US Abortion Industry Wants Canadian Doctors Forced to Perform Abortions
Cosmetic Abortion an Ugly Science
Medical Students for Choice: Next Generation of Abortionists
Pro-Life Woman Approach Gets Boost
Man Who Sold Abortion Business a Bogus Malpractice Insurance has been Sentenced
UN Pressuring Philippines to Reduce Population Numbers & Support Abortion
World Bank to Continue Promoting Abortion in Developing Nations After US Drops Opposition
El Salvador “An Army Opposed to Abortion” Says Nation’s President
Missouri Supreme Court Upholds Parental Consent Abortion Law
Utah Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Case Reopened by Federal Judge
Ohio Planned Parenthood Abortion Center Sued Over Incest Case Coverup
Kansas Governor Signs Bill Protecting Pregnant Women & Unborn who are victims of violence
New York Abortion Practitioner Who Sexually Abused Patient Loses License…
US ABORTION INDUSTRY WANTS CANADA DOCTORS FORCED TO DO ABORTIONS. The head of an abortion business trade group that is comprised mostly of American-based abortion facilities wants Canada to change its laws and force doctors there to do abortions. Vicki Saporta, president and CEO of the National Abortion Federation, claims Canadian women are having to wait too long to get one.
The waiting time, she said, comes about because she claims just 15 percent of doctors in Canada are willing to do an abortion — with the rest refusing for professional or personal reasons. Though doctors hold to the Hippocratic Oath and its belief that physicians are meant to heal, not harm or kill their patients, Saprota said they should instead put doing abortions for women who want them ahead of "their own religious and moral convictions."
Her group has called on the Canadian Medical Association to change its policy, which currently allows physicians to opt out of doing abortions.
"We're hearing from women across Canada and from our providers that this is a problem," she told the National Post. "It has reached a critical mass that many women are upset that they haven't been able to get referrals from their physicians."
Saporta claims that making women wait to have an abortion makes them more dangerous, even though early-term abortions cause women significant physical, spiritual and mental health problems.
Dr. Williard Johnston, president of Canadian Physicians for Life, responded to the pro-abortion group's call and said that whether women have a risky abortion isn't up to the doctor.
"It's not within the control of the physician who doesn't want to participate, how much longer the delay will be," she told the Calgary Sun newspaper. "That is entirely the responsibility of the system at large."
Johnston's group wants the CMA to go the other direction and strengthen its policy so doctors aren't pressured or forced into doing abortions or making abortion referrals.
"Now is not the time for us to be weakening the conscience protection for health care workers with the huge changes we are facing with technological capabilities," he said.
CMA President Dr. Colin McMillan defended the group's current policy saying it does not "treat women unfairly or impede their access to critical health care." The CMA's abortion policy was passed in 1988 and is "re-confirmed" every year, with the most recent vote in February. [13-14May07, LifeNews.com, Ertelt, Ottawa, Canada]COMMENT: Canada — trying to set precedent by forcing doctors to have to do/refer for abortions (in a socialized medical system). This would provide leverage when they go after American physicians with the same demands…AAPLOG, 23May07]
COSMETIC ABORTION AN UGLY SCIENCE. In England, it now seems, a baby can be aborted for not being pretty enough. Maybe this was inevitable as genetic screening and techniques such as ultrasound advanced.
The London Daily Telegraph Web site reports that the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has licensed a fertility clinic to screen embryos for a genetic defect that causes a severe squint.
A squint? The aborting of babies with undesired characteristics is hardly new. In China, where people have a strong preference for boys, so many female babies have been aborted that a serious imbalance between the sexes exists. Babies with fatal conditions have been aborted. We now seem to have invented cosmetic abortion.
The man to whom the license was granted, professor Gedis Grudzinskas, was asked whether he would screen babies for hair color. He replied that hair color "can be a cause of bullying, which can lead to suicide. With the agreement of the HFEA, I would do it."
As medical genetics advances, it will become possible to predict more and more characteristics of an unborn child — hair color, height, likelihood of obesity, perhaps intelligence. Presumably, it will then be possible to try again and again until you get your ideal baby. This is strange territory.
The list of techniques lengthens: artificial insemination, sperm banks, in vitro fertilization, DNA screening for abortion and cloning just around the corner. Selective abortion might be called passive genetic engineering. Though it is further in the future, design from scratch by genetic manipulation looks
possible in principle.
