Abortion Advocates Investigate Back-Alley Abortions Roe Was Supposed to Stop

World Health Organization Circumvents Abortion Laws in Bangladesh with Menstrual Regulation Kit

Secret Meeting to Plot Global Abortion Strategy Exposed / UN Personnel Present

HHS: If Approved, Regulations Combined to Validate Right of Conscience for Health Care Professionals

Critique of the American Psychiatric Association Task Force on Abortion and Mental Health

New Zealand Study Finds Violence Increases Risk of Abortion

Texas Groups Celebrate Closing of Dallas Late-Term Abortion Business

New Prenatal Test for Down’s Syndrome Concerns Pro-Life Advocates

South Dakota Law Requiring Telling Women Truth About Abortion Upheld by Federal Court...

ABORTION ADVOCATES INVESTIGATE BACK-ALLEY ABORTIONS ROE v WADE WAS SUPPOSED TO STOP. To hear abortion advocates tell the story, the United States needed to make abortion legal to stop the supposed high number of back-alley abortions. It turns out now that those abortions still continue and pro-abortion groups are now investigating why.

The organizations Gynuity and Ibis Reproductive Health have launched a new study in San Francisco, New York and Boston to determine how many women try self-abortions without going to an abortion center.

Despite the claim that legal abortions would stop the back-alley practice that supposedly resulted in the death of women, several stories have cropped up over the years showing women doing their own abortions.

The abortions frequently involve an anti-ulcer drug known as Cytotec, or misoprostol, that abortion advocates have urged to be used to induce an abortion in places where the practice is illegal.

ABC News quotes Daniel Grossman, an abortion activist and doctor in the San Francisco area who confirmed he sees women coming to him who have had medical complications from mis-using the drug for abortions.

"She had been given a misoprostol from her friend in San Francisco," said Grossman, he said.

It also cited Pfizer media representative Shreya Jani who said the company continues to warn against mis-using the misoprostol drug for abortions.

"Pfizer only promotes the use of its medicines for approved indications. Cytotec is off-patent with at least two generics, and we are not actively marketing the brand," she said. "Pfizer has not studied Cytotec for the purpose of labor induction or for the early termination of pregnancy, nor do we intend to."

Money may likely play a role in the back-alley abortions -- as a surgical abortion, at its cheapest in the first trimester, can cost $300-400. The abortion drug mifepristone, RU 486, is cheaper but still more expensive than the $5 a pill cost for Cytotec.

"Sometimes, people talk about this as a passport to the ER," said Grossman. "They take enough so it looks like they're having a miscarriage, and then they have an aspiration procedure."

The Internet also plays a role as ancient herbal methods for doing abortions before advanced methods have cropped up on the Internet.

That back alley abortions haven't stopped with the legalization of abortion, as pro-abortion groups said it would, is no surprise.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League who is now a pro-life physician, admitted that he and other abortion proponents made up statistics about women dying from illegal abortions.

"We spoke of 5,000 - 10,000 deaths a year," he said. "I confess that I knew the figures were totally false [but] it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics?"
[22Aug08, Ertelt, www.LifeNews.com Washington, DC]



WHO CIRCUMVENTS ABORTION LAWS IN BANGLADESH WITH 'MENSTRUAL REGULATION' KITS. launched an initiative recently to boost a program for menstrual regulation in Bangladesh. WHO states that the objectives of this program are to “ensure the quality of [menstrual regulation] and to share the knowledge of safe motherhood.”

     “Menstrual regulation,” also known as "menstrual extraction" (ME) is billed as a family planning method for women who missed their regular menstrual period and who strongly suspect that they are pregnant but cannot or do not want to wait for the results of a pregnancy test. Critics charge that menstrual regulation is a technique used to provide abortions in countries, like Bangladesh, where abortion is illegal.

     A fund of $2.73 million, which was established with funding from the Netherlands Ministry of Development Cooperation and in partnership with the government of Bangladesh and non-governmental organizations working on menstrual regulation, will support projects over a four-year period starting this year.

     Since there may not be an actual pregnancy to terminate, menstrual regulation is sometimes available in countries that prohibit abortion.  If the woman was pregnant at the time the menstrual extraction is performed, the evidence of an abortion is either destroyed during the procedure or easily disposed of.  Menstrual regulation is sometimes regarded as a cross between "foresight contraception" and "hindsight abortion."

     Bangladesh has allowed menstrual regulation since the 1970s. A memo from 1979 established menstrual regulation as an "interim method of establishing non-pregnancy" for a woman at risk of being pregnant, whether or not she is actually pregnant.

