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Obama Administration Cuts Women’s Health Care for Community Health Centers, Funds Planned Parenthood

ALL: Obama OK With Massive Black Abortion Rate

Study: Pro-Life Parental Notification Laws Reduce Abortions 15% / Pro-Life Laws Work: Study

Texas Medical Board Investigating Abuses at Abortion Centers

Biotech Company Using Cell Lines from Aborted Babies in Food Enhancement Testing

30 ‘Black Genocide’ Abortion Billboards Featuring Obama Go Up in Chicago

‘My Presence Was Peaceful’: After 48 Days in Jail, Arrested Pro-Lifer Speaks Out in Canadian Court

Killing an Unborn Child is Never the Solution: 78 Argentinean Obstetricians

Two Women Victimized by Botched Abortions on Same Day at NAF Center

Woman Rushed to Hospital in Florida After Botched Abortion

Tapes Show Planned Parenthood Injured Woman in Botched Abortion

Complaint Filed Against ‘Dirty Dozen’ Texas Abortionists

Abortion Facility Tries to Stop Pro-Life Video Containing Real Abortion Footage

Front Alley Abortion 

Commentary: Is Gosnell the ONLY Abortionist who HARMS WOMEN & Ends up in TROUBLE?

Commentary: Cleanliness is... NOT Expected Here

CONSCIENCE

Roe v. Wade Could Ironically Provide Conscience Protections

Illinois Pharmacists Win Key Victory on Morning After Pill

ABORTIFACIENT 'BIRTH CONTROL'

ASK Your Pharmacist to NOT STOCK ELLA -- http://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF10I20.pdf

LEGISLATION

Commentary: Planned Parenthood Paying for “Volunteers” to Lobby Congress

Virginia Gov. Signs Law Mandating Hospital Safety Standards for Abortion Businesses

Philippines: Reproductive Health-Abortion Bill Fails Again ...

Obama Cuts Women’s Health Care, Funds Planned Parenthood
Barack Obama is facing criticism from a conservative group for cutting women’s health care while holding steadfast to funding for the Planned Parenthood abortion business.

Obama refused repeated requests from pro-life House Speaker John Boehner to agree to cut funding for the Planned Parenthood abortion business. However, his administration didn’t raise a stink about the elimination of $600 million for Community Health Centers.

Planned Parenthood, and its defenders, like Obama have used the argument against cutting its funding that women’s health would suffer because the funding cuts would supposedly cut or eliminate legitimate health care programs for women offered by the abortion business.

However, the community health centers facing the cuts offer real health care services for women that Planned Parenthood doesn’t provide.

While an expose’ revealed Planned Parenthood doesn’t provide mammograms and its own figures show relatively few women receive pre-natal and post-natal care (about 95 percent of pregnant women get abortions at Planned Parenthood), community health centers provide both.

In an email LifeNews.com received from the conservative American Principles Project, community health centers helped 320,000 women with mammograms, while Planned Parenthood provided none.

“Coating its ideology in flowery language about women’s health and alleged Republican mean-spiritedness, liberal Democrats refused to cut one dime out of Planned Parenthood’s plump federal purse during the budget debate,” APP president Frank Cannon said.

“All the while a sharp knife was being taken to community health centers that actually perform full-scale exams for the needy. These health centers offer prenatal care to women and their babies – 480,000 times in 2009 alone. Planned Parenthood? Their 850 clinics average less than one prenatal visit a month, in other words, it’s not their line of work.”

In March, the pro-life organization responsible for recent videos showing Planned Parenthood offering abortions to alleged sex traffickers who prey on women found the abortion business is misleading about mammograms.

Previously, LifeNews.com and pro-life blogger Jill Stanek followed up with phone calls to various Planned Parenthood centers and confirmed they do not do mammograms.

Then, Live Action released videotaped footage of calls to 30 Planned Parenthood centers nationwide in 27 different states where abortion facility staff were asked whether or not mammograms could be performed on site. Every one of the Planned Parenthood centers admitted they could not do mammograms.

Every Planned Parenthood, without exception, tells the women calling that they will have to go elsewhere for a mammogram, and many centers admit that no Planned Parenthood sites provide this breast cancer screening procedure.

“We don’t provide those services whatsoever,” admits a staffer at Planned Parenthood of Arizona while a staffer at Planned Parenthood’s Comprehensive Health Center clinic in Overland Park, Kansas tells a caller, “We actually don’t have a, um, mammogram machine, at our clinics.[sic]”

Live Action president Lila Rose said the recordings further confirm Planned Parenthood’s corruption.

“Planned Parenthood is first and foremost an abortion business, but Planned Parenthood and its allies will say almost anything to try and cover up that fact and preserve its taxpayer funding,” she told LifeNews.com.

“It’s not surprising that an organization found concealing statutory rape and helping child sex traffickers would misrepresent its own services so brazenly, playing on women’s fears in order to protect their tax dollars.”
[Ertelt | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 4/14/11   http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/14/obama-cuts-womens-health-care-funds-planned-parenthood/

ALL: Obama OK With Massive Black Abortion Rate

A pro-life organization says Barack Obama is, ironically, allowing the high rate of abortions on black women and children to continue by refusing to de-fund the Planned Parenthood abortion business.

Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion business in the United States, doing hundreds of thousands of abortions, more than 27 percent of the 1.2 million that take place annually.

A February report the Centers for Disease Control issued showed abortions fell in 2007 to their second lowest level in the last 10 years. But, looking at the women from the 25 areas that reported abortions and cross-classified race/ethnicity data for 2007, black women accounted for 34.4% of all abortions despite being less than 20 percent of the national population of women.

The CDC found black women had the highest abortion rates (32.1 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years) and ratios (480 abortions per 1,000 live births).

The report found black mothers get abortions at a 300 percent higher per capita rate and an overall rate 2.5 times that of non-blacks.

Another report shows sixty percent of the abortions in New York City are performed on black women, and new abortion centers Planned Parenthood recently built in Houston, Portland and Chicago are located in the heart of minority communities. The Washington Examiner reported in 2009 that 41 percent of all pregnancies in predominately black Washington, DC end in abortion.

In Georgia in 2006, 57.4 percent of abortions are performed on African-American women even though blacks comprise just 30 percent of the general population. In Texas, abortions on black women comprise nearly 25% of all state abortions even though they only constitute 12.7% of the female population (ages 15-44). Every other racial demographic shares a smaller percentage of statewide abortions than their respective percentage of total population.

With those statistics in mind, the  American Life League said it is surprised that “America’s first black president drew a bizarre line in the sand declaring he would shut down the government of the United States to keep federal funding for Planned Parenthood, the organization that aborts over 125,000 black children nationwide each year.”

“The president of the United States champions aborting over one-third of the next generation of African-Americans as empowerment,” said Jim Sedlak, vice president of American Life League.  “We do not.  We see it as the worst bigotry of low expectations.  Margaret Sanger would be proud of her elitist black disciples.  We are not.”

Based on its calculations, ALL says Planned Parenthood is responsible for the deaths of at least 126,601 black unborn children each year.

“With leaders like the president and the DC mayor, is it any surprise this black genocide continues?  It needs to stop and the place to start is with the total defunding of the organization where it began: Planned Parenthood,” Sedlak concluded. [Ertelt | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 4/14/11,  http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/14/pro-life-group-obama-ok-with-massive-black-abortion-rate/

Study: Pro-Life Parental Notification Laws Reduce Abortions 15%

Michael New, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the University of Alabama, recently published a study on abortion in State Politics and Policy Quarterly demonstrating the effectiveness of pro-life laws.

The study, “Analyzing the Effect of Anti-Abortion U.S. State Legislation in the Post-Casey Era,” evaluated abortion data from nearly every state over a span of 21 years, from 1985 to 2005 – a longer period than nearly any other peer-reviewed study.

It contributes to a substantial body of social science research which finds that parental involvement laws and public funding restrictions are effective.
 
New found in his study that data from both the Centers for Disease Control and the Guttmacher Institute provide solid evidence that Medicaid abortion funding restrictions, parental involvement laws and informed consent laws effectively lower abortion rates.

His findings included that parental involvement laws reduce in-state abortion rates for minors by approximately 15 percent. This is among the first peer reviewed studies which shows that informed consent laws have an effect.

“Planned Parenthood and many groups on the Catholic Left often argue that pro-life laws are ineffective,” New told LifeNews.com. “They claim that contraception spending and more generous welfare benefits are the best ways to reduce abortion rates. In reality, however, there is virtually no peer reviewed research, analyzing actual abortion data, which finds that more spending on either contraception or welfare has any effect on the incidence of abortion.”

“Conversely, this study adds to the sizeable body of peer reviewed research which finds that legal protections for the unborn are effective at lowering abortion rates,” he said.
 
The study is now part of a substantial body of academic literature showing that such laws are effective in cutting abortions — and back up the anecdotal evidence seen in states like Mississippi, Michigan, South Carolina, Missouri and others where abortions have been cut by half from their previous highs thanks to the passage of several pro-life measures limiting abortions.
 
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins commented on the latest study in remarks to LifeNews.
 