The idea of matching a child, or a soon-to-be child, against a checklist to decide whether to keep it struck me as repellant, but I wasn't sure why. I asked several friends what they thought. Their reaction was pretty much mine. One woman made a face and just said, "Creepy." Yes, but why?
These people weren't against abortion in general. If abortion is all right because you don't want a baby at all, why is it unsettling to have an abortion because you don't want a particular baby?
Increasing biological knowledge raises a lot of ethical questions that didn't exist before. For example, it used to be that if you suffered severe brain damage in an accident, you died. Today, medical machinery can keep a body alive when the brain is dead. It might make sense to unplug the victim when there is clearly no one home, but that's euthanasia, and where do you draw the line?
Similar questions come up in the case of premature babies. In the past, babies more than somewhat premature just died. Today medical science can keep extremely premature children alive, including crack babies with grave defects. Some of them are nightmarishly deformed. Where do you draw the line?
Mr. Grudzinskas further said that "he would seek to screen for any genetic factor at all that would cause a family severe distress."
Here is another step into a curious future. First, screening tried to eliminate babies who had some inevitably fatal disorder, like cystic fibrosis. Then Mr. Grudzinskas gets a license to screen for a condition that would be unpleasant, specifically an ugly squint. Now he wants to screen for anything that might make mommy and daddy unhappy. Maybe the child screens to be healthy and in fact brilliant, but maybe daddy can't stand nerds, or the DNA says the child might be overweight. This makes abortion begin to sound like a branch of psychotherapy, and child-bearing like shopping. "Creepy" isn't a scientific term, but maybe it fits. [19May2007, http://www.washingtontimes.com/technology/20070518-100822-2536r.htm, By Fred Reed; N Valko RN, 23May07]
MEDICAL STUDENTS WEIGH BEING NEXT GENERATION OF ABORTION PRACTITIONERS. Taking the life of one patient and likely hurting the other isn't the idea most medical students have in mind when they're thinking of a specialty or career after college. But for some pro-abortion students, becoming an abortion practitioner is not only an option, but, they feel, an obligation because of declining numbers. Plastic surgeons are often looked down upon by the rest of the medical community but there are more than three times as many people doing cosmetic surgeries as there are abortion practitioners. That's how frowned upon the profession is within the medical world — and the number is on the decline.
The Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood — the nation’s largest abortion business — estimates that there are about 1,800 abortion practitioners in the United States; but the number has fallen about 37 percent from 1982-2000 for a variety of reasons.
Most abortion practitioners are older and retiring, many come from the bottom ranks of medical school and have had run-ins with state health departments over botched abortions or health violations, others have converted to a pro-life position.
Looking at the equation from the pro-abortion side, groups like Medical Students for Choice say the decline is the result of stepped up protests against abortion practitioners at both the abortion centers as well as their homes. And abortion advocacy groups say the decline has been caused by more state regulations on abortion facilities to ensure that women's health is better protected and to reduce the number of abortions.
But two students at the very liberal University of Colorado in Boulder say they're likely going to enter the field.
Fourth year medical student Megan Lederer, who is 30, told the Los Angeles Times that she's being drawn into considering becoming an abortion practitioner because of horror stories groups like NARAL still perpetuate about women dying from illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade.
Never mind that women still die from abortion despite its legality and that the abortion advocates at the time cooked the books.
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, NARAL's co-founder before Roe was handed down in 1973, admits his group lied about the number of women who died from illegal abortions when testifying before the Supreme Court in 1972.
"We spoke of 5,000 – 10,000 deaths a year," he has said previously. "I confess that I knew the figures were totally false [but] it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics?"
Still, Lederer admits she's drawn to the practice because abortion is an act of defiance — a way to thumb her nose at a society that is increasingly pro-life. "It's like when your big brother says you can't do something," Lederer said. "That just makes you want to do it even more."
If she becomes an abortion practitioner, her decision would be particularly ironic as her father is a pediatrician. But the woman's studies major whose mom bought her a book on Gloria Steinem says she may be needed to do abortions for the next generation of women. She attended a recent MFC conference with abortion practitioners and other medical students and was amazed that people who could otherwise be respected physicians could make a profit and career in the abortion business.
