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NEW! 81.1% of Georgia Voters say 'Yes' to Personhood Amendment

NEW! Feminist Strategy Backfiring: Drug Used to Assault Women

NEW! Commentary: Abortion and Maternal Mortality

NEW! More Trouble for Abortionist Brigham, This Time in Pennsylvania

NEW! Surgeon General Koop Urges No Vote on Kagan Based on Abortion Manipulation

NEW! Report: Obama Has Spent $23 Million Backing Pro-Abortion Kenya Constitution

NEW! More than 170 Leaders from 21 Countries Sign Kenya Pro-Life Petition

NEW! Review: Obama Admin Would Have Funded Abortions in Health Law Without Expose'

NEW! Commentary: Abortion Returns to the Health Care Reform Debate

Indiana Planned Parenthood Caught On Tape Giving Fabricated Medical Information

Maryland Plan Indicates (Yet Again) HHS Approved High Risk Pools With No Restrictions on Abortion Coverage

Abortion Business in Colombia Accused of Selling Children - Third this Year

U.S. Feds Hand $23 Million to Kenya Proxies Fighting FOR PRO-ABORTION Constitution

Abortion and Black Genocide ("The Negro Project") -- youtube & www.blackgenocide.org

Buffett Secretly Spending Millions on Abortion Med-School Scheme: NY Times

Commentary: Royal College of Ob-GYN "Fetal Awareness" Report Does Nothing to Rebut Conclusion Unborn Can Experience Pain at 20 Weeks

Bringing Science Back to the Abortion Debate: Helping Women & Unborn Children

Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg: 'We Will Never Go Back' to Outlawing Abortion

Commentary: Alabama Needs to Follow Up to Ensure Abortion Centers Follow State Laws

Planned Parenthood Files Suit over Nebraska Abortion Law

Nebraska Judge Halts the Abortion Screening Law That Would Have Helped Women Make Informed Decisions

Pro-Life Pushback Against Bubble Zone

'Abortion Guidelines' Withdrawn in Northern Ireland

Congressman: Obama Admin Illegally Funding Push for Pro-Abortion Kenya Constitution with U.S. Taxpayer $$

ELLA

Commentary: FDA Misleads Women on New Abortion Drug

CONSCIENCE

Washington State Capitulates, Recognizes Pharmacists' Conscience Rights

HEALTH "REFORM"

NARAL Enraged with HHS 'Clarification' on High-Risk Pool Abortion Funding

New Mexico Cancels Plan to Cover Elective Abortion with Federal Funds

"Obamacare" to Pay for Abortions Under New $160 Million Pennsylvania Program

Obama Admin Approves Second Set of Abortion Funding Under Health "Care" Law

Obama Administration Gives More Funding to Abortion Groups Than Pregnancy Centers

'The Health Care Betrayal'

GAO Report on Planned Parenthood Reveals Startling Discrepancy / GAO Revelation that U.S. Poured $1 Billion into Abortion Cartel Renews Calls for De-funding

Kagan’s Abortion Distortion (Who is the REAL author of THE crucial statement in the ACOG policy on partial birth abortion that was used as the fulcrum to overturn state partial birth abortion bans?)

Iowa Planned Parenthood Subject of Criminal Complaint Over "Telemed" Abortions / Planned Parenthood President Says "Telemed" Abortion Plan Going Nationwide

Update: 27-Year-Old Abortion Facility Closed Down Over Health Code Violation

Abortion Activists Claim New “Right” to Maternal Health   

Dozens of British Teenage Girls Have Had Three Abortions or More

Andrea Bocelli Confirms: He’s Not Merely Anti-Abortion, He’s “for Life”

Study: Abortion More Than Tripled Breast Cancer Risk for Sri Lankan

Abortion May Increase Risk of Autoimmune Disease

Canadian Study Finds Strong Link Between Abortion and Premature Birth

Study Shows Link Between Abortion and Physical, Sexual Abuse by Women's Partners

"Creative" Math: Abortion Activists and Maternal Health

Planned Parenthood Leads Push for Abortion at UN High-Level MDG Review

North Carolina Abortion Business Ceases Abortions

Ultrasound Laws Protect Women's Health, Stop Abortions, Provide Window to the Womb

FDA Hearing on ellaOne -- Ulipristal -- [Incorrectly] as "EC" (Emergency Contraception) Rather than as an Abortifacient

AAPLOG Submission to the FDA Reproductive Health Advisory Committee Regarding the (upcoming) 17 June 2010 Meeting on Ulipristal Approval as an “Emergency Contraceptive”

EllaOne: New Pill, Same Misinformation

Ella ... It's Not Enchanted ... It's Embryocidal

NEW!  More on EllaOne...

81.1% of Georgia Voters say 'Yes' to Personhood Amendment
Throughout the state yesterday, citizens had a chance to express their sentiment regarding the important policy question of when life begins and when it should be protected in law. Select metro counties throughout Georgia placed the following question on their respective ballots: “Do you support an amendment to the Georgia State Constitution so as to provide that the paramount right to life is vested in each human being from their earliest biological beginning until natural death?” The amendment passed overwhelmingly in all 46 counties. 323,474 total votes were cast and the average margin of voters approving the question was an amazing 81.1%!  [http://www.aipnews.com/talk/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=15769&posts=1 ; AIP News, 22 July 2010, ALL Pro-Life Today]



FEMINIST STRATEGY BACKFIRING: Drug Used to Assault Women

RU 486, the abortion pill [mifepristone, Mifeprex], is used to cause chemical abortions in early pregnancy.

Since its controversial approval by the FDA in September of 2000, it can be prescribed to pregnant women of any age, even teenagers.

Led by pro-abortion feminists in the 1990’s, the fervent sales pitch for its approval called for a safe, effective, inexpensive and accessible abortifacient.

According to Planned Parenthood’s Alexander Sanger, it represented “one of the most important victories for women in this century.” To Kate Michelman of NARAL, it was the “biggest thing since the birth control pill.”

All rhetoric aside, the reality of RU 486 is that after nearly ten years on the market, this “victory for women” has taken 7 American women’s lives (that we know of), caused serious complications in hundreds of others, and provided a new instrument for the abuse of women.

To produce a chemical abortion, a “killer cocktail” combination of drugs is used to ensure the deadly result. The FDA approved protocol1 calls for 600 mg of RU 486, or mifepristone, to be taken by a woman who is up to 7 weeks pregnant.

This drug is a progesterone blocker, which deprives the developing baby of essential nutrients and causes him/her to die of starvation.

Two days later, the woman is to take 400 mg of a second drug, misoprostol, (prostaglandin) to induce contractions that will expel the dead baby. On the 14th day, the woman is to visit her doctor to confirm that the abortion is complete (i.e. the dead baby has been expelled). If it is not, a surgical abortion is necessary.

During the intervening time, the woman is in the “privacy” of her own home, bleeding an average of 13 days (or as many as 30 days), often very heavily, possibly witnessing the expulsion of the baby in the process.

As gruesome as this may sound, it is a best-case scenario.

Even so, pro-abortion feminists thought RU 486 could “mainstream abortion” by making it seem more accessible and "natural".

Unfortunately, the FDA approval of these drugs for such lethal purposes has unleashed a host of unintended consequences that have hurt women.

In the last few years, one news story after another has described an abortion forced on a woman by a husband or boyfriend who has given her a drug in food or drink without her knowledge:

    *  In 2007, a 21-year-old Virginia man was sentenced to 5 years in prison for trying to poison his girlfriend with the intent of trying to cause an abortion or miscarriage. Daniel Riase crushed two misoprostol pills and put them into 19-year-old Sharii Best’s drink, after which she began to bleed. She went to the hospital, where her 11-week pregnancy ended in miscarriage. She later discovered an email receipt for his purchase of the drug.2

    *  Also in 2007, a 34-year-old Wisconsin man named Manish Patel was arrested and charged with attempted first-degree homicide of an unborn child for trying to cause the abortion of his unborn twins. He obtained mifepristone from his native India and put it in his girlfriend’s drink. Darshana Patel never drank the spiked drink, but turned it over to the authorities after suspecting foul play. Testing confirmed the presence of the drug. Patel appears to have fled the country after posting bail.

    * In 2009 in Alaska, Airman First Class Scott Boie faced a court martial for causing his wife to have an abortion. He used his computer to search for abortion drugs and got a friend to obtain misoprostol for him. He crushed up the pills and put them in his wife Caylinn’s food. She miscarried a week later, thinking it occurred naturally. She learned about his actions from a friend and confronted him.

    * Thus far in 2010, a 38-year-old New York pharmacist, Orbin Eeli Tercero, has been arrested for causing his Pennsylvania mistress to have an abortion. He allegedly inserted misoprostol tablets vaginally during two sexual encounters. He also dissolved misoprostol tablets in her drinks, just to be sure. As she started miscarrying, she discovered the partially dissolved pill in her discharge. He is charged with the murder of an unborn child in the first degree.3

    * Also in 2010, 31-year-old Jered Ahlstrom from Utah has pleaded guilty to unlawful termination of his girlfriend’s pregnancy. He put misoprostol in her food twice to cause an abortion. She delivered a stillborn baby 16 weeks into her pregnancy. He later admitted over email that he had caused her abortion.

    * In a similar crime, a 25-year-old Maryland man, William Stanley Sutton III, spiked his girlfriend’s drink in an attempt to cause an abortion. He used a cattle hormone sometimes used to cause abortions in cows. Lauren Ashley Tucker went to the hospital complaining of a possible poisoning after consuming the foul drink that burned her throat. Both she and her 15-week-old unborn child survived. He was charged with reckless endangerment, assault and contaminating her drink.

In each case, the woman was pressured by the man to have an abortion and she refused. He took matters in his own hands and slipped her the drug. Other similar cases in the UK and New Zealand have also been reported. These incidents highlight the danger of violence to women who refuse to comply with their partner’s wish for an abortion.

Equally disturbing is the idea that these news stories may just be the tip of the iceberg, for it is unknown how many “miscarriages” and stillborn births may have been caused by similar foul play that was never discovered. The availability of the RU 486 killer cocktail makes this scenario too easy to accomplish.

Unfortunately, despite the pro-abortion mantra that insists it is a woman’s “choice” to have an abortion, plenty of evidence exists that women are regularly coerced into having one. As many as 64% of women having abortions said they felt pressured to abort and 45% of men interviewed at abortion facilities recalled urging abortion.

When a woman refuses to abort, it can be at the risk of losing her job, her home or her partner. She may be threatened with injury, abuse or even death.4

As a matter of fact, homicide is the leading killer of pregnant women.5

With 92% of women saying that domestic violence and assault is the women’s issue of greatest concern to them, it is not surprising that some women feel they must choose abortion to protect themselves from further violence.

As it turns out, pro-abortion feminists have played right into the hands of the violent men in our society by promoting a drug that provides another means for men to forcefully impose their will on women.

In addition to the 7 American women (13 internationally) who have died after taking RU 486, FDA reports show that as of 2006: 116 women needed blood transfusions, 232 women required hospitalization, and 1,024 women reported adverse events.6

Since there is no mandatory reporting of RU 486 complications to the FDA, and because of the distinct possibility that a deadly infection may not be traced back to the use of RU 486, there is no telling how many other women have suffered serious complications or death from these chemical abortions.

A more recent study from Finland indicates that when using the abortion pill, 20% of women suffered at least one significant side effect.

Of those studied, hemorrhaging occurred in 15.6% of cases, infection in 1.7%, and incomplete abortions in 6.7%.

Compared to surgical abortion, the risk of hemorrhage was almost eight times higher and the risk of an incomplete abortion was five times higher.7

Other research suggests that the drug suppresses the immune system, leaving the woman more susceptible to infection.8

There are primarily two ways the RU 486 regimen can cause a woman’s death. The first is an incomplete abortion, where parts of the baby remain inside the woman’s uterus. As a result, the woman can bleed to death or she can develop a deadly blood infection and die of septic shock.

The second most likely cause of death is a ruptured tubal pregnancy. Since RU 486 cannot abort a tubal pregnancy, ruling out that possibility is best done by ultrasound.

Surprisingly, the FDA protocol does not require an ultrasound.

As a result, the FDA reports at least 17 cases where women with tubal pregnancies took the drug, with potentially fatal consequences.9

It would seem that, at the very least, there is a compelling case for vigilant care of women under this regimen; but instead, some abortion providers choose to shortcut care and focus on the financial bottom line.

For example, the abortion industry has tried to increase its profits by reducing the recommended dosage of mifepristone to 200 mg and by dispensing the drug to women up to 9 weeks pregnant, increasing the risks of incomplete abortion and other complications.

Planned Parenthood offices in Iowa have also used a “telemed” process that allows an off-site abortionist to provide instructions to the patient over a computer monitor. She then presses a button on the screen which opens a compartment that dispenses the drug, reducing it to a vending machine abortion. There is no medical exam, much less an ultrasound or a two-week follow-up visit. Despite minimal doctor-patient interaction in this process, Planned Parenthood is apparently charging the insurance company more than twice the price of a surgical abortion.10

This lax approach to safe practices is the predictable result of the politically motivated and flawed FDA approval process in which the safety of women was sacrificed for the pro-abortion and population control agenda of its proponents.

Synthesized in 1980 by chemist Georges Teutsch, mifepristone (RU 486) was owned by French pharmaceutical company Roussel-Uclaf. The German firm Hoechst owned majority shares in Roussel-Uclaf and traced its history to I.G. Farben, who manufactured Zyklon-B, the “human pesticide” used in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

With RU 486’s toxic effect on unborn babies drawing an eerie parallel to this regrettable history, both Hoechst and Roussel-Uclaf were extremely reluctant to apply for FDA approval or enter the US market with a controversial abortion pill that could trigger boycotts and product liability litigation.11

Enter the Clinton Administration. Heavily supported by pro-abortion advocates, Clinton overturned the ban on RU 486 in 1993, and was determined to fast-track its FDA approval. In 1994, with Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala strongly encouraging a licensing agreement, Roussel-Uclaf granted all of the pill’s patent rights and technology to the Population Council, a pro-abortion non-profit organization that conducts research on “reproductive health issues.”12

The Population Council created Danco Laboratories to market RU 486 in the US, but was unsuccessful in finding a US company willing to manufacture it. The best they could find was a Chinese manufacturing company, Shanghai Hualian, which had a history of violating US regulations and has since been found to be manufacturing tainted leukemia drugs.13 The company is a division of Shanghai Pharmaceutical Company, which is owned by the Chinese Communist government.

Since a manufacturing process was essential for FDA approval, any concerns about Shanghai Hualian were apparently swept under the rug in order to get this drug approved.

This was one of many questionable decisions by the FDA.14 It waived its own requirements for unbiased clinical trials and eventually approved the drug under a “Subpart H” process for accelerated approval that is usually reserved for drugs meant to treat “severe or life-threatening illnesses.”

Clearly, pregnancy is not an illness, and for the FDA to treat it as one illustrates how the twisted logic of abortion advocates has been used to distort the most natural, nurturing, life-sustaining process that exists on this earth.

Safety directives used in the clinical trials and in other countries, such as requiring an ultrasound to verify the age and location of the pregnancy, were dropped or watered down in the final FDA protocol.

The “pediatric rule,” was waived, allowing teenagers to receive RU 486 even though the drug was never tested on adolescents.

Since RU 486 by itself was not effective in completing an abortion, the FDA ordered use of the second drug, misoprostol, thereby mandating an unapproved “off-label” use of the drug.

Searle Laboratories, the manufacturer of this ulcer medication, warned abortionists not to use it. As seen in the news stories above, misoprostol now appears to be the drug of choice for forcing chemical abortions on women without their knowledge.

Taken all together, it has become clear that RU 486 should be removed from the marketplace. The approval shortcuts, the ineffective protocol and the non-existent reporting requirements have allowed a drug regimen that at its best kills babies very effectively. At worst, it kills the mother or allows a third party to kill her baby without her permission or knowledge. Does this sound like a victory for women?

1 US FDA Drug, Mifeprex (mifepristone) Information, accessed at: http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/
PostmarketDrugSafetyInformationforPatientsandProviders/ucm111323.htm
2 Unless otherwise noted, all news stories can be found by searching LifeNews.com at: www.LifeNews.com
3 Accessed at: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/printerfriendly.html?articleid=10040816
4 The Elliot Institute, Forced Abortions in America, A Special Report, accessed at: http://www.theunchoice.com/pdf/FactSheets/ForcedAbortions.pdf
5 Ibid., p. 2.
6 US FDA News & Events, Mifepristone: Approval Process and Postmarketing Activities, May 17, 2006, p. 3. Accessed at: http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Testimony/ucm112562.htm
7 O’Bannon, Dr. Randy, Study: 20 Percent of Women Using Abortion Drug Face Medical Complications, LifeNews.com, Nov. 11, 2009. Accessed at: http://www.lifenews.com/int1377.html
8 Ertelt, Steven, Pro-Life Groups Renew Call to Pull Abortion Drug RU 486, Despite FDA Meeting, LifeNews.com, May 17, 2006. Accessed at: http://www.lifenews.com/nat2277.html
9 Willke, J.C., RU 486 Has Killed Thirteen Women, Life Issues Institute, July 2008. Accessed at: http://www.lifeissues.org/ru486/deaths.htm
10 Ertelt, Steven, Pro-Life Group Files Complaint in Iowa Against Telemed Abortion Drug Process, LifeNews.com, April 8, 2010. Accessed at: http://www.lifenews.com/state4977.html
11 Hogan, Julie A., The Life of the Abortion Pill in the United States, Harvard Law School, March 2000. Accessed at: http://leda.law.harvard.edu/leda/data/247/Hogan,_Julie.html
12 Judicial Watch, Inc., The Clinton RU-486 Files, April 2006.
13 Hoffman, Matthew C., Manufacturer of RU-486 Paralyzes Patients with Tainted Drug, LifeSiteNews.com, January 31, 2008. Accessed at: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jan/08013105.html
14 Wright, Wendy, RU-486: Killer Pills, September 10, 2002. Accessed at: http://www.cwfa.org/articledisplay.asp?id=1561&department=CWA&categoryid=life
[June 2010, Life Issues Connector, Susan W. Enouen, P.E., http://www.lifeissues.org/connector/2010/Jun10_Feminist_Backfiring.html]




Commentary: Abortion and Maternal Mortality

International groups such as the World Health Organization, the World Bank and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have been aggressively marketing a new strategy to push their pro-abortion agenda. Third-world countries, they insist, must have safe abortion. Further, they claim the only way to make abortion safe is to make abortion legal in nations where unborn babies are currently protected by law.

These pro-abortion organizations also believe that legal abortion is essential to lowering maternal mortality, that is, the number of deaths of mothers per 100,000 births. The highest levels of the US government are echoing this sentiment. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health.” Then, as if to remove all doubt of what she meant, Secretary Clinton added, “And reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal…abortion.”

It is an unmistakable strategy of making reduced maternal mortality rates and access to legal abortion inseparable, all in the name of protecting women’s lives.

They should have researched the facts before embarking on this methodology. Our friends at LifeSiteNews.com have thoroughly investigated the matter, and we’d like to share some of their findings. There is a considerable body of evidence from around the world showing that permissive abortion laws result in a higher maternal mortality rate, not a lower one.

For example, the country of Mauritius has the lowest maternal mortality rate of African nations, yet it has some of the continent’s most protective laws regarding the unborn. Contrast this with Ethiopia that has permissive abortion laws and a maternal mortality rate forty-eight times greater than Mauritius.

When looking at countries in South America, Chile, which protects unborn children, has the lowest maternal mortality rate. By comparison, Guyana, which basically allows abortion-on-demand, has a rate thirty times higher than Chile.

Looking at Southeast Asia, Nepal has no restrictions on abortion and has the highest rate of maternal mortality. The lowest in this area of the world is Sri Lanka—fourteen times lower—and they have some of the most protective laws in the world.

The Central American nation of El Salvador experienced a decrease by half in their maternal mortality rate after they began protecting unborn babies in 1998. Poland’s rate dropped by forty-percent after they passed major pro-life legislation.

In contrast, South Africa saw maternal deaths increase twenty-percent in the wake of liberalizing their abortion laws. Even the International Planned Parenthood Federation admitted that part of what they called a “surge” in deaths of South African women was due to complications of legal abortion in that country.

Worldwide, Ireland, which protects its unborn children, has the lowest rate of maternal mortality of all. Ironically, three of the richest and most advanced nations on earth: the United States, Norway and Canada, showed an increase in maternal mortality. All three have the most liberal abortion laws in the world.

