Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Mississippi abortions plummet over decade

LifeSite News reports, Mississippi Becomes Case Study for Reducing Abortions Through Legislation. "After peaking at 8,814 in 1991, the number of abortions in 2002 fell to just 3,605."

That's still 3,605 too many women climbing onto the abortion table, but nobody can deny that it's an improvement. Well, nobody except a radical abortion advocate.

Self-centered whining

Self magazine recently published a whiny piece about what horrible places CPCs are. LifeNews covered it here. Here was my response to them:

Let's go ahead and say that prolife CPCs are as bad as you say they are. The worst case scenario is that the woman is frustrated and has to make another appointment to get an abortion. How can that even come close to the risks women face walking into abortion facilities, where they can end up comatose, facing a hysterectomy, needing a colostomy, or dead? Where are your priorities?

If you were really concerned about the well being of women, you'd be doing a story on how the National Abortion Federation "safe abortion" hotline promises SAFE abortions, but only requires that members pay dues to get referrals, not that they follow any safety protocols. Ask the mothers of Deanna Bell, Barbaralee Davis, Patricia Chacon, Mary Pena, and other women and girls dead after abortions at NAF member clinics. Investigate the people KILLING women, not the ones ANNOYING them.

Speaking of self-centered whining, there's this whiny turkey who keeps trashed, vacant rental units as shrines to his own real or imagined victimization.

Thursday, December 23, 2004

Poll misrepresents Roe, counts false support

An article on Lifenews.com observes that a recent poll misrepresented the Roe vs. Wade abortion decision to the people it polled, generating an illusion of support for the legalization of abortion after 3 months.

This is how you know a movement is losing -- when the only way it can show that people support it is to lie about what it actually is.

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

"Wrongful Life" suit rejected

According to this article on Lifenews.com, the South Carolina Supreme Court rejected a "wrongful life" suit filed by a woman claiming that she should have been told about her unborn son's brain abnormality in plenty of time to arrange an abortion, and that failing to give her enough time to arrange an abortion forced life on a child who'd have been better off never having been born.

With the decision, South Carolina joins 27 other states that have rejected so-called "wrongful life" lawsuits. Three states, California, New Jersey, and Washington, allow such litigation.

Prolife activists hail this as a victory, but it underscores the need to clearly define what an obstetritian's responsibilities are toward his patients. I've proposed that we need to clearly distinguish between "Hippocratic" physicians -- those who adhere to the Hippocratic oath and who will not kill or recommend death for their patients -- and "Progressive" physicians who place a higher value on either patient choice or quality of life. This would allow those parents who want a chance to reject their unborn child to choose a "Progressive" obstetrician who will share their philosophy of examining the fetus carefully and considering abortion if there appears to be a problem. And parents who want to stand by their unborn child no matter what could choose a "Hippocratic" physician who they know will do everything he or she can to give their baby a chance at life.

Sunday, December 19, 2004

Violence against pregnant women

The gruesome murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnet has people talking about the newly-noted problem of violence against pregnant women, primarily related to men who see killing the woman as a way to avoid fatherhood.

Now -- how will our society approach this? After all, the poster-child of the proabortion movement, Geraldine Santoro, sought her fatal abortion because she feared violence from her abusive ex-husband. The prochoice mantra has been that if a pregnant woman fears violence, she should be quickly and cleanly aborted. The idea of protecting her from her abuser never enters the equation. (You'll note that among abortion advocates, once a woman becomes pregnant, the only thing she has a right to is abortion -- things like restraining orders, shelters, psychiatric care, prenatal care, and so forth, are ignored. Abortion is the cure-all for whatever ails her, regaredless of what her actual wishes may be on the matter.)

Are abortion advocates going to be able to leverage this newly-spotlighted problem into greater support for abortion, even among women who want their babies? Or is this new attention going to show the abortion solution for what it is -- dismissing the woman's concerns and forcing her to surrender her body and her values to the brutal dog-eat-dog philosophy that says might makes right?

Saturday, December 18, 2004

Neal Horsley stole my stuff!

I just found this page today, in which Christian Gallery lifts all of my hard work and research -- and copyrighted material -- on maternal deaths from abortion. You can even check the source code and see that the thief didn't bother to change the metatags! In some cases he left my name in them!

Suggestions for what to do next? I've already written and told him he needs to link to my articles, no repost them on his site without my permission.

What's in a name?

The horrifying murder of Bobbi Jo Stinnett has the media stumbling for words. Her unborn baby was cut from her body and kidnapped.