“Dr. Michael New’s research tells us that parental involvement laws more effectively get parents involved in their kids’ lives, and reduce the number of abortions,” he said. “Almost invariably it is a parent, not a government employee or business entity, who cares most about a daughter’s well-being. This is why we strongly support commonsense laws that reaffirm parents’ unique role as the decision-makers in the life of their child.”
 
“Politicians can talk about ‘reducing abortion rates,’ but if they truly want to do so they will support parental-involvement legislation and defund such organizations as Planned Parenthood that perform or promotion abortions,” Perkins added.
 
Dr. New issued a previous study in 2008 showing parental involvement laws reduce abortions anywhere from 19-31 percent for teenagers.
 
He also issued a prior study looking at 1985-1999 finding pro-life laws cut teen abortion rates by as much as 50 percent. Parental involvement laws were part of the reason for this decline but not the only reason.
 
State Politics and Policy Quarterly serves as the official journal of the state politics and policy section of the American Political Science Association and is one of the top state politics journal in the country. [Ertelt | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 3/28/11
 http://www.lifenews.com/2011/03/28/study-pro-life-parental-notification-laws-reduce-abortions-15/ ]


Pro-Life Laws Work: Study

A new analysis of abortion data across all 50 U.S. states has found solid evidence that legislation intended to reduce abortion, such as parental involvement laws, is effective.

Michael New, Ph.D., an assistant professor of political science at the University of Alabama, recently published the survey entitled “Analyzing the Effect of Anti-Abortion U.S. State Legislation in the Post-Casey Era” in State Politics and Policy Quarterly, the top state politics journal in the country. The study evaluated abortion data from nearly every state over a span of 21 years, from 1985 to 2005, a longer period than nearly any other peer-reviewed study.

New drew from both the Centers for Disease Control and the Alan Guttmacher Institute, whose data on abortion rates provided what New found was a clear indication that Medicaid abortion funding restrictions, parental involvement laws and informed consent laws effectively lower abortion rates.

Parental involvement laws specifically were found to reduce in-state abortion rates for minors by approximately 15 percent.

The professor notes that his study is part of a substantial body of academic literature showing that such laws are effective, although his latest work aimed to overcome shortcomings of previous studies by analyzing many types of abortion restrictions, as well as examining a broader range of years and states.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said the study by New, a former adjunct fellow with the Family Research Council, confirms the conservative group’s support for laws that strengthen families against the tragedy of abortion.

“Almost invariably it is a parent, not a government employee or business entity, who cares most about a daughter’s well-being. This is why we strongly support commonsense laws that reaffirm parents’ unique role as the decision-makers in the life of their child,” said Perkins.

“Politicians can talk about ‘reducing abortion rates,’ but if they truly want to do so they will support parental-involvement legislation and defund such organizations as Planned Parenthood that perform or promotion abortions,” he added.

Click here to read the entire report -- http://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF11C45.pdf
[29 Mar 2011, Kathleen Gilbert, WASHINGTON, LifeSiteNews.com; Michael New, Ph.D.]




Texas Medical Board Investigating Abuses at Abortion Centers

The Texas Medical Board has notified Operation Rescue that it is conducting an investigation into the wide ranging abuses the pro-life organization found when it conducted an undercover probe of several abortion businesses in the state.

The complaints were filed after a three-month undercover investigation of abortion clinics across Texas revealed numerous violations, including illegal dumping of private patient medical records and biohazardous waste, a disregard for informed consent and 24-hour waiting period laws, mishandling of drugs and prescription forms, and a willingness to help minors evade parental notification laws.

“This represents a mammoth investigation of the abortion industry in Texas,” Troy Newman, the head of the group, told LifeNews.com today.

“Based on our investigation, we have no doubt that these abortionists are playing fast and loose with the health, safety, and privacy of women and that makes them a danger to the public. We pray that the Medical Board looks carefully into these serious allegations and takes appropriate disciplinary action,” he said.

The Texas Medical Board indicated in letters to Newman dated March 31 that cases have been placed with a senior investigator and that Operation Rescue will be sent a status letter on each case every 90 days.

The abortion practitioners currently under investigation include Jasbir Ahlwualia, Arthur John Brock, Robert Hanson, Margaret Kini, Pedro Kowalyszyn, Sherwood C. Lynn, Jr., Lester Minto, Alan Molson, Robert L. Prince, Lamar Robinson, Franz Theard, and William West.

Complaints were also filed against abortion practitioners Douglas A. Karpen and Brook Randal, but there has so far been no word on whether the Texas Medical Board will add them to the massive investigation.

Among the worst offenders was Whole Women’s Health, which operates five abortion facilities in Texas. The McAllen, Texas discoveries were particularly disturbing and dumped in the trash were the bloody refuse of several abortions along with the names of patients and other private information.

Patient logs and other records were discovered on Whole Women’s Health forms and the bloody remains of abortions came in bags with other documents bearing Whole Women’s Health’s name. Operation Rescue has made examples of this evidence public.

During one conference call recorded on January 10, 2011, abortionist William West of Whole Women’s Health can be heard mocking the information he is required by law to tell women. After he says that he is required to say that abortion presents a risk for breast cancer, he launches into a mocking rebuttal of the information he just told them.

The anti-abortion folks have waged this fear campaign for years now, um, making numerous false charges about the quote dangers of abortion, and uh, one completely fictitious this is drummed up spread all around is that there is an increased risk of breast cancer and interference with future childbearing and so forth. None of these are true. It’s their attempt to scare you out of having an abortion.

“If this does not violate the letter of the law, it certainly undermines the intent of the legislature, which determined that women should have certain information on which to make an informed decision,” said Newman. “It is his remarks that are grossly untrue, and he should be held accountable for misleading women about abortion risks.”

Later in that same call, one woman expresses concern that her appointment is not 24 hours from the time of the conference call, as required by law.

Caller: Hello?
West: Yes.
Caller: My appointment is tomorrow morning and if I called now, is this enough time? It’s less than 24 hours.
West: Yes.
Caller: And that’ll be okay?
West: Um-hm.
Caller: Thank you.

“This investigation shows that violations of the law at abortion clinics are a widespread crisis of epidemic proportions,” said  Newman.
 
“The evidence we uncovered of illegal activity reveals a systemic problem throughout Texas that is not confined to one particular clinic or group of clinics,” he explained. “These violations endanger the heath of women, violate the rights of women to be informed and have their medical records protected, and present health hazards to the general public.”

“We also found disturbing evidence of attempts to evade parental consent laws and child sex abuse reporting laws. This illegal activity endangers the safety and welfare of children throughout Texas,” Newman said.

“Our investigation focused on what the average woman would experience if she sought an abortion in Texas, and how the abortion clinics appeared and operated on an everyday basis,” said Newman. “From what we found, women are subjected to a variety of abortion abuses as a matter of routine. Violating the law is standard operating procedure for abortion clinics in Texas.”

One undercover conversation with a receptionist named “Lupa” at Franz Theard’s clinic, Hill Top Reproductive, in El Paso was particularly disturbing. The caller posed as a 17-year old minor who wanted an abortion. The receptionist quickly scheduled an abortion for her for the following Saturday at 9:00 am and told her to bring and I.D. and $460. That is when the call took a disconcerting turn...

Lupa then assures the caller that she will see Dr. Theard and that she does not need to tell her parents.

Santa Teresa is a community across state lines from El Paso in New Mexico, where abortion laws are essentially non-existent. It has become obvious that Theard keeps this clinic open for the purpose of circumventing Texas abortion laws that require minors must have the consent of their parents before abortions can be done.

“If encouraging a minor to cross state lines to evade the laws of her home state isn’t illegal, it ought to be,” said Newman. “Those laws were enacted to protect young girls and to protect the integrity of the family and parental rights. Theard is openly defying the intent of the Texas legislature and trampling the rights of parents while profiting off the vulnerability of their underage daughters. It’s really quite despicable.”

Click link for complete article --   http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/05/texas-medical-board-investigating-abuses-at-abortion-centers/
[Ertelt | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 4/5/11]



Biotech Company Using Cell Lines from Aborted Babies in Food Enhancement Testing

Pepsico, Kraft Foods, and Nestlé are among the corporations partnered with a biotech company found using aborted fetal cell lines to test food flavor enhancers, according to a pro-life watchdog group.

The internationally recognized biotech company, Senomyx, boasts innovation and success in “flavour programs” designed to reduce MSG, sugar and salt in food and beverage products.  Senomyx notes their collaborators provide them research and development funding plus royalties on sales of products using their flavor ingredients.

The watchdog group CGL has called upon the public to target the major corporations in a boycott, unless the company ceases to use aborted fetal cell lines in their product testing.

“Using isolated human taste receptors,” the Senomyx website claims, “we created proprietary taste receptor-based assay systems that provide a biochemical or electronic readout when a flavor ingredient interacts with the receptor.”

“What they do not tell the public is that they are using HEK 293 – human embryonic kidney cells taken from an electively aborted baby to produce those receptors,” stated Debi Vinnedge, Executive Director for CGL, the watch dog group that has been monitoring the use of aborted fetal material in medical products and cosmetics for years.