Dr. Donna Harrison is a diplomat for the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the president of the American Academy of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

She believes that the key to reducing maternal mortality isn’t abortion, but instead can be found in prenatal care, better skilled birth attendants, antibiotics and oxytocics.

Legal abortion, Dr. Harrison points out, actually increases a woman’s chances of experiencing hemorrhage, infection and damage to her reproductive organs, particularly if pieces of the unborn child are left in the womb.

This makes chemical abortion, or RU 486, most risky for women because of an eightfold increased risk of bleeding, five times higher chance of an incomplete abortion and twice the risk of having to rely on a surgical abortion as a backup.

Ironically, chemical abortions are being widely promoted by pro-abortion organizations that stress the need for abortion to reduce maternal mortality.

Contrary to what international pro-abortion organizations and political leaders in the Obama administration say, making abortion legal in third-world countries will not reduce the incidence of maternal mortality.

The extensive evidence shows quite the opposite is true.

Nations that protect their unborn children also enjoy the benefits of better health for their women. In most of these nations, mothers are the backbone of families and society.
[June 2010,  Life Issues Connector, Bradley Mattes, MBS, http://www.lifeissues.org/connector/2010/Jun10_Maternal_Mortality.html ]

More Trouble for Abortionist Brigham, This Time in Pennsylvania

Steven Chase Brigham, a physician whose medical license has been revoked, relinquished, or temporarily suspended in five states, is now facing regulatory and tax troubles that could jeopardize his American Women's Services chain of 15 abortion businesses. The Pennsylvania Department of Health this month ordered Brigham to permanently shut his four facilities in the state for repeatedly employing unlicensed caregivers.  

Lawyer Julia Gabis, who represents Brigham in the Pennsylvania case, contends that the order violates his constitutional rights and reflects selective enforcement against abortion providers. The department rejected those arguments.

Brigham also has to deal with the IRS. In April, it placed $234,536 in liens against him for failing to pay payroll taxes from 2002 to 2006. His company, which does business as American Women's Services, has six businesses in New Jersey, including the headquarters at 1 Alpha Ave., Voorhees.

John Zen Jackson, a lawyer in Warren, N.J. who represented Brigham in a lawsuit against him by his accounting firm, did not respond to requests for comment on the liens.

Brigham, 53, has rarely given interviews about his legal scrapes, which go back as far as 1989 and have pitted him against medical boards, creditors, landlords, patients, and others. He declined to be interviewed for this article.

Brigham graduated from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1986. By 1990, when abortion became the focus of his practice, he was licensed in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, California, Florida, and Georgia, public records show.

Pennsylvania was the first setback. In a confidential 1992 settlement, Brigham agreed to permanently give up his license amid an investigation of his practice in Wyomissing.

Despite this restriction, Brigham continued to own and expand his abortion business in the state.

In 1994, New York took his license, finding him guilty of "gross negligence" and "inexcusably bad judgment" involving two late-pregnancy abortions. The patients suffered life-threatening bleeding and required emergency hospital operations, public records show.

Brigham maintained offices in New York through 1995 but failed to file state business taxes, a misdemeanor for which he was sentenced to 120 days in jail and $8,188 in restitution, public records show.

In Florida, Brigham lost his license for not disclosing New York's action. California put him on probation and ordered extra training; instead, he let his license lapse, as he did in Georgia.

New Jersey suspended Brigham's license in 1993, citing the same botched abortions as New York, plus other charges. After three years of defending himself against an action by the state Attorney General's Office, Brigham won full reinstatement of his medical privileges.

Pennsylvania's latest disciplinary action came July 7 when Deputy Secretary of Health Robert Torres permanently banned Brigham and any corporation in which he has a controlling interest from providing abortions in the state. Torres' order cites repeated violations of the state's medical licensing rules.

American Women's Services does about 3,600 abortions a year in Pennsylvania, state records show. It has clinics in Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie, and State College. Until last month its website also listed 11 locations in Philadelphia, Bristol Borough, King of Prussia, and Willow Grove where patients could rendezvous for "free transportation" to a clinic.

Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, said this week, "We applaud Pennsylvania's decision."

Her trade association, which has 400 abortion providers that meet its clinical standards, has long criticized the quality of care at Brigham's clinics.

The most recent violation cited in the July 7 order occurred in 2008, when a woman who was not a nurse worked as one in the Pittsburgh clinic, according to Health Department charges.

During hearings early last year, Brigham contended he had been duped. He testified that he did not know the applicant's name when he verified the license number she provided to his office administrator. As a result, he verified the wrong person's license.

Asked why he did not specifically check the applicant's name, he said, "It didn't dawn on me. I mean, I just, I didn't. . . . I don't know. I guess I don't have a good explanation."

In his legal pleadings, Brigham argued that even if there were a licensing violation, it was minor. Shutting him down, he contended, would be "excessive" and "drastic."

But the 2008 violation was far from minor, health officials decided, in the context of his previous lapses.

In 1997, Brigham employed an obstetrician-gynecologist who was under suspension for, among other things, sexually molesting patients.

"We contacted Dr. Brigham, and he said he wasn't aware that the license was suspended," recalled Kenneth Brody, the department's chief counsel. The department accepted that explanation and did not discipline Brigham.

In 2004, Brigham again pleaded ignorance. He said he was unaware that a physician who had done more than 1,600 abortions at American Women's Services clinics in Pennsylvania had previously retired his license and thus was not paying into the state's medical malpractice insurance fund.

That time, Brigham had to promise the department that from then on, his company would go to special lengths to verify medical credentials. He agreed that any further slip-ups would be grounds for barring him from having abortion facilities "directly or indirectly" in the state.

In issuing the shut-down order last week, Torres rejected one last legal argument that Brigham added to his pleadings early this year: He claimed the case had become moot because in January, he transferred ownership of his Pennsylvania clinics to a newly created company headed by a 70-year-old woman in Toledo, Ohio.

Permission to run abortion clinics "may not be transferred as part of a sales transaction," Torres ruled. Any transfer "would be void."

During Brigham's travails, his enterprise has continually evolved. Over the years, he has created at least 20 corporate entities -- some with names such as Peaceful Corp., Goodness Inc., and Kindness Corp. -- and added clinics in Virginia and Maryland.

The IRS now has a big claim against all of it.

"We have made a demand for payment of this liability, but it remains unpaid," say April IRS notices demanding $234,536 for unpaid payroll taxes. "Therefore, there is a lien in favor of the United States on all property and rights to property belonging to this taxpayer for the amount of these taxes, and additional penalties, interest, and costs that may accrue."[http://dailyme.com/story/2010072100001049/trouble-abortion-doctor-time-pennsylvania.html Daily Me, 22 July 2010, ALL Pro-Life Today]





Surgeon General Koop Urges No Vote on Kagan Based on Abortion Manipulation
 Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop has written an extensive letter to members of the Senate calling for a no vote on the Supreme Court nomination of Elena Kagan. The letter focuses attention on the Clinton administration memos Kagan authored showing her attempting to manipulate abortion opinion.

Specifically, Koop refers to the ways in which Kagan influenced the language of a 1997 statement by American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists on partial-birth abortions.

Whereas ACOG found no occasion in which the three-day-long abortion procedure is medically necessary for women, Kagan pressured ACOG to include language saying there may be instances where it is and the Supreme Court eventually relied on that language to overturn state bans on the abortion procedure.

That eventually kept partial-birth abortions legal for several years longer until the Supreme Court reversed itself when considering a national ban Congress approved with medical findings that partial-birth abortions are medically unnecessary.

In his letter, Koop calls "unethical" and "disgraceful" Kagan's effort to persuade the medical group to change its expert opinion to conform to her political demands.

"She was willing to replace a medical statement with a political statement that was not supported by any existing medical data," writes Koop.

"Kagan's political language, a direct result of the amendment she made to ACOG's Policy Statement, made its way into American jurisprudence and misled federal courts for the next decade," he said. [Full story at LifeNews.com, 25 July 2010, Washington, DC]







Report: Obama Has Spent $23 Million Backing Pro-Abortion Kenya Constitution
A new report issued by the Inspector General (IG) for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) reveals the Obama administration has spent over $23 million for activities in Kenya to influence voters there to support a new constitution that would allow virtually unlimited abortions.

The nation currently protects women and unborn children from abortions, but a constitution voters will consider on August 4 would change the historic pro-life laws of the African nation.

Rep. Chris Smith, a key pro-life congressman who is the Ranking Member of the Africa and Global Health Subcommittee, has been working with other lawmakers and the IG’s office to investigate grants the Obama administration has provided to Kenyan groups promoting the Yes vote campaign for the new constitution.

In a new report Smith released to LifeNews.com on Friday, he says U.S. taxpayers are now footing the bill for those pro-abortion efforts to the tune of $23 million, far above previous estimates.

Previous estimates had indicated that $2 million was being spent, then that was updated to $11 million and now the figure identified by the IG’s office exceeds $23 million, he said.

“The Obama Administration should not be spending $23 million in American tax dollars on the specific “Yes” campaign, pushing a determined outcome on the proposed constitution in Kenya,” Smith said.

“The U.S. government can be supportive of the process, helping to secure a free and fair referendum. But we must respect the Kenyan people and let them decide for themselves. U.S. dollars should not be used to tell the Kenyan people how to vote," he added. [Full story at LifeNews.com, 25 July 2010, Washington, DC]

More than 170 Leaders from 21 Countries Sign Kenya Pro-Life Petition

With just two weeks to go until Kenyans vote on a new Constitution, World Congress of Families Managing Director Larry Jacobs announced the conclusion of a successful petition drive, "In Support Of  The 'No' Campaign - Kenyans Opposed To The Pro-Abortion Constitution."

In less than a week, the Congress gathered signatures from more than 170 pro-life and pro-family leaders in 21 countries.  Signers include former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Former Boston Mayor and Vatican Ambassador Ray Flynn and Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, as well as current or former members of the parliaments of Britain, Australia and the European Union, and the Congresses of Poland and the Philippines.

Jacobs observed: "Kenyans are literally fighting for the hope and future of their nation - the lives of unborn children.  The Constitution, which will be voted on by Kenyans on August 4, includes language which overturns current Kenyan law prohibiting abortion except to save the mother's life. It would allow abortion when the mother's 'health' is affected by a continuation of pregnancy.

"The World Health Organization (WHO) defines 'health' to include 'complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.' Thus, Section 26 of the proposed Constitution sets up a mechanism for unrestricted abortion on demand at any time during pregnancy," he said.

Africa has been targeted by international population control groups for legalized abortion despite a 47% drop in Kenyan fertility and projections that show a declining population in the next 50 years.

In recent days the Obama administration has been accused by a group of U.S. congressmen of spending over $23 million to promote the pro-abortion Constitution.

Jacobs urged Kenyans to "carefully consider the consequences of this fatal move, which could be the first step on a road the West has followed, leading to one-quarter of all pregnancies in the U.S. ending in abortion."

"Once again, the legacy of Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood is revealed with their racist agenda to eliminate black Africans," said Jacobs. He pointed to the history of 21st Century black genocide from abortion as chronicled in the documentary movie, Maafa21.

Click here for the text of the Petition and a full list of signers and affiliations.

World Congress of Families V was held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, August 10-12, 2009. World Congress of Families VI is planned for 2011/2012.  For More information on the Congress, go to www.worldcongress.org.  [22 July 2010, WASHINGTON, www.LifeSiteNews.com,  http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10072203.html ]





Review: Obama Admin Would Have Funded Abortions in Health Law Without Expose'
Last week, the Obama administration came under heavy fire from a pro-life group that discovered, in three states, officials had approved paying for abortions under new high risk insurance programs created under the national health care law President Barack Obama signed.

The National Right to Life Committee exposed the abortion funding and the Obama administration responded at first by claiming the executive order Obama signed prohibits the funding NRLC uncovered.

Then, Obama officials revised the statement to say they promised the high risk insurance programs would not fund abortions in Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Maryland or any other states.

Douglas Johnson, the legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee who uncovered the abortion funding, reviewed last week's back and forth with LifeNews.com today.

He said the dustup proves the point his organization and other pro-life groups made that the health care bill funded abortions, the executive order was insufficient to prevent that, abortion funding would have happened without NRLC exposing it, and the public will have to take the Obama administration at its word that abortion funding will not occur in the future.

"First, the assurances that were offered in March by certain congressional Democrats, and by their guardians among the interest groups, that the final health care bill contained adequate pro-life safeguards, were patently false. All the major pro-abortion groups are now openly proclaiming what National Right to Life said all along -- neither the law Obama signed, nor his executive order on abortion, prohibit federal funding of abortion in the high-risk program," Johnson explained. [Full story at LifeNews.com, 25 July 2010, Washington, DC]







 

Commentary: Abortion Returns to the Health Care Reform Debate

By Richard M. Doerflinger

Congress passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) in March, amidst an unresolved debate about the legislation’s impact on abortion and conscience protection.  As president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Francis George explained then that the bishops had to oppose the final bill despite their strong support for health care reform, because (among other things) it “appropriates billions of dollars in new funding without explicitly prohibiting the use of these funds for abortion.”  Others dismissed this charge, saying that legislative intent and a last-minute executive order from President Obama prevented abortion funding.

Fast-forward to July, when one of those PPACA provisions appropriating billions of dollars was about to take effect.  Section 1101 of the Act provides $5 billion for “high-risk insurance pools,” providing much-needed health coverage for people with “pre-existing conditions” who cannot otherwise get coverage.  This program ends in January 2014, when these patients can join others in purchasing qualified health plans on the new state insurance exchanges.  State governments can propose the benefits list and other details for covering their residents in these pools, but the federal government makes final decisions and provides all government funds for subsidizing this coverage.

Pro-life groups found that several states – beginning with Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Maryland – had announced on their web sites that their statewide plans would include elective abortions.  (New Mexico used the phrase openly; Pennsylvania said its plan would not cover “elective abortions,” but would cover abortions that are legal under the Supreme Court’s decisions – meaning any abortion an abortionist sees as needed for a woman’s social or emotional “well-being.”)  These plans were described as already approved, and New Mexico had already begun signing up enrollees.

Public criticism of this development prompted immediate denials and evasive responses.  An initial response from the Department of Health and Human Services insisted that “federal funds” would not cover these abortions – leaving open the prospect that everyone who enrolls could be forced to fund other people’s abortions with their premium dollars.  Late on July 14, however, HHS issued a new and more welcome response, saying that abortions simply “will not be covered” in these plans except in cases of rape, incest or danger to the mother’s life, as has long been true in federally subsidized health plans for federal employees.

Now pro-abortion groups are crying foul, with the interesting complaint that this pro-life outcome goes beyond anything in PPACA or the executive order.  In other words, they are saying the bishops’ analysis of loopholes in these documents is right.

The high-risk pool program is just one funding stream left open to abortion by PPACA.  For now it seems pro-life forces have won the first round, through careful research and a prompt public response.  But PPACA needs a legislative fix to close such loopholes once and for all. 

That fix is offered by the “Protect Life Act” (H.R. 5111) sponsored by Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) and 115 other House members, including 13 Democrats.  Whether these or other billions of dollars in taxpayers’ funds are used to help kill unborn children is not a matter we should leave to shifting politics or to chance.

Doerflinger is Associate Director of the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, USCCB.  To learn more, see www.usccb.org/prolife.  [23 july 2010, LIFE ISSUES FORUM, usccb.org]    

Indiana Planned Parenthood Caught On Tape Giving Fabricated Medical Information
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_HoM6213kc&feature=player_embedded

Maryland Plan Indicates HHS Approved High Risk Pools With No Abortion Requirements
Was the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) approving state applications for running federal high-risk insurance pools without a second thought to abortion? That is how it seems to the National Right to Life Committee, which discovered that Maryland’s plan to cover individuals with pre-existing conditions also had no restrictions on abortion coverage until media attention and public controversy propelled the HHS to clarify the matter.

In an email sent Friday to LifeSiteNews.com, NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson said that Maryland was “on the way to providing federally funded abortion coverage in the new federal Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP)” until the HHS declared that Hyde amendment restrictions on abortion funding – allowing abortion only for rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother – would apply to the federal high risk pools.

The federal PCIPs are a $5 billion HHS program to help give coverage to individuals with pre-existing medical conditions unable to afford health insurance, until the health care reform law takes full effect in 2014. The HHS is directly administering the program in 21 states, while 29 states and the District of Columbia will administer the PCIPs through their own programs.

Johnson pointed out a press release from Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, which explained that the Maryland Health Insurance Plan (MHIP) would be administering the PCIP for that state. But the release also directed readers to a “Frequently Asked Questions" page which explained that the “MHIP Federal Plan offers the same benefit package as other MHIP plan options."

But the MHIP also provides coverage for abortion, a fact Johnson said could be seen for itself on page 53 of MHIP’s “2010 Plan Year Certificate of Coverage.” In the “Covered Services” section, under the heading “Maternity Services,” is listed abortion. For individuals with an HMO plan – one of five plans available – inpatient abortion surgery has a “$250 co-pay per admission,” while outpatient abortion surgery has “No Facility Copay.”

“Each day brings more evidence that federal DHHS was merrily approving abortion-funding plans without a second thought,” observed Johnson. “There is no evidence that DHHS either conveyed to the states that abortion could not be included, or that DHHS had any intent of imposing such a policy, until NRLC put the spotlight on the issue.”

Johnson's theory that the federal government was approving plans without abortion guidelines has already been bolstered by the plans in two other states.

Betina Gonzales McCracken, spokeswoman for New Mexico Human Services Department, told LifeSiteNews.com in an e-mail that the inclusion of “elective abortion” in New Mexico’s federal high risk pool was a “simple mistake,” and that state officials “knew from the very beginning that elective abortion is not a covered service.”

“The ‘draft’ summary of benefits submitted to the HHS mistakenly included ‘elective abortion,’” McCracken stated. “The way that occurred was we had a short time frame to turn in our application to the feds, so we turned in a ‘mirror’ version of the NM high-risk pool. We should have had a qualifier that stated ‘pending rules and guidance’ from the federal government.”

McCracken’s statement did not indicate that the HHS had given application requirements to states submitting such proposals. LSN twice requested McCracken Friday to provide any HHS directives regarding abortion coverage in the application process, but received no response as of press time Monday.

HHS spokeswoman Jenny Backus also indicated to the AP that HHS issued no abortion restrictions –  but were "working on" it – even as some state-run PCIPs, such as Maryland’s, began going into effect as of July 1. Backus told the AP last Wednesday, “The department is working on guidance to make those restrictions explicit to states and insurance plans.”

The controversy impelled HHS to clarify in a statement last week that Hyde-amendment restrictions would apply to all PCIPs – both state and federal. The declaration drew howls of outrage from NARAL Pro-Choice America, and praise from the US Catholic Conference of Bishops, which had lobbied heavily for a broad ban on federal funds for elective abortion and failed. (see coverage here)

But the matter has also put President Obama’s executive order back in the spotlight. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) stated on Friday that the executive order made clear “that federal funds may not be used for abortion under the Affordable Care Act – including the pre-existing condition insurance pools currently being implemented in Pennsylvania, New Mexico and other states across the country.”

Yet top pro-life analysts have noted that the text of the executive order only concerns the state-run exchanges (sec. 1 & 2), and the Community Health Center (CHC) program. No mention is made regarding the PCIPs.

Citing such flaws on abortion funding, pro-life organizations including the USCCB, NRLC, and others, have called for the adoption of the Protect Life Act (HR 5111) to clearly apply Hyde-amendment restrictions to the federal health care law. The bill, offered by Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Penn.), has the same legislative language that Rep. Stupak fought for during the health care debate but no longer supports.  [19July 2010, Peter J. Smith, D.C., http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10071909.html ]





Abortion Business in Colombia Accused of Selling Children - Third this Year

A "clinic" shut down in Colombia for performing illegal abortions is also being accused of child trafficking, according to Radio Santa Fe in Bogotá.

The clinic [sic}, which falsely claimed to give sonograms to women, was actually selling children for between 1.5 and 5 million pesos (the equivalent of 800 and 2,660 USD), as well as performing abortions that carry criminal penalties under Colombian law, according to authorities. It reportedly specialized in late-term abortions.

Police who raided the clinic [sic] reportedly found three babies alive inside, which have been turned over to Colombia's child protective services.

The operators of the clinic have been charged with aggravated forced disappearance, aggravated criminal conspiracy, and aggravated homicide.  They deny the charges and are being held in prison until trial.

The closure of the clinic [sic] is the third case this year of child trafficking associated with the abortion industry in Colombia, according to the prolife Spanish website, HazteOir (Make Yourself Heard).

