity Chen Jie gets is the remains of an A4 poster crumpled up in a puddle somewhere." [6Oct07, By CLAUDIA JOSEPH, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=486083&in_page_id=1811]
 

UNICEF Among Sponsors of New Campaign Promoting Abortion
US, Canadian government development agencies among participants in campaign
A new global initiative was launched by various UN agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in New York last week that includes a call for legal abortion. Among the sponsors of the initiative called "Deliver Now for Women and Children" is the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), a UN agency that persistently denies they support abortion in any way, shape, or form.

Marketed as a campaign to raise awareness of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on maternal and child health, the agenda of "Deliver Now" includes a call for “safe abortion" which is synonymous with legal abortion.

The campaign is coordinated by The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health, chaired by Kul Gautam, the deputy executive director of UNICEF and assistant secretary-general of the UN, and whose members include among others: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, International Planned Parenthood Federation, government development agencies from the US, UK, Canada, and Bangladesh, as well as WHO and UNFPA.

The campaign lists a number of severe maladies that effect maternal health and concludes “most maternal deaths could be prevented if women had access to and could use professional care.” "Deliver Now" defines “quality care” as including “services before and during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period, as well as safe abortion.”

The "Deliver Now" website features the stark tagline, “More than 10,000,000 deaths per year. Too many to ignore.” This enormous number is the conflation of two numbers; the total number of childhood deaths per year from all causes, said to be 10 million, and the number of deaths women suffer from maternal causes, a highly suspect number claimed by some UN agencies to total 500,000 per year.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the child mortality numbers are calculated from official sources including birth and death data derived from vital registration, census, and/or household surveys. On the other hand, the maternal mortality statistics are questionable estimations at best.

According to the WHO, the primary source for maternal mortality statistics, “data on maternal mortality and other causes of death are often unavailable or, where available, are unreliable due to deficiencies in vital statistics registration systems.”

Dr. Joseph Chamie, the former head of the UN Population Division, official statisticians of the UN, states the 500,000 number used for maternal deaths cannot substantiated and he refused to use it.

Pro-family UN watchers are concerned that the disproportionate focus on unsafe abortion based upon questionable maternal mortality figures detracts from addressing the major health risks to pregnant women in the developing world. Experts say these are severe bleeding, eclampsia and obstructed labor. By UNFPA’s own admission in a 2004 report, the most important means of reducing maternal mortality is not access to contraceptives and legal abortion but the presence of skilled birth attendants and access to emergency obstetric care.

Abortion proponents often link unsafe abortion and maternal mortality to push for legal, so-called “safe” abortion. Critics of this argument are quick to point out that in Poland, when abortion was severely restricted in 1993, the country showed a sharp decline in the abortion rate and a decline in maternal deaths.

In Ireland, where abortion remains illegal, the country reports one of the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world. By contrast, while the United States has had abortion on demand since 1973, this year the US reported a rise in maternal deaths.

The next scheduled event in the "Deliver Now" campaign is the Women Deliver Conference in London from October 18-20 which also focuses heavily on abortion rights.

See reports:Abortion-Pushing UNICEF Back for Hallowe’en – Whole Month of October new Collection Drivehttp://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/jun/06062009.html

UNICEF Still Unfit to Receive Halloween Donations from Pro-Lifers
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/oct/05102606.html

UNICEF Nigerian Polio Vaccine Contaminated with Sterilizing Agents Scientist Finds
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/mar/04031101.html

UNICEF Demands Abortion for Underage Girls without Parents Knowledge
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/oct/04101201.html
[4 Oct 07, By Samantha Singson, New York, C-FAM.org; 6Oct07, LifeSiteNews.com]

Pro-life Memorial Day: Oct. 1 . October 1 is American Life League’s Pro-life Memorial Day. Please take this time to remember all of the 48 million lives that have been lost forever due to the legalization of abortion. Wear a black arm band.

ACLU Lawyer Convicted of Child Porn Possession: Sentenced to 7 years in prison. Charles Rust-Tierney, an attorney who served as the president of the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from 1993 to 2005, was arrested February 23, 2007 and charged with possession of child pornography. He pleaded guilty to one count of receipt of child pornography, was convicted and on September 8, was sentenced to seven years in prison.
 