     Officials touted the menstrual regulation initiative as a positive step to help Bangladesh achieve Millennium Development Goal 5 to reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters. The maternal mortality rate in Bangladesh is decreasing, but is still one of the highest in the world.  According to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), of the 2.5 million women who become pregnant each year, an estimated 370,000 develop fetal complications which the health facilities in the country are neither equipped nor able to handle.

     Proponents of the WHO initiative assert that the decreasing maternal mortality rate can be primarily attributed to increased family planning services, including menstrual regulation. They argue that making menstrual regulation more widely available reduces the maternal deaths, decreasing the likelihood that a woman would recourse to an unsafe abortion.

     UNICEF cites lack of access to emergency obstetric care, lack of skilled birth attendants, and maternal malnutrition as the primary causes of maternal death in Bangladesh, not unsafe abortion.  According to UNICEF statistics, half of Bangladeshi women of reproductive age are underweight and in 2001, only 11.8 percent of deliveries were assisted by qualified medical personnel.

     Critics of the WHO initiative charge that the menstrual regulation program may lead to fewer deliveries, and thus lower the maternal mortality rate, but it will not make women’s deliveries any safer.

     The WHO is currently reviewing project proposals from interested organizations and research institutes working on menstrual regulation. [August 21, 2008, Friday Fax, Volume 11, Number 36, Samantha Singson, C-FAM, New York, http://www.c-fam.org/publications/id.722/pub_detail.asp; CWA, 21Aug08]





SECRET MEETING TO PLOT GLOBAL ABORTION STRATEGY EXPOSED / UN PERSONNEL PRESENT. A group calling itself the "brain trust" met in secret recently to plot how to take advantage of conflict situations to advance the abortion and radical feminist agenda.

A new group called the Global Justice Center (GJC) hosted the New York meeting on June 9 of this year.

The Friday Fax was given the chance to listen to a recording of the inaugural meeting of the "brain trust” which details the GJC's plan to exploit ceasefire and peace talks to gain leverage in newly-formed governments.        

The GJC meeting brought together academics, lawyers, practitioners with ties to radical groups as the George Soros’ Open Society Institute, Equality Now, Center for Reproductive Rights, Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) and Amnesty International.  Jeremy Sarkin, the current UN Special Rapporteur for Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances was also at the meeting.    

Participants at the meeting lamented the lack of international political will to enforce “gender justice” around the world and agreed that “shock treatment” was needed to change “the entrenched political and cultural norms that perpetuate male-dominated decision-making bodies and constrain women.”
   
Janet Benshoof, former president of the Center for Reproductive Rights and current president and founder of the GJC, asserted that conflict situations could be used as an “access point” to change the culture and the players. Benshoof argued that the prime opportunities for advancing their cause lay in the “transitioning government structures which afford particular opportunity for repositioning women's role in public life and decision-making.”   
   

Meeting participants deliberated on how human rights law precedents could be made in conflict situations to “reshape power structures,” ensure gender equality, create “judicial entrepreneurs” and change norms. Some ideas included: increasing the number of women judges, increasing the number of female legislators by getting political parties to actively recruit women, and implementing affirmative action policies.

One participant mused, “A lot of laws have not been interpreted or defined in a new country and you can assume that whatever you want the law to be, it is – unless it is proven otherwise. So of course we put the most progressive spin on it.”

Apart from getting involved in conflict situations, the group discussed other possible opportunities and entry points to change norms and advance the agenda. 

The group expressed hope in being able to take advantage of the new human rights bodies that are being created by the Association of South East Asian Nations and the Arab League.    

One member of the group boasted, “The more we say it, the more people get to believing it. We’re changing the norm. First they laugh and then they start repeating it.”
   
The Global Justice Center started as a project of Women’s Link Worldwide, which was founded by the pro-abortion advocacy group The Center for Reproductive Rights, an organization that seeks to create an international human right to abortion on demand through litigation.          

By the end of the day-long meeting, participants said they were looking forward to coming together again to discuss monitoring and implementation and “to think of creative mechanisms for enforcing laws.” Future meetings of the "brain trust" have not yet been announced. [August 14, 2008, C-FAM Friday Fax, Volume 11, Number 35, Samantha Singson, New York
http://www.c-fam.org/publications/id.711/pub_detail.asp; prolifeamerica.com, 15Aug08]




HHS: IF APPROVED, REGULATIONS COMBINED TO VALIDATE RIGHT OF COSCIENCE FOR HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS. The Bush administration has proposed stronger job protections for doctors and other health care workers who refuse to participate in abortions because of religious or moral objections.

Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said that health care professionals should not face retaliation from employers or from medical societies because they object to abortion.

"Freedom of conscience is not to be surrendered upon issuance of a medical degree," said Leavitt. "This nation was built on a foundation of free speech. The first principle of free speech is protected conscience."