Meanwhile, third-year medical student Lysie Cirona, told the Times that her possible decision to devote her medical career to taking the lives of unborn children is a backlash at the Supreme Court's recent ruling upholding the federal ban on partial-birth abortions. "It wasn't on my radar screen" a year ago, Cirona told the newspaper, but now she envisions herself flying to states like Nebraska or North Dakota to do abortions because large portions of the state don't have abortion centers.
Cirona's roommate, Michelle Cleeves, told the Los Angeles paper that she's drawn to becoming an abortion practitioner because doing simple things to promote abortion — voting for candidates or putting a bumper sticker on her car — are no longer enough. "It doesn't matter what you believe if you don't back it up with action," she said. "The right to abortion doesn't mean anything if women don't have access."
Access is what abortion advocates desire most — not just in terms of the number of abortion centers but the number of medical school programs where doing an abortion is part of the curriculum. Lois Backus, executive director of Medical Students for Choice, says that j
ust 20 out of 400 family practice residencies include abortion training. It appears likely that the number will have a direct correlation with the number of abortion practitioners in the future. [22May07, Ertelt, LifeNews.com Denver, CO]
PRO-LIFE'S PRO-WOMAN APPROACH GOT BOOST FROM ABORTION RULING. Key leaders in the pro-life movement see the Supreme Court's recent ruling upholding the partial-birth abortion ban as the latest step in proving that pro-life doesn't mean anti-woman. Some see the decision as validating the assertions pro-life advocates have made in the last several years that abortion hurts women. For the pro-life community, opposing partial-birth abortions makes common sense.
A partial birth abortion medical description sounds something akin to a horror film — birthing a baby most of the way from her mother's womb, puncturing her skull, and suctioning out the contents of her skull. The abortion procedure itself is revolting to all but the most hard-core pro-abortion advocates but it also makes no sense from the standpoint of women's health.
Dr. Anthony Levatino, a Las Cruces, New Mexico OBGYN who formerly did abortions in New York, says a partial-birth abortion is a three day long process and would never be a medical procedure a doctor would need to use to protect a woman's health.
"The way you end a pregnancy to save a woman's life is to deliver the (baby)," Levatino said. "If you wait three days to do a partial birth abortion, she's going to end up in the morgue."
That's a point that pro-life advocates across the board say not only refutes the arguments of abortion advocates that partial-birth abortions ought to remain legal but shows that they are more in tune with the concerns of women than groups like Planned Parenthood or NARAL.
“We think of ourselves as very pro-woman,” said Wanda Franz, president of the National Right to Life Committee, told the Associated Press. “We believe that when you help the woman, you help the baby.”
While NRLC highlights the pro-woman arguments associated with the pro-life position, other groups like Feminists for Life take the point even further. The group has championed the argument since its founding in the early 1970s and its "Women Deserve Better" signs are now a staple of any pro-life event.
The group has made a point of not only showing abortion hurts women by causing a variety of medical and mental health problems but works to reduce the so-called socioeconomic need most women say they have for an abortion by helping them find other options.
On college campuses, pro-life groups sing the praises of Feminists for Life for their ability to help them organize pregnancy resource forums or giving them a means of communicating with a culture that normally knee-jerks away from the standard "pro-baby" arguments the pro-life movement has relied on since Roe.
The pro-woman, pro-life perspective has made its way throughout the pro-life movement and even state legislators are embracing the concept that the pro-life position embraces both mother and child.
When the state of South Dakota passed an abortion ban that would have been a direct attack on the Supreme Court's landmark abortion ruling, it released a several-dozen page report on the state of abortion.
The report could have been filled with polemic remarks condemning abortions, the women who have them or the practitioners who do them. Instead, page after page of the report highlighted the various ways abortion has hurt women and cited the commentary of thousands of women who know firsthand how abortion destroyed their lives.
Allan Parker, the head of the Justice Foundation, a Texas-based pro-life law firm that helped organize the testimonies for the South Dakota legislature, talked with the Associated Press about the direction the pro-life movement is headed based on the pro-woman and post-abortion perspective.
He compared the newer direction to the approach taken by the anti-smoking community. “We’re kind of in the early stages of tobacco litigation,” Parker said. Parker also pointed out how Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority in the partial-birth abortion case, cited a Justice Foundation brief in his decision.
"It seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained,” Kennedy wrote. As a result, “The state has an interest in ensuring so grave a choice is well informed.”