Tierney had downloaded and paid for what the judge called "abhorrent" child pornography including torture and sexual assaults on children as young as 6. Police found 850 still images and 36 videos on his computer. The sentence is a year less than the minimum recommended by federal sentencing guidelines.
 
Rust-Tierney expressed regret, saying, "I know what I have done is wrong, morally and legally. My conduct in paying the producers of this material is reprehensible. I am filled with contrition, remorse and shame."
 
Social and political conservatives in the US have long objected that the ACLU is the political lobby of the extreme left, and has made the suppression of public expressions of religion, particularly conservative Christianity, the main focus of its work. It lists among its goals the defence of "reproductive rights," including contraception and abortion; full recognition of homosexual partnerings as equal to natural marriage.
 
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
ACLU Founder a Communist Ideologue Bent on Uprooting Judeo-Christian Foundation of America
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/sep/05092102.html
 
ACLU Head Likens Praying School Board Members to 9/11 Terrorists
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/aug/05081704.html
[By Hilary White,  VA, September 11, 2007 LifeSiteNews.com]



$7.5 million libel lawsuit against Planned Parenthood. The new Planned Parenthood abortion business in Aurora, Illinois was scheduled to open on September 18; as of September 30, it has still not opened.

As the city continues its investigation of the tactics that PP used to get into town, the Thomas More Society has filed a $7.5 million lawsuit against Planned Parenthood of Chicago Area and its CEO, Steve Trombley. This lawsuit is based on Planned Parenthood’s claims that opponents of the Aurora abortion facility have a "well-documented history of advocating violence against both persons and property." PP included this false information in a full-page ad in the Aurora Beacon, a Chicago area newspaper, on September 4. [STOPP, 25Sept07]

Chicago Planned Parenthood Faces Lawsuit Over Libelous Ad
Ad deliberately confuses thrice exonerated (by the US Supreme Court) Pro-life Action League Joe Scheidler with local activist Eric Scheidler. The Chicago Area Planned Parenthood faces legal action unless it recants recent public statements that accuse pro-life protestors at the construction of a new abortion clinic in Aurora of a history of violence and inciting others to violence.
 
The Thomas More Society sent a letter to Steven Trombley, the President and CEO of the Chicago Area Planned Parenthood, September 7 demanding that Trombley recant the libelous statements he made in his letter to the Mayor and the Aldermen of Aurora and retract the Planned Parenthood Ad published in the Aurora Beacon, defaming Joe Scheidler, the Pro-Life Action League Network, Eric Scheidler and the Fox Valley Families Against Planned Parenthood.
 
Trombley's Planned Parenthood has been fighting pro-life advocates Eric Sheidler, Fox Valley Families Against Planned Parenthood, and others over the construction of a new abortion facility in the city of Aurora. Eric Scheidler and the Fox Valley Families had been coordinating protests including a peaceful 40 day vigil after discovering Planned Parenthood's intention to build a new clinic as quietly as possible in Aurora.
 
Trombley sent his letter dated September 4, 2007, to the mayor and aldermen of the City of Aurora defaming the pro-life opposition to the facility as "zealots", who "have a well-documented history of advocating violence against both persons and property as well as other related criminal activity."
 
For added effect, Planned Parenthood issued an advertisement featuring a burnt-out Planned Parenthood clinic with the words: "DON'T LET THE EXTREMISTS DENY VITAL HEALTH CARE TO THE PEOPLE OF AURORA." (http://www.jillstanek.com/PP_Ad_9-10%5B1%5D.pdf)
 
The ad then subtly accuses the Pro-life Action League Network (PLAN) and director Joe Scheidler of leading the Aurora protests and having a history of "criminal activity" and violence, although as the Thomas More Society points out, Joe Scheidler and PLAN have had nothing to do with the Aurora protests.
 
Instead, it appears that Planned Parenthood has libeled Scheidler and PLAN for the sole purpose of using them as "red herrings" deliberately to confuse the public. In truth, it is Eric Scheidler, a resident of Aurora and coordinator of Fox Valley Families - not PLAN's Joe Scheidler - who has led the peaceful 40-day vigil against the new abortion clinic under construction.
 
The Thomas More Society went on to demand that the Chicago Area Planned Parenthood repudiate the "121 crimes" it falsely alleges Joe Scheidler and PLAN to have committed, which were all laid to rest by the US Supreme Court in NOW vs. Scheidler.