“They could have easily chosen COS (monkey) cells, Chinese Hamster Ovary cells, insect cells or other morally obtained human cells expressing the G protein for taste receptors,” Vinnedge added.

Responses from major corporations to CGL’s letter campaign succeeded in warning the pro-life watchdog that these companies would need significant public pressure to admit involvement in and convince them of the need to change Senomyx’s unethical testing methods.

After three letters, Nestlé finally admitted the truth about their relationship with Senomyx, noting the cell line was “well established in scientific research”.

Pepsico wrote: “We hope you are reassured to learn that our collaboration with Senomyx is strictly limited to creating lower-calorie, great-tasting beverages for consumers. This will help us achieve our commitment to reduce added sugar per serving by 25% in key brands in key markets over the next decade and ultimately help people live healthier lives.”

“If enough people voice their outrage and intent to boycott these consumer products, it can be highly effective in convincing Senomyx to change their methods”, Vinnedge noted.  “Otherwise, we will be buying Coca-Cola, Lipton soups and Hershey products!”

To contact the companies:

Kent Snyder, CEO
Senomyx
4767 Nexus Centre Drive
San Diego, California 92121
email

Paul Bulcke, CEO
Nestlé USA
800 North Brand Boulevard
Glendale, CA 91203

Jamie Caulfield, Sr.VP
PepsiCo, Inc.
700 Anderson Hill Road
Purchase, NY 10577

Irene Rosenfeld, CEO
Kraft Foods/Cadbury Chocolate
Three Lakes Drive
Northfield, IL 60093
[29 Mar 2011, updated same day, Rebecca Millette, LARGO, Florida, LifeSiteNews.com, http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/biotech-company-using-cell-lines-from-aborted-babies-in-food-enhancement-te/






30 ‘Black Genocide’ Abortion Billboards Featuring Obama Go Up in Chicago

Thirty pro-life billboards featuring the image of Barack Obama are going up in South Chicago, U.S. president Barack Obama’s adopted hometown, starting tomorrow.

“Every 21 minutes, our next possible LEADER is aborted,” states the ad, which features an artistic rendering of Obama’s profile with a caption directing viewers to “thatsabortion.com.”

“Our future leaders are being aborted at an alarming rate. These are babies who could grow to be the future Presidents of the United States, or the next Oprah Winfrey, Denzel Washington or Maya Angelou,” said Rev. Derek McCoy, a black pastor and board member of Life Always, which is responsible for the campaign.

According to official U.S. data, black Americans account for approximately 36.9 percent (2007) of the total U.S. abortion numbers, despite accounting for only 12.9 percent (in 2009) of the total U.S. population.

According to a 2008 article by Susan Cohen for the Guttmacher Policy Review, “the abortion rate for black women is almost five times that for white women.” While disputing the notion that the black community is being deliberately targeted by Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers, Cohen also noted that black women led the abortion rate even across the income demographic.

“At every income level, black women have higher abortion rates than whites or Hispanics, except for women below the poverty line,” said Cohen, “where Hispanic women have slightly higher rates than black women.”

The black pro-life leaders behind the recent campaign noted that the Illinois Department of Public Health reported 25,196 abortions in Cook County, where Chicago is located, in 2009.
“The potential of a community lies in its children,” said pastor Stephen Broden, another Life Always board member. “If we aren’t having them, our potential is lost.”

The issue of the high rate of abortion among women in the black community coupled with the fact of Planned Parenthood’s facilities being largely located in minority communities, has helped pro-life advocates fuel calls for the organization’s defunding.

Currently a proposal to sever the abortion giant’s financial relationship with the federal government is part of a six-month Continuing Resolution proposed by House Republicans, but opposed by Senate Democrats. A number of pro-abortion Democrats led by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) indicated they would rather see a government shut down than defund Planned Parenthood.

Herman Cain, a black GOP presidential candidate and successful CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, recently made a stir by telling reporters recently that he believed Planned Parenthood should be renamed “Planned genocide.”

Cain said the heavy preponderance of Planned Parenthood clinics in African-American/minority communities, “says to me they are targeting blacks.”

“I’ve talked to young girls who go in there, and they [Planned Parenthood] don’t talk about how you plan parenthood,” explained Cain. “They don’t talk about adoption as an option. They don’t say, ‘Well, bring your parents in so we can sit down and talk with you, and counsel with you before you make this decision.’”

“There’s not any planning other than to abort the baby.”
[Mar 28, 2011, Peter Smith, CHICAGO, LifeSiteNews.com,  http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/black-genocide-abortion-billboards-feature-barack-obama-in-chicago?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=94edf1f3e6-LifeSiteNews_com_US_Headlines03_28_2011&utm_medium=email




‘My Presence Was Peaceful’: After 48 Days in Jail, Arrested Pro-Lifer Speaks Out in Canadian Court

After spending 48 days in jail, pro-life activist Mary Wagner stood trial today for offering assistance to distressed pregnant women in the vestibule of a Toronto abortion facility.  Wagner represented herself in court, reading a statement in what one witness called “a little bit of history being made.”

While the crown argued that the abortion facility should have a right to operate their business without interference from Wagner, in her statement of defense Wagner concentrated on the plight of unborn children and their mothers.

“I stand before you accused of mischief,” Wagner began. She pointed out that the ‘business’ in question “exists almost exclusively for the purpose of destroying children in their mothers’ wombs; under the guise of serving women, helpless babies are killed there, and their mothers are left wounded.”

Although the small courtroom was full and included several pro-abortion activists, there was a hush during Wagner’s presentation.

“I have attempted to reach out to women who are considering abortion as a solution to the difficult circumstances in which they find themselves,” she said. “My presence was peaceful, and stems from an acknowledgment of the fact that a new human life exists from the moment of conception.”

At the conclusion of her statement she asked the judge for a moment of silence for the unborn.  The judge denied the request.

The judge then announced that he disregarded Wagner’s statement since he said it did not pertain to the matter at hand.  He found Wagner guilty of mischief and sentenced her to one year of probation with an order not to go near any abortion facility in Toronto.

Wagner was arrested February 9th after peacefully handing out roses to pregnant mothers entering the abortion centre.  On a small card with each rose, Wagner wrote: “You were made to love and to be loved.”

“Your goodness is greater than the difficulties of your situation. Circumstances in life change. A new life, however tiny, brings the promise of unrepeatable joy. There is still hope!”

At least one couple is known to have left the centre that day, rose in hand, smiling thankfully at pro-life witnesses on the sidewalk outside.

Alissa Golob, leader of Campaign Life Coalition Youth, attended the trial with a group of pro-life supporters. 

Golob told LifeSiteNews that she and her friends felt it was a privilege to be on hand for the trial.  She described the silence that greeted Wagner’s statement and said that it struck awe in the hearts of the pro-lifers present, encouraging them to continue to strive for the right to life of unborn children.
[Mar 28, 2011, John-Henry Westen, TORONTO, LifeSiteNews.com,  http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/i-stand-before-you-accused-of-mischief-arrested-pro-lifer-speaks-out-in-cou?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=94edf1f3e6-LifeSiteNews_com_US_Headlines03_28_2011&utm_medium=email

Killing an Unborn Child is Never the Solution: 78 Argentinean Obstetricians

A group of 78 Argentinean obstetricians and gynecologists have signed a public declaration in favor of the right to life and against proposed legislation to legalize the killing of the unborn in their country, basing their position on the science of human development.

The declaration, called the Manifesto for Life, affirms: “Science teaches that life begins with conception.  To deny this certainty of biology is not an expression of lack of faith, but rather a lack of fundamental knowledge of human genetics.” It adds: “If this truth is also affirmed by religions, it does not for that reason cease to be a strictly scientific truth.”

“From the moment that the ovum is fertilized, a new life begins that is not the life of the father nor the mother, but rather a new human being that develops autonomously,” the doctors continue.

“To affirm that ‘women can do with their bodies what they want’ and therefore have the right to abortion, besides being a presumptuous affirmation, is not in any way supported by science. The embryo is not part of the body of the mother, nor is the fetus an organ of her body: the DNA of the embryo is distinct from its progenitors.

“There are moments in medical practice - we physicians are also human beings - in which, perhaps, health professionals don’t know what to do to resolve the problem of a particular pregnancy. But we know what not to do: to directly kill the child, making ourselves the owners and lords of life and death.”

The physicians counsel that the “most effective strategy” to prevent abortion is “moral and ethical education.”

They say that “it is not sufficient to give information on biological, physiological, and anatomical facts about the human body,” arguing that education should “impart teaching on values, in such a way that new generations adopt a responsible, ordered, and dignified attitude towards sexuality.”

Regarding proposed pro-abortion legislation in Argentina, the manifesto points out that Argentina is the signatory of numerous human rights accords that also protect the unborn.

“The right to life and liberty of conscience are protected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (articles 3 and 18 respectively), of the American Convention on Human Rights (articles 4 and 12.1), in the International Pact on Political and Civil Rights (articles 6 and 18.1), in the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (art. 5.d-liberty of conscience), and in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (articles 1 and 14.1),” the manifesto states. It adds that such accords have an equal status with the Constitution itself under Argentinean law.