The facilities, which provide abortions in violation of Colombian law, use other activities as a smokescreen for their illegal services.  They were reportedly turned in by concerned citizens.

Abortion was partially depenalized by a decree of Colombia's Constitutional Court in 2006, which said that criminal penalties cannot be applied to abortions in cases of rape, fetal deformity, or danger to the life of the mother.
[20 July 2010, M.C. Hoffman, Latin America Correspondent, BOGOTÁ, http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10072012.html ]

U.S. Feds Hand $23 Million to Kenya Proxies Fighting FOR PRO-ABORTION Constitution

 With Kenya’s pivotal referendum on a new pro-abortion constitution just a few weeks away, three pro-life congressmen have brought forward more evidence that the U.S. federal government has heavily invested in procuring the approval of the document - to the tune of $23 million*. The U.S. has also enlisted pro-abortion groups to convince Kenyans to approve the constitution, they said, despite the existence of federal laws prohibiting such activity.

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Ranking Member of the Africa and Global Health Subcommittee, along with Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Ranking Member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Ranking Member on the House Oversight Committee, now report that the degree of the federal government’s complicity in supporting its proxy “yes” campaign in Kenya was far more than the $2 million dollars they estimated at the beginning of their investigation, and twice the revised figure of $11 million.   

“The Obama Administration should not be spending $23 million in American tax dollars on the specific 'Yes' campaign, pushing a determined outcome on the proposed constitution in Kenya,” Smith said. “The U.S. government can be supportive of the process, helping to secure a free and fair referendum. But we must respect the Kenyan people and let them decide for themselves. U.S. dollars should not be used to tell the Kenyan people how to vote.”   

The Congressmen say that they acquired the information from Donald Gambatesa, the Inspector General for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which can be found on a chart listing the groups receiving USAID funds for activities related to the constitutional referendum with a summary of their agreements.

Such activity could mean that the Obama administration is not only influencing the outcome of a sovereign nation’s referendum, but also pushing a constitution that would overturn Kenya’s current “life of the mother only” exception to its ban on abortion. Such activity is prohibited by the Siljander amendment, a statute that prohibits the federal government from using foreign aid funds “to lobby for or against abortion.”

Article 26 of the proposed constitution would broadly permit abortion if the “health of the mother is in danger,” “or if permitted by any other written law.” Abortion is one of two prongs upon which the Christian churches in Kenya have launched their opposition to the adoption of the constitution – the other being the Khadis courts, where Muslims would fall under Islamic jurisdiction and potentially pose a threat to Christian converts from Islam.

Additionally, the chart obtained from USAID reveals an even more flagrant violation of the Siljander amendment: the Kenyan proxies supported financially by the U.S. federal government includes what Rep. Smith describes as “pro-abortion groups committed to overturning pro-life laws in Kenya.”

According to the report from Smith’s office, these groups include the Kenyan Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA-Kenya), the Committee of Experts on Constitutional Review in Kenya, the African Woman and Child Features Service, and Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI).

FIDA-Kenya led the charge in 2008 to liberalize Kenya’s abortion law and received over $85,000 from USAID to lobby for the constitution. It is a member of the Kenyan Reproductive Health and Rights Alliance (RHRA), which was tasked with “drafting reproductive health provisions for the revised constitution” by Planned Parenthood, its financial sponsor.  

The African Woman and Child Features Service uses the power of media to advocate “comprehensive reproductive health rights” in Kenya, and has received $157,000 for activities related to the constitution.

The lawmakers say that DAI –  which has received $3 million as a primary grant recipient, advised USAID in 2000 to support local advocacy groups pushing for “efforts to eventually legalize abortion in Kenya.”

This latest information follows upon a report from the pro-life lawmakers last week revealing that the U.S. government also has funding agreements with various NGOs pledging to marshal Kenyans behind the proposed constitution. At least five NGOs agreed to register 20,000 voters each – 100,000 voters total – “for a YES vote at the next referendum.” One group received grant money to secure the support of Kenya’s elite.

“We should be embracing the health and welfare of both mothers and children in African while respecting sovereign prolife laws,” said Smith.

*Correction: LSN had originally reported that the U.S. had contributed $28 million to lobbying in favor of the Kenyan constitution, instead of the correct figure of $23 million. We apologize for the error.

Previous coverage: U.S. State Department Funds Groups Lobbying “Yes” Vote on Pro-Abortion Kenya Constitution -- http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10071416.html

U.S. Embassy Denies Funding Campaign for Pro-Abort Kenya Constitution
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10071207.html

Pro-Life Anti-Constitution Rally Bombed in Kenya
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10061501.html

Biden Promises Kenya 'Money to Flow' if Pro-Abort Constitution Passes
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10061804.html
[19 July 2010, Peter J. Smith, D.C., http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10071910.html ]




Abortion and Black Genocide (Barack Obama and the Negro Project)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfFVKqHWJU0&NR=1&feature=fvwp
www.blackgenocide.org





Buffett Secretly Spending Millions on Abortion Med-School Scheme: NY Times
 Billionaire investing mogul Warren Buffett has been secretly backing a campaign to combat the decrease in doctors who are training as abortionists and to bring abortion into mainstream medicine, revealed the New York Times this week.

In her NYT magazine cover story, journalist Emily Bazelon describes how abortion “rights” activists are working to “recast doctors, changing them from a weak link of abortion to a strong one.”

The piece, entitled “The New Abortion Providers,” claims that abortionists and the pro-abort lobby are trying to dispel the image of the “greedy, butchering ‘abortionist’.”  “The bold idea at the heart of this effort is to integrate abortion so that it’s a seamless part of health care for women — embraced rather than shunned,” writes Bazelon.

The strategy, she says, aims at moving abortuaries away from stand-alone facilities into hospitals and encourages family physicians to offer abortions within their practices.

She describes two training programs for abortionists that are central to this strategy.  The first, called the “Family Planning Fellowship,” is a two-year post-residency program designed to further equip doctors for providing abortions and contraception.  She says this fellowship is now being offered at 21 university campuses.  The second is called the Kenneth J. Ryan Residency Training Program, which aims to supply medical schools with funds to train ob/gyn residents in providing abortions.  So far, this program has funded 58 campuses in the U.S. and Canada.

Both programs are run out of the University of California at San Francisco, and both are directed by Uta Landy, the former director of the National Abortion Federation.  Bazelon spoke with Jody Steinauer, the associate director of the Fellowship program, but she said that Landy declines all interviews out of fear that publicity would scare off potential universities, or their lone donor.

“The money for the Ryan and the Family Planning Fellowship comes from one foundation and from one family,” writes Bazelon.  “The donor has chosen to remain anonymous, which helps to explain why there’s been so little publicity about the pro-choice strategy of bringing abortion into academic medicine. It has been covered by a veil of semisecrecy.”

But as the two training programs have grown, this anonymous donor has become more widely known, she says.  “In the course of my reporting, two doctors who had not done the fellowship themselves, but who work in universities, volunteered to me that the money for the programs comes from the Buffett Foundation,” she wrote.

According to Bazelon, the Buffett Foundation’s tax records reveal that most of its spending is allocated to “abortion and contraception advocacy and research.”  The Foundation has given tens of millions to Planned Parenthood and Ipas, as well as millions to other pro-abortion groups like Catholics [sic] for Choice.  Buffett has pledged to give away 99% of his estimated $47 billion assets, with most of it going to the Gates Foundation, which is infamous for its avowed emphasis on population control.

Despite Buffett’s and the rest of the pro-abortion movement’s efforts to bring abortion into the mainstream of medicine, however, pro-life leaders insist that abortionists are by nature at the bottom rung of medicine, where debauched doctors end up when they are too incompetent for any other area.

“No one goes to medical school with the intent of working in a Planned Parenthood or some other abortion clinic [sic],” said Mark Crutcher, President of Life Dynamics Inc., last month, after an Ottawa abortionist was disciplined for his incompetence in treating 25 of his clients.  “The wash-outs from the leftovers of medicine wind up working in these abortion clinics [sic].”

Related coverage:  Buffett Billions Padding “Charitable” Abortion Advocacy
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10070810.html
[19 July 2010, Patrick B. Craine, OMAHA, Nebraska, http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10071905.html ]

Commentary: Royal College of Ob-GYN "Fetal Awareness" Report Does Nothing to Rebut Conclusion Unborn Can Experience Pain at 20 Weeks

What are we to make of the typical headline associated with the recently released "Fetal Awareness" paper issued by Britain's Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists (RCOG)--that the human fetus cannot feel pain until 24 weeks' gestation? Pro-abortionists and almost the entire media establishment on both sides of the Atlantic insist it rebuts the case that the unborn experiences pain no later than the 20th week. In fact, the report does nothing of the sort, as a closer examination makes clear.

By way of preface, it is important to remind ourselves that the RCOG report unintentionally makes hash of a 2005 pro-abortion "study" in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) which purported to show that the unborn could not feel pain until the 29th week. (See below.) But the demarcation of 24 weeks still manages to avoid the abundant scientific evidence supporting fetal pain perception at 20 weeks' gestation.

How? By minimizing the research and opinion of the leading experts in the field; by including seriously inaccurate analogies; and by introducing the highly misleading concept of an unconscious fetal state where the child is supposedly "insensitive" to severe pain.

The flaws in the RCOG report derive not just from a misreading of the science. Logical inconsistencies and a disturbing philosophy combine to leave the impression that the intent of the RCOG's Working Party is not to offer a scientific update--as it was charged with doing by the British government's Ministry of State for Public Health--but rather a partisan exercise in damage control. A side benefit is that the report offers a kind of how-to guide to reassure the troops in the abortion clinics who are facing some increasingly uncomfortable questions every day from pregnant women and, possibly, from their own consciences.

In one sense, there is nothing really new here. The RCOG came to the same conclusion in its first report on the subject, in 1997. As the governing body of Britain's obstetricians and gynecologists, including abortionists, it seemed somewhat convenient at the time that its interpretation of the science coincided with the latest gestational age at which most abortions are performed in the United Kingdom. Actually, the RCOG concluded that the fetus does not likely feel pain until 26 weeks' gestation, but to be on the safe side, it moved its recommendation back to 24 weeks, because of the inherent uncertainty in dating a pregnancy. So in now declaring 24 weeks as the earliest juncture at which the unborn can feel pain, this latest report actually moves the RCOG's consensus opinion back two weeks earlier in pregnancy than in 1997.

While the RCOG is moving in the right direction, it is still off. Based on our current understanding of the anatomical, hormonal, and behavioral development of the human fetus, the scientifically correct moment is 20 weeks.

The second point, as noted above, is that in one stroke, this report invalidates the infamous August 24, 2005, article in JAMA. "Fetal Pain: A Systematic Multidisciplinary Review of the Evidence" purported to show that the fetus cannot feel pain until 29 weeks. This absurd conclusion effectively ignored the pain felt by premature infants who are born and survive from 23 weeks onward, to say nothing of unborn children in the womb from 20 weeks, the real pain-capable threshold. Of course, the JAMA authors included committed abortion advocates, as was revealed at the time by Marie McCullough of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Now, they have even lost the backup of their own fellow abortionists in the United Kingdom, who have rendered the American study's conclusion irrelevant by 5 weeks, back to the 24-week mark. Even more embarrassing for the profession in the U.S., the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) recently issued a blithe denial, without qualification of gestational age, of the entire concept of fetal pain.

Three Categories of Problems

The problems with the new RCOG Working Party report can be grouped into three categories: scientific, logical, and philosophical.

1. Scientific. The authors correctly note that between 12-18 weeks, pain-bearing nerve fibers begin to rise up from a deep structure (the thalamus, which gathers pain inputs from the body below) toward the surface of the brain. The brain's surface is called the cerebral cortex, and contains the one billion brain cells that create our consciousness and awareness, and issues commands for our voluntary actions. The cortex is also referred to as the "plate," and the region just below it the "subplate zone." This zone is present only in the fetus, and gradually disappears around 34 weeks, as the overlying cortical plate matures. Ascending pain fibers reach this subplate zone by 16-20 weeks, then make their final connections with the surface from 20-24 weeks.

The report appears to ignore emerging evidence that the subplate is not just a transient feature of the maturing fetal brain, but increasingly functions as a highly active zone of neuronal activity, creating a fetal awareness of incoming neuronal signals, including pain. While the pain pathway is initially crude, it is not absent.

By not acknowledging the latest research on the importance of the complexity of fetal subplate function, the authors are able to resist moving their chosen date of 24 weeks to a point earlier in fetal development. This is but one example of the disturbing manner in which the panel turned their back on inconvenient research and interpretations by leading scientists in the field, such as American fetal pain expert Dr. K.J. (Sunny) Anand, who point to 20 weeks as the point by which the unborn can experience pain.

The authors also introduce the concept that, even if pain signals reach the fetal cerebral cortex at an early stage, it doesn't matter, because the fetus is not awake: "It has been proposed that arguments around fetal pain can be resolved by the fact that the fetus never enters a state of wakefulness in utero." This belief was not mentioned at all in the 1997 report, has not been a topic on the radar screen of fetal pain discussions in recent years, and appears to come out of left field. It is hard to avoid the impression that the authors view this new proposal as a kind of scientific trump card.

The evidence, such as it is, appears largely based on observations of fetal lambs in the womb. Brain-wave patterns are sleep-like, including both rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and the deeper non-REM sleep. To test their hypothesis that these sleeping lambs cannot feel pain, they "stressed" them by temporarily depriving them of the normal oxygen concentration in their blood, a maneuver known as hypoxic stress. While doing so, they observed little movement or distress in the fetal lambs. Their conclusion? The human fetus likely cannot feel pain in this dream state, even if all the pain wiring is hooked up.

Does this make any sense? To answer this, you don't need to be a neuroscientist, you only need to step back and consider your own experience of sleep. While non-REM sleep can be deep, REM sleep (in which dreams take place) is quite light, as anyone knows when they waken from a dream "with a start" into instant awareness. Sleep is not coma, and the lighter stages of sleep even less so.

For the authors to imply that this sleeplike state obviates a potential for fetal pain is like saying that we shouldn't worry about the suffering experienced by a victim in light sleep who is suddenly attacked and stabbed repeatedly. It should be obvious that, after a split-second delay, the pain will be all too palpable.

Also, the "stress" of diminishing the fetal lamb's oxygen can hardly be equated to an abortion, as the authors seem to guiltily acknowledge: "While the lack of fetal movement during anoxic stress in sheep may not be the same as the response to acute surgical tissue damage in humans ... ." Or, for that matter, the horrific tissue destruction of a second-trimester abortion.

Nevertheless, despite the weakness of this observation, and the caveats buried within the text, the authors parade this point in both their conclusion and in a scripted section at the end of the report designed to reassure women, entitled "Questions some women ask." For example, "Will the baby suffer/feel pain?"

"No, the fetus does not experience pain. In addition, increasing evidence suggests that the fetus never enters a state of wakefulness inside the womb."

2. Logical. The authors go on to endorse the "it's not pain, it's a reflex" argument, which is both common and pivotal to the insistence that the unborn cannot feel pain until at least the 24th week, if not much later. They correctly note that reflexive movements away from a painful stimulus arise from deeper levels (spine, thalamus) without the need for voluntary awareness and reaction. But while reflexive response begins early in fetal development, and awareness of pain later, the persistence of reflex reactions (in adulthood as well) does not, by itself, deny conscious suffering from pain. Far from it. Again, consider your own experience.

When you accidently place your hand on red-hot stove burner, you quickly pull your hand away (the reflex) before the searing wave of pain hits you (conscious awareness). By their argument, seeing the initial reflexive movement somehow denies the second response: "Behavioral reactions can be mediated at a very low level in the brain and are not, therefore, evidence for experienced emotion or sentience." But of course such "sentience" is in no way excluded either.

They try to support their position by pointing to the intact reflexes in children born with tragically severe brain malformations, including anencephaly, where the child has a rudimentary brain structure, but fails to develop the entire cerebral cortex. They also use the example of pain reflexes observed in children with the rare brain malformation called lyssencephaly, in which the brain maturation arrests at a point similar to a fetus of 22-24 weeks gestation. But this is not the same thing at all and as such is deeply misleading. In lyssencephaly, there is a lack of connections between deeper structures and the cerebral cortex, and abnormalities of another part of the pain system, the limbic system.

By contrast the unborn child who is developing without problems is rich in such connections at this stage. These analogies are scientifically invalid, and, more than anything, highlight the weakness of this argument.

The authors also try to dampen enthusiasm about our ability to witness "normal" baby behaviors, such as yawning, visible on exquisitely clear 4D ultrasound images. They point out that yawning is a protective lung reflex that maintains proper lung inflation: "While this protective reflex is unnecessary in the womb where oxygen is delivered by the umbilicus, it will be necessary soon after birth, and therefore the neural connections that mediate it need to be fully functional well in advance of birth."

While this is all true, the authors fail to see the irony: this same argument can be turned against them and made to support the position that there is an early and gradual development of the pain system. Just as yawning prepares the unborn baby's lungs to be ready for the sudden plunge into outside air, so too the fetal pain system needs early development and readiness in the womb to prepare for the moment of separation from the mother. Once outside and no longer protected by the comforting environment of the mother's uterus, the newborn baby's ability to feel pain and distress, and then draw the mother's attention by crying, is absolutely critical for his survival and healthy growth.

3. Philosophical. Consider this quote from the RCOG report: "The fact that the cortex can receive and process sensory inputs from 24 weeks is only the beginning of the story and does not necessarily mean that the fetus is aware of pain or know it is in pain. It is only after birth, when the development, organisation and reorganisation of the cortex occurs in relation to the action and reaction of the neonate [newborn] and infant to a world of meaning and symbols, that the cortex can be assumed to have mature features ... . Thus, there is good evidence for claiming that the cortex is necessary for pain experience but not sufficient." This kind of analysis--that pain is only genuine when someone "knows it is in pain"--bears the unmistakable imprint of Stuart Derbyshire, one of the paper's authors. Dr. Derbyshire, a Birmingham psychologist, is a tireless and prolific denier of fetal pain based on just this type of analysis. As opposed to the hard science of embryology and physiology of fetal pain, Derbyshire favors a highly intellectualized approach to pain--that there can be no meaningful pain experience without the ability to interpret the pain in the context of higher cognitive awareness and prior experience. Its logical extension would find one ignoring the heartrending cries of a baby because she is too simple and inexperienced to fully appreciate pain.

However, this altogether misses the reality that higher-level cognitive functioning is not at all necessary for the reception and impact of such a primal experience as pain. To their credit, the paper's authors seem somewhat uncomfortable with the intellectual line of argument. They note that official international definitions of pain "tend towards a view of pain as being a constituent part of higher cognitive function. There is disquiet in denying a rawer, more primitive form of pain or suffering that the fetus, neonate and many animals might experience." But, they seem to then say, not to worry. They set aside these unpleasant thoughts with this bit of hand-waving: "One possible solution is to recognize that the newborn infant might be said to feel pain, whereas only the older infant can experience that they are in pain and explicitly share their condition with others as an acknowledged fact of being."

The inclusion as a panel author of Derbyshire gives away the clear intent of the whole RCOG exercise: to minimize and deny the emerging reality of fetal pain awareness at 20 weeks or even earlier (when many second-trimester abortions are performed in the UK and elsewhere). In an era of increasingly aware and informed patients, this is becoming a problem for them.

Similarly--and quite strangely--the RCOG has minimized input from true fetal pain experts such as Dr. Anand and UK experts such as Drs. Nicholas Fisk and Vivette Glover. Dr. Glover has previously expressed a belief that fetal pain may be present as far back as 17 weeks' gestation. This is a rather important omission.

To its credit the original 1997 RCOG report, while erroneous in setting 26 weeks as the age of fetal pain detection (with the recommendation to use 24 weeks, to be on the safe side) at least raised worrisome questions about the subject, and expressed a sense that doctors should err on the side of caution.

The new report, on the other hand, seems determined to err on the side of callousness. "Currently there is no immediately obvious way of resolving these arguments empirically," the authors candidly admit, but in discussions of the need for specific anaesthesia for potential fetal suffering, they wave these concerns away.

The entire exercise suggests that abortionists on both sides of the Atlantic are thrashing around in trying to deal with the emerging evidence of fetal pain, which has resulted in a political report designed to seal off concern about fetal pain in abortion.

The RCOG report is not a new contribution to science as much as a form of political cover for the horrific practice of late abortion, and perhaps a shaky attempt to reassure those who have to perform it.