The 1998 verdict of the Chicago jury against PLAN was reversed on the basis that most of the "crimes" were "peaceable, non-violent direct action" such as advocated by civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, and the four counts of violence were dismissed after they were discovered to have been supported by falsified evidence.
 
"Those opposed to your new facility have a First Amendment right lawfully to protest against your proposed killing of human beings you deem 'unwanted,'" warned President and Chief Counsel Tom Brejcha of the Chicago Thomas More Society. "Yes, you may disagree with their point of view, but you may not smear their good names and reputations with libelous falsehoods."
 
Brejcha warned Planned Parenthood that it has until this Tuesday evening to recant its statements or face legal consequences for libel.
 
A large scale, fully readable copy of the Planned Parenthood Ad can be found here:
http://www.jillstanek.com/PP_Ad_9-10%5B1%5D.pdf
[By Peter J. Smith, Aurora, IL, September 11, 2007 LifeSiteNews.com]

Heroic Sacrifice for Life: From fighter pilot to courageous mother: the story of Caroline Aigle. Caroline Aigle would have turned 33 on September 12. The first female fighter pilot of the French military and future astronaut died of cancer on August 21.  The country is still mourning her death and continues to be moved by her sacrifice: she was five months pregnant when she learned she had cancer and she chose to postpone her treatment so her baby could be born.
 
In mid-July Caroline received the devastating news. Rather than despairing, she faced the adversity and ignored doctors who advised her to have an abortion.
 
Together with her husband Christophe Deketelaere, who is also a pilot, she decided to give this new member of her family a chance to live.  Her second son was born three and a half months premature at the beginning of August and doctors say he is progressing well.
 
In an interview Christophe said, “She could not stop the life she had carried for five months.  She told me: ‘He has the right to have the same chances I had’.”  Her husband said that her pregnancy was “her final battle and she won.”  Before dying, she was able to see her son several times and hold him in her arms.  “She was heroic to the end,” he said.
 
Caroline Aigle (which means “eagle”) was born in Montauban in 1974.  At the age of 14 she entered the military school of Saint-Cyr.  In May of 1999 she became a fighter pilot and flew a Mirage 2000-5.
 
Her funeral was celebrated by Father Pierre Demoures, a former fighter pilot himself.  In his homily, he remembered Caroline as someone who led people to Christ with “her qualities, kindness, willingness, passion,” and he praised her for choosing to give life to her son, for whom she “postponed a treatment that was urgent.”
 
Father Demoures recalled that when Carolina and Christophe sought him out for marriage preparation, they asked him for a book that spoke not about the love of one for the other, “but rather about the love that opens us to love others.”
 
“The great lesson that Carolina gives us is the urgency to love.  Not the urgency to fear, but the vital urgency to know that only love gives life.  Man is made for life. This urgency can make love stronger and give life to a treasure amidst the most tragic events,” Father Demoures said.
[From fighter pilot to courageous mother: the story of Caroline Aigle Paris, Sep 26, 2007 / 01:17 pm (CNA).-
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=10494; LifeSiteNews.com, 26Sept07]

Austria Court Refuses to Rule Hiasl the Chimp a Person. An Austrian court just refused to declare him a person. This is good news, but animal liberationists who seek his entry into the moral community of humans will keep at it in Austria and elsewhere until they find a court radical enough to presume to redefine personhood to include animals.
 
From AP: He's now got a human name--Matthew Hiasl Pan--but he's having trouble getting his day in court. Animal rights activists campaigning to get Pan, a 26-year-old chimpanzee, legally declared a person vowed 27Sept to take their challenge to Austria's Supreme Court after a lower court threw out their latest appeal.
 
Silly lead to the story. Hiasl only has a name because it was given to him by humans. We do that kind of thing, for ourselves and for animals. It is part of what we, unlike any other species, do.
 
AP: A provincial judge in the city of Wiener Neustadt dismissed the case earlier this week, ruling that the Vienna-based Association Against Animal Factories had no legal standing to argue on the chimp's behalf. The association, which worries the shelter caring for the chimp might close, has been pressing to get Pan declared a "person" so a guardian can be appointed to look out for his interests and provide him with a home.
 
No, they want him named a person so they can utterly upset the human/animal apple cart and destroy our belief in human exceptionalism. [AP, posted by Wesley J. Smith, 27Sept07]
 

Respect for Life: Brazilian baby with anencephaly now ten months old.  Little Marcela de Jesus Galante Ferrerira continues to surprise the world.  She is now ten months old despite doctors’ predictions that she would die soon after being born.  She suffers from anencephaly, a birth defect in which the brain does not develop.
 