The manifesto was published by Nicolás Lafferriere of the Center for Bioethics, the Person, and the Family, on the organization’s website. It can be read here in Spanish.
[29 Mar 2011, M.C. Hoffman, LifeSiteNews.com,   http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/killing-an-unborn-child-is-never-the-solution-say-78-argentinean-obstetrici?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=0d88fc9953-LifeSiteNews_com_US_Headlines03_29_2011&utm_medium=email

Two Women Victimized by Botched Abortions at NAF Centers
As the National Abortion Federation prepares for its annual conference in Chicago this week [April 2011], one of its former board members sent two women to the hospital in separate botched abortion incidents.

Two women were transported for emergency care in one day from the Affiliated Medical Services abortion business located at 1428 North Farwell Avenue in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The condition of the two women is currently unknown. Operation Rescue officials informed LifeNews about the two incidents, which took place on Friday less than two hours apart.

The first ambulance arrived with sirens blaring and lights flashing at about 10:50 a.m. OR indicated. The pro-life participants in a 40 Days for Life prayer vigil witnessed the incident and one person recorded it on his telephone video recorder. Dan Miller, Milwaukee coordinator for 40 Days for Life provided Operation Rescue with the raw video.

After some time, emergency workers emerged from the abortion center with a woman on a gurney as abortion facility escorts held up a blanket or dark sheet to hide the incident from the pro-life witnesses who were documenting it. The woman was rushed to Columbia St. Mary’s Hospital.

At approximately 12:55 p.m., the second ambulance arrived, this time without lights or sirens. The video shows an ambulance of a different color and parked in a different place, leaving no doubt that there were two separate incidents. Again, clinic escorts held up a dark sheet to conceal the woman on a gurney that was loaded into the awaiting ambulance and taken to an unknown location.

“The abortionist cannot hide his dirty work behind ‘sheets of shame.’ While we only see a small fraction of the abortion injuries inflicted upon women, the truth about unsafe clinics and shoddy abortionists continues to come out,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “These are two more urgent reasons why our tax dollars must not fund abortion providers.”

Newman said the abortion practitioner on duty at Affiliated Medical Services at the time was Bernard Smith, a current member of the NAF, who boasts on his website of having “expertise in Quality Assurance and safe clinical practice.”

“Unfortunately, that so-called expertise failed the two women and their babies who landed in the hospital,” Newman said. “Smith sent two women to the hospital. Now it’s time for the authorities to hold him accountable for the injuries he caused. We will be filing a complaint with the Wisconsin Department of Regulation & Licensing based on these two emergency transports.”
[Ertelt | Milwaukee, WI | LifeNews.com | 4/12/11   http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/12/two-women-victimized-by-botched-abortions-at-naf-centers/

Woman Rushed to Hospital in Florida After Botched Abortion
An ambulance rushed to the Presidential Women’s Center abortion center in West Palm Beach, Florida on Saturday to transport a woman to the hospital for emergency care following a botched abortion.

This was the third time recently that a woman was transported to the hospital after a botched abortion at an abortion business affiliated with the National Abortion Federation.

Two women were transported for emergency medical care after failed abortions in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

In this latest case in Florida, the ambulance pulled into the back alley where emergency workers loaded a gurney bearing an injured woman and then it sped away to an unknown hospital emergency room. The woman’s condition remains unknown as well. One pro-life advocate who happened to be at the abortion center to inform women of abortion alternatives photographed the ambulance and watched the scene unfold.

The abortion practitioner on duty at the time was Michael Benjamin, who has a history of Medical Board discipline and has a current public complaint on file, according to the Florida Department of Health. Abortion practitioner Frank Rodriguez is also known to do abortions there, according to Operation Rescue, the pro-life group that provided information about the failed abortion to LifeNews.

“This is not the first time we have seen ambulances at Presidential Women’s Center,” said M. Susan Pine, the president of the local pro-life group FACE Life, Inc., who was at the abortion center at the time.

[Full story at LifeNews.com -- http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/15/woman-rushed-to-hospital-in-florida-after-botched-abortion/  15 April 2011]

Tapes Show Planned Parenthood Injured Woman in Botched Abortion
The audio tapes of a 911 call in Washington state confirms a Planned Parenthood facility in Washington state was forced to rush a woman to the hospital following a botched abortion.

The Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Everett, Washington sent a woman to the hospital in late March. Local pro-life advocate Mary Emanuel was at the abortion facility at the time and snapped pictures of the ambulance that whisked the woman away from the Everett Planned Parenthood.

“We are still investigating as to the severity of the botched abortion and only pray that it was not fatal or caused serious injuries,” she said at the time.

Now, Emanuel has obtained the recording of the 911 call Planned Parenthood officials placed to emergency personnel. In the call, the Planned Parenthood caller identifies herself as “Pamela” and casually tells the dispatcher that abortion center staff “have a patient that is bleeding that we need to transfer to the hospital immediately”.

“We just did an abortion on her,” the staffer tells the 911 dispatcher and she confirmed the patient was “not yet” in shock but asked that the ambulance and emergency responders use the side door of the facility to not draw as much attention.

According to John Hubert of the blog Abortion in Washington, which obtained the tapes and first reported the botched abortion, “The woman was taken to Providence Medical Center’s Pacific Campus, but unlike in other high profile accident cases, Providence refused to comment on the status of the victim, or to indicate if she had recovered from her injuries. Nothing on the call indicated whether the apparent hemorrhaging was from a perforated uterus or colon as in the case of the ongoing lawsuit against Cedar River Clinics which we broke. In that case also the woman was evacuated by ambulance. She ended up having a hysterectomy, rendering her permanently infertile.”

Hubert says the abortion business is so unregulated that women are injured by failed abortions in addition to unborn children losing their lives.

“It is incidents like this that are causing other states around the country to increase the regulation and oversight of the abortion industry to protect women and babies, and to end taxpayer support of Planned Parenthood,” he said. “One might expect this incident to cause Washington State legislators and regulators to revisit their policy of absolute deregulation of abortion, but instead they are looking for ways to give them more money by expanding the Take Charge program, and turning their regulator fire on pro-life pregnancy centers.”

“This is despite the fact that this very same clinic has recently employed a doctor who was disciplined and apparently could not find work providing real healthcare (and is listed as working there to this day), and despite the fact that another Planned Parenthood seems to be employing unlicensed “nurses,” he said.

Hubert says Planned Parenthood officials have refused to identify the abortion practitioner responsible for the botched abortion or the other medical staff it currently employs so that their records and credentials can be checked.

He also criticized Planned Parenthood CEO Christine Charbonneau, who he says is putting the health of women at risk:

Charbonneau, as CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest, owes women all the information they need to make an informed choice about their abortion and their abortionist: name and past history. Even Seattle Medical and Wellness Clinic gives pictures of their “providers”, but no names. Why not? The public is constantly told that “abortion is a private decision between a woman and her doctor.” How can that be true if a woman never knows the name of her doctor, never meets her/him and never consults with her/him?

Planned Parenthood can talk all they want about how they’re supposedly here to “protect women”, but as long as their patients keep leaving out the back door on gurneys and being evacuated via ambulance, it’s going to be increasingly ridiculous.
[Ertelt | Everett, WA | LifeNews.com | 4/7/11,  http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/07/tapes-show-planned-parenthood-injured-woman-in-botched-abortion/

Complaint Filed Against ‘Dirty Dozen’ Texas Abortionists
The Texas Medical Board has now received complaints about the medical practices of twelve Texas abortion providers, called the “Dirty Dozen” by a pro-life watchdog group because of their alleged violation of state and federal abortion laws.

Operation Rescue reports it filed the complaints after a three-month undercover sting of randomly chosen clinics showed the conditions and treatment to which female clients were subjected.

Abortionists named in the complaint include Jasbir Ahlwualia, Arthur John Brock, Robert Hanson, Douglas A. Karpen, Margaret Kini, Pedro Kowalyszyn, Lester Minto, Alan Molson, Robert L. Prince, Brook Randal, Franz Theard, and William West.

Operation Rescue (OR) says they found mishandling of private patient medical records and information, violations of informed consent laws, violations of the 24-hour waiting period required by law, improper removal of bio-hazardous medical waste, the counseling of minors how to flout parental notification laws, and more.

The pro-life group, which conducted the undercover investigation between December 2010 to February 2011 with members of another pro-life group, The Survivors, detailed their findings in a Special Report, which is posted on their website.

“There can be no question that violations have occurred,” said OR President Troy Newman.

“There are questions, however, about whether the Texas Medical Board will act appropriately to protect women and uphold the standard of care. Those questions remain to be answered.”

Newman said the Medical Board has oversight of Texas physicians including abortionists, but he added that other state agencies regulating abortion clinics have also been furnished with materials from the investigation.

There is little wonder that abortion abuses were found at every clinic that was investigated, considering the checkered backgrounds of the abortionists that operate them. At the twelve abortion clinics subject to this investigation, fifteen abortionists were identified as being associated with them.