The giveaway comes on the last page of the report, with these sad words: "Consideration needs to be given to the education and support of clinical staff working in this difficult area."
[Paul Ranalli, M.D., FRCPC, is a neurologist at the University of Toronto]
 
RCOG Report Analysis Highlights

A new report by Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists (RCOG)--the governing body of Britain's obstetricians and gynecologists--is seriously flawed. Its main conclusions are reached by misinterpreting existing science and ignoring the latest research in human brain development.

    * Fetal pain experts consistently point to 20 weeks' gestational age, and possibly earlier, as the point by which the unborn are capable of experiencing pain. Several of these experts were ignored or minimized in the RCOG report.
    * While the RCOG currently claims that the unborn cannot experience pain until 24 weeks (down from 26 weeks in its prior report), abortion practitioners and their governing bodies are all over the map. A 2005 American abortionist study claimed 29 weeks as the earliest point, while a recent statement from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology denied fetal pain capability altogether.
    * The RCOG report further implies the fetus is unlikely to feel pain because it never enters a state of wakefulness in the womb. In fact, the authors have attempted to interpret the light sleep observed in fetal animals as meaning the human fetus cannot feel the horrific pain of a second-trimester abortion. Unfortunately for the unborn victims of abortion, light sleep is not coma.
    * The RCOG report's authors endorse a long-argued pro-abortion claim that the reflex withdrawal from a painful stimulus does not imply the fetus can "feel" pain, as the reflex occurs at a primitive, subconscious level. Yet, as adults, we all still possess the quick reflexive withdrawal from a painful stimulus, and immediately afterward we feel the pain. Thus the observation of a reflexive pain withdrawal does not deny the pain experience. The question is, when does that pain experience begin in fetal life? By focusing on the reflexive component of pain, abortion advocates try to avoid that question, with good reason. As the science steadily builds a case for fetal pain capability at 20 weeks gestation or even earlier, this type of deception is needed to shield the public from this dreadful reality.
    *The panel included an author who has long promoted the view that there can be no meaningful pain experience without the ability to interpret the pain in the context of higher cognitive awareness and prior experience. The RCOG appears to indulge this view. If taken to its logical conclusion, this would imply we should not care about pain in newborn babies, a viewpoint that has been discredited for over 30 years, and is now considered barbaric.
    * The RCOG report's authors are unable to avoid creating the appearance of partisan pro-abortion bias throughout the report, best revealed in the concluding reassurance they attempt to give to abortion clinic [sic] workers, who work every day in what is euphemistically termed a "difficult" area.

Dr. Ranalli is a Neurologist at the University of Toronto. [15 July 2010, Paul Ranalli, MD FRCPC, http://www.nrlc.org/News_and_Views/July10/nv071510.html ;
http://www.nrlc.org/News_and_Views/July10/nv071510.html?sms_ss=facebook ; NRLC Editor's note. This is a very important article. Be sure to read it carefully and pass it along to all your contacts. ]

Bringing Science Back to the Abortion Debate: Helping Women, Unborn Children
According to conventional wisdom, anti-abortion advocates are vulnerable to charges of being anti-woman and anti-science. Pro-lifers subordinate dispassionate scientific inquiry to irrational religious belief, many people believe, and their "fetus fetish" blinds them to the plight of women in crisis pregnancies.

But two novel laws passed recently in Nebraska explode those myths by highlighting how pro-lifers have embraced women and seized the mantle of science by revealing exactly what it is those who abort are choosing.

On July 15, the Women's Health Protection Act will take effect. The law will require women seeking abortions to be screened for mental health issues and other risk factors and to be asked whether they are being forced or pressured to abort.

The measure also will give women who develop mental or physical problems post-abortion the right to file civil lawsuits against abortion providers who failed to give proper pre-screening. Abortion providers will not face criminal charges or risk losing their medical licenses.

The new law erodes the notion advanced by Planned Parenthood and others that the emotional effects of abortion are "largely positive." Although post-abortion stress is a subject of considerable controversy, the new law affirms what numerous empirical studies have shown: that many women experience profound and long-lasting emotional grief after abortion.

The second law addresses not the pangs of the aborting mother but the excruciating pain of the aborted baby. The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act makes it illegal for a doctor to perform an abortion 20 weeks or more after fertilization, except to preserve the life of the mother.

This law is informed by research showing the strong likelihood that unborn children develop pain receptors throughout their bodies as early as 20 weeks. It is the first law to prohibit some abortions on the basis of pain instead of viability, whether an unborn child can live outside the womb.

There is no doubt that abortion can be painful. A dilation and evacuation (D&E) abortion, used from 13 weeks to 24 weeks, involves using forceps to pull the baby into pieces. A saline abortion, the most common technique after 16 weeks, involves injecting a strong salt solution through the mother's abdomen into the baby's sac. The baby then swallows, and is poisoned by, the fluid, which also burns off the outer layer of the baby's skin. Labor begins within 24 hours, and the mother delivers a dead baby.

These two first-of-their-kind laws are a result of pro-lifers' embrace of science and technology. Ultrasound images give mothers and fathers an enhanced picture of what - of who - is being destroyed in an abortion. Twenty states have laws that allow women considering abortion to be offered a chance to view an ultrasound image of their unborn child.

These laws are rooted in the basic insight that if a woman in a crisis pregnancy perceives her child as a living, breathing, feeling (not to mention kicking and yawning) human being, and if she recognizes the risks of abortion, she will be more likely to choose life.

Abortion rights groups are challenging both new laws. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland filed suit against the mental health screening law, stating that compliance could be difficult and that women could be given irrelevant information. A hearing for a preliminary injunction of the law is set for July 13.

Regardless of the legal outcome, the recognition that a fetus can feel pain and that a woman may experience a deep sense of loss after an abortion has already had a profound effect in the court of public opinion.

America has seen a remarkable shift away from abortion in almost every way. Numerous polls show that for the first time in at least a decade, a majority of Americans describe themselves as "pro-life." In Gallup's annual poll, the share of respondents who self-identified as "pro-life" grew from 33 percent in 1995 to 51 percent last year.

Abortions have decreased by 25 percent, from an all-time high of 1.6 million in 1990 to 1.2 million in 2005, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Abortion advocates openly fret about the shortage of medical students willing to train in abortion. The number of abortion providers dropped from 2,908 in 1982 to 1,787 in 2005. And 87 percent of U.S. counties have no abortion facilities.

Ultrasound has been responsible for a number of high-profile conversions to the pro-life cause, including several directors of abortion facilities. It also has stirred many Americans who were formerly ambivalent about abortion to adopt the pro-life position.

Americans rightly recoil from images and descriptions of torture of prisoners and of cruel treatment of animals. We should not be surprised when they react similarly to the inhumane treatment of unborn babies and their mothers. [13 July 2010, Gary Bauer and Daniel Alott, http://www.lifenews.com/nat6537.html; Gary Bauer is president of American Values and chairman of Campaign for Working Families. Daniel Allott is senior writer at American Values and a Washington fellow with the National Review Institute. This article originally appeared at the Washington Times and is used with permission.]

Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg: 'We Will Never Go Back' to Outlawing Abortion
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last Thursday insisted that America would "never go back" to outlawing the murder of the unborn, now that a whole generation of women has experienced the effects of Roe v. Wade. "Over a generation of young women have grown up, understanding they can control their own reproductive capacity, and in fact their life's destiny," Ginsburg said in remarks at the Aspen Ideas Festival. "We will never go back to the way it once was."  [http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10071307.html , Life Site News; 14 July 2010, ALL Pro-Life Today, www.all.org]


Commentary: Alabama Needs to Follow Up to Ensure Abortion Centers Follow State Laws

After decades of hard work and Alabama’s Passage of Women’s Right to Know (WRTK) Legislation, I learned follow up is still needed to insure these regulations will be implemented.

Alabama passed Women’s Right to Know a decade ago for the purpose of saving babies lives by giving women information on fetal development and alternative assistance groups near her. As is frequently the case [nationwide], sidewalk counselors observed many aspects of the law passed were not being carried out.

Parental consent forms were carried outside and signed in the parking lots by minors who then took them right back into the buildings to receive abortions. The women were not being shown their ultrasounds, nor were they encouraged to watch the Alabama State Dept. of Public Health video “Did You Know”.

Most were not provided a copy of the "Did You Know" booklet with pictures of fetal development. Instead they were asked “You don't want to read this do you? Sign here to decline it.“

Alabama Citizens For Life is a small state organization and knew we did not have the financial means to bring legal action against these wealthy abortion facilities, so we wrongly assumed there was nothing further we could do. This was a deadly error on our part.

After years of ineffective complaining to elected officials, notifying the media (a non starter – “6 on your side” won't do anything for this situation) and calling the health department we realized we had to work for the election of a “Pro-Life” Governor. We succeeded in electing Gov. Riley (R) and Attorney General Troy King (R). Still the state would not prosecute for these violations and our concern and frustration persisted.

Lila Rose's Live Action team displayed these errors across cyberspace with undercover video and audio recordings and still nothing improved.

Then a few determined members of Alabama Citizens for Life and others were able to secure meetings with the Director of Health and Human Services. Dr. Donald Williamson arranged a series of meetings on these compliance concerns with his AL State Dept of Public Health Commissioner, State health inspectors and representatives from Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers in the state were also in attendance.

During these meetings, explanations of the law were given, implementation defined and the health codes made specific. THEN, annual inspections began to occur on a regular basis.

This follow-up is critical to insuring the health and safety of women. Despite 6- or 12- month probations as the first step rather than prosecution, several abortion facilities have chosen to go out of business rather than abide by the regulations. Follow-up is vital to the cause for life.

Elections matter!

Although required by law for many years, the inspections had not been occurring during the previous Democratic Governor’s administration [Don Siegelman (D)]. When the abortion mills were reviewed they would receive a ‘warning call’ in advance instead of random inspections.
During Bob Riley's (R) administration, the AL Dept. of Public Health returned to random and systematic inspections that enforced the health and safety regulations outlined in the WRTK law.

Attorney General Troy King (R) did not prosecute Planned Parenthood in Birmingham despite clear documentation they had repeatedly failed to report sexual abuse of minor girls. Nine of 9 (100%) of the charts reviewed indicated lack of parental consent. (See full inspection report at www.AL4Life.org.)
This may have been a factor in King losing his bid for re-election in the primary.
Is there a message here for Attorney Generals across the country?

Pro-life constituents want Attorney Generals who will prosecute those flagrantly breaking the hard fought laws to protect the lives of women and babies.

Once unbiased accurate inspections began, serious deficiencies were exposed, including a gruesome incident in Birmingham, where a woman -- after being told she was only 4 to 6 weeks pregnant -- was given abortion drugs by an unauthorized staff member and gave birth a few days later to a nearly full-term, over 6 pound dead baby.

Montgomery’s Beacon abortion business worker admitted “I've never shown anyone that video in the years I've worked here”. (complete deficiency report can be viewed at our state affiliate website www.AL4life.org) This Montgomery Clinic closed June 18, 2010.

Now Planned Parenthood in Birmingham is on probation also due to deficiencies and violations of Regulation and Health codes (details also at our website www.AL4life org).

[This PP abortion business is the designated location for the Pro-Life Freedom Rides event on 24 July 2010 to be led by] Dr. Alveda King to declare the Civil Right to Life for Unborn Americans – a fitting location due to the high number of black and Hispanic babies whose lives are ended here in Birmingham, AL.

[July 9, 2010, Cheryl Ciamarra, MCD CCC-SLP; LifeNews.com Note: Cheryl Ciamarra is the Alabama Citizens For Life state director to The National Right to Life Committee and www.FocusOnLifeRadio.com]

Planned Parenthood Files Suit over Nebraska Abortion Law
Planned Parenthood of the Heartland filed a federal lawsuit Monday [28 June 10] against Nebraska leaders, claiming a state law passed in April places requirements on abortion providers that are unconstitutional and impossible to meet.  "This act is an attack on our patients," said Jill June, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, which provides services in Iowa and Nebraska. "This act is an attack on providers, and it is an attack on the ethics and integrity of the medical profession." [29 June 2010, ALL Pro-Life Today; http://journalstar.com/news/local/article_7aa9fee6-82d8-11df-8248-001cc4c002e0.html, Journal Star] [ed. Abortion kills babies and hurts women. If PP REALLY cared about women's health, they would be happy to cooperate to make sure that every effort was being made to improve and protect their health.]



Nebraska Judge Halts Abortion Screening Law Helping Women Get More Info
 A Nebraska judge has agreed with a request from abortion advocates to halt the implementation of a new screening law that helps women obtain more information about abortion risks.

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland filed a lawsuit against a bill designed to help women get the kind of information on abortion's risks and alternatives that it fails to provide.

The abortion business is challenging LB 594, the "Women’s Health Protection Act" and complained the bill "imposes requirements that are both impossible to meet and require physicians to flood their patients with false and misleading information."

The new law tightens informed consent requirements that help women choose abortion alternatives. It helps women understand the “physical, psychological, emotional, demographic or situational” risk factors associated with an abortion.

U.S. District Judge Laurie Smith Camp granted Planned Parenthood its request for a preliminary injunction against the law, saying it may have possibly made abortions illegal in Nebraska. The order prevents the state from enforcing the pro-life law until the lawsuit is decided. [LifeNews.com Pro-Life News Report 7/15/10 #4940, Lincoln, NE]



Pro-Life Pushback Against Bubble Zone
Planned Parenthood may have gotten the Chicago City Council to enact a Bubble Zone around the abortion clinics, but time and time again they've found that they didn't get the law they wanted.  This week was another excellent case in point. [29 June 2010, ALL Pro-Life Today; http://prolifeaction.org/hotline/2010/pushback/ , Pro-Life Action]

'Abortion Guidelines' Withdrawn in Northern Ireland
We’re very glad to report that, just days after the massive Rally for Life in Belfast, the health department in the north of Ireland has officially withdrawn the abortion guidelines they had re-issued. As previously reported, pro-life organizations have argued from the beginning that this document could be used to legalize abortion through the back door.

On Monday a letter was sent to Jim Wells, Chairman of the Northern Ireland Assembly's Health Committee, from the department announcing that it has withdrawn its interim guidelines on abortion and would be launching a public consultation

Precious Life, who has spent years battling the guidelines, welcomed their withdrawal, and noted that the Department of Health have now issued and overturned or withdrawn such guidelines twice so far. In 2009, pro-life groups challenged the legality of the guidelines in the High Court. Lord Justice Girvan ruled that the guidelines issued by the Department of Health were not clear and agreed that they would be open to misinterpretation. He added that the language used in the guidelines was "ambiguous" and "a trap to the unwary” and warned that they could create problems for doctors and other medical practitioners.

“Given Justice Girvan’s remarks, it was particularly objectionable that the Department of Health chose to issue very similar guidelines in February of this year,” said Bernadette Smyth of Precious Life. She said the Department had repeatedly ignored the wishes of the pro-life majority, the motion passed by the Assembly, the evidence of medical practitioners and even the High Court to pursue an abortion agenda...
[14July10, Youth Defence, http://www.youthdefence.ie/latest-news/pro-life-victory-as-abortion-guidelines-withdrawn-in-the-north/]

Congressman: Obama Admin Illegally Funding Pro-Abortion Kenya Constitution with U.S. Taxpayer $$

Despite denials by the office of Vice President Joe Biden and the U.S. embassy in Kenya, the leading pro-life congressman says the Obama administration is absolutely engaging in illegal funding of a campaign to get voters in Kenya to adopt a pro-abortion constitution.

As LifeNews.com reported on Monday, the United States embassy in Kenya issued a statement saying the administration of President Barack Obama is not spending taxpayer dollars funding a campaign to support a pro-abortion Constitution Kenya voters will consider at the polls next month.

But Rep. Chris Smith, one of three U.S. lawmakers who have requested an investigation into U.S. activities leading up to the referendum, tells LifeNews.com today he has evidence the Obama administration is funding the Yes campaign.

Smith says Obama is doing so by providing taxpayer dollars for the Yes campaign via organizations that are actively supporting it on the ground in Kenya.

“There is no doubt that the Obama Administration is funding the ‘yes’ campaign in Kenya,” he said. “By funding NGOs charged with obtaining ‘yes’ votes, the Administration has crossed the line."

"Directly supporting efforts to register ‘yes’ voters and ‘get out the yes vote’ means the U.S. government is running a political campaign in Kenya. U.S. taxpayer funds should not be used to support one side or the other," he added.

As part of ongoing discussions with the Office of the Inspector General of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Representatives Smith and Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and California Rep. Darrell Issa received a chart listing USAID funding recipients and a summary of their agreements.

Two organizations are receiving over $150,000 from the U.S. government to “contribute to an ‘overrepresentation’ of the Yes voters,” and five organizations have been charged with registering a total of 100,000 “for a Yes vote” at the referendum.

Other Kenyan groups are being given funding for similar Yes vote efforts, Smith said.

Specifically, the Provincial Peace Forum, Eastern Providence received $97,633.33 in taxpayer funds to “gain buy-in for the new proposed constitution by educating the professional elites in Isiolo South Constituency about its benefits and getting their commitment to use their influence to ensure people register and vote YES at the referendum.”

* The Central Organization of Trade Unions, Kenya (COTU) received $91,106.66 to “marshal a coalition of pro-Constitution individuals, institutions, and organizations to drum up political support for the Proposed Constitution by organizing a public rally at the historic Kamukunji Grounds, Nairobi.”

* The Provincial Commissioner North Eastern Province obtained $99,220 for “one of a series of activities that aim to contribute to an ‘overrepresentation’ of the YES voters at the next referendum. Specifically, OTI will provide support to the office of the Provincial Commissioner (PC) in the form of transportation and fuel.”

* The Kenya Muslim Youth Alliance (KMYA) got $56,953.33 from the Obama administration for “one of a series of activities that aim to contribute to an ‘overrepresentation’ of the YES voters at the next referendum. Specifically, OTI will provide support to Kenya Muslims Youth Alliance (KMYA) in the form of transportation and communications.”

* The Provincial Peace Forum, Rift Valley Province received $94,193.33 to “build on previous activities in the North Rift as an entry point for a YES campaign on the constitution. Specifically, this activity will serve to gain buy-in for the new proposed constitution by getting the professional elites’ commitment.”

* The Inter community Peace Choir Organization obtained $38,600 for “one of a series of activities aimed at facilitating registration of approximately 20,000 in cosmopolitan areas occupied by IDPs for a YES vote at the next referendum.”

* The North Rift Theatre Ambassadors got $37,773.33 from Obama for “one of a series of activities aimed at facilitating registration of approximately 20,000 in cosmopolitan areas of Uasin Gishu, namely Turbo, Maili Nne-Chepkanaga, and Huruma divisions for a YES vote at the next referendum.”

* The Amani Peoples Theatre received $41,400 for “one of a series of activities aimed at facilitating registration of approximately 20,000 in Kachiliba and Psigor Constituencies-North Pokot for a YES vote at the next referendum.”

* The Christian Community Services obtained $37,466.67 for “one of a series of activities aimed at facilitating registration of approximately 20,000 in the three Constituencies of Turkana South, Central, and North for a YES vote at the next referendum.”

* And the Pokot Outreach Ministries received $38,133.34 for “one of a series of activities aimed at facilitating registration of approximately 20,000 additional voters in the entire Constituency of Kapenguria for a YES vote at the next referendum.”

Smith said these Obama administration-funded grants for organizations actively involved in persuading Kenyan voters to adopt a constitution that will legalize abortions is inappropriate.

“The draft constitution, with its controversial provisions expanding access to abortion, is a matter for the Kenyan people to consider and decide,” Smith said. “The Obama Administration should immediately withdraw all U.S. taxpayer funding used to buy votes and influence the outcome on the referendum.”

While Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have lent their support to the voting process, they have carefully couched their language in terms of supporting the constitutional review process rather than urging support for the document itself.

The proposed new Kenyan constitution concerns pro-life and church groups both locally and around the world because provisions in it would overturn the current legal protections women and unborn children enjoy and would essentially authorize unlimited abortions despite the pro-life cultural views of most Kenyans.

The United States embassy in Nairobi said it is not providing financial support for the Yes campaign for the August 4 vote on the proposed constitution.

“These claims are categorically false, and those making such allegations are lying,” the statement said, according to APA News. “The US Government is supporting the constitutional review process as the centerpiece of the broad reform agenda agreed to following the post-election crisis."

That mirrors language coming last week from a representative of Biden.

After publishing a news story compiling the developments over the last two months that LifeNews.com has chronicled, Fox News received a response from Biden's office.

"Requests for comment sent to the vice president’s office were not initially returned, but following the original publication of this story, Biden's press secretary, in an e-mail, stressed that while in Kenya the vice president reiterated that it is up the people to decide about their country's constitution," the television news station indicated.