This story from Fox News, for example, shows how silly it sounds when you try to avoid calling a baby "a baby" because it might offend abortion advocates. Here are some quotes:

"Authorities have charged a woman with killing mom-to-be Bobbi Jo Stinnett (search) and cutting the fetus from her womb."

Okay, at that point the child was still technically a fetus.

Lisa M. Montgomery ... is accused of ... strangling her and taking the woman's premature baby girl.

So far so good -- after being removed, the baby would properly be referred to in this way. But then it gets bizarre:

Montgomery was in possession of the infant believed to be the stolen fetus...

Was this a kidnapped infant or a "stolen fetus?"

[A]uthorities were questioning a man and a woman who were in the place where the baby was found. .... The kidnapped baby, said to be in good health, was taken to a hospital in Topeka, Kan., authorities said.

Now she's a baby again.

Earlier Friday, investigators put out the Amber Alert for the missing fetus ....

Amber Alerts are for kidnapped children. So here a fetus is a child.

Espey said authorities are awaiting DNA testing to confirm the girl is Stinnett's child.

Now she's a "girl" and a "child."

Several pregnant women have been killed in recent years by attackers who then removed their fetuses, in some cases to pass the children off as their own.

According to Roe vs. Wade, fetuses are most assuredly not children.

In the most recent case, a 21-year-old woman was shot to death in Oklahoma in December 2003, allegedly by another woman who pretended the 6-month-old fetus was her child. The fetus died and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

This gets really confusing. Was this a case where the baby died while being removed from the mother, or was this a "fetus ex utero" that died after being prematurely delivered?

I don't know if this is a sign of a good thing or a bad thing. Are we starting to recognize that, at least past viability, fetuses are indeed children? Or are we starting to view newborns as just fetuses that have changed location?

Thursday, December 16, 2004

Medical opinions

Doctors are so often able to make a diagnosis, to predict what sort of outcome a patient can expect, that we forget one thing. When a doctor gives a prognosis, he's doing the same thing the meteorologist is doing on TV every evening: he's trying to predict the future. And that is something no human being has ever been able to do with 100% accuracy. Give a thought to The Limits of Medical Prognostications.

Saturday, December 11, 2004

How to deal with allegations

This piece on nasty allegations about an abortion clinic looks at the three ways we can deal with these allegations:

1. Believe them.
2. Dismiss them.
3. Investigate them.

Myself, I advocate the third. And I think everybody who does investigate allegations should post their findings online. Knowledge is power!

On a more local note, if you hear anything fishy about Jeff Minana of Johnstown, PA, make sure you check it out! The more you learn about him, the more you want to poke him away with a sharp stick.

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

The Fetal Frontier

The Village Voice posted The Fetal Frontier, summarizing a slugfest between Francis Kissling (ex-nun, ex-Catholic, and pretty much the sole member of "Catholics" For Free Choice) and Ellie Smeal of the Fund for a Feminist Majority.

Kissling thinks that the prochoice movement needs to switch to hand-wringing and agonizing over how sad abortion can be in order to win the PR war. Smeal wants a more rah-rah approach that celebrates abortion.

I think they're both right and both wrong. No matter what they do, they'll look pretty heartless -- either because they admit they're killing babies but want to do it anyway, or because they present themselves as CHEERFULLY killing babies.

Let's face it, folks: unfettered abortion is on its way out. Horray!

Sunday, December 05, 2004

Pushed into unwanted abortions

The slogan, "Don't like abortions? Don't have one," doesn't hold water, especially when it comes to supposedly "medically indicated" abortions. The reality of legalization isn't making "needed" abortions safer and more accessible for sick women, or women carrying severely handicapped babies. The realty is women who ordinarily wouldn't resort to abortion being frightened into them by doctors who are giving them inaccurate information.

Deborah Cardamone is fighting to introduce legislation in the US that would protect women from being given bogus information to frighten them into abortions. Debbie knows whereof she speaks: her daughter, Marla, was browbeaten into an unwanted abortion that took her life -- all to abort and "abnormal" fetus that was in all liklihood perfectly healthy!

Thursday, December 02, 2004

Abortion Turns Miracle to Tragedy

Silent No More, and David Reardon, are focusing public attention on the topic of coerced abortion. One of the most heartbreaking cases of coerced abortion is that of Allegra Roseberry, who was tricked into aborting a healthy baby, supposedly to save her own life. The abortion killed her.

Deanna Bell's "Uneventful" Abortion

After a Brevitol overdose killed 13-year-old Deanna Bell, the hospital that referred her for the abortion got an interesting thank you note from the abortion facility. It said that her abortion had been "uneventful."

Uneventful? She DIED!