Since her birth Marcela has become a symbol of the pro-life movement in a country that is debating allowing abortion in such cases.
 
Although babies with anencephaly tend to die shortly after birth and only in rare cases live beyond three months, Marcela has broken a world record with her ten months of life.
 
She now weighs 24.6 pounds, surpassing the average weight of her age group.  Since April she has been at home with her parents in the city of Ribeirao Preto, 256 miles northeast of Sao Paulo.
 
According to her pediatrician, Dr. Marcia Beani, despite her birth defect, Marcela is very active, can recognize her mother and cries when she is not in her arms.  She still is being fed with a tube, but occasionally she can take soup and soft foods.
 
She uses an oxygen mask to breath but she can breathe on her own for around two hours per day
[Rio de Janeiro, Sep 26, 2007,  http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=10495
 

Judge says Planned Parenthood unlikely to succeed in having MO abortion business law ruled unconstitutional. ADF attorneys: Law requiring abortion clinics to follow reasonable safety standards like other medical facilities is “common sense”

MO governor’s administration retains ADF as legal counsel after Planned Parenthood sues over abortion clinic safety law. In an order issued 24Sept07, a federal judge wrote that Planned Parenthood is not likely to succeed in having a Missouri law that holds abortion clinics to the same safety standards as other medical facilities ruled facially unconstitutional.  Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund represent Missouri Director of Health and Senior Services Jane Drummond in a lawsuit Planned Parenthood filed against the new state law, which the court has put on hold while both sides negotiate on some specifics as to how the law will apply.
 
“Abortion clinics should not be exempt from common-sense regulations that protect the health and safety of Missouri patients.  We’re pleased that the court agreed with this and said that he did not believe Planned Parenthood would succeed in its arguments that the law is facially unconstitutional,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Dale Schowengerdt.
 
A “facial” challenge is a common legal tactic used to strike down a law in all of its applications.
 
Under the new law, HB 1055, abortion clinics would be designated as ambulatory surgical centers, and as such would have to meet specific safety standards to protect the patients at those centers.  Abortion clinics that would fall under the new designation are those where second- or third-trimester abortions are performed as well as clinics where more than five first-trimester abortions are performed each month.
 
The order in Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri v. Drummond issued by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, Central Division, is available at www.telladf.org/UserDocs/DrummondOrder.pdf.
 
Missouri Governor Matt Blunt’s administration retained ADF attorneys to defend Drummond in the lawsuit last month (www.telladf.org/news/story.aspx?cid=4214).
 
Note: Facts in ADF news releases are verified prior to publication but may change over time. Members of the media are encouraged to contact ADF for the latest information on this matter. [September 24, 2007, ADF Media Relations, Jefferson City, MO, www.telladf.org]
 
 

Poor training 'causes 1,000 stillbirths a year'
By Martin Beckford
Last Updated: 2:30am BST 24/09/2007
 Up to 1,000 babies are dying needlessly every year because overworked midwives and doctors are not trained to spot danger signals, according to an expert on stillbirths.
 
His warning came as confidential figures were disclosed which show that the health service faces nearly £4.5 billion in compensation claims over alleged blunders by doctors and midwives.
 
A young boy is weighed after being born, poor training 'causes 1,000 stillbirths a year'
Prof Sabaratnam Arulkumaran said there was a direct connection between staffing levels and the risk for patients
 
Professor Jason Gardosi, director of the Perinatal Institute, is to present the results of a 10-year study at a conference in Birmingham. It will show a link between stillbirths and foetal growth restriction, in which babies in the womb fail to reach their expected size.
 
Around 40 per cent of stillbirths are growth-restricted, and it is estimated as many as 1,000 stillbirths a year could be avoided if medics spotted that the babies were smaller than normal and should, therefore, be delivered early.
 
"Our research has shown the largest percentage of stillbirths were associated with the baby not having grown well within the womb," said Prof Gardosi. "And it found that the majority of these stillbirths were potentially avoidable.
 
"There is also an issue about resources, in terms of midwifery caseload and in terms of providing ultrasound to check for foetal growth for high-risk pregnancies."
advertisement
 
His comments were echoed yesterday by Prof Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, the incoming president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, who warned that the numbers of consultants and midwives at up to half of hospitals "aren't adequate", putting pregnant women and babies in danger.
 