Of that fifteen, eight abortionists were found to have egregious records of illegal or unethical conduct including the following:

    • Big-money malpractice lawsuits and/or settlements.
    • Lost, revoked, suspended, or surrendered licenses in several states.
    • Current personal injury lawsuits.
    • Medical board actions and corrective orders for professional misconduct.
    • Administrative penalties and fines for failure to comply with state regulations.
    • No hospital privileges.
    • Delinquencies in medical licensing.
    • Federal conviction and ban from Medicaid, Medicare participation.
    • Frequent use of unlicensed surgical assistants.
    • Failure to have a licensed nurse or qualified employee present / absence of administrator
    • Death of female abortion patient.

Of the remaining seven abortionists, for which no previous record could be found, each of them were identified with violations during this investigation.

The investigation found yielded the following evidence, now in the possession of Operation Rescue:

    • Human flesh remains from abortion, illegally dumped in the trash.
    • Non-flesh abortion procedure waste (blood and suction tubes and syringes), illegally dumped in the trash.
    • Urine cups with names and birth dates of patients clearly marked, illegally dumped in the trash.
    • Dozens of sonograms with parental names clearly identifiable, infringing on patient privacy and violating HIPAA.
    • Numerous patient charts, receipts, ledgers, and other private medical paperwork with full names, birth dates, addresses and phone numbers, financial information, procedure details and more.
    • Recorded audio of clinic worker at Whole Women’s Health in McAllen telling the boyfriend of an underage pregnant girl that she will not report him for rape. (In Spanish)
    • Recorded conversations from Women’s Whole Health conference calls of abortionists West, Molson, Randal and Kini making statements mocking informed consent laws, the TX legislature and the TX Dept of Health website with abortion info.
    • Recorded instructions from abortionist West saying it will be “fine” for a woman to come to the clinic for her abortion in less than 24 hours, clearly violating Women’s Right to Know Act which specifies, “After you get this information, your doctor must wait 24 hours before your abortion can be performed.”
    • Recorded audio of supposed “24-hour” right to know conference calls in which the abortionist is unintelligible and does not respond to patients requests to repeat information or speak clearly, and where the abortionist never comes on the line, both of which violate the patients’ legal rights.
    • Recorded conversation with clinic worker in San Antonio instructing a 15-year-old how to get a judicial bypass and avoid the parental consent requirement. [http://www.operationrescue.org/archives/tx-abortion-abuses/]

He said they expect to have more filings as they continue to process data from the investigation.

Operation Rescue says their investigation involved randomly choosing abortion facilities, after which their team would participate in undercover phone calls or pose as abortion-minded women. They also examined and documented materials recovered from the clinics’ trash disposals.

In some cases, clinic workers appeared unconcerned about abetting child sexual abuse. One receptionist advised a caller posing as an older man about how to get an abortion for his underage girlfriend without alerting her parents. A staffer is recorded as saying that all the girlfriend needs to do is get a judicial bypass, and that she has never heard of a case where a judge has turned down a request.

The investigation also found that eight abortionists associated with the clinics had serious past records of illegal or unethical behavior.

“Our investigation focused on what the average woman would experience if she sought an abortion in Texas, and how the abortion clinics appeared and operated on an everyday basis,” explained Newman. “From what we found, women are subjected to a variety of abortion abuses as a matter of routine. Violating the law is standard operating procedure for abortion clinics in Texas.”

The full findings of the OR report -- http://www.operationrescue.org/archives/tx-abortion-abuses/

[25 Mar 2011, Peter Smith, AUSTIN, Texas, LifeSiteNews.com; http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/complaint-filed-against-dirty-dozen-texas-abortionists?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=7e344119aa-LifeSiteNews_com_US_Headlines03_25_2011&utm_medium=email




Abortion Facility Tries to Stop Pro-Life Video with Real Abortion Footage

A screencapture for the promotional video for the Northland Family Planning Centers' promotional video.

A late-term abortion chain has threatened to sue the pro-life Center for Bio-ethical Reform for copyright infringement, because it juxtaposed the clinic’s promotional video with real video of an abortion being performed.

Pro-life blogger Jill Stanek reports that the Northland Family Planning Centers in Michigan are none too pleased that footage of a late-term baby being actually dismembered has been spliced with shots from their advertizing video about how “everyday good women” get abortions.

The CBR video is entitled “The Most Shocking (graphic imagery), Four Minute, Abortion Debate You Will Ever See” and has been posted since January at Pro-lifeTube.com  [WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC -- http://www.pro-lifetube.com/videos/583/the-most-shocking-%28graphic-imagery%29,-four-minute,-abortion-debate-yo ]

A description below the CBR video explains: “This Angel of Light video combats the lies of Northland Family Planning with the horrible visual truth of what abortion is and does to a living baby.”

Stanek says that Northland’s attorneys have sent a cease-and-desist letter to CBR, alleging that posting the video violated U.S. digital copyright laws, because Northland holds the registered copyright to the “Everyday Good Women Choose Abortion” footage. The March 18 letter of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP warns that they could face civil penalties of $150,000 for each posting and potential criminal liability as well.

“Northland is a late-term abortion chain of 3 mills in Michigan that aborts babies up to 24 weeks old. CBR merely showed what that looks like. I thought truth in advertising was a good thing?” remarked Stanek.

The Thomas More Law Center, a Palo Alto-based public interest firm, is representing CBR and told the firm representing Northland that they would be happy to bring the matter to court. The letter from TMLC senior trial counsel Robert Muise asserted that the Northland material in the CBR video fulfills the “fair use” doctrine in US copyright law, and warned Northland would be “reckless” to follow through on “hollow threats to sue them.”

CBR’s Gregg Cunningham explained in a lengthy email quoted by Stanek that they were just giving viewers an opportunity to see what happens “down the hall” from the rosy clinic office of the Northland narrator.

“Without saying a word, we simply show viewers the reality which Northland’s narrator struggles to distort. Is abortion an expression of ‘love’ or a vicious act of violence?”

Cunningham said viewers must decide whether to believe what they hear “or what they see – with their own eyes.”

Read the full details -- http://www.jillstanek.com/2011/03/abortion-clinic-threatens-lawsuit-pro-life-group-responds-make-our-day/
[25 Mar 2011, Peter Smith, LANSING, Michigan, LifeSiteNews.com, http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/abortion-facility-tries-to-stop-pro-life-video-with-real-abortion-footage?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=7e344119aa-LifeSiteNews_com_US_Headlines03_25_2011&utm_medium=email

Front Alley Abortion        

One of the major arguments that feminists use to impose abortion upon our country is that women, especially poor women, are going to get abortions anyway. By providing “safe” facilities to these poor women, we can prevent them from resorting to shady back alley abortion doctors, persons lacking the necessary skills, or environments lacking minimal medical standards. Such operations, they claim, were often botched and lead to the death, not only of the babies, but countless women.
 
It may be true that legal abortion may have managed to diminish the wildly inflated incidence of back alley abortion in America. However, this fact has exposed women, especially poor women, to a much more grave danger: the front alley abortion.
 
As bad as the back alley abortion is, the front alley abortion is much worse.
 
Front alley abortions are those legal abortion mills that operate normally and are open to the public. They have all the appearances of a legitimate business. They may even have nice sounding names like Woman’s Medical Society or similar misnomers.
 
These establishments have all the protection of the government since abortion enjoys legal protection under law. They also have the slavish support of liberals and media who see these mills as essential to “reproductive rights.” Government regulating agencies seem to be more interested in tanning salons than what goes on inside these abortion mills.
 
The appearance of these clinics in the front part of the alley, and not the back, gives them all the appearance of respectability.
 
Protected by the veneer of this respectability and the force of law, some operators have used these fronts as a shield allowing them to commit the most horrible acts with impunity. What goes on behind the closed doors of these front alley clinics can go far beyond anything in the back alley.
 
Of course, the most obvious case is what is now called Gosnell’s House of Horrors, alias Women’s Medical Society, a clinic operated in West Philadelphia by Kermit B. Gosnell, M.D. According to the District Attorney’s report, Gosnell staffed his decrepit and unsanitary clinic entirely with unlicensed personnel, let them practice medicine on unsuspecting patients, unsupervised, and directed them to heavily drug patients in his absence. In addition, he regularly performed abortions beyond the 24-week limit prescribed by law. As a result, when viable babies were born, Gosnell killed them by plunging scissors into their spinal cords. He taught his staff to do the same. Meanwhile, government regulatory agencies turned a blind eye to blatant violations of health codes and practices.
 
Yet it seems Gosnell’s case is not the only one. Other houses of horror have been found. While most do not reach the point of Gosnell’s “House of Horrors,”the blatant disregard for any kind of standards seems to be a typical or systemic characteristic of front alley abortion mills. Indeed, violations of health regulations rules seem to be a common occurrence – and government failure to enforce the regulations as well. Consent laws are often circumvented by operators who secure abortions for minors. As the recent sting operations against Planned Parenthood have shown, many employees appear to have adopted the policy of failing to report abuse to the authorities. Many abortion doctors seem to have a hard time holding on to their licenses – and some workers never had them in the first place.
 