He pointed out that women who have abortions suffer “regret,” “severe depression,” “loss of esteem” and other ills. "Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow."
“Thirty-three years of real life experiences,” the foundation had said in the amicus brief, “attests that abortion hurts women and endangers their physical, emotional and psychological health.”
But while the pro-woman tone of the pro-life movement resonates with the millions of women who passionately regret their abortions and would do anything to talk their sisters out of having one, it falls on deaf ears in the pro-abortion ranks.
“It’s motivated by politics, not by science, not by medical care, and not for the purposes of compassion," NARAL president Nancy Keenan told AP about the pro-woman direction.
However, the words of the women themselves appear to prove otherwise.
Georgette Forney [dir, Anglicans for Life; head, Silent No More Awareness Campaign that helps post-abortion women speak out] could have easily been an abortion advocate. She fits the profile of many of the leading pro-abortion spokeswomen — articulate, well-educated, socially astute, an Episcopalian, and hailing from an East Coast state.
But her abortion eventually led her to the pro-life movement and, once there, Forney became one of the leaders in changing the tone to promote the concerns of women.
"This is not … about abortion politics as usual, it's about reaching out to people who are struggling after an abortion and don't know help is available," Forney says.
She then sums up the argument and makes the cases that could eventually topple abortion: "It's also about helping the public understand that reproductive rights aren't really right for women." [22May07, Ertelt, LifeNews.com Washington, DC]
MAN WHO SOLD ABORTION BUSINESS BOGUS MALPRACTICE INSURANCE SENTENCED. A man who sold fraudulent medical malpractice insurance to a North Dakota abortion business has been sentenced to nearly six years in prison and has had to relinquish considerable amounts of money and property. However, the man sold the bogus insurance to other abortion facilities, potentially putting women at risk.
William Ledee III, a 64 year-old Atlanta resident, sold the fraudulent insurance to the Fargo Red River Women's Clinic abortion facility — the only abortion business in the state.
Ledee will head to prison in Atlanta for five years and 10 months, Patrick Crosby, a spokesman for federal prosecutors, told AP. Crosby also said Ledee will forfeit $10 million in cash and real estate — including a home in Hilton Head, South Carolina.
Ledee's company, Professional Liability Insurance Co., advertised medical malpractice coverage but had no loss revenues other assets to pay out claims. The businessman pled guilty last August of wire fraud, mail fraud, interstate transport of money taken by fraud, money laundering and using false financial statements.
The North Dakota Insurance Department began investigating Ledee in 2004 and Insurance Commissioner Jim Poolman issued a citation prohibiting Ledee from doing business in the state.
Poolman told the abortion facility to release its medical malpractice insurance records to the state after it was found that the facility had contracted with the bogus company. Red River wouldn't comply with the request and Poolman obtained a subpoena for the records.
Poolman's findings prompted concerns about abortion centers putting women at risk by not being able to cover legal claims after botched abortions. PLIC was told to quit doing business in the state of Washington because it is considered an insurance scam selling false insurance policies.
Other states, including Florida, Alabama, Illinois Mississippi, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Texas have prohibited PLIC form operating there.
Pro-life leaders expressed their concerns after the president of an abortion business network admitted that the fraudulent malpractice insurer was widely used among abortion facilities nationwide.
"The entire abortion industry is based on fraud and deception, and it's the clients — women — who get taken," Wendy Wright, Senior Policy Director for Concerned Women of America told LifeNews.com at the time.
"The latest revelation that abortion clinics gain other's confidence by using a bogus malpractice insurance company says more about the abortionists than the fly-by-night scam artists," Wright said. "The bogus company takes money, but abortionists take babies'
lives, wound women's bodies and souls, and charge for the service."
Her comments came after Jane Bovard, president of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers and owner of Red River, told state officials that Professional Liability Insurance Company, also known as Unimed, has issued malpractice insurance policies with many abortion businesses.
Vicky Conroy of Legal Action for Women told LifeNews.com that abortion practitioners rate on the high end of malpractice risk indexes, which leads to high premiums.
Others may list a different specialty, such as dermatology, to obtain less expensive premiums, low-cost insurers, as Unimed advertises itself. Conroy said the use of fraudulent malpractice insurance adds insult to injury for women who obtain abortions, as it adds another complication to the difficult task of collecting on malpractice suits against abortion practitioners.