"There's a direct connection between staffing levels and the risk for patients," he said.
 
In a speech next month he will cite data showing that most babies die during the night when hospitals have fewer consultants on duty.
 
Only a handful of European countries suffer more stillbirths than Britain. Almost 4,000 babies deaths occurred last year — 10 a day in England and Wales — and the levels have stayed roughly the same for a decade.
 
There are demands that hospitals which deliver the most babies are given better levels of cover, particularly at night. The Royal College of Midwives claims that 5,000 extra midwives will be needed in the next five years as birth rates rise.
 
Meanwhile, confidential figures from the NHS Litigation Authority, which handles claims for medical negligence, show that the health service is being sued for huge amounts of compensation, amounting to £4.49billion, from families of brain-damaged babies.
 
Three quarters of the figure relates to incidents in which the child has cerebral palsy, often caused by being starved of oxygen at birth.
 
The Department of Health said the size of the figures was explained by the high cost of providing lifetime care to disabled children. It also said research into the cause of stillbirths was of great importance and that £3.7million is spent a year on investigating premature births.
 
Gwyneth Lewis, the Government's chief adviser on maternity care, insisted: "Due to the skill and expertise of our midwives and doctors, England is one of the safest places to have a baby."
 
Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, vowed yesterday to fight the next general election on health, promising better cancer treatment and a blitz on hospital superbugs. However, the Conservatives claimed that maternity services were not improving.
 
Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said: "We warned the Government that over the past five years we've seen a 12 per cent increase in the number of live births but only a 4.5 per cent increase in the number of midwives.
 
"Mothers should be able to expect not only choice in child birth but also not to be exposed to unnecessary risk."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/24/nbirth124.xml
 

Georgia Singing Group Makes Available Free Pro-Life Song with Sheet Music and MP3 Audio
 DULUTH, GA, September 12, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Cathy Weaver (left) and some children record a new song that they believe could possibly change the minds of expectant parents contemplating an abortion.
 
Written by David Burke (right), "We Want to See the World" is an emotional call-and-response ballad between an angel and children who are still in their mothers' wombs. The lyrics portray beautiful images of earth, convey messages about reaching heaven, and assure parents of God's grace for their children.
 
Burke sent the song to more than 15,000 Catholic churches nationwide to encourage their music ministers and Respect Life directors to use the song, particularly during October, which Catholics recognize as Respect Life Month. He also sent the song throughout the country to various Catholic/Christian media (radio/print), Christian churches of other denominations, and pro-life organizations. Burke says the response has been positively overwhelming, and the aim of the group is to reach as many people as possible.
 
The song can be heard, downloaded, and its sheet music printed (all free) from the following website:
http://www.WeWantToSeeTheWorld.com
 

Couple Sues IVF Doctor for Cost of Raising Twin: Couple wanted only one child and find they are "overwhelmed" raising two children. A lesbian couple in Australia have taken the first 'wrongful birth' lawsuit in Australian legislative history to court.  The two women, who have three year old twin daughters, are suing Canberra obstetrician, Robert Armellin, for 'wrongful birth' after he supervised the implantation of two embryos instead of one into the birth mother during the in-vitro fertilization procedure. 
 
The women, who cannot be named because of a court order, are suing the doctor for almost $400,000 (USD) which they contest will be the cost of raising the mistakenly implanted second child.  The sum includes funds for private school, medical expenses and lost wages for the women.
 
According to the Australian newspaper, the PerthNow, the mother claimed that certain aspects of pregnancy were extremely stressful to her - for instance, buying a stroller - due to the fact that she was carrying twins.  "It was like the last frontier of acceptance to spend hundreds of dollars on a pram."  The mother also lamented that she suffered nausea during the pregnancy.
 
The mother's partner claimed in court that the couple became so overwhelmed with every day childcare issues that they lost their ability to function as a couple. 
 
Under questioning from Armellin's lawyer, the mother admitted that the couple initially thought of keeping one of the children and putting the other up for adoption but decided that to do so would be unfair to both children.  "The primary consideration was that adoption shifted the burden of responsibility for this situation onto the children.  The burden is not the children's to bear.  The burden is ours alone."
 