That came after Biden told prominent Kenya government officials that passage will "allow money to flow" to the African nation.

"The United States strongly supports the process of constitutional reform. ... Dare to reach for transformative change, the kind of change that might come around only once in a lifetime," he said. "If you make these changes, I promise you, new foreign private investment will come in like you've never seen."

Whether the Obama administration is directly supporting the constitution is a critical question because lobbying for or against abortion is prohibited under a provision of federal law known as the Siljander Amendment annually included in the State, Foreign Operations Appropriations Act.

The amendment reads, “None of the funds made available under this Act may be used to lobby for or against abortion,” and violations are subject to civil and criminal penalties under the Antideficiency Act, 31 U.S.C. § 1341."

Obama himself has promoted the new constitution in an interview in early June with the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC).

He called voting for the document a "singular opportunity to put the government of Kenya on solid footing" and urged Kenyans to"take advantage of the moment."

Obama tried to couch his language in neutral impartiality, saying "Regardless of whether they vote Yes or No I just want to make sure that they participate,' but he extolled the virtues of the document to the KBC saying it will promote human rights.

And in May, US Ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger called on the African nation's political leaders to rally the people to pass the referendum.

Ranneberger issued a statement praising the Kenya parliament for passing the proposed constitution and urging President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to rally support for it.

He also suggested the Obama administration would fund a national campaign to persuade the people to adopt the document.

Although the draft contains language advocating the right to life for unborn children, it contains a section with a health exception that essentially opens the nation to unlimited abortions throughout pregnancy for any reason.

Joseph Meaney of Human Life International weighed in on the constitution saying it violates the views of most Kenyans who are pro-life.

"Kenyans are pro-life," he said. "When we see the new articles added to the constitution and approved by parliament under heavy pressure from Western elites, we are seeing an assault on the very heart of the Kenyan people."

"Perhaps the greatest insult is that this attack is happening under the banner of 'improving women's health'. The only ones who believe that killing an unborn child is good for a woman's health are those who will profit from the slaughter, Western powers who are pouring untold millions of dollars into measures to keep Africa's children from being born," he told LifeNews.com.

"This is nothing but population control, an imperialist assault intended to rob Africa of its future by eliminating her children. It is a disgrace," he said.

A poll conducted March 21–26 by the polling firm Synovate, formerly known as Steadman, shows the citizens of Kenya are overwhelmingly pro-life.

“Thinking about abortion, which of the following is closest to your view?” the firm asked respondents.

Some 69 percent of Kenya residents are against legalizing abortions while just 9 percent support it. Another 16 percent say it doesn't matter while 6 percent said they had no opinion.

Answering the question, “When do you believe human life begins?” 77 percent of Kenyans stated that life begins at conception, while 19 percent stated that human life begins at the time of birth.

Respondents were also asked about their views concerning the new Kenyan Constitution and the question found only 19 percent support it as currently written, while a majority, 52 percent, want Parliament to revise the document before passage.

Scott Fischbach, the director of MMCL Go, an international pro-life outreach, provided the polling results to LifeNews.com.

"Currently, advocates of abortion are using the issue of maternal mortality and illegal abortions to argue for legalization of the procedure. However, the answer to illegal abortions and high maternal mortality rates is very simple: provide hope, opportunity and support for pregnant women by insuring a clean water supply, clean blood supply and adequate health care," he said.

"Kenya is a pro-life country and ought not to head toward an abortion-on-demand policy in its new Constitution," he added.
[14 July 2010, http://www.lifenews.com/int1593.html, Ertelt, Washignton, DC]

Commentary: FDA Misleads Women on New Abortion Drug Ella, Billed as Morning After Pill

The abortion debate is shifting. Americans are uncomfortable with abortion. They definitely do not want tax dollars paying for abortions. Most doctors aren't willing to participate.

So abortion advocates have a new plan: mislead and mislabel. They are steering the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to mislead women by mislabeling the new drug Ella to avoid mentioning that it can cause an abortion. Women and health providers will be enticed by the claim that it can prevent a pregnancy, unaware that it also can abort a pregnancy. And by not being labeled an "abortion drug," it may skirt federal laws against funding abortions - and the government will pay for it.

The question is: Will the FDA go along with this scheme?

This new drug is close to being introduced in the market. It can be taken up to five days after sexual intercourse. The drug sponsor touts Ella's ability to delay ovulation, but Dr. Jeffrey Bay, an FDA pharmacologist, admitted that Ella also may prohibit embryos from implanting in the uterus.

This is significant. Ella impacts embryos both before and after implantation by interfering with the hormone needed to line the uterus to support an embryo.

An FDA advisory panel recently approved Ella as an "emergency contraceptive." However, the drug contains virtually the same chemicals as the abortion drug RU-486 and acts the same way. By blocking progesterone receptors, it starves the baby to death.

Despite this, the FDA panel voted unanimously not to inform women that Ella may do more than prevent ovulation. Incredibly, it went further by discouraging studies to determine if Ella can cause birth defects in babies who survive.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) admitted, "Extremely limited data are available on the health of the foetus/new-born in case a pregnancy is exposed" to Ella. It also noted that Ella "is embryotoxic at low doses."

RU-486 was approved without adequate trials and, even with restricted distribution, has resulted in thousands of complications - including deaths. Ella's clinical trials looked at by the EMA reported on a single dose per menstrual cycle in a limited group of women. In the real world, it will be used more frequently and by all types of females. If the drug is approved for contraceptive use, it could later be approved for sale over the counter.

What if women use Ella more than once in a cycle? EMA noticed an effect on all tissues, particularly the liver, "if the drug is used again a month later ... in repeated dose this could result in toxicity due to accumulation."

If this isn't enough, clinical tests of Ella were conducted only on females 16 years of age and older. If approved, Ella could be used by girls younger than 16, the side effects for whom are unknown.

Planned Parenthood told the FDA panel that it dispenses the morning-after pill Plan B after its approved 72-hour limit. It boldly states on websites how it violates the safety guidelines for the dangerous RU-486. (Several women who died from RU-486 abortions went to Planned Parenthood.) If Ella is approved, there is no doubt it will be given to women beyond the five-day window in order to take advantage of its abortion-causing mechanism.

If Ella does not cause abortions, does not cause birth defects and is not dangerous to use multiple times, the drug sponsor should prove it. The FDA would require this of any other drug. It should not have lower standards for reproductive drugs used by women.

Women deserve better than this. The FDA should not be party to this deception of women for profit.

Related web sites:
Concerned Women for America - http://www.cwfa.org
Students for Life of America - http://studentsforlife.org
Sign a Petition Against Ella & more info - http://www.ellacausesabortions.com

FDA Misleads Women on New Abortion Drug

Thank you for standing with me in opposing ella. Thank you for taking a stand for the preborn and their mothers.

Check out our new webpages on www.ellacausesabortions.com to find out more information on ella, the abortion drug.


Please take 5 minutes today and forward this e-mail to all of your contacts as we need to spread the word that ella is an abortion drug.

Thank you for standing for Life,
Kristan Hawkins
Executive Director
Students for Life of America
Related: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/7/fda-misleads-women-on-new-abortion-drug/
[July 8, 2010, By: Wendy Wright and Kristan Hawkins; July 13, 2010, LifeNews.com Note: Wendy Wright is the president of Concerned Women for America. Kristan Hawkins is the executive director of Students for Life of America.]

Washington State Capitulates, Recognizes Pharmacists' Conscience Rights

This afternoon, less than two weeks before the start of a civil rights trial in Tacoma federal court, attorneys for the State of Washington told a federal judge that the State would seek to create new rules for pharmacists with conscientious objections.

The new regulations would give the plaintiffs in the lawsuit--the owners of Ralph's Thriftway pharmacy and two pharmacists--what they've wanted all along: the right to refuse to stock or dispense Plan B (the so-called "morning after pill") based on their conscientious objection.

This is an enormous about-face for the State, which has for several years maintained that it had to restrict the religious freedoms of pharmacies and pharmacists in order to ensure patient access to the morning after pill. In its filing today, however, the State concedes that allowing pharmacists with conscientious objections to refer patients to other pharmacies "is a time-honored pharmacy practice" that is "often in the best interest of patients, pharmacies, and pharmacists" and "do[es] not pose a threat to timely access to lawfully prescribed medications."

Based on the State's representations, the Plaintiffs have agreed to allow the trial to be postponed while the Washington State Board of Pharmacy undertakes its rule-making process.  Washington State is capitulating less than a month after The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty <http://www.becketfund.org> helped Plaintiffs defeat Washington's motion for summary judgment.

"This sends a clear signal to Governor Christine Gregoire that her bullying tactics are not acceptable. First she threatened to fire the members of the State Board of Pharmacy if they did not agree with her; then, she tried to pressure the pharmacy by joining a boycott against Ralph's Thriftway," said Eric Rassbach [National Director of Litigation for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty].

"It may come as a surprise to her, but conscientious and principled people like the owners and pharmacists of Ralph's Thriftway are the backbone of this country."

The controversy began in 2006 when the State Board of Pharmacy unanimously supported a rule protecting conscience for pharmacy workers. The Board voted in favor of a regulation allowing pharmacists with religious objections to refrain from dispensing Plan B and to refer patients to nearby suppliers.

Governor Gregoire soon learned about the protection, publicly threatened to fire the Board's members, and even called them late at night to lobby them. Matters escalated when the State's Human Rights Commission insinuated that Board members could be held personally liable under gender discrimination laws if they supported the regulation.

Buckling under these pressures, the Board decided to reconsider the issue and instead adopted new language mandating pharmacies to stock and dispense the medication even when doing so violates their conscience.
The Board adopted this regulation even though it admitted it found no evidence that anyone in the state had ever been unable to obtain Plan B (or any other time-sensitive medication) due to religious objections. The Becket Fund's clients, a family owned pharmacy and two individual pharmacists, filed suit to prevent the new regulation from forcing them out of their profession.

 "Americans should not be forced out of their professions solely because of their religious beliefs--but that is exactly what Washington State sought to do," said Luke Goodrich, legal counsel at The Becket Fund. "The government should accommodate and protect the fundamental rights of all members of the medical profession, not punish some members because of their religious beliefs."

Legal Voice, a group that intervened in the case to defend the regulations, has already decried Washington's change, calling it an "outrage." The Becket Fund represents the plaintiffs along with Kristin Waggoner and Steven O'Ban of the Seattle firm Ellis, Li & McKinstry, PLLC.

See actual article at http://www.becketfund.org/index.php/article/1346.html for many imbedded links in the article and for the resources and documents below...

Resources and Documents:
Petition for Rehearing
9th Circuit Court Opinion
Revised 9th Circuit Court Opinion Granting Petition
Final Response to MSJ
 
Other sources:
  Letter from Christine O. Gregoire, Governor of Washington State, to Dr. Asaad Awan, Chair, Washington State Board of Pharmacy (June 1, 2006)
 Original 2006 State Board of Pharmacists draft language

The Becket Fund is also fighting for healthcare workers' conscience rights at the federal level, opposing an Obama Administration proposal to eliminate a regulation that protects those conscience rights. The regulation, which went into effect on January 20, 2009, protects health care workers who want to opt out of performing procedures or dispensing medications that would violate the ir conscience. On April 8, 2009, The Becket Fund submitted a response that provides a detailed history of conscientious objection and the legal and historical support for the right of conscience in the health care profession.
[7 July 2010, http://www.becketfund.org/index.php/article/1346.html; PharmFacts E-News Update, 13July 10]
See actual article at http://www.becketfund.org/index.php/article/1346.html for many imbedded links in the article and for the resources and documents above...

NARAL Enraged with HHS 'Clarification' on High-Risk Pool Abortion Funding
Abortion advocates are fuming that the Obama administration has moved to implement a "Stupak-style" ban on funding abortions in state high-risk insurance pools under the federal health care law, prompted by the National Right to Life Committee's (NRLC) exposure of the issue and resulting media attention.

"To our dismay, the Obama administration just announced it will exclude abortion coverage in the temporary health-insurance pools that will transition us into the new health-care system," wrote NARAL Pro-Choice America president Nancy Keenan in an email to constituents Thursday. "I am outraged that such a decision would come from a pro-choice president that we helped elect."

Keenan's announcement refers to the federal Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plans (PCIPs), which are meant to provide insurance to individuals with pre-existing conditions until the insurance health exchange takes effect in 2014. After Pennsylvania proposed a scheme to implement the federally funded PCIP, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) pointed to language that they said signaled the first instance of taxpayer-funded abortion under Obama's health care law.

However, the HHS immediately issued a statement Thursday asserting: "In Pennsylvania and in all other states abortions will not be covered in the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) except in the cases of rape or incest, or where the life of the woman would be endangered." The statement also suggested that such restrictions were already in accord with the federal health care law and "the President's related Executive Order more generally."

In another case in New Mexico, media attention forced the state to backpedal on its abortion coverage. When the Associated Press revealed that the state's plan would include "elective termination of pregnancy" as a covered benefit of their federally-subsidized plan, a spokeswoman said that the state was "in the process of correcting the package so it will not have elective abortion coverage," after initially telling the AP that the coverage would remain.

NRLC's Douglas Johnson told LifeSiteNews.com that, “It is certainly clear that they were not imposing any abortion restrictions until now, until it became a matter of controversy."

“They were not applying any kind of guidance that would keep states from submitting such a plan [approving abortion coverage], and they weren’t denying approval when a state did submit such a plan," he said.

Abortion advocates had worked tirelessly in the lead-up to the health care law's passage to ensure that abortions would be included in federally subsidized programs, vigorously fighting verbiage known as the Stupak language that applied Hyde-amendment restrictions to the use of federal funds for the procedure.

While the Obama administration later touted an Executive Order as sealing off the bill's abortion funding to meet pro-lifers' wishes, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, who had led the fight against the Stupak language, dismissed the Order as a "symbolic gesture"...

Previous coverage:
HHS Moves to Block Abortion Funding in High-Risk Pools Following Controversy
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10071511.html

Obamacare to Pay for Abortions under New $160 Million Pennsylvania Program
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10071311.html
[16 July 2010, Kathleen Gilbert, D.C., www.LifeSiteNews.com]


New Mexico Cancels Plan to Cover Elective Abortion with Federal Funds
[http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/new-mexico-cancels-plan-to-cover-elective-abortion-with-federal-funds/ Catholic News Agency; ALL Pro-Life Today, 16July2010]
Press inquiries and pressure from pro-life groups appear to have caused a federally funded New Mexico health insurance program to drop elective abortion from its list of covered procedures. The New Mexico Medical Insurance Pool (NMNIP), an effort of the Obama administration's recent health care overhaul, was the subject of media inquiry and intense criticism by pro-life groups as it previously covered elective abortions using federal funds.   

Obamacare to Pay for Abortions Under New $160 Million Pennsylvania Program
In the first known instance of direct federal funding of abortion under the new health care legislation, the Obama Administration will give Pennsylvania $160 million to set up a new "high-risk" insurance program - and has quietly approved a plan submitted by an appointee of Governor Edward Rendell (D) under which the new program will cover any abortion that is legal in Pennsylvania.  [http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10071311.html , Life Site News; 14 July 2010, ALL Pro-Life Today, www.all.org]

Obama Admin Approves Second Set of Abortion Funding Under Health "Care" Law
The day after revelations that the Obama administration allowed federal taxpayer funding of abortions under the new national health care law that was supposed to prevent it, new information shows President Barack Obama has authorized abortion funding in a second state.

The first abortion funding had the Obama administration approve a Pennsylvania plan calling for the use of taxpayer funds to pay for abortions for virtually any reason through a new high risk insurance program created by the national health care law.

Now, the National Right to Life Committee, which uncovered the first case of abortion funding, has dug up a second set -- in New Mexico.

NRLC legislative director Douglas Johnson informed LifeNews.com of the first set and spoke with Kathryn Lopez of National Review about the abortion funding in the western state.

He said New Mexico state officials have put together a new $37 million high-risk pool that will begin enrolling members on July 1 and they will begin receiving benefits August 1 -- including federal funding for elective abortions according to the state insurance department's website. After the insured pays the deductible, taxpayer dollars from the federal government cover the remaining 80 percent.

"HHS has been hiding most of these high-risk plans, including the plan that HHS will administer directly in 21 states. Of the four state plans we've managed to ferret out, two provided coverage of essentially all abortions — Pennsylvania and New Mexico," Johnson told National Review.

"This is part of a pattern, under this administration, of making 'soft' rhetorical statements on abortion policy, but consistently promoting and expanding abortion through low-visibility administrative decisions. The administration's heavy funding of groups pushing a proposed new pro-abortion constitution in Kenya is another example," Johnson added. [15July10, Washington, DC, LifeNews.com Pro-Life News Report #4940]

Obama Administration Gives More Funding to Abortion Groups Than Pregnancy Centers, Critics Say
The Obama administration is funding groups that promote or perform abortions far more than it is funding groups that help women carry their babies to term, some pro-life leaders have charged. One said a new $25 million fund established by the new health care law to assist pregnant women was just “a drop in the bucket” compared to what the government spends on abortion providers.  [http://www.ewtnnews.com/new.php?id=1164 , EWTN; 14 July 2010, ALL Pro-Life Today, www.all.org]

 
'The Health Care Betrayal'
Sr. Carol Keehan and 60 "progressive" nuns claim abortion coverage is not included in the Obama health care reform law, yet the Department of Health and Human Services released $160 million for emergency insurance to cover abortions [ed. in PA, and apparently in NM] ... UNDER the new law. So who is really to blame for this great expansion of abortion and birth control coverage? To view the ALL Report, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv5vBJn36rM
[14 July 2010, ALL Pro-Life Today, A.L.L. REPORT, www.all.org]

GAO Report on Planned Parenthood Reveals Startling Discrepancy

"American Life League’s STOP Planned Parenthood project analyzed a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office on federal tax money funneled into Planned Parenthood," announced American Life League president Judie Brown.

According to the GAO report, Planned Parenthood Federation of America audits show the organization spent only $657.1 million between 2002 and 2008 from federal government grants and programs when the abortion behemoth’s annual reports show it took in $2 billion from government grants and programs during the same time period.

“That leaves $1.3 billion unaccounted for. That’s not pocket change,” said STOPP national director Rita Diller. “Why the discrepancy? These numbers don’t add up and from an organization with a track record like Planned Parenthood’s, the American people deserve an explanation.”

The report was requested by 31 U.S. senators and representatives. It is the first of its kind since the 2001 figures released by the GAO in 2003. STOPP notes that Planned Parenthood has other sources of government funding – state and local -- and that the GAO report for 2001 shows that PPFA expenditures of federal money accounted for 79 percent of its government income. The new report shows PPFA expenditures of federal money comprising an average of only 32 percent of its government income from 2002 through 2008.

“It is simply not believable such a large amount of its funding is from local and state sources,” Diller said.

Additionally, in just two weeks, Planned Parenthood will complete its 2009–2010 fiscal year. Yet it still has not released its annual report for its 2008–2009 fiscal year.

“So breaking down the situation,” Diller said, “at a time when the majority of Americans consider themselves pro-life, Planned Parenthood rakes in over two billion of our tax dollars, inconsistently reports how it spent our tax money and then admits to killing 1,803,302 preborn babies between 2002 and 2008 alone.”

“A growing number of Americans are fed up. It’s time to defund Planned Parenthood.”

American Life League was cofounded in 1979 by Judie Brown. It is the largest grassroots Catholic pro-life organization in the United States and is committed to the protection of all innocent human beings from the moment of creation to natural death.  For more information or press inquiries, please contact Katie Walker at 540.659.4942.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

    * Washington Times: Diller: Planned Parenthood's Missing Millions (21 June 2010) http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/18/planned-parenthoods-missing-millions/

    * American Life League: GAO Report http://www.all.org/gaoreport
http://www.all.org/article.php?id=12863
[22 June 2010, ALL Pro-Life Today, Katie Walker, Washington, D.C. ]

GAO Revelation that U.S. Poured $1 Billion into Abortion Cartel Renews Calls for Defunding
The U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) released a new report last week that revealed that nearly one billion dollars was allocated to abortion-supporting organizations from 2002-2009 with the lion's share of the tax money going to Planned Parenthood.
 
"With all of the accusations of criminal conduct now circulating against Planned Parenthood organizations nationwide, it is unconscionable for the tax payer to be forced to foot this outrageous bill for their questionable activities," said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.
 
"The vast majority of the American people object to tax funding of abortions. At a time of economic instability in our nation it is fiscally irresponsible and morally repugnant for the U.S. government to pour money down the rat hole that is the unscrupulous and unaccountable abortion cartel."
 