In her experience of representing women hurt by abortion, the abortion practitioner's assets are in other names or in offshore accounts, making it impossible to collect, even after winning the lawsuit.
Related: Legal Action for Women (LAW) – http://www.legalactionforwomen.org
Concerned Women for America – http://www.cwfa.org
[21May07, Ertelt, LifeNews.com, Atlanta]
UN PRESSURING PHILIPPINES TO REDUCE POPULATION NUMBERS, SUPPORT ABORTION. Manila, Philippines (LifeNews.com) — The United Nations is placing pressure on the Philippines to reduce its population numbers and that could mean the island nation reversing its pro-life laws that prohibit abortions. However, the strongly Catholic country has turned back previous efforts to weaken its protective laws. A representative of the United Nations Population Fund told the Filipino government that it should adopt the agency's Millennium Development Goals to eradicate poverty and hunger.
However, the UNFPA has been involved in China's family planning program that prohibits couples from having more than one child and has resulted in forced abortions and sterilizations as well as significant legal and political harassment. China instituted its policy for same anti-poverty reasons. Suneeta Mukherjee, UNFPA representative to the Philippines told the nation that it must do more to promote "women’s rights … including reproductive health and family planning.”
The UNFPA claims that about half of all of the pregnancies in the Philippines are unplanned and would like to do more to promote birth control usage there. In March, pro-life advocates in the country celebrated the defeat of a bill that would have prohibited families from having more than two children each. The bill would have imposed up to six months imprisonment for families not upholding a reproductive health care agenda. [14May07, LifeNews.com]
WORLD BANK TO CONTINUE PROMOTING ABORTION IN DEVELOPING NATIONS AFTER US DROPS OPPOSITION. An attempt by the United States to get the World Bank out of the population control business has failed after opposition from EU countries led the United States to back down. On Tuesday, the World Bank approved a new health policy retaining support for abortion after the United States dropped its insistence that the Bank which is funded primarily by the United States, halts its promotion of abortion.
The Bush Administration sought to insert language in the health policy update which would distance it from forcing abortion on recipient cou
ntries. The language would have asked countries to provide "age appropriate access to sexual and reproductive healthcare" rather than the currently worded "reproductive health services" which include abortion.
In an April 19 letter, a copy of which was obtained by LifeSiteNews.com, Bank Directors from Belgium, Switzerland, France, Germany and Norway demanded that the bank continue its coercive population control policy. (see the letter here: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007_docs/worldbankmemo.pdf )
World Bank sources told Reuters that the United States did not formally submit any objection to the strategy by a midnight deadline on Monday. Instead, reports Reuters, the United States said it would note its concerns about the language referring to underage sex and access to abortion in the official minutes of last week's board discussion.
A World Bank press release on the new health policy says it intends to continue to promote population control. "In its new strategy, the Bank commits itself to work on population issues in countries with high unmet needs in sexual and reproductive health," says the release. The release says explicitly that the Bank will be "providing financial support and policy advice for comprehensive sexual and reproductive health systems and care, including family planning." And further that it will be "generating demand for reproductive health information and systems."
Population Control expert Stephen Mosher, the founder and director of the Population Research Institute was disappointed with the development. He was upset at the Bush Administration's "failure to stay the course" on the issue.
Mosher noted that World Bank documents report that the organization is in fact funding a lobby effort for abortion. In Africa, he quoted from a World Bank report, Word Bank projects have included "mobilizing public awareness and political support for abortion and other reproductive health services." Thus, he said they are lobbying for abortion. "So World Bank money is going directly to lobby for the legalization of abortion, something that most Americans would find offensive."
Beyond offending Americans, promoting population control in the developing world is highly offensive the majority of the populations in those same countries. "The World Bank representative of the United States wanted to do the right thing and take out these reproductive health programs that are so offensive to developing world sensibilities," Mosher told LifeSiteNews.com.
"I had here in Washington representatives from a dozen Latin American countries two weeks ago, people in those countries are very offended by these programs for multiple reasons, and yet we continue to run roughshod over their values, over their traditions, over their moral convictions."
Mosher noted that the US-controlled World Bank has spent much of its resources designated for the developing world on population control rather than on the real needs of these countries. A 2000 World Bank report notes that it had already spent 2.5 billion dollars on population control programs the world over.