The obstetrician has, from the very beginning of the lawsuit, acknowledged that a mistake was made in implanting two embryos though sources differ as to whether the mother changed her mind at the very last moment before the surgery making the confusion more probable. [20September2007, Source URL: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/sep/07092003.html, LifeSiteNews.com; By Meg Jalsevac, Australia]
 

Israeli Doctor Exposes Nazi Abortion Program
Reveals Chilling Parallels with the Ideas of Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger
An Israeli doctor has recently published an account of the Nazi use of abortion, euthanasia, and sterilization to eliminate groups they deemed "inferior stock", especially Jewish and Slavic people.
 
Dr. Tessa Chelouche writes that "Abortion was used as a weapon of mass destruction in Eastern Europe," where "it has been estimated that tens of thousands of Polish and Russian women were compelled to abort not because of health reasons, but because of Nazi dogma." She goes on to quote Hitler's 1942 policy statement on the application of abortion to Slavic people, which is chillingly similar to modern Planned Parenthood propaganda:
 
"In view of the large families of the Slav native population, it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible. We are not interested in seeing the non-German population multiply…We must use every means to install in the population the idea that it is harmful to have several children, the expenses that they cause and the dangerous effect on woman's health… It will be necessary to open special institutions for abortions and doctors must be able to help out there in case there is any question of this being a breach of their professional ethics."
 
Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, expressed a similar objective about eliminating US colored people in a letter she wrote only months after Hitler's invasion of Poland: "We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."
 
Today, Planned Parenthood and other international promoters of abortion, sterilization, and contraception, often claim that the availability of such services is a "health issue" and is necessary to fight poverty, echoing Hitler's slogans.
 
The article, "Doctors, Pregnancy, Childbirth and Abortion during the Third Reich," which appeared in the March issue of the Israel Medical Association Journal, shows that Hitler facilitated and promoted abortion and sterilization for "inferior genetic stock" while simultaneously practicing "positive eugenics" by prohibiting most abortions and sterilizations of "Aryan" German women. This practice reflected the same reasoning behind Margaret Sanger's famous slogan "more from the fit, less from the unfit".
 
In 1942 and 1943, the Nazis implemented mandatory abortion programs in some ghettos. "The punishment for giving birth and for delivering the infant was death for the whole family and for the Jewish doctor or midwife," writes Chelouche. In the concentration camps, however, "pregnant women were usually sent to their immediate deaths upon arrival just because they were pregnant."
 
Chelouche's also notes that the German sterilization program led easily to a program of mass murder of unwanted groups. "During the five and a half years preceding the outbreak of the Second World War, about 320,000 German persons with 'lives unworthy of life' were sterilized under the terms of the sterilization law," she writes.
 
"The victims of this sterilization program were asylum inmates, ethnic majorities, servants, prostitutes, unmarried mothers, unskilled workers and others. This sterilization campaign was a direct prelude to mass murder: the prohibition against bearing 'unworthy children' was expanded into the 'euthanasia' programs, beginning with the murder of some 5000 children, and then into the infamous T4 'euthanasia' program in which some 350,000 German adults were killed under the disguise of euthanasia."
 
Chelouche concludes with a profound question: "Who can confront the Holocaust and not be put on alert to evaluate scientific paradigms and the implications for public policy that flow from them, so that what we, as medical professionals and as human beings, want and identify as good, will be for the sake of respecting and saving human life? They too asked and answered the question: who shall live and who shall die? Then and now the subject at hand is killing, letting die, helping to die, and using the dead. Then and now the goal is to produce healthier human beings."
 
Dr. Tessa Chelouche is a physician with Clalit Health Services, in the Shomron District in Israel, and is affiliated with the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Israel.
 
Read the Full Article Online:
 
Doctors, Pregnancy, Childbirth and Abortion during the Third Reich
http://www.ima.org.il/imaj/ar07mar-23.pdf
 
Related coverage: LifeSiteNews.com Extra Special MUST READ Report on Population Control
THE INHERENT RACISM OF POPULATION CONTROL
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/may/040518a.html%C2%A0
 
Current Medical Euthanasia and Eugenic Abortion Practices Echo Nazi Past
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2003/oct/03100208.html
 
Roe v Wade Lawyer: Use Abortion "to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/may/06051504.html
 
New Website Details Thousands of Violent Crimes by Abortion Supporters
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/sep/06092003.html
[6September2007, By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, LifeSiteNews.com]