Just recently, the Texas Medical Board, for example, received complaints about the medical practices of twelve Texas abortion providers, called the “Dirty Dozen” by a pro-life watchdog group who claim to have documented violation of state and federal abortion laws. These front alley clinics were chosen at random and pro-life activists say that they found mishandling of private patient medical records, violations of consent laws, violations of the 24-hour waiting period required by law, improper disposal of biohazardous medical waste, the counseling of minors on how to flout parental notification laws, and more.
 
That is to say, behind the shield of the front alley abortion clinic some of the most horrific things still take place. Yet it is not surprising. The nature of the business of abortion is such that it brutalizes human sensibilities. In this sense, every abortion, front or back alley, is a tragic denial of our humanity and will lead to that which is inhuman.
[Written by John Horvat II,  05 April 2011, http://www.tfp.org/tfp-home/fighting-for-our-culture/front-alley-abortion.html ]

Commentary: Cleanliness is... NOT Expected Here
Most of us have heard about Kermit Gosnell and his "House of Horrors" in Philadelphia. 

It was so unimaginably vile in blood and gore, including the  rows of jars of baby feet covering the shelves, that it caused a political tsunami of sorts which washed through not only Pennsylvania abortion businesses, closing many and firing many civic leaders who had allowed this to continue for decades, but then moving to at least two other states scouring away the filth through serious inspections. States without any abortion business regulation are now considering such.

While "pro-choice" people want to paint a rosy picture of squeaky clean abortion centers, in reality, such utopic sites are few and far between, if they really exist at all. When workers kill babies for a living, day in and day out, they are not usually compulsive "Mr. Clean" housekeepers...

The idea that there could be "safe standards" for killing unborn babies is hard to grasp for People of Life; but the fact is that we should work to make sure that every state mandates basic regulations for abortion businesses, at least similar to those already required for ambulatory surgi-centers all around the nation.

People would pitch a fit if they went to one day surgical centers and found blood and other body excrements on the sheets or in the bathroom. 

How long would a hospital emergency room or surgi-center last if it was not pristinely clean and did not maintain the highest level of sanitized instruments and equipment? 

How long should an abortion business last when blood, excrements, dirty floors, trash everywhere, roaches, expired medications, broken equipment, and uncleaned, reused tubing, needles, forceps, and other surgical instruments litter the visual horizon?

Is EVERY abortion business as filthy and horrifying as the Gosnell site? No.
Is EVERY abortion business sanitized as we all hope they are? No.
Are abortion businesses REGULARLY INSPECTED (UNannounced inspections) in every state? No.    
In Most states? No.

What would happen if our surgi-centers were not regularly inspected?
What would happen if our restaurants were not regularly inspected?

The Gosnell Deficiency Report from the PA Health Department, and the Grand Jury report, was close to 300 pages long. An abortion business that has a 68 page Deficiency Report was closed by the AL Health Department in 2010.
How do we get to this point, when NO deficiency report should realistically exceed ONE page in length?

We have arrived at this point because those with money and power have spun a web of deception and confusion. The abortion industry is a multi-Billion dollar INDUSTRY which is NOT regulated, and they like it that way -- they can make MORE MONEY that way.

The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) fights to keep abortion businesses UNregulated. They recently whined that if basic standards for medical facilities were enforced on abortion businesses in Virginia, 17 of the 21 abortion businesses in VA would have to close...

17 of 21 abortion businesses in VA, therefore, would NOT PASS INSPECTION in Virginia.
Yet, we should believe that it's OK for women to go and have INVASIVE SURGERY there...

We have arrived at this point because, simply, power corrupts. Those in positions of political power prefer that kind of power and easy money to the high road of taking a stand for truth and righteousness which would protect the weak and the innocent.

Thomas Jefferson noted that "the care of human life and happiness -- and not their destruction -- is the first and only legitimate object of good government".

As a wise sage has noted, This is the Moment of Truth.
[16 Apr 11, Editor]




Commentary: Is Gosnell the ONLY Abortionist who HARMS WOMEN & Ends up in TROUBLE?
Kermit Gosnell and his 'House of Horrors'
Actual Philadelphia District Attorney's Office Investigative Report (200+ pages, incredibly disturbing):  http://www.phila.gov/districtattorney/PDFs/GrandJuryWomensMedical.pdf

A number of abortion providers associated with Gosnell are presently under investigation. Several have been investigated in the past.

James S. Pendergraft has had his license suspended in Florida (more than once). He owns several abortion businesses in Florida. Now he is doing unlicensed late-term abortions in Washington, D.C.

California abortionist Andrew Rutland surrendered his license early in 2011 after killing an patient who had come for an abortion. He is charged with falsifying medical records, over-prescribing pain killers, and having sex with a patient in his office.

Massachusetts abortionist Rapin Osathanondh was sent to prison for killing a young woman in a botched abortion. He has been banned from ever practicing medicine again.

Over 200 patient records (including names) and bags of fetal remains were illegally dumped in the trash bin behind the Michigan office of abortionist Alberto Hodari. He botched one abortion so badly that the woman had to have her uterus removed. He owns more than one abortion business in Michigan.

A Kentucky abortuary operated by abortionist Hamid Sheikh was shut down and his license suspended, when the state medical board found evidence of fraud, filthy conditions and illegal abortions. A reporter called the place "hellish".

Florida abortionist Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique ordered an employee to throw the body of a baby who survived a late-term abortion onto the roof of his abortion business in a red plastic biohazard bag to prevent the police from finding it.

Abortionist Stephen Brigham owns and operates a chain of abortion businesses in four states, despite having his own medical license suspended in New Jersey. Abortionists working for Brigham have had their licenses suspended as well.

A recent on-going and random investigation in Texas is uncovering many illegal abortion operations.

This is the very tip of the iceberg...

At this time, there are undoubtedly DOZENS of abortion providers around the nation who are being investigated, and multiple more who have been suspended or put on probation for malpractice, botched abortions, fraud, drug abuse, and multiple other reasons.

As Joe Scheidler notes, "Investigate the records of just about any abortionist in the country and it won't be long before you find charges of fraud, malpractice and criminal activity."

In 1978, just 5 years after Roe v. Wade legalized abortion-on-demand in our nation, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a seven-part investigative series called "The Abortion Profiteers" which detailed the unsafe conditions in Chicago abortion businesses. Following that series, two abortion businesses closed, an abortionist lost his license, and a grand jury was convened.   Sadly, 33 years later, conditions in the 685+ abortion industry businesses nationally are just as bad, if not worse.

What Can Be Done?
Increase abortion facility regulations to a uniform level nationally
Require regular, unannounced facility inspections -- at least twice per year
Include stiff criminal and civil penalties if regulations are not followed
Require all abortion providers to complete a nationally recognized abortion certification program, with required CEUs every 2 years
Decrease federal funding for abortion
Require that women receive INFORMED CONSENT prior to an abortion, including information that abortion is linked to breast cancer, and that abortion is linked to premature delivery/birth in subsequent pregnancies
Written Verification that women are not being forced/pressured to have an abortion

Let's challenge states to develop abortion business regulations that will separate & identify the abortion providers-who-really-believe-they-are-helping-women 'sheep' from the ruthless money-sucking 'goats'.

In summary, INCREASE regulations and inspections, and DECREASE federal and state funding. The abortion businesses that are looking for Easy Street will slither off to make money in other ways, with less hassle. The businesses that REALLY CARE about women's health will clean up their acts.

Related:

The Philadelphia Abortion Horror: How Mass Murder Gets a Pass by Michelle Malkin 20Jan2011 --
http://vdare.com/malkin/110120_abortion_horror.htm 

[16 Apr 11, Editor]

  CONSCIENCE

Roe v. Wade Could Ironically Provide Conscience Protections

Roe v. Wade could prove an unlikely source of pro-life conscience protection.

The need to protect conscience rights in the healthcare field has become more acute in recent years, as governments become more involved in healthcare, and as governments and interest groups have argued that providing abortions should be a required part of medical practice.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), for example, has issued ethics opinions which would require doctors to provide abortions despite religious or conscientious objections, if refusal or even referral might interfere with “a patient’s conception of well-being.” California has argued in court that it retains the right to force physicians to provide abortions where needed to protect the “health of mothers”–a category that has been defined very broadly by the Supreme Court to include, among other things, “the distress . . . associated with the unwanted child” and the “stigma of unwed motherhood.”

While the effort in H.R. 3 to create additional statutory protections for providers, which Helen Alvaré recently wrote about for Public Discourse, is laudable, pro-lifers may be ignoring an even more promising source for conscience protection against government coercion: Roe v. Wade itself. Roe and its successor, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, are perhaps the best known examples of the Court’s use of the concept of “substantive due process” to declare constitutional rights that are not actually written in the Constitution.

The Court has described this analysis as a search for “fundamental rights” that are “deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions.” In Casey, the Court focused less on history and more on personal autonomy and self-definition, finding that the Fourteenth Amendment also protects a person’s right to “define one’s own concept of existence . . . and of the mystery of human life” by choosing whether or not to have an abortion. In short, it is clear that under the Fourteenth Amendment the government cannot compel a woman to abort her own fetus–the question asked here is, can it force her to abort someone else’s?