"A true concern for women in the developing world would be taking into concern their own desires," said Mosher. He explained that a survey of women in the developing world found so-called reproductive health care a very distant desire compared to immediate needs.
"We need to be standing up for the women in developing countries who say 'we need clean drinking water, we need penicillin, we need antibiotics for our children when they become stricken with infectious disease, we need inoculations, we need vitamin tablets'," he said. "'We don't need your family planning programs, we don't need your so-called reproductive health care, we don't need your population stabilization programs.'"
Mosher concluded saying that the continued US push for population control is at the heart of some of the anti-US sentiment coming from the developing world. "It's very obvious to me," he said, "that this is an aspect of US foreign policy that is deeply resented around the world and has made it difficult for us to achieve our other aims like promoting democracy and economic development."
Related: European Nations Demand World Bank Continue Forcing Abortion on Developing Nations — http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/apr/07042509.html
The UN, the IMF, the World Bank, and abortion
http://www.theinterim.com/1999/jan/20financial.html
WORLD BANK URGING PRO-ABORTION CURRICULUM IN NIGERIA
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2002/sep/02090906.html
US Government De-Funding of UN Population Fund
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/aug/050826a.html
[2May07, JH Westen, DC, LifeSiteNews.com]
EL SALVADOR "AN ARMY OPPOSED TO ABORTION" SAYS NATION'S PRESIDENT: Europeans at World Bank attempting to force developing countries to accept abortion to get loans. Comments from El Salvador’s President, Elias Antonio Saca, have challenged international abortion and population control agencies who are targeting his country. “We are an army of defenders opposed to abortion,” Saca said in response to the approval of legalized abortion in Mexico City.
In April, it was revealed that European interests at the World Bank are attempting to force developing countries such as El Salvador to implement abortion in exchange for loans. In an April 19 letter, Bank Directors from Belgium, Switzerland, France, Germany and Norway demanded that the bank continue its coercive policies requiring strict population controls.
El Salvador remains defiant. “Those of us who love life, those of us who believe in life cannot be in favor of abortion in any form,” the president said. Saca [is grateful] that the con
stitution supported the right to life, and “Our leaders are opposed to abortion.” He warned, however, that there are still those in El Salvador’s government who “believe in these kinds of things, in this kind of dangerous modernism.”
He…called abortion “a crime” and said that some have "gone even further and have called it terrorism, because it is the killing of a baby in the womb of its mother, it is true terrorism.”
Related: New York Times Caught in Abortion-Promoting Whopper – Infanticide Portrayed as Abortion – http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/nov/06112806.html
European Nations Demand World Bank Continue Forcing Abortion on Developing Nations
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/apr/07042509.html
[2May07, H. White, San Salvador, LifeSiteNews.com]
MO SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS PARENTAL CONSENT ABORTION LAW. The Missouri Supreme Court last week upheld a state law requiring teenagers seeking an abortion to get their parents' permission beforehand. Pro-life lawmakers and groups strongly supported the law saying that teens must get the approval of their parents for numerous other activities but not abortion. They also hoped the law would help to further reduce the number of abortions in Missouri. The state has seen its numbers drop over the last two decades following the enactment of pro-life laws and vigorous educational campaigns. The law, approved in September 2005, also includes a provision that allows someone to file a lawsuit against anyone who helps a minor obtain an abortion outside of Missouri without parental or judicial consent. Backers of the law hoped the provision would help curb the number of teenagers that are taken just over the border in large cities like St. Louis and Kansas City. The Hope Clinic For Women, an abortion business in Granite City, Illinois, a St. Louis suburb, has long been criticized for helping teenagers break the Missouri notification law and promoting secret abortions in advertising there. [8May07, Jefferson City, MO LifeNews.com]