The proposed rule, which applies to institutions receiving government money, would require as many as 584,000 employers ranging from major hospitals to doctors' offices and nursing homes to certify in writing that they are complying with several federal laws that protect the conscience rights of health care workers. Violations could lead to a loss of government funding and legal action to recoup federal money already paid.

Abortion foes called it a victory for the First Amendment, but abortion rights supporters said they feared the rule could stretch the definition of abortion to include birth control, and served notice that they intend to challenge the administration.

"Women's ability to manage their own health care is at risk of being compromised by politics and ideology," Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement.

Abortion rights groups had complained that earlier drafts contained vague language that might block access to birth control, and they said the latest version has not addressed all of their concerns.

The rule "fails to give assurances that current laws about abortion will not be stretched to cover birth control," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

But Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, said it upholds basic constitutional freedoms.

"This proposal ensures that doctors and other medical personnel will retain the constitutional right to listen to their own conscience when it comes to performing or participating in an abortion," Perkins said. "These regulations will ensure that pro-life medical personnel will not be forced to engage in the unconscionable killing of innocent human life."
Leavitt said the regulation was intended to protect practitioners who have moral objections to abortion and sterilization, and would not interfere with patients' ability to get birth control or any legal medical procedure.

"Nothing in the new regulation in any way changes a patient's right to any legal procedure," he said, noting that a patient could go to another provider.

"This regulation is not about contraception," Leavitt added. "It's about abortion and conscience. It is very closely focused on abortion and physician's conscience."

The 42-page rule seeks to set up a system for enforcing conscience protections in three separate federal laws, the earliest of which dates to the 1970s. In some cases, the laws aim to protect both providers who refuse to take part in abortions and those who do.

The regulation is written to apply to a broad swath of the health care work force, not doctors alone. Accordingly, an employee whose task it is to clean the instruments used in a particular procedure would be covered. Also covered would be volunteers and trainees.

The underlying laws deal mainly with abortion and sterilization, but both the laws and the language of the rule seem to recognize that objections on conscience grounds could involve other types of services.

"This regulation does not limit patient access to health care, but rather protects any individual health care provider or institution from being compelled to participate in, or from being punished for refusal to participate in, a service that, for example, violates their conscience," the rule said.

Planned Parenthood attorney Roger Evans said that a key legal problem with the rule is that it fails to define what constitutes an abortion, and thereby could be stretched to cover other types of services. But Leavitt said existing laws adequately define abortion.

The regulation now faces a 30-day public comment period.
[8/21/2008, NewsFlash Home, by R.Alonso-Zaldivar, Washington, The Associated Press, http://www.al.com/newsflash/washington/index.ssf?/base/politics-15/1219342177182940.xml&storylist=washington#continue]

Proposed U.S. Government Regulations Strengthen Doctors' Increasingly Threatened Freedom of Conscience
Would allow health care workers to refuse even indirect involvement in some procedures
The United States Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) today proposed regulations that would increase awareness of federally funded health care providers' right of conscience, including their right to refuse involvement in abortion or sterilization procedures on moral grounds. Dr. David Stevens, CEO of the Christian Medical Association (CMA), praised the proposed regulations as "desperately needed" to fight back against widespread coercion of health care professionals to perform against their moral or religious beliefs.

The regulations ensure "that the Department of Health and Human Services funds do not support coercive or discriminatory policies or practices" by highlighting three anti-discrimination laws that already protect health care workers' First Amendment rights.  Under the proposed regulations, government fund recipients will be required to submit a written document certifying their compliance to these laws, and the HHS Office for Civil Rights will be designated to receive and assess complaints of discrimination - demonstrating that protecting the freedoms of health care workers who are discriminated against due to religious or moral beliefs is in fact a civil rights issue.

The regulation would allow all federal health care workers to refuse even indirect involvement in certain procedures they find morally objectionable without fear of losing their job.  Some have objected that the proposed rule protects moral and religious objections to procedures other than abortion.  This is only true in the cases where the longstanding statutes being implemented by the rule have this broader scope.  For example, since 1973 Congress has required that the moral and religious convictions of individuals regarding any medical or biomedical research procedure be respected in programs receiving federal funds.

The CMA's Dr. Stevens claimed that two out of five CMA members reported being pressured or discriminated against at work "simply because they adhere to life-affirming, patient-protecting standards of medical ethics such as the Hippocratic Oath.  If current trends of coercion are allowed to continue, patients will not be able to find physicians who share their life-affirming values."

Dr. Stevens noted that "The recent all-out campaign by those who oppose conscience rights to muzzle these HHS regulations actually has served to highlight the need for the regulations.

"Their comments have demonstrated the poisonous, hostile and intolerant environment they have created for healthcare professionals who practice medicine according to life-honoring standards of ethics."

In response to the official proposal, Planned Parenthood stepped up its already