One example of abortion abuses is the case of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, which currently faces 107 criminal charges related to illegal late-term abortions and manufacturing evidence to cover it up. Operation Rescue has initiated a campaign to speed that case to trial that has garnered the attention of news organizations. Saturday, WorldNetDaily.com published an article on the subject.
 
Operation Rescue has worked with legislators who have attempted to defund Planned Parenthood in Kansas. For two years, legislation that would redirect Title X funding away from Planned Parenthood to legitimate health care clinics has passed with large public support, only to be vetoed by a pro-abortion governor out of step with his constituents.
 
Another Planned Parenthood organization in Iowa is currently under investigation by the Iowa Board of Medicine. That investigation was initiated after Operation Rescue filed a complaint concerning "telemed abortions," which provide dangerous abortion pills via a remote controlled system over the Internet without a licensed physician on site or even available in the event of complications.
 
Other Planned Parenthood organizations have been accused of concealing child sex abuse, preying on minorities by targeting their neighborhoods for abortion, and shoddy medical practices that have landed scores of women in the hospital and several in the grave.
 
Now, Rita Diller the national director of Stop Planned Parenthood (Stopp), has accused Planned Parenthood of "disturbing financial discrepancies" in an editorial published last Friday in the Washington Times. She says that according to Planned Parenthood's own audits, the abortion group actually received $2.3 billion from government programs, but only spent $657.1 million. She rightly questions where the remaining money went and what Planned Parenthood is hiding by not coming clean in their financial reports.
 
"America is experiencing a moral awakening as far as abortion is concerned," said Newman. "In fact the abortion movement is a failing one. Over two-thirds of the nation's abortion clinics have closed in the past 18 years. The only thing that is allowing this dying industry to stay afloat is the influx of our tax dollars. We simply cannot excuse government funding of abortion either morally or financially as this GAO report so clearly illustrates. We must support efforts to defund the abortion cartel now."
 
Read the entire GAO Report (33 pgs.) -- http://operationrescue.org/pdfs/GAO-061610-AbortionFunding.pdf
[June 21, 2010, Washington, DC, From the Frontlines]

Kagan’s Abortion Distortion: This is a fascinating piece that just came out today [29 June 2010]. Information dug out of the Kagan documents that have been released show that she was the author of THE crucial statement in the ACOG policy on partial birth abortion that was used as the fulcrum to overturn state partial birth abortion bans.

The ACOG hypocrisy in this whole matter is almost unbearable. 

The entire article is reproduced below or you can see it at the following link:
http://article.nationalreview.com/437296/kagans-abortion-distortion/shannen-w-coffin
Shannen W. Coffin


Kagan’s Abortion Distortion

How the Supreme Court nominee manipulated the statement of a medical organization to protect partial-birth abortion.

When President Obama promised in his inaugural address to “restore science to its rightful place,” he never explained what that rightful place would be. Documents recently released in connection with the Supreme Court nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan suggest an answer: wherever it can best be used to skew political debate and judicial outcomes.

The documents involved date from the Clinton White House. They show Miss Kagan’s willingness to manipulate medical science to fit the Democratic party’s political agenda on the hot-button issue of abortion. As such, they reflect poorly on both the author and the president who nominated her to the Supreme Court.

There is no better example of this distortion of science than the language the United States Supreme Court cited in striking down Nebraska’s ban on partial-birth abortion in 2000.

This language purported to come from a “select panel” of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), a supposedly nonpartisan physicians’ group. ACOG declared that the partial-birth-abortion procedure “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.”

The Court relied on the ACOG statement as a key example of medical opinion supporting the abortion method.

Years later, when President Bush signed a federal partial-birth-abortion ban (something President Clinton had vetoed), the ACOG official policy statement was front and center in the attack on the legislation. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Kopf, one of the three federal judges that issued orders enjoining the federal ban (later overturned by the Supreme Court), devoted more than 15 pages of his lengthy opinion to ACOG’s policy statement and the integrity of the process that led to it.

Like the Supreme Court majority in the prior dispute over the Nebraska ban, Judge Kopf asserted that the ACOG policy statement was entitled to judicial deference because it was the result of an inscrutable collaborative process among expert medical professionals. “Before and during the task force meeting,” he concluded, “neither ACOG nor the task force members conversed with other individuals or organizations, including congressmen and doctors who provided congressional testimony, concerning the topics addressed” in the ACOG statement.

In other words, what medical science has pronounced, let no court dare question.

The problem is that the critical language of the ACOG statement was not drafted by scientists and doctors.

Rather, it was inserted into ACOG’s policy statement at the suggestion of then–Clinton White House policy adviser Elena Kagan.

The task force’s initial draft statement did not include the statement that the controversial abortion procedure “might be” the best method “in a particular circumstance.” Instead, it said that the select ACOG panel “could identify no circumstances under which this procedure . . . would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.”

Notwithstanding its allegedly apolitical nature, ACOG shared this draft statement with the Clinton White House. Miss Kagan, then a deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy, already knew ACOG’s stance as a result of a July 1996 meeting at the White House, at which ACOG representatives told administration officials — according to a Kagan memorandum [PDF] — that “in the vast majority of cases, selection of the partial birth procedure is not necessary to avert serious adverse consequences to a woman’s health.”

Upon receiving the task force’s draft statement, Kagan noted in another internal memorandum [PDF] that the draft ACOG formulation “would be a disaster — not the less so (in fact, the more so) because ACOG continues to oppose the legislation.” Any expression of doubt by a leading medical body about the efficacy of the procedure would severely undermine the case against the ban.

So Kagan set about solving the problem. Her notes, produced by the White House to the Senate Judiciary Committee, show that she herself drafted the critical language hedging ACOG’s position. On a document [PDF] captioned “Suggested Options” — which she apparently faxed to the legislative director at ACOG — Kagan proposed that ACOG include the following language: “An intact D&X [the medical term for the procedure], however, may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.”

Kagan’s language was copied verbatim by the ACOG executive board into its final statement, where it then became one of the greatest evidentiary hurdles faced by Justice Department lawyers (of whom I was one) in defending the federal ban. (Kagan’s role was never disclosed to the courts.)

The judicial battles that followed led to two Supreme Court opinions, several trials, and countless felled trees. Now we learn that language purporting to be the judgment of an independent body of medical experts devoted to the care and treatment of pregnant women and their children was, in the end, nothing more than the political scrawling of a White House appointee.

Miss Kagan’s decision to override a scientific finding with her own calculated distortion in order to protect access to the most despicable of abortion procedures seriously twisted the judicial process. One must question whether her nomination to the Court would have the same effect.

— Shannen W. Coffin, an attorney in Washington, D.C., was the deputy assistant attorney general in charge of the defense of the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act during the Bush administration.
[June 29, 2010]

Iowa Planned Parenthood Subject of Criminal Complaint Over "Telemed" Abortions

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, an Iowa-based abortion business, is the subject of a criminal complaint from a group that says it is engaging in illegal telemed abortions. That's the process where women are not given the ability to meet with a physician in person before receiving the dangerous abortion drug.

Operation Rescue has filed a formal complaint with the Iowa Attorney General's office asking for a criminal investigation of a remote-controlled push-button Internet abortion pill scheme.

"We believe that telemed abortions are illegal for several reasons and may rise to the threshold of criminal negligence," said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. "Planned Parenthood's scheme to deny women personal access to licensed physicians is a prescription for disaster."

This is not the first time the pro-life organization has asked Iowa officials to investigate the controversial abortion process.

In April, Operation Rescue filed formal complaints with the Medical Board of Iowa asking for an investigation into the process and asking officials to stop allowing abortions without a licensed physician on site and discipline those involved. http://www.lifenews.com/state4977.html

The new complaint with the state attorney general names abortion practitioners Thomas William Ross and Susan Haskell, both osteopaths who are employed with PPH and are known to participate in the telemed abortion scheme.

The complaint lists five major areas of concern regarding telemed abortions, including a potential violation of Iowa law requiring that only licensed physicians perform abortions and that its remote dispensing practice for abortion drugs RU 486 and misoprostol ignores FDA protocols and are intentionally endangering womens' lives.

The complaints also include allegations of criminal negligence and consumer protections law violations as OR says "evidence shows that Planned Parenthood intentionally exceeds manufacturer warnings and safety limits, and misrepresents to patients the actual failure rate of the medical abortion process."

They include allegations of consumer protection violations regarding insurance company overbilling and of patient abandonment "since the licensed physician only speaks with the patient for a brief time over an Internet teleconferencing hookup, and never interacts with the patient again even in the case of emergency."

Operation Rescue has also filed a supplemental information packet with the Iowa Board of Medicine as an amendment to their complaint, along with a request to expand their investigation to include abortion practitioner Thomas Ross. [25 June 2010, Ertelt, Des Moines, IA, http://www.lifenews.com/nat6464.html ]


Planned Parenthood President Says "Telemed Abortion" Scheme Going Nationwide

 Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards delivered the keynote speech at the 30 year anniversary celebration of Planned Parenthood in Cedar Rapids. There, she shared with her fellow abortion activists more details about the telemed abortion scheme it has set up in Iowa.

The process has abortion practitioners instruct women on using the dangerous abortion drug by video conference instead of assisting them in person.

It involves the dangerous RU 486, or mifepristone, abortion drug that has killed at least 13 women worldwide and injured 1,100 in the U.S. alone, according to 2006 FDA figures.

Operation Rescue, one of the pro-life groups exposing the practice, informed LifeNews.com that Richards revealed that expanding drug-induced into every Planned Parenthood center in the country through the use of the "telemed abortion" scheme is part of PPFA's Strategic Plan for 2015.

The group joined the Pro-Life Action League and local pro-life advocates led by Steve Brody by braving the cold and rain to protest the Planned Parenthood fund-raising banquet.

Iowa Public Radio interviewed Richards, who confirmed that the telemed abortion process is beginning to expand throughout Iowa and that the abortion business has plans to expand it throughout the nation during the next five years.

Operation Rescue has filed complaints with the Iowa Board of Medicine against Planned Parenthood alleging that the telemed abortion scheme is dangerous, illegal, and violates FDA protocols for usage of the drug. The board is investigating.

"If this push-button abortion scheme is allowed to spread, it will only increase the number of abortions at a time when abortion rates are falling and abortion clinics are closing," OR president Troy Newman told LifeNews.com.

"Not only will more babies die, but women will be placed in increased danger of serious medical complications or death, with no real emergency plan other than to make patients fend for themselves at whatever emergency room they can find," he said.

Abortion rates nationally have dropped, as have the number of surgical abortion clinics. However, in Iowa, abortion rates have remained steady as telemed abortions have offset the decrease in the number of surgical abortions, Newman explained.

"In addition to the dangers, telemed abortions are a cash cow for the abortion cartel. Planned Parenthood is charging insurance companies twice the price of cash patients, without having to pay an on-site abortionist. If this dangerous scheme is allowed to spread, it will increase health care costs for everyone," said Newman.

At least a dozen small Planned Parenthood offices in Iowa are administering the dangerous abortion drug without the mother seeing a doctor in person.

Instead, practitioner Susan Haskell of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland briefly addresses abortion patients from a teleconferencing hook up from her office in Des Moines. After explaining the medical abortion process, a button is pushed and an electronic drawer opens that contains the drugs.

Newman is also concerned because his group discovered that Planned Parenthood deviates from the FDA protocols in both dosage and number of recommended office visits.

The pro-life group also discovered that Planned Parenthood charges insurance companies $1,000 for the abortion drug procedure -- twice the cost of the abortion and something Newman says will drive up insurance prices for all consumers. [21 May 2010, Ertelt, Cedar Rapids, IA, http://www.lifenews.com/state5111.html ]



Update: 27-Year-Old Abortion Facility Closed Down Over Health Code Violations

The Montgomery, Alabama location for the Summit Medical Centers chain of abortion mills has closed after the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) produced a 68-page long document detailing numerous violations of state law and of medical standards.

The center had been operating on a probationary license since October 2006 due to the legal and health deficiencies found on a 2006 survey.

Among medical deficiencies, the ADPH document notes failure to inspect medical equipment annually, failure to wash hands and medical equipment in accord with the guidelines of the Center for Disease Control, failure to provide for infection control in the recovery room, failure to provide a sufficient number of staff to care for patients in the recovery room, failure to keep adequate medical records, and failure to ensure the availability of emergency drugs and oxygen for use by authorized employees.

Furthermore, expired medications were not removed from the clinic, calls from patients with potential medical conditions were not returned in a timely fashion, and medical waste was not disposed of correctly but instead given to normal trash collectors.

Such gross negligence resembles the unsanitary conditions that have been found in other abortion mills, such as the New Jersey abortion center where forceps crusted with "blood-like residue" were found and rusted crochet hooks were used to remove IUDs.  Similarly unsanitary disposal of medical waste has been exposed in a Philadelphia abortuary.

Aside from such serious medical failures, the clinic also failed to follow various laws designed to bring about informed consent and protect minors from abuse.

The ADPH document notes that the clinic failed to develop policies in accord with state law regarding parental consent, suspected abuse, or neglect of a minor, that it failed to inform a woman of her right to view an educational videotape as part of the counseling process, and that it failed to observe the 24-hour waiting period required before abortions.

Such problems are typical of abortion clinics across the country; the Mona Lisa project run by Live Action has found multiple cases in which clinics failed to report apparent cases of statutory rape.

Other abortion clinics run by Summit Medical Centers have had similar problems of gross incompetence.  In 2006 one such center had its license suspended after a nurse gave a woman an ultrasound and concluded that the woman was only six weeks pregnant when she was actually in the third trimester.  The nurse gave the woman the abortion drug RU 486, which resulted in the woman's visit to the hospital six days later with the baby's head protruding before delivering the dead six and one-quarter pound child.

This newly-closed clinic is the last of the Summit clinics to operate in Alabama.  The website of the clinic now directs patients on a "short 2.5 hour drive" to Summit Medical Associates in Atlanta, Georgia.  
[11June2010, James Tillman, MONTGOMERY, Alabama, http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10061109.html]



Abortion Activists Claim New “Right” to Maternal Health
At the United Nations (UN)-backed Women Deliver conference in Washington DC last week, abortion activists announced the achievement of a new international human right to maternal health just three years after launching a campaign to establish it.  

Advocates said that the new right requires nations to liberalize abortion laws and create numerous new bureaucracies, procedures and programs.

In a paper entitled, “Preventing Maternal Mortality and Ensuring Safe Pregnancy," the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) asserted,  “[W]omen’s rights to life, health, and non-discrimination entitle them” to maternal health and that “governments must ensure women’s access to high-quality, appropriate reproductive health care, abolish discriminatory laws and social practices … and allow women to make autonomous decisions regarding their reproductive lives.”

The paper said this includes “contraceptives, family planning counseling, sex education, and safe abortion services.” CRR and other groups have dozens of legal cases pending in Brazil, India, South Africa and elsewhere to enact the new right.

     Paul Hunt, former UN Special Rapporteur for health, said that human rights are not just about judicial accountability, but also discriminatory budgets and policies that require “radical” social transformation to rectify. Harvard University fellow Alicia Yamin, a founder of the campaign to establish the right, said, “Human rights needs to be an insurrectionalist discourse,” that “subverts the pathologies of power.”

     “Women and children are not dying because it is a medical problem,” Yamin said, but because “It is a social problem. It is because they are discriminated against.” Columbia University professor Lynne Freedman said “Human rights work begins by identifying the workings of power [and] working for rearrangements of power necessary for change using a different vision of human well-being.”

     Yamin said activists could use “hard and soft law” such as an article in the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) that specifies using “the maximum extent of resources” to protect rights. University of Toronto law professor Rebecca Cook said activists could show how laws and policies “attack women’s moral capacity” by using the definition of discrimination in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

     CEDAW proscribes laws and policies with the “‘effect or purpose’ of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women … of human rights and fundamental freedoms….”

One legal expert told the Friday Fax that the U.S. Supreme Court has historically rejected this definition as too broad since it includes the effect, and not just the intent, of laws and policies. The United States is not party to ICESCR.  

     The basis for the announcement of a new right, according to experts like Yamin is a non-binding 2009 Human Rights Council (HRC) resolution stating, “preventable maternal mortality is a health, development and human rights challenge.”

The non-binding resolution was promoted by the European Union and came after two years of intense lobbying on the part of abortion advocates.

     Conservative legal experts have been dubious about claims to new rights in the past, arguing that it requires explicit negotiation in a binding treaty document, or a general and consistent customary practice of states out of a sense of legal obligation that develops over an extensive period of time. [June 17, 2010, Friday Fax, Volume 13, Number 27, Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D. & Co-authored by Catherine Glenn Foster, http://www.c-fam.org/publications/id.1649/pub_detail.asp , D.C.]

Dozens of British Teenage Girls Have Had Three Abortions or More, according to figures that campaigners say paint a profoundly depressing picture of modern Britain.

Government data have disclosed that 89 girls aged 17 or under who terminateda pregnancy last year have had at least two abortions previously.
 
The head of Britain’s largest abortion provider said many young women were
living chaotic lives that meant they could not organise contraception.
 
Christian doctors said the statistics demonstrated the failure of liberal
sex education policies.
 
The Department of Health figures for 2009 show that, for the first time,
more than a third (34 per cent) of abortions were performed on women who had
already ended one or more pregnancies.
 
Across all ages, more than 1,000 women or girls were on at least their fifth
termination, including 214 on their sixth, 70 on their seventh and 48 who
underwent the procedure for at least the eighth time.
 
Ann Furedi, the chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service,
said repeated pregnancies among teenage girls were often caused by chaotic
lifestyles and difficulties they had in using contraception.
 
She said: “With teenage girls, often they feel able to handle sex,
emotionally and physically, yet aren’t able to handle the planning that
comes with contraception.”
 
Dr Peter Saunders, from the Christian Medical Fellowship, which represents
Christian doctors, said that the figures were profoundly depressing. “It is
increasingly clear that abortion is simply being used as a form of
contraception by a growing percentage of girls and women, and that tired
policies of values-free sex education, condoms and morning-after pills are
not working,” he said.
 
The total number of abortions in England and Wales last year, 189,100, fell
slightly on the previous year. Of those, 63,390 involved women who had
previously ended a pregnancy, compared with 51,987 a decade ago — a rise of
22 per cent.
 
Almost 18,000 abortions were carried out on girls aged under 18, including
more than 1,000 on girls aged 14 or under. The statistics follow controversy
last month about Britain’s first television advertisement for abortion
services. [Laura Donnelly <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/laura-donnelly/>,
Health Correspondent, 12 Jun 2010]

Andrea Bocelli Confirms: He’s Not Merely Anti-Abortion, He’s “for Life”
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10062109.html
Andrea Bocelli wants to make it clear that he is not merely “anti-abortion” but genuinely pro-life, in the fullest sense. In an interview this weekend with the Italian newspaper Il Foglio, the world-renowned singer said his position is founded on his deeply held Catholic faith. “Because of my personal convictions as a devout Catholic, I am not only fighting against something, I am fighting for something - and I am for life,” he said. [ ALL Pro-Life Today | 22 June 2010]

Study: Abortion More Than Tripled Breast Cancer Risk for Sri Lankan
 A new study out of Sri Lanka has found that women who had abortions more than tripled their risk of breast cancer. The study focused on analyzing the association between the duration of breastfeeding and the risk of breast cancer. But the researchers also reported other “significant” risk factors for breast cancer, such as exposure to passive smoking and being post-menopausal. The highest of the reported risk factors was abortion.
[Cancer Epidemiol. 2010 Jun;34(3):267-73. Epub 2010 Mar 24. "Prolonged breastfeeding reduces risk of breast cancer in Sri Lankan women: a case-control study". De Silva M, Senarath U, Gunatilake M, Lokuhetty D. ; http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10062202.html ; ALL Pro-Life Today | 22 June 2010]

Abortion May Increase Risk of Autoimmune Disease
Surgical abortion may increase the likelihood of certain autoimmune diseases, according to a new report by Dr. Ralph P. Miech of Brown University.

Fetal microchimerism - the transfer of fetal cells into the bloodstream of the mother, whence they may be grafted on to bone marrow or other tissues - is the key link between abortion and autoimmune disease, says Miech. 

The researcher pointed out that as the placenta is destroyed during a surgical abortion, there is an increased "fetal-to-maternal transfer of fetal ... cells." These fetal cells may persist in the mother’s body for decades. 
"Activation of hibernating fetal microchimeric cells," Dr. Miech writes, has "been postulated to result in the initiation of an autoimmune disease."