UTAH PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTION BAN CASE REOPENED BY FEDERAL JUDGE. A federal judge has agreed to reopen an old lawsuit abortion advocates filed against the state's ban on partial-birth abortions so a decision can be rendered and the law take effect. The ban was on hold until after the Supreme Court issued its recent decision upholding the constitutionality of the federal ban. The Utah Attorney General's Office filed a motion in U.S. District Court on Monday asking that the ban be validated. It asks that the injunction be lifted and that the state's partial-birth abortion ban be immediately enforced. Judge Paul Cassell ruled on the motion on Tuesday and his decision likely will mean that the partial-birth abortion ban will go into effect. That's because abortion advocates don't plan to continue the fight. "We are not challenging this particular law any further," Karrie Galloway, director of Planned Parenthood of Utah, told the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper. "It is futile." Assistant Attorney General Jerrold Jensen says the Utah ban is similar to the federal one but is important to have on the books because it makes it easier for state and local officials to prosecute violations. If PPU and the Utah Women's Clinic abortion facility, the original parties in the lawsuit, agree in writing to lifting the injunction, the ban will go into effect. Jensen said he expected that to happen in the next few weeks. Cassell ordered both sides to issue legal papers in the matter by May 30, which is when the case could be closed and the law authorized. [10May07, Salt Lake City, UT, LifeNews.com]
OHIO PLANNED PARENTHOOD ABORTION CENTER SUED OVER INCEST CASE COVERUP. A suburban Cincinnati Planned Parenthood has been sued by a teenage girl who accuses it of covering up her sexual victimization by her father. Under Ohio law, doctors, nurses, teachers and other professionals are required to report alleged sexual abuse to authorities and the teen says that didn't happen in her abortion case. The unnamed girl filed the lawsuit in Warren County Common Pleas Court on Wednesday saying she told Planned Parenthood staff about the incest. Abortion business officials told the Associated Press they hadn't seen the lawsuit yet and couldn't comment on it but added that someone at the facility would have contacted authorities after learning of any possible sexual abuse. "We would call and report as required by law," Becki Brenner, Planned Parenthood's Southwest Region president and chief executive officer, said. Under the lawsuit, the teenager says Planned Parenthood's failure to report the incest to police resulted in another 18 months of sexual abuse at the hands of her father. According to AP, the girl eventually told someone else about the problems, leading to her father John Blanks Jr's prosecution and a five year prison sentence. The lawsuit claims Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio uses a "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to sexual abuse but Brenner claimed "not part of the training procedure and it's not part of our protocols." [11May07, Cincinnati, LifeNews.com]
KANSAS GOVERNOR SEBELIUS SIGNS BILL PROTECTING PREGNANT WOMEN & UNBORN WHO ARE VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE. The law is targeted at those who would attack someone like Laci Peterson and her unborn son Conner, who were killed in California and brought national attention to the epidemic of violence against pregnant women. Sebelius signed the measure without comment as part of a broader package of criminal law provisions, but state pro-life group Kansans for Life was happy with her decision. "Mother's Day came early for thousands of Kansans today because criminals who attack pregnant women can no longer get away with murder–literally–in Kansas," Mary Kay Culp, the group's director, told LifeNews.com.
The law is known as Alexa's law and the final House vote was 97 to 27 and the Senate approved it on a 26-14 vote margin. The legislation would allow two charges when a criminal kills both a pregnant mother and her unborn child in an act of violence. Current state law doesn't allow prosecutors to hold attackers accountable for both crimes. The bill is known as Alexa's Law and is named after teenager Chelsea Brooks and her baby Alexa who were both murdered. Chelsea's family was disturbed to learn the state had no law charging the attacker with killing Alexa. [11May07, LifeNews.com, Topeka]
NEW YORK ABORTIONIST WHO SEXUALLY ABUSED PATIENT LOSES LICENSE. A New York state appeals court had ruled against giving an abortion practitioner back his license who was accused
of having sex with a patient at his office and a local hospital. Akiva Abraham has also been accused of falsifying medical records and misrepresenting himself on his web site.
The Appellate Division of state Supreme Court ruled that it found nothing warranting the return of Abraham's medical license. It also ruled against his claim that two expert witnesses in the case violated federal confidentiality laws and the doctor-patient relationship, according to an Albany Times Union report. "In short, that which petitioner does not contest alone supports the finding of license revocation," the court said.
Court records show that Abraham, who practices in Clifton Park, was accused of having sex with a 25 year-old patient suffering from anxiety and depression on the same day he was slated to do an abortion on her. The newspaper reported that he kept the sexual relationship going for five months and forced her to have sexual relations with him on at least one occasion. The court records also showed that Abraham lied to a state health department investigator by denying the sexual relationship and engaged in several fraudulent acts, including falsifying his medical affiliations on his web site. [20April07, Albany, NY LifeNews.com]