Even asking that question may feel counter-intuitive for most pro-lifers. Pro-lifers have long argued that Roe and Casey were wrongly decided, and that the Supreme Court has no business writing new rights into the Constitution.

Nevertheless, a close examination of the Court’s stated test yields a surprising result: the right to refuse to perform an abortion actually has better historical support, and better satisfies the Court’s stated tests, than the abortion right itself.

Thus, so long as Roe and Casey remain the law, their reasoning also protects the right of healthcare providers to refuse to participate in abortions.

Historically, healthcare providers have generally been free to refuse to perform abortions. At common law, physicians actually had no duty to treat any patient at all, even in an emergency.

While the exact legal status of abortion at common law is the subject of intense debate, there has been no suggestion from historians on either side that providers were forced by the government to participate in abortions.

In fact, even historians supporting the Roe decision acknowledge that abortion was at best tolerated, not expressly legalized, and that the law dealt quite harshly with abortion providers (including imposing the death penalty on the provider if a woman died during an abortion).
Moreover, medical ethics codes for centuries prohibited participation in abortions–an injunction that would be difficult to follow if the state could force doctors to perform abortions.

As states began to liberalize their abortion laws in the years preceding Roe, they provided express conscience rights at the same time.

For example, when New York relaxed its abortion laws in 1971, the state also made it a crime to force anyone to participate in an abortion against his or her will.

Such conscience protections are consistent with the Court’s description of the provider’s role in Roe and in its companion Doe v. Bolton.

Roe acknowledged the variety of views among physicians about abortion, and relied upon the presence of a willing physician, acting in concert with a patient, deciding to perform an abortion. In fact, the Court in Roe expressly refers to the abortion right as, at least in part, a “right of the physician.” The Court in Doe noted that individual and institutional refusals to perform abortions were the subject of “appropriate protection” by state laws. After Roe, both Congress and virtually every state government in the country adopted explicit statutory protection for individuals and hospitals to prevent them from being forced to participate in abortion procedures.

This history shows that the right to refuse to perform an abortion is “deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions.” In fact, the historical basis for a right to refuse is actually far better established than the historical basis for the rights to abortion or to homosexual sodomy. Abortion was illegal for at least the century before Roe, and was likely limited at least at certain stages of pregnancy before that. The Court in Lawrence v. Texas found that non-procreative sex was widely banned. Yet the Court found both of these rights to be eligible for substantive due process protection because it found a practical ability to engage in the relevant conduct.

In each of those cases, the Court took a practice which was actually expressly illegal and deemed it to satisfy the test of being “deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions.”

In contrast, there is no evidence that it has ever been illegal for a physician to refuse to provide abortions. Far from being illegal, refusing to perform an abortion was actually required conduct in many circumstances (i.e., wherever abortion was outlawed). Prosecutions for refusals do not appear to be merely “infrequent” as in Lawrence–they appear to be entirely nonexistent. Those who performed abortions contravened accepted medical ethics, and were punished severely by the government for errors made in the process.

And while Roe and Lawrence both relied on recent liberalization trends–in Roe, the Court noted “about one-third” of the states had changed their abortion laws; in Lawrence, nine states had moved toward abolishing their laws targeting homosexual sex–here virtually all of the states in the union and the federal government have declared their view that the government cannot compel providers to participate in abortions.

They have all done so “in the past half century”–i.e., the period of time the Supreme Court deems to have the “most relevance” in this inquiry–and they did so rapidly upon the legalization of abortion.

This widespread agreement that the government cannot force people to participate in abortions dwarfs any trends cited by the Court in Roe and Lawrence, and confirms that the right to refuse is both deeply rooted and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.

Beyond this historical argument, the Court’s decision in Casey provides additional support for a constitutional conscience right. Casey announced the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of individual decision-making autonomy on certain issues, including abortion. The Court explained that:

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.

The Court further stated that a pregnant woman’s destiny “must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperatives and her place in society.” The Court repeated this view of the Fourteenth Amendment in Lawrence.

While the Court has explained why the fetus gets no Fourteenth Amendment rights–the fetus is not a “person” according to the Court–no similar argument can be made about the healthcare provider. For the “person” performing the abortion, abortion quite directly implicates one’s “concept of existence . . . and of the mystery of human life.”

In fact, even abortion providers who support Roe have indicated that performing abortions can impose serious psychological harms on healthcare providers–an effect that would likely be amplified for a provider who believes the fetus to be an innocent, living human being. There is little reason to believe that the Casey autonomy right protects only the right of the pregnant woman, and not the right of her physician, to have her destiny “shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperatives and her place in society.”

This constitutional argument cannot be trumped by the government’s control over licensing. Indeed, the post-Roe history of near unanimous protection of conscience shows a broad national consensus that licensed medical practitioners, who have willingly chosen their professions, could not be forced to provide abortions.

Nor can the constitutional conscience right by trumped by referring back to Roe and arguing that a conscience right interferes with exercise of the right to choose abortion. The Court has repeatedly made clear that the right recognized in Roe is a right against government interference. This is true with most constitutional rights.

The First Amendment, for example, protects my right to buy a Bible, but it does not mean the government can force any particular store to sell one; Lawrence protects a right to engage in homosexual sodomy, but it surely doesn’t mean the government can force unwilling people to participate. The same is true with abortion.

More than thirty years ago the Court recognized that Roe does not even require the government to pay for abortions; it can hardly be read to include a right to force the government to force unwilling individuals to actually provide them.

Of course, recognition of a constitutional right to refuse in these cases does not necessarily mean the right is absolute. Like the right in Roe, the constitutional right to refuse is a right against the government, not against private employers; pro-life healthcare providers would still need to rely on statutes for protection against private employers. And even where the government is involved, constitutional rights can occasionally be impinged if the government shows the burden is necessary to serve a sufficiently compelling governmental interest.

Still, any such argument in this context would need to begin with a governmental explanation as to why it needs to forcibly conscript unwilling providers rather than providing the service directly by hiring willing providers, by transporting patients to willing providers, or by giving willing providers incentives to operate in under-served communities rather than more profitable urban centers.

In the vast majority of cases, it would likely be impossible for the government to demonstrate that an interest is sufficiently compelling to trump the constitutional right to refuse, yet not quite compelling enough to justify direct government provision of or expenditures for the service.

None of this, of course, resolves the long-running debate about the legitimacy of Roe and Casey themselves.

But it does suggest that, so long as those cases are the law of the land, they must be understood to provide a constitutional basis for the rights of the other undisputed constitutional “persons” in the operating room–the health care providers.

For this reason, in an era of increasing government involvement in health care, pro-lifers in search of conscience protection may find that revisiting Roe might be just what the doctor ordered.

LifeNews.com Note:  Mark Rienzi is Assistant Professor at CUA, Columbus School of Law. This essay is adapted from a longer article titled “The Constitutional Right to Refuse: Roe, Casey, and the Fourteenth Amendment Rights of Healthcare Providers.” This article originally appeared on Public Discourse.
by Mark Rienzi | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 3/22/11   http://www.lifenews.com/2011/03/22/roe-v-wade-could-ironically-provide-conscience-protections/

Illinois Pharmacists Win Key Victory on Morning After Pill

The American Center for Law and Justice today secured a sweeping victory for pro-life pharmacy owners in Illinois after a legal battle lasting six years.

A state court in Illinois issued a decision striking down a state law that compels pharmacy owners to dispense Plan B and other forms of emergency contraception, even if doing so violates their religious or moral beliefs.

In August 2009, a state judge granted the ACLJ’s request for a preliminary injunction in the case of two pharmacy owners, Luke VanderBleek and Glenn Kosirog in the case of  Morr-Fitz, Inc. v. Blagojevich. The case went to trial in March 2010 and a decision today by Judge John W. Belz of the circuit court sitting in Springfield declared that the state law violates the state’s Health Care Right of Conscience Act, the Illinois Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), and the Free Exercise of Religion Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Francis Manion is Senior Counsel for the ACLJ and served as co-counsel for the plaintiffs.

“Today’s decision is a major victory for the rights of conscience,” Manion told LifeNews. “After six long years of litigation, our clients have finally prevailed against a state government determined to coerce them and all pro-life pharmacists into violating their deeply held religious beliefs or give up their livelihoods.  Judge Belz’s decision makes clear that both Illinois state law and the First Amendment will not permit this. This country was founded by people with a strong commitment to religious freedom. That’s why freedom of religion is the first freedom protected in the Bill of Rights. For government at any level to try to run roughshod over that freedom is to abdicate the government’s primary responsibility.”

Mark Rienzi of Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law served as co-counsel in the case.

He commented: “Luke VanderBleek and Glenn Kosirog are competent and caring professionals who have been diligently serving the public for decades,” Rienzi said. “They happen to have a religious objection to one discreet kind of drugs — drugs that they believe interfere with human life at its earliest stages. In a pluralistic society that honors diversity there ought to be room for people like our clients to practice their professions without the threat of government sanctions. It’s significant that the court in this case found that Illinois officials produced no evidence whatsoever of anyone ever being unable to obtain the drugs at issue and that there is no realistic threat of danger to anyone’s health posed by allowing objecting pharmacists to step out of the way. The state’s arguments to the contrary simply did not hold up to scrutiny.”
 