Autoimmune diseases occur when the body's immune system mistakenly attacks its own tissues and cells as if they were foreign.  Certain triggers, Dr. Miech states, may activate the "fetal microchimeric immune cells to attack the maternal host cells, resulting in an autoimmune disease," although these triggers "have not yet been definitely identified."

This would explain why women during their reproductive and post-reproductive years are more likely than men to develop many chronic autoimmune diseases.  According to Dr. Miech, such diseases have "had for decades an unexplainable increasing incidence."

"The consistently rising incidence of auto-immune diseases in women over the past four decades may be attributed to the increase in the utilization of abortion," he says.

Dr. Miech has also performed research linking the abortion drug RU 486 to a rare bacterial infection.

In that research, Dr. Miech showed that the anti-progesterone effects of Mifepristone cause changes in the cervix that allow C. sordellii, a common vaginal bacteria, to enter the cervical canal. C. sordellii thrives in this low-oxygen environment and derives nutrition from the decaying fetal tissue, leading to infection.

Related stories: Leading Researcher Proves RU-486 Causes Septic Shock Deaths
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/jul/05072802.html

ABSTRACT
Fetal microchimerism occurs in normal human reproduction and is a relatively new discovery in biology. Recent data in the scientific and medical literature indicates that some of the autoimmune diseases that show a predilection for women in their child-bearing years and beyond are linked to fetal michrochimerism from previous pregnancies. The pathological role of fetal microchimeric progenitor immature T cells in autoimmune disease in women is explored. Fetal microchimerism is increased in women who had a termination of pregnancy and may be associated with the development of autoimmune disease later on in life. Furthermore, the consistently rising incidence of autoimmune diseases in women over the past four decades may be attributed to the increase in the utilization of abortion.[Int J Clin Exp Med 2010; 3(2):164-168, http://www.ijcem.com/files/IJCEM1004004.pdf , online 12 June 2010; http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10061712.html
Life Site News; ALL Pro-Life Today | 18 June 2010]

Canadian Study Finds Strong Link Between Abortion and Premature Birth

A new study out of McGill University in Montreal has found a strong link between a past abortion and premature delivery in subsequent pregnancies.

Dr. Ghislain Hardy and his team did a chart review of 17,916 women who delivered at Royal Victoria Hospital, McGill’s teaching hospital. Dr. Hardy’s team found that women with one past abortion were 45% more likely to give birth before 32 weeks, 71% more likely to do so at less than 28 weeks, and more than 50% more likely at less than 26 weeks.

They noted that the link was even greater where the woman had more than one abortion.

He presented the paper, entitled “Early Preterm Birth and Adverse Perinatal Outcomes in Women With a History of Induced Abortions,” at the 58th Annual Clinical Meeting of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, held from May 15-19.

“Preterm birth is a major concern in our health-care system today. It is the most important cause of neonatal morbidity,” Dr. Hardy explained in his presentation, according to the Canadian Health Network.  A study of the issue is important, he noted, because “an association between therapeutic abortion and prematurity has resurfaced in recent years.”

The link between abortion and subsequent premature delivery has been confirmed by a growing body of independent studies on the issue.  Most significantly, in February 2009 a German team who evaluated over two million pregnancies between 1995 and 2000, found that the risk of very premature birth is increased by 30% after one abortion, and by 90% after more than one.

Dr. Hardy explained that abortion could lead to greater cervical sensitivity that might result in a greater proclivity towards premature delivery.

“Our study showed a significant increase in the risk of preterm delivery in the women with a history of previous induced abortion,” he said. “The association becomes stronger with decreasing gestational age and with an increasing number of therapeutic abortions.”

Related: Second Abortion Increases Risk of Premature Babies 93%: Canadian Study
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/sep/09091703.html

Abortion Linked to Subsequent Pre-Term Births, New Research Again Confirms
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jul/09070109.html

Massive German Study Confirms Abortion Significantly Increases Premature Birth Risk
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/feb/09021111.html

Study: Previous Abortions Linked With Pre-Term Birth and Cerebral Palsy
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/oct/07102602.html

National Academies of Science: Abortion Linked to Subsequent Premature Birth
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jul/06072806.html ["Early Preterm Birth and Adverse Perinatal Outcomes in Women With a History of Induced Abortions,” presented at the 58th Annual Clinical Meeting of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, May 2010, http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10062208.html ; ALL Pro-Life Today | 23 June 2010]

Study Shows Link Between Abortion and Physical, Sexual Abuse by Women's Partners

A study shows the link between abortion and the physical and sexual abuse to which women may be subjected in the relationship by their husband or boyfriend following the abortion.

University of Iowa researchers led the study, which shows women seeking abortions have experienced a high rate of violence and abuse from their partners.

The study was published online June 17 in the American Journal of Public Health.

Audrey Saftlas, a Universiy of Iowa professor of epidemiology and lead author of the study, talked about the results her team found.

"Women seeking termination of pregnancy comprise a particularly high-risk group for physical or sexual assault," she said. "In our study, almost 14 percent of women receiving an abortion reported at least one incident of physical or sexual abuse in the past year."

"These findings strongly support the need for clinic-based screening with interventions. These high-risk women need resources, referrals and support to help them and their families reduce the violence in their lives," Saftlas added.

The researchers examined 986 women who had abortions and completed questionnaires.

Overall, the researchers found the combined one-year prevalence of physical or sexual abuse by any perpetrator was 13.8 percent. The prevalence of physical and sexual violence by an intimate partner was 9.9 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively.

Of the women who reported such pre-abortion violence, 74 percent of women identified their former partner as the perpetrator of the violence and 27 percent identified a current partner as responsible for the violence. The numbers don't add up to 100 percent because some women reported violence by both current and former partners.

"These figures suggest that women seeking abortions have frequently left abusive relationships in the months before the abortion," Saftlas said.

As a result, women who have had abortions or speak out, say abortion centers should ask women if they are having an abortion as a result of partner abuse and assault. They also suggest that abortion may not be in their best interest or resolve those abuse and assault situations.

Leaders of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign,a national network of women and men who regret their decision or participation in an abortion, say the survey does not go far enough in identifying how women seeking abortion should be counseled.

Penny Dickey, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland chief operating officer and a study author, said her abortion business participated in the study.

"A Planned Parenthood official who participated in this Iowa study admits that her organization has not been asking women about any abuse they’ve suffered," said Janet Morana, co-founder of the organization.

She told LifeNews.com, "That Planned Parenthood has been aborting women’s babies for four decades and is only now talking about maybe asking women if they’ve been abused shows that women’s lives are of no consequence to them."

Georgette Forney, also a co-founder of the group and a woman who has experienced the personal regret of an abortion, said "asking women if they’ve suffered physical attacks by their babies’ fathers would be an innovation for Planned Parenthood."

"What the organization’s sales staff should really do, but which they will refuse to do, is ask women if they’ve been coerced by a boyfriend, husband, or parent to have the abortion. We know that feigning concern for women is one thing for Planned Parenthood, asking women questions that might cause them not to abort is quite another," Forney said.

Related web sites:
Silent No More Awareness Campaign - http://www.SilentNoMoreAwareness.org
May 2010: Abortion

[25 June 2010, Ertelt, Washington, DC, www.LifeNews.com, http://www.lifenews.com/nat6463.html ]

Creative Math: Abortion Activists and Maternal Health

 Is abortion a necessary part of the maternal health initiative? Would funding abortion in the developing world really save 70,000 mothers’ lives annually?

These are questions the media are not asking as the number has been repeated in news reports across the country and internationally.

The 70,000 figure is used to show that excluding abortion from a maternal health package means ideology is trumping sound medical care at the expense of women’s lives in the developing world.

The reality, however, is quite the opposite insofar as the 70,000 is based on ideology as much as science.

A review of how the World Health Organization comes to the number 70,000 for maternal deaths due to abortion reveals faulty methodology based on numerous debatable assumptions and definitions of “safe” and “unsafe” abortion that don’t hold water, even with some abortion providers.

SHOW ME THE DATA

Hard data on abortion in the developing world understandably doesn’t exist. In fact, World Health Organization reports make it clear that the data is very difficult to find. They caution as a result that their numbers are estimates:

“Abortion statistics are notoriously incomplete… As there are no feasible data collection methods that can reliably reflect the overall burden of unsafe abortion, one is left to work with incomplete information on incidence and mortality from community studies or hospitals…This is then adjusted to correct for misreporting and under-reporting…” [1]

ASSUMPTIONS LAYERED ON ASSUMPTIONS

That abortion is always under-reported is the underlying assumption behind the WHO's “Unsafe abortion” series of reports. This is, however, an opinion and only a cursory defence of this opinion is offered. [2] Given cultural, religious and ideological stigma attached to abortion that the WHO reports do readily acknowledge, [3] it’s just as likely that fewer women would resort to abortion particularly where modern medical care is absent.

Another assumption is that local data can be used as representative of the national statistics. [4] But would we take medical trends in Barrie, Ontario, for example, to be representative of the country at large?

A third assumption is that hospital births, miscarriages and abortions in the developing world can be used as a proxy for those outside the hospital. Again, this doesn’t hold water. In Canada, births that occur in hospitals and miscarriages (or abortions that result in a hospital admission) do not correlate and vary significantly by region. [5]

Every data point is based on multiple assumptions due to the lack of concrete data.

DEFINING SAFE VERSUS UNSAFE ABORTION

A 2009 briefing report published by the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), a pro-life research group dedicated to monitoring the United Nations, clarifies that safe versus unsafe abortion is selectively defined by some WHO articles. “A 2007 article co-sponsored by WHO, (allows) for a purely legal definition of unsafe abortion as ‘abortions in countries with restrictive abortion laws.’” [6]

C-FAM further recounts how at the 2007 Women Deliver conference in London even medical professionals were troubled by how “unsafe abortion” was defined. “During a presentation of a paper estimating the worldwide number of ‘unsafe’ abortions, a Marie Stopes International representative from a clinic performing abortions in a country where it is illegal rose in indignation and said, ‘By your definitions, are you saying that all the abortions performed in my clinic are unsafe?’ The presenter did not answer her question.” [7]

The lack of data and disagreement over the data, combined with an understanding of how the public might perceive the confusion—also how funding might be affected—has led some abortion-rights activists to call for a numbers publication ban prior to reaching agreement. C-FAM reported on June 23: “Ann Starrs, co-founder and president of the abortion advocacy organization Family Care International (FCI), told a roomful of scientists to ‘lock all the academics in a black box and have them come out with a consensus set of numbers’ or ‘at least hide that there is disagreement’ and ‘infighting.’ [8]

The obvious problem is that experts don’t actually agree. When The Lancet published new—different from the WHO data and lower—maternal mortality statistics in April, maternal health activists asked if they would delay the data release until after funds were raised. [9]

A Lancet editor by the name of Richard Horton explained what happened: “Even before the paper by Hogan et al was submitted to us, we were invited to ‘delay’ or ‘hold’ publication.” He went on: “The justification for this concern was several fold: potential political damage to maternal advocacy campaigns; confusion among countries, policymakers, and the media, given the difference between this maternal mortality estimate and the previous UN number; undermining progress on global commitments to maternal health; and the risk of an unproductive academic debate while women continued to die.” [10]

POLICY RAMIFICATIONS

So what’s the point of this discussion? Any maternal deaths as a result of abortion are an obvious tragedy. But the implications for this one number in the maternal health debate are even broader.

Where comparative benchmarks are necessary, these numbers provide a serious obstacle to knowing how and when maternal health actually improves. Indeed, the guestimate of 70,000 remains constant for WHO researchers. The fourth edition of WHO’s Unsafe Abortion says there are 68,000 maternal deaths in 2000, the fifth edition says the number is between 65,000 and 70,000 in 2003. [11]

Where policy makers are predisposed to viewing legal abortion as safe and illegal abortion as unsafe, this treads closely to an attempt to change national laws—something a maternal aid mandate should not do because it would be an obvious infringement on national sovereignty. On this note, many of those advocating for abortion to be included in this maternal health mandate have a vision to liberalize other sovereign countries’ abortion laws. [12]

Where numbers are not currently known, guestimates should not be taken or reported as hard fact.

Finally, in the maternal health debate, ideology runs rampant and is not limited to the pro-life side.

The 70,000 is more ideology than math and should be treated as such. In this contentious debate, when economic resources are limited, a solution lies in a general improvement in medical care in the developing world, not with abortion provision. Any government would be wise to stay away from the “A word,” working instead to provide basic medical necessities as a main thrust of charitable action in the developing world.


Endnotes

[1] Ahman, E., Shah, I. (2004). Unsafe abortion: Global and regional estimates of the incidence of unsafe abortion and associated mortality in 2000, fourth edition. Geneva: World Health Organization, p. 6.
[2] The following paragraph includes study references, including one that surveyed American women between 1976 and 1988, but also an embedded opinion that abortion is cross-culturally prevalent without exception. It is clear the researchers don’t view this as an opinion, but where no data exists to verify, it remains fair to call it such.

“Whether legal or illegal, induced abortion is generally stigmatized and frequently censured by religious teaching. Women are often reluctant to admit to an induced abortion, especially when it is illegal. Surveys show that under-reporting occurs even where abortion is legal. When abortions are clandestine they may not be reported at all or reported as spontaneous abortion (miscarriage).The language used to describe induced abortion reflects this ambivalence: terms include induced miscarriage (fausse couche provoquée), menstrual regulation, or “regulation of a delayed or suspended” menstruation. It is therefore not surprising that unsafe abortion is one of the most difficult indicators to measure.”
Unsafe abortion (2004), p. 6.
[3] “Whether legal or illegal, induced abortion is generally stigmatized and frequently censured by religious teaching or ideologies. Women are often reluctant to admit to having had an induced abortion, especially when it is illegal.”
Ahman, E., Shah, I. (2007). Unsafe abortion: Global and regional estimates of the incidence of unsafe abortion and associated mortality in 2003, fifth edition. Geneva: World Health Organization, p. 27.
[4] “It is assumed that subnational data can be extrapolated to country level with adjustments.”
Unsafe abortion (2007), p. 28.
[5] Ibid.
In effect, this assumption suggests that the per cent of live births in hospitals is equal to the per cent of miscarriages and abortions that end up in hospital. To give an example, if researchers knew that 1000 babies were born in a particular region in a particular year, but only 750 of the births were in a hospital, that would mean one quarter of births occur outside hospitals. They therefore assume that if 150 women are admitted to hospital due to spontaneous or induced abortion, one third of that number again, a 25 per cent of the total, occur outside the healthcare system, meaning 200 total spontaneous or induced abortions. Researchers also rely on the fact that in the hospital the cause of the abortion, natural or induced, is more likely to be known and apply this to non-hospital abortions, spontaneous or induced. These assumptions are then connected with the number of women who die in the perinatal period, and further linked to death the result of abortion.
[6] Harrison, D. (2009, May 1). Removing the roadblocks from achieving MDG 5 by improving the data on maternal mortality. New York: Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, p. 3.
[7] Ibid, p. 4.
[8] Yoshihara, S. (2010, June 3). Researchers Asked to Hide Scientific Debate over Maternal Deaths. Retrieved online at http://www.c-fam.org/publications/id.1641/pub_detail.asp
[9] Associated Press. (2010, April 14). Lancet: Sharp drop in maternal deaths worldwide. Retrieved online at http://www.physorg.com/news190462124.html
[10] Horton, R. (2010, April 10). Maternal mortality: surprise, hope, and urgent action. London: The Lancet.
[11] Unsafe abortions (2007), p. 5 and Unsafe abortions (2004), abstract.
[12] “Specifically, many United Nations (UN) agencies and non-governmental organizations pressure decision makers to liberalize abortion laws, promising everything from a decrease in maternal mortality to an increase in the well being of women if such laws are put into effect.”
Harrison, (2009), p. 2.
[25 June 2010, Andrea Mrozek, Manager of Research and Communications, Institute of Marriage and Family Canada (IMFC)]

Planned Parenthood Leads Push for Abortion at UN High-Level MDG Review
The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) launched a new campaign this week called "A Promise is A Promise," demanding that states implement policies and programs to achieve the controversial Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target 5b on "universal access to reproductive health by 2015."

According to IPPF, "universal access to reproductive health refers to a full package of services including comprehensive sexuality education, access to contraception, maternity care, emergency obstetric care, and safe abortion services ..." 
[http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10061714.html
Life Site News; ALL Pro-Life Today | 18 June 2010]

North Carolina Abortion Business Ceases Abortions
A Raleigh abortuary that has seen constant presence from pro-lifers with the popular 40 Days for Life campaign has ceased performing abortions.

The Raleigh News and Observer reported Wednesday that National Women's Health Organization of Raleigh is, in the words of one local pro-abortion affiliate, "in transition." The affiliate spokesperson, Ann Rose, said that the last abortions would be conducted on Saturday, but she would not explain what other changes the “transition” would entail.

The paper reports that the abortuary was generally thought to be for sale after its founder, pro-abortion activist Susan Hill, passed away of breast cancer in February. There are two other facilities in Raleigh where abortions are performed.

David Bereit, the national director of 40 Days for Life, praised the end of the destruction of unborn life at a building where prayer witnesses with the nationwide campaign have kept vigil. North Carolina was one of the first states ever to conduct a 40 Days for Life campaign...

Bereit also lauded statistics cited by the News and Observer story, which show that abortions have been declining in North Carolina; the abortion rate dropped 4.6% between 2007 and 2008. [23June2010, Kathleen Gilbert, Raleigh, NC, http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10062309.html ]

Ultrasound Laws Protect Women's Health, Stop Abortions, Provide Window to the Womb

State ultrasound laws are critical tools in ensuring that women are protected from the harms inherent in abortion. Additionally, research and real-life experience have shown that a woman who undergoes and views an ultrasound before an abortion is less likely to follow through with the abortion.

In recent years, pro-life advocates have enjoyed tremendous success at the state level in facilitating and encouraging the adoption of ultrasound requirements. Nineteen states have already enacted ultrasound requirements, and nearly a dozen states have considered ultrasound-related measures in 2010.

However, as with any important policy initiative, there continues to be debate within the pro-life movement as to the best approach for making ultrasounds available to women before abortion. Importantly, there are more areas of agreement than disagreement.

First and foremost, pro-life advocates agree that ultrasounds perform an important protective function—both in terms of women’s medical safety and in ensuring that they are fully informed as to the consequences and impact of their abortion decisions.

Notably, over the last several years, a pre-abortion ultrasound has become the undisputed "gold standard" of abortion "care." Many—if not most—abortionists admit to using ultrasounds prior to abortions (regardless of estimated gestational age). While at one time, an ultrasound was not used regularly in the first trimester—when 90 percent of abortions occur—more and more abortionists are utilizing the technology to ensure "safe" abortions and avoid potentially devastating complications.

Ultrasound requirements are necessary in order to check for ectopic pregnancies, ensure a viable pregnancy, estimate gestational age, and better protect women from the physical harms inherent in surgical and chemical abortions.

In addition to safeguarding women’s health and safety, this standard of practice also opens the door to more stringent and meaningful regulation of abortion. If the use of an ultrasound is the "gold standard" of "care" among abortionists, then it is much easier for states to pass laws requiring its use and avoid costly and unnecessary constitutional challenges.

Since 2006, AUL has made model ultrasound legislation available to state legislators and pro-life and pro-family policy groups and has been directly involved in legislative debates over ultrasound requirements across the nation. And our extensive involvement with this issue continues to bear "fruit" and provide insight as to how we can effectively strengthen the protection and value of state ultrasound laws. For example, we are currently updating our ultrasound model to mandate that an ultrasound be performed prior to an abortion, better protecting the lives and health of women considering abortion.

As in our earlier model, the new language will, as an alternative to actually performing the ultrasound, give abortionists the option of providing women with a list of facilities and agencies that provide ultrasound services free of charge. This opens the door for a woman to receive the mandatory ultrasound at a pregnancy resource center—a facility where a woman will hear truthful information about her developing child and receive the counseling she needs to make a truly informed "choice."

It will also empower women by allowing them to choose whether or not they want to see the images or hear the anatomical descriptions of their unborn children.

An important component of AUL’s model is that a state affirmatively provide a medical standard of care for the provision of pre-abortion ultrasounds, requiring abortionists to accurately portray and describe (if the woman so wishes) the features of the unborn child. Such a standard ensures that women receive an accurate image and explanation, leaving abortionists little room to point to random splotches on an ultrasound screen and label them "fetal tissue."

Notably, Michigan Senator Wayne Kuipers recently introduced a bill in that state (SB 1283) requiring abortionists to utilize the best technology available to them in providing ultrasound services. This type of law ensures not only that the mother sees the best image possible of her unborn child, but that it protects her health and welfare as well.