In his ruling, Judge Belz noted that “The government asserts that this Rule serves a compelling interest in timely access to drugs. Yet the government concedes that it had never done anything to advance its asserted interest prior to April 2010. Even as to emergency contraception, the Court heard no evidence of a single person who ever was unable to obtain emergency contraception because of a religious objection.”

Officials with Americans United for Life also commented on the legal victory.

“There is a widespread attack on conscience in America,” said AUL president Charmaine Yoest. “But today an Illinois court ruled that the state cannot target pharmacists simply because of their religious beliefs.”

The complaint alleged that then Gov. Rod Blagojevich violated the conscience rights of pharmacists and pharmacies by requiring them to dispense “emergency contraception” against their religious convictions. As the case has proceeded, AUL’s involvement included two amicus curiae briefs on behalf of national medical organizations in support of the plaintiffs and the conscience rights of all health care providers in the state of Illinois.

In today’s ruling, the court found that the rule was improperly aimed only at pharmacists and pharmacies holding religious convictions. While proponents of the draconian rule claim it is necessary in order to ensure availability of “emergency contraception,” the court noted that not a single person has ever been unable to obtain “emergency contraception” because of a pharmacist’s religious objection.

Yoest commended the state court: “For six years, pharmacists and pharmacies have been bullied by the state of Illinois into choosing between violating their religious beliefs or violating the law. We applaud the Illinois circuit court for permanently striking this unconstitutional rule.”
  http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/05/illinois-pharmacists-win-key-victory-on-morning-after-pill/
[Ertelt | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 4/5/11]

LEGISLATION

Commentary: Planned Parenthood Paying for “Volunteers” to Lobby Congress
Denise Hunnell spotted this posting in the jobs section of Craigslist-Washington DC this morning:

    **Stop the Assault on Women’s Reproductive Rights!**$335-$535/wk (Dupont)
[see this link for a picture of the posting, and for other imbedded links -- http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/06/planned-parenthood-paying-for-volunteers-to-lobby-congress/ ]

Typos aside, this is shocking that the pro-abortion machine has become so desperate for real flesh-and-bone supporters and activists that they are willing to pay people to do what pro-lifers volunteer to do.

The fact that this group is called “Grassroots Campaigns” is quite ironic, considering they are in the business of paying people to “spontaneously” support their cause. In politics we have a word for paying people to fake real supporters: Astroturfing.

But wait, it gets more interesting: this Thursday is Pro-Choice Lobby Day in Washington DC. They promise to “provide training” to people who show up. That’s smart, especially if the people who are showing up are being paid to lobby and don’t know this issue. Maybe the RSVP list looked too thin to the organizers and they decided they needed a little shot in the arm.

But wait, it gets more interesting: could Planned Parenthood be behind this? The advertisement above was uploaded under the name “PP DC CL” (“Planned Parenthood DC?”).

More to the point, if you visit the Grassroots Campaigns website you will meet Allie Diffendal. Allie is their Washington DC canvassing director. Here’s part of her bio:

    Tired of writing newspaper articles and academic papers about the world’s problems, [Allie] traded in her pen for a clipboard and hit D.C.’s streets to get passersby invested in practical solutions. In just two swift months, she championed gay rights for the American Civil Liberties Union, fought for affordable healthcare and women’s legal right to choose with Planned Parenthood Federation of America…

That last organization looks awfully familiar. It turns out Grassroots Campaigns has organized (and presumably hired) “volunteers” for Planned Parenthood in the past.

So, let’s recap: Mere days before a major pro-abortion Congressional lobbying day in Washington DC, an organization that has worked with Planned Parenthood before posts an advertisement named “PP DC CL” in a local Craigslist job section to hire people willing to “fight the anti-choice Congress.”

In other words, this very well may be yet another example of our tax dollars at work paying for Planned Parenthood to pay people to … get us to pay them with more of our tax dollars.

Sounds like another great example for why we need to expose and DEFUND Planned Parenthood.

LifeNews.com Note: Thomas Peters writes for American Papist, a blog at CatholicVote.org where this post originally appeared. It is reprinted with permission.
[Thomas Peters | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 4/6/11;  http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/06/planned-parenthood-paying-for-volunteers-to-lobby-congress/

Virginia Gov. Signs Law Mandating Hospital Safety Standards for Abortion Businesses

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has signed legislation that requires abortion clinics [sic] to follow the same standards for patient safety as hospitals.

The Virginia General Assembly passed the legislation in February after the full Democrat-controlled Senate was forced to vote on the measure. A 20-20 split in the chamber (with two conservative Democrats joining the 18 Republican senators) was resolved when Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling cast the decisive tie-breaking vote.

The state Board of Health has 280 days to craft new regulations for clinics [sic]. The board is scheduled in September to weigh and decide on emergency regulations to be implemented by January 1.

There is currently a vacancy on the Board of Health, and McDonnell’s next appointee could help create a 8-7 pro-life majority. But Olivia Gans of the Virginia Society for Human Life (VSHL) said that there is no way to guarantee that McDonnell’s next appointment to the Board of Health would be pro-life.

“All the board members must be approved by a committee in the Virginia state Senate” which she explained has a pro-abortion majority. Nonetheless, the instructions to the Board in the statutary language, she said, make it very clear that the board will have to follow the will of the General Assembly.

Abortion advocates have complained that as many as 17 out of 21 Virginia clinics could close over the cost of complying with new requirements on hallway and doorway width, staffing, and equipment rules.

Many of these rules are standard safety procedures; the regulations related to hallway and doorway size are designed to help emergency rescuers maneuver in and out of a building in the event of a medical emergency.

“The Virginia Society for Human Life is very pleased that the governor has signed the regulations,” said Gans, who called the regulations “much needed protections for women against the unscrupulous and unregulated abortion practitioners in the state of Virginia.”

She added, however: “What we must remember is that while the clinic regulations can in fact be beneficial towards women’s lives, the reality is that every abortion still stops the beating heart of an unborn child, and we need to continue to work toward greater protective legislation that will directly and completely procure the safety of unborn children.”

NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia Executive Director Tarina Keene denounced the new regulations, saying that it is a “distressing day for the women of Virginia.” She called the regulations “a legally questionable and ethically indefensible political gimmick.” [ed. This coming from the industry that gains substantially from abortion funding...]
[Peter Smith, Mar 29, 2011, WASHINGTON, D.C., LifeSiteNews.com, http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/virginia-gov-signs-law-mandating-hospital-safety-standards-for-abortion-cl?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=0d88fc9953-LifeSiteNews_com_US_Headlines03_29_2011&utm_medium=email
 

Philippines: Reproductive Health-Abortion Bill Fails Again

The controversial “Reproductive Health (RH) Bill” opposed by pro-life groups because it advances a contraception-birth control agenda that could lead to the eventually promotion and advancement of abortion, has failed.

The bill contained several provisions offending pro-life advocates, including one that would have called for a two-child limit similar to the one-child policy in China that has been enforced with forced abortions, coercive sterilizations and other human rights abuses.

The legislation failed to pass on the final day of the legislative session of the Filipino House of Representatives. Western Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that support abortion were furiously campaigning for its passage during “National Women’s Month.” Although the failure to pass the bill in this session is a temporary victory, pro-life organizations and Catholic leaders warn the next session of the federal legislature starts in May and abortion advocates will again be pushing the measure.

“All of the wealthy NGOs who saw this as their best chance to pass the RH bill are discouraged that they still don’t have a majority in this pro-life, pro-family country,” said Rene Bullecer, MD, the director of Human Life International Philippines, said in a statement to LifeNews.com. “Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent, but they have not been able to overcome the power of truth and of prayer. Still, we know that they will not give up and that their pockets are bottomless, so we still have lots of work to do before the next session begins.”

The failure of the measure came after thousands of Philippine Catholics rallied in Manila against the bill the government supported.

Ignacio Barreiro-Carámbula, interim president of Human Life International, also applauded the failure by abortion advocates to move the bill ahead, and he condemned the pressure pro-abortion groups from outside the Philippines used to pressure Filipino lawmakers,

“The arrogance of sterile Western elites trying to tell Filipinos how to be ‘responsible parents’ is truly stunning,” he said. “But Christians are united against the bill...They realize the mortal threat that the RH bill represents to their families and their future, and the more that people learn about it, the more vehemently they oppose it.”

“This is definitely a victory for life and family,” said Monsignor Barreiro. “But it is only temporary — it is not the end of the war. We and our partners will continue to grow the opposition to this destructive bill.”

Philippine President Benigno Aquino supported the bill. He said he opposes abortion but, according to a Catholic News Service report, worried about the country’s population, saying  government officials “cannot close our eyes to the reality of our huge population; that is why the state should address it along with other issues like maternal and child health.”

The bill was killed in 2010 and in previous years as well.
[Ertelt | Manila, Philippines | LifeNews.com | 3/28/11  http://www.lifenews.com/2011/03/28/philippines-reproductive-health-abortion-bill-fails-to-pass/