Ultrasound technology truly does provide a window to the womb. Women who see their unborn children are much less likely to choose to abort. It is now up to the states to enact ultrasound laws that protect women and provide them with the best possible chance at seeing their precious children.

AUL’s updated ultrasound model will be available before the 2011 state legislative sessions convene.
In the meantime, our current model is available at www.AUL.org.
[23 June 2010, Mailee Smith, http://www.lifenews.com/nat6456.html ; LifeNews.com Note: Mailee Smith is an attorney for Americans United for Life, a pro-life legal group that focuses on national and state legislative matters. This opinion column is a response to Stopping Abortion: A Different Take on Legislation Promoting Ultrasounds, written by pro-life NIFLA attorney Tom Glessner.]

FDA Hearing on Ulipristal as "EC" (Emergency Contraception)
Last week we introduced you to EllaOne, the European "EC" that is in fact an abortifacient agent (first cousin to Mifeprex, the medical abortion pill available in the USA).

We explained that it is abortifacient because it is a progesterone blocker, thus disabling the endometrial transfer of oxygen and nutrients to the embryo which is trying to implant. While it may in some instances inhibit ovulation, a major anti-fertility action will be due to blocking progesterone action on the endometrium.

The FDA held a New Drug Application hearing on June 17.

Our written testimony is found at http://www.aaplog.org/?page_id=831

AAPLOG represented you at the hearing with the following verbal testimony given by Dr. Donna Harrison, AAPLOG President:

Good Afternoon. I am Dr. Donna Harrison, board-certified OBGYN. On behalf of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists I want to thank you for allowing us to address this committee.

Our concerns regarding the lack of safety studies for ulipristal are detailed in our written submission in your folder. I will limit comments to the lack of reproductive toxicology information, without which ulipristal should not be approved for use in women of childbearing potential.

The European Medicines Agency noted that, "As expected, ulipristal acetate is embryotoxic at low doses."

The EMEA also noted,"Ulipristal acetate prevents progesterone from occupying its receptor, thus the gene transcription normally turned on by progesterone is blocked, and the proteins necessary to begin and maintain pregnancy are not synthesized."

Ulipristal's embryolethal and fetocidal action is identical to mifepristone, from which ulipristal is derived.

Both act at the level of the ovary--inhibiting granulosacell production of progesterone needed to maintain pregnancy through the first 10 weeks of gestation. Both also directly block progesterone receptors at endometrial glands and stroma, destroying maternal placental tissues.

Information on this embryotoxic and fetotoxic mechanism of action is critical to informed consent for women.

Many women have ethical qualms about using a drug capable of aborting an early pregnancy.

Clear information about the embryotoxic and fetotoxic potential must be included on the product label for adequate informed consent.

It is predictable that progesterone blockade will have profound embryo-lethal and developmental effects on the embryo fetus exposed to ulipristal.

Yet, reproductive toxicology studies were never completed.

The effect of ulipristal on fetal development is unknown, highlighting the failure of the European voluntary pregnancy registry to provide answers to this critically important question, and illustrating the need for a mandatory fetal registry such as the one now utilized for accutane.

Since fetal safety information is lacking, the EMEA label states "EllaOne is contraindicated during an existing or suspected pregnancy."

However, in use as an emergency contraceptive, it is impossible to prevent ulipristal use in pregnancy, as illustrated by the clinical trials which support this NDA. In each trial, there were women whose urine pregnancy tests were negative prior to use of ulipristal, but were later found by pre-administration serum pregnancy tests to have been already pregnant at the time of ulipristal use, so under the best circumstances of a clinical trial, pre-existing pregnancy could not be excluded.

The European Medicines Agency noted that ulipristal can be detected in reproductive tissues up to 14 days after administration.

In the real world, it is inevitable that women who are already pregnant will unknowingly take ulipristal. In addition, ulipristal's 2% failure rate means that 2 out of every 100 women who use this drug will carry a fetus exposed to ulipristal, a drug known to interfere with placental development.

It is irresponsible that basic reproductive toxicology studies called for by the ICH GCP Guidelines, for drugs designed for use in women of childbearing potential, have not been completed for ulipristal.

Voluntary fetal registration from Europe has proven to be inadequate to answer basic questions of safety.

Since use of ulipristal as emergency contraception will inevitably result in women using the drug in pregnancy, approval of ulipristal will put the FDA in the untenable position of approving a drug which is contraindicated in pregnancy, for an indication in which use in pregnancy is inevitable, and for which inadequate safety information is available.

This reason alone is sufficient for the FDA to deny approval of ulipristal for use as emergency contraception. Our other concerns are detailed in our written submission.
[June 19, 2010, AAPLOG email;  the complete letter (the "written submission") on this can be found at http://www.aaplog.org/?page_id=808]

AAPLOG Submission to the FDA Reproductive Health Advisory Committee Regarding the (upcoming) 17 June 2010 Meeting on Ulipristal Approval as an “Emergency Contraceptive”

AAPLOG to FDA on Ulipristal, June 2 (pdf), 15 page report

 
New Pill, Same Misinformation

On June 17th, a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel unanimously approved a new abortifacient drug, cutely called “ella," moving it one step closer to final approval and its appearance on drugstore shelves across the nation.

The French pharmaceutical company HRA Pharma, which manufactures the drug, claims that it is just an upgraded “morning after pill” that prevents, rather than interrupts, a pregnancy. In fact, the company claims that this one tiny pill can prevent pregnancy up to five days after sexual intercourse.

The abortion industry, feminist groups, and the lamestream media are wild with excitement over this new addition to the arsenal of the sexual revolution, but we are forced to ask an obvious question: How can a pill "prevent" pregnancy five full days after sex?

Answer: it doesn't. There is little doubt that "ella" acts as an abortifacient in many cases.

The only reason that the company claims otherwise—aside from greed, that is—is that they redefine the meaning of the word "pregnant." In their view, pregnancy does not begin at conception, but rather only at the implantation of the developing embryo into the uterine wall five to seven days later. This is a misleading and inaccurate definition of pregnancy.

Planned Parenthood—an organization that would profit off the new drug—claims that there is no evidence that the drug interrupts pregnancy after implantation. But it almost surely does, since it uses ulipristal acetate, which blocks the progesterone receptors necessary for the early development of the embryo to continue. Indeed, the test which women are given to determine whether they are suffering a miscarriage is one which measures the amount of progesterone. A progesterone-blocking drug will necessarily be an embryo-killing drug.

The pill has been roundly criticized by experts and religious leaders. Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America cited the pill's deceptive marketing, saying that "women will buy it thinking it's a morning-after pill when in fact, it is an abortion pill." Cardinal Daniel DiNardo weighed in with a letter to FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg, in which he expressed "grave concern" over the FDA's approval, among other reasons citing its potential "'off-label' use as an abortion drug."

And Dr. Donna Harrison, president of American Association of Pro Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists (AAPLOG), blasted the drug not only because of its possible safety hazards, but also because of its inaccurate and misleading marketing.

"Information on this embryotoxic and fetotoxic mechanism of action is critical to informed consent for women," she said. "Many women have ethical qualms about using a drug capable of aborting an early pregnancy. Clear information about the embryotoxic and fetotoxic potential must be included on the product label for adequate informed consent."

In other words, this is not a form of "emergency contraception." It is yet another kind of abortion pill, and should be clearly labeled as such if it is approved.

Better yet, it should not be approved at all.
[23 June 2010, PRI Weekly Briefing, Steven W. Mosher is the President of the Population Research Institute.
Colin Mason is the Director of Media Production at Population Research Institute.]

AAPLOG Submission to the FDA Reproductive Health Advisory Committee Regarding the (upcoming) 17 June 2010 Meeting on Ulipristal Approval as an “Emergency Contraceptive”

AAPLOG to FDA on Ulipristal, June 2 (pdf), 15 page report

Ella ... It's Not Enchanted ... It's Embryocidal

The recent recommendation by a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel that the FDA approve the sale of Ella (ulipristal acetate) as an “emergency contraceptive” was practically a foregone conclusion.

I cannot recall the last time the FDA rejected an application for any new “reproductive health” drug or device—no matter how risky it proved to be for mothers or unborn children!

The agency routinely approves drugs and devices to block reproduction that are later found unacceptably dangerous for women—the high-dose estrogen pill, the Dalkon Shield intra-uterine device, Norplant rods, Depo-Provera shots, nonoxynol-9, and the Ortho Evra patch, to name just a few.

As evidence of the level of risk the FDA tolerates in the reproductive health pharmacopoeia, FDA has not recalled the patch, despite its link to the deaths of at least 29 apparently healthy young women due to blood clots. While some at the FDA may believe their deaths to be an acceptable trade-off so that others can avoid pregnancy, the victims’ families no doubt feel differently.

But the yet-unquantified risk to mothers is only part of the problem with Ella.

It is simply false and deceptive to promote Ella as an “emergency contraceptive” like Preven and Plan B. Depending when they are taken relative to ovulation and intercourse, Preven and Plan B may act primarily as contraceptives (by disrupting ovulation, for example), or sometimes as very early abortifacients (by modes of action that interfere with the embryo’s movement to the womb or ability to implant there).

The reason Ella is far more effective than Preven and Plan-B (complete failures at the population level!), and the reason Ella keeps working five days (or more) after “unprotected intercourse,” is that Ella—like its close chemical cousin RU-486—blocks progesterone receptors in the uterine lining. This destroys the capacity of the mother’s reproductive organs to produce the progesterone necessary to support the embryo through the first 10 weeks of pregnancy.

Because Ella is formulated precisely to prevent a newly conceived human being from implanting in and receiving nutrition from the uterine lining, or to disrupt the process if it has begun, the American Association of Pro Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists properly calls Ella an embryocidal drug.

“Millions of American women, even those willing to use a contraceptive to prevent fertilization in various circumstances, would personally never choose to have an abortion. They would be ill served by a misleading campaign to present [Ella] simply as a ‘contraceptive’.” [Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, June 17 letter to the FDA]

As used in animal studies, Ella killed rat, rabbit, and monkey embryos, and caused severe congenital defects in embryos whose gestational age was advanced when Ella was administered.

This is an important point.

In all three major clinical trials in women, some women were later found to have been pregnant before the intercourse for which they sought “emergency contraception.”

In addition, trials have shown that Ella fails to kill the newly conceived human embryos in about 2% of cases. The survivors may then face severe congenital anomalies.

Lastly, Ella has been detected in maternal tissues 14 days after taking the drug, so children conceived during that period also could be deformed or killed by the drug.

The FDA must drop the fantasy that Ella is contraception, and reject Ella in order to safeguard the lives and health of children exposed to this poison pill.
[June 25, 2010, LIFE ISSUES FORUM, By Susan E. Wills, Assistant Director for Education & Outreach, USCCB Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities]

AAPLOG Submission to the FDA Reproductive Health Advisory Committee Regarding the (upcoming) 17 June 2010 Meeting on Ulipristal Approval as an “Emergency Contraceptive”

AAPLOG to FDA on Ulipristal, June 2 (pdf), 15 page report

http://www.aaplog.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/AAPLOG-Ulipristal-Comments_2010.pdf

 MORE ON ellaOne...

EllaOne is an abortifacient -- it causes abortion.
While Emergency Contraception (Plan B, for example) MAY be abortifacient a percentage of the time, that is not its only mechanism (although it is the most likely mechanism).

EllaOne is in the same family with the infamous RU-486 (mifepristone, "mifeprex") which acts only as an abortifacient to kill a developing human embryo.

Now, THEY will say there is no pregnancy yet. That's because THEY -- the pharmaceuticals & pro-aborts & pro-contraceptors -- REDEFINED the word "conception" in the 1960s to mean "implantation in the uterus" instead of its historic meaning of union of sperm & egg (fertilization).

This gives them a 6-10 day window for destruction by simply claiming that the embryo -- which is growing and developing all this time -- really does not exist. Sort of like saying the earth really is not round...

[from AAPLOG]

Last week we introduced you to EllaOne, the European "EC" that is in fact an abortifacient agent (first cousin to Mifeprex, the medical abortion pill available in the USA). We explained that it is abortifacient because it is a progesterone blocker, thus disabling the endometrial transfer of oxygen and nutrients to the embryo which is trying to implant. While it may in some instances inhibit ovulation, a major anti-fertility action will be due to blocking progesterone action on the endometrium. The FDA held a New Drug Application hearing on June 17.

[AAPLOG] written testimony is found at http://www.aaplog.org/?page_id=831

AAPLOG represented you at the hearing with the following verbal testimony given by Dr. Donna Harrison, AAPLOG President:

Good Afternoon. I am Dr. Donna Harrison, board-certified OBGYN. On behalf of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists I want to thank you for allowing us to address this committee.

Our concerns regarding the lack of safety studies for ulipristal are detailed in our written submission in your folder. I will limit comments to the lack of reproductive toxicology information, without which ulipristal should not be approved for use in women of childbearing potential.

The European Medicines Agency noted that, "As expected, ulipristal acetate is embryotoxic at low doses."

The EMEA also noted,"Ulipristal acetate prevents progesterone from occupying its receptor, thus the gene transcription normally turned on by progesterone is blocked, and the proteins necessary to begin and maintain pregnancy are not synthesized."

Ulipristal's embryolethal and fetocidal action is identical to mifepristone, from which ulipristal is derived.

Both act at the level of the ovary--inhibiting granulosacell production of progesterone needed to maintain pregnancy through the first 10 weeks of gestation. Both also directly block progesterone receptors at endometrial glands and stroma, destroying maternal placental tissues.

Information on this embryotoxic and fetotoxic mechanism of action is critical to informed consent for women.

Many women have ethical qualms about using a drug capable of aborting an early pregnancy.

Clear information about the embryotoxic and fetotoxic potential must be included on the product label for adequate informed consent.

It is predictable that progesterone blockade will have profound embryo-lethal and developmental effects on the embryo fetus exposed to ulipristal. Yet, reproductive toxicology studies were never completed.

The effect of ulipristal on fetal development is unknown, highlighting the failure of the European voluntary pregnancy registry to provide answers to this critically important question, and illustrating the need for a mandatory fetal registry such as the one now utilized for accutane.

Since fetal safety information is lacking, the EMEA label states "EllaOne is contraindicated during an existing or suspected pregnancy."

However, in use as an emergency contraceptive, it is impossible to prevent ulipristal use in pregnancy, as illustrated by the clinical trials which support this NDA.

In each trial, there were women whose urine pregnancy tests were negative prior to use of ulipristal, but were later found by pre-administration serum pregnancy tests to have been already pregnant at the time of ulipristal use, so under the best circumstances of a clinical trial, pre-existing pregnancy could not be excluded.

The European Medicines Agency noted that ulipristal can be detected in reproductive tissues up to 14 days after administration.

In the real world, it is inevitable that women who are already pregnant will unknowingly take ulipristal.

In addition, ulipristal's 2% failure rate means that 2 out of every 100 women who use this drug will carry a fetus exposed to ulipristal, a drug known to interfere with placental development.

It is irresponsible that basic reproductive toxicology studies called for by the ICH GCP Guidelines, for drugs designed for use in women of childbearing potential, have not been completed for ulipristal.

Voluntary fetal registration from Europe has proven to be inadequate to answer basic questions of safety.

Since use of ulipristal as emergency contraception will inevitably result in women using the drug in pregnancy, approval of ulipristal will put the FDA in the untenable position of approving a drug which is contraindicated in pregnancy, for an indication in which use in pregnancy is inevitable, and for which inadequate safety information is available.

This reason alone is sufficient for the FDA to deny approval of ulipristal for use as emergency contraception. Our other concerns are detailed in our written submission.

Below is a link to a graph from an ObGyn text book, that illustrates the role of progesterone in pregnancy (from intrauterine pregnancy, to spontaneous abortion, to ectopic pregnancy, etc.)  This graph illustrates the importance of progesterone to pregnancy.  If a medication is received that "modulates" progesterone, such as Ella One, then what is it actually doing?  It appears very evident by this illustration that Ella One is an abortifacient, as it's sole mechanism of action. 

Subject: Progesterone and Pregnancy
Type: Reference Book
Title: Katz: Comprehensive Gynecology
URL: http://www.mdconsult.com/das/book/0/view/1524/I4-u1.0-B978-0-323-02951-3..50020-0--f17.fig

Here is the European Package Leaflet -- http://www.ellaone-registry.com/en/download/package_leaflet_EN_240909.pdf / www.ellaone-registry.com

One of the key phrases in this piece is that Ella One is referred to as a "Progesterone Modulator." Progesterone is necessary to maintain a healthy pregnancy, by stimulating the thickening of the uterine lining in preparation to receive a fertilized egg (a conceived child).

Anything that disrupts this process -- or in their choice of words "modulates" this process by reducing progesterone levels -- will prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus, leading to spontaneous abortion or ectopic pregnancy.

If conception has occurred, then a child will be spontaneously aborted.

PDF file of the Ulipristal trial published in Lancet, February 2010 (www.thelancet.com, Vol 375 February 13, 2010, Ulipristal acetate versus levonorgestrel for emergency contraception: a randomised non-inferiority trial and meta-analysis, pp 555-562) and the commentary from May 2010 (pp 1607-1608):

Ulipristal acetate versus levonorgestrel for emergency contraception: a randomised non-inferiority trial and meta-analysis, Lancet, February 2010

[Ed. NOTE Last sentence: "Ulipristal acetate provides women and health-care providers with an effective ALTERNATIVE for emergency contraception that can be used up to 5 days after unprotected sexual intercourse." (emphasis added)

It is noted as an "alternative for emergency contraception"; also in this double speak, "conception" is defined as "implantation" in the uterus; so the pharmaceutical companies and the abortion industry do not consider this tiny embryo that is rapidly growing & moving to the uterus to be a human embryo. They call it a "pre-embryo"... how does one get to be a grown person without having passed through this so-called "pre-embryo" stage??]

Summary
Background
Emergency contraception can prevent unintended pregnancies, but current methods are only effective if used as soon as possible after sexual intercourse and before ovulation.

We compared the efficacy and safety of ulipristal acetate with levonorgestrel [ed. Plan B] for emergency contraception.

Methods
Women with regular menstrual cycles who presented to a participating family planning clinic requesting emergency contraception within 5 days of unprotected sexual intercourse were eligible for enrollment in this randomised, multicentre, non-inferiority trial.

2221 women were randomly assigned to receive a single, supervised dose of 30 mg ulipristal acetate (n=1104) or 1·5 mg levonorgestrel (n=1117) orally. Allocation was by block randomisation stratified by centre and time from unprotected sexual intercourse to treatment, with allocation concealment by identical opaque boxes labelled with a unique treatment number. Participants were masked to treatment assignment whereas investigators were not.

Follow-up was done 5–7 days after expected onset of next menses. The primary endpoint was pregnancy rate in women who received emergency contraception within 72 h of unprotected sexual intercourse, with a non-inferiority margin of 1% point difference between groups (limit of 1·6 for odds ratio).

Analysis was done on the efficacy-evaluable population, which excluded women lost to follow-up, those aged over 35 years, women with unknown follow-up pregnancy status, and those who had re-enrolled in the study. Additionally, we undertook a meta-analysis of our trial and an earlier study to assess the efficacy of ulipristal acetate compared with levonorgestrel. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT00551616.

Findings In the efficacy-evaluable population, 1696 women received emergency contraception within 72 h of sexual intercourse (ulipristal acetate, n=844; levonorgestrel, n=852). There were 15 pregnancies in the ulipristal acetate group (1·8%, 95% CI 1·0–3·0) and 22 in the levonorgestrel group (2·6%, 1·7–3·9; odds ratio [OR] 0·68, 95% CI0·35–1·31).

In 203 women who received emergency contraception between 72 h and 120 h after sexual intercourse, there were three pregnancies, all of which were in the levonorgestrel group. The most frequent adverse event was headache (ulipristal acetate, 213 events [19·3%] in 1104 women; levonorgestrel, 211 events [18·9%] in 1117 women).

Two serious adverse events were judged possibly related to use of emergency contraception; a case of dizziness in the ulipristal acetate group and a molar pregnancy in the levonorgestrel group. In the meta-analysis (0–72 h), there were 22 (1·4%) pregnancies in 1617 women in the ulipristal acetate group and 35 (2·2%) in 1625 women in the levonorgestrel group (OR 0·58, 0·33–0·99; p=0·046).

Interpretation
Ulipristal acetate provides women and health-care providers with an effective alternative for emergency
contraception that can be used up to 5 days after unprotected sexual intercourse.
Funding: HRA Pharma.