Archive for the 'Health Issues' Category

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America will cut ties with its San Francisco affiliate office, Planned Parenthood Golden Gate, as of September 3, apparently due to serious financial mismanagement, as its most recent documents filed with the IRS showed a loss of $2.8 million!

Planned Parenthood Golden Gate is probably best known for its infamous 2005 video “A Superhero for Choice,” featuring Dianysis, a “superhero” modeled on PPGG’s CEO Dian Harrison. The video — which PPGG pulled from its website soon after posting it — features, among other things, Dianysis drowning an abstinence educator in a garbage can and blowing up pro-life demonstrators: (more…)

We recently got a question by e-mail from someone who touched on a topic that’s somewhat related to Elizabeth’s “Women Will Die” post from earlier this week.

The e-mail asked if we knew what percentage of abortions are performed for the health of the mother, and among these, how many are done because the life of the mother is threatened?

Since these questions are ones that are fairly commonly asked, I’ve included my reply below.

Abortion and the Health/Life of the Mother

Dear Friend,

Thanks for writing.

There isn’t a short answer to this question.

The statistics that I’ve come across — such as on this page from the pro-life group Center for Bio-Ethical Reform — which cites stats from the Guttmacher Institute, which is closely affiliated with the U.S.’s leading abortion provider, Planned Parenthood — indicate that “6% of abortions occur because of potential health problems regarding either the mother or child”, but it doesn’t break the figure down further [emphasis added].

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There’s a beautiful article on LifeSite today about a one-of-a-kind community of nuns:

The Little Sisters Disciples of the Lamb are a contemplative religious community in France that enables girls with Down syndrome to respond to a religious vocation.

The tiny community, founded in 1985 and based in Le Blanc, in the diocese of Bourges, is made up of seven sisters, five of whom have Down syndrome.

In a world where up to 90 percent of Down syndrome children are aborted, the Prioress of the Little Sisters Disciples of the Lamb says the order exists, “To allow those who have the ‘last place’ in the world, to hold in the Church the exceptional place of spouses of Jesus Christ. To allow those who depend on others for their everyday life to take in charge, in their prayer, the intentions that are entrusted to them. To allow those whose life is held in contempt to the extent of being in danger from a culture of death, to witness by their consecration to the Gospel of Life.”

The possibility of young women with Down syndrome being enabled to realize their religious vocation depends on the support of sisters without the disability, who have responded to a call to consecrate themselves to God with their disabled sisters and to form one community with them.

I encourage you to read the whole thing — there’s a good chance it may be the most uplifting story you read today.

Last night’s vote passing the President’s health care overhaul in the House of Representatives was a big loss. But now that the bill has been passed, how does it change things for pro-life activists?

Not much, according to Ann Scheidler, Vice President of our parent organization, the Pro-Life Action League. And I agree with her. Check out the entry she posted today on the League’s Hotline blog.

Unborn babies are still being killed all over America today, just like they would be if the vote had gone the other way yesterday.

So our task remains the same: to save babies and their mothers from abortion and expose the horror of abortion to the American people.

As Ann says in her post, “It won’t matter if federal funds can be used to pay for abortion if we can intervene and save those babies at the clinic doors.”

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This Sunday, March 21, is World Down Syndrome Day.

Did you know that 80% of babies diagnosed in utero with Down Syndrome are aborted?

And did you know that individuals with Down Syndrome themselves oppose prenatal detection testing for this very reason?

And did you know that for every 50 children with Down’s Syndrome identified and killed by abortion, 160 non-affected babies are lost by miscarriage after the test?

Christina Dunigan has an eye-opening post on this topic titled “An Acceptable Level of Collateral Damage”. You can read it here.

And after that, check out this touching video featuring children and adults with Down Syndrome talking about their dreams and what they’re proud of in their lives.

Last week, authorities made a shocking discovery while investigating a West Philadelphia abortion clinic run by Kermit Gosnell where a woman died following an abortion in November 2009.

In Gosnell’s office, they found two dozen frozen fetuses.

On Sunday, Gosnell’s license was suspended, with the suspension order detailing “deplorable and unsanitary conditions” that made his practice “an immediate and clear danger to the public health and safety.”

Today, on the pro-choice blog RH Reality Check, Rachel Larris has a post on Gosnell and the woman who died at his facility in November (the woman is identified by the Philadelphia Inquirer as Karnamaya Mongar).

Who does Larris blame for the woman’s death?

Why, pro-lifers, of course.

(more…)

Lila Rose shared some big pro-life news this week.

Lila, who just last month shared about her groundbreaking undercover investigations of Planned Parenthood at our TeenSpeak conference, has shone a light on the web of deceit that surrounds Planned Parenthood clinics across the country.

Now her work is getting the attention of authorities in Alabama, where Lila and her team at Live Action filmed one of their undercover videos.

Here’s what Lila had to say: (more…)

This two and a half minute video is one of the simplest and clearest explanations I’ve seen of why President Obama’s (and the entire “pro-choice” movement’s) vision for health care reform includes taxpayer funding for abortion—even if he never uses the word “abortion”:

There is an interesting article on LifeSiteNews this week about Belmont Abbey, a North Carolina Catholic college that’s been accused of sexual discrimination by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) because it refuses to provide insurance coverage for contraception for its employees.

In other words, a Catholic college is being accused of discrimination for applying the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Whatever happened to the separation of church and state?

(more…)

Hi All!

I’d like to invite each of you to join me on this summer’s Face the Truth tour conducted by the Pro-Life Action League (parent group of Generations for Life). As someone who’s taken part in it for several years, I must say that it’s an amazing experience, and has always been the highlight of my summer! Please come and participate!

Where: Greater Chicagoland area, itinerary with specific locations here.

When: July 10 - 18 (not held on the 12th as its Sunday, day of rest)
There are 3 sites each day, and typically, 1.5 hours is spent at each site. (Lunch is usually provided)

A ‘Face the Truth’ tour is an opportunity to educate people about the absolute wrongfulness of abortion through the usage of signs showing graphic images of aborted babies and unborn babies. You may view what signs they use here.

While people hold the signs along the road, other pro-life volunteers distribute literature to passing motorists and pedestrians to help them understand the gravity of the Culture of Death. Besides having the opportunity to display these powerful pictures, you will get a neat “Face the Truth’ t-shirt and be able to pass out prolife literature to passersby (information on pregnancy help, baby development, post-abortive help) to a multitude of people over the week.

A good presentation of what it is like to partake of this event may be viewed here:

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**Warning: This post includes graphic language from a Planned Parenthood website.**

For years, pro-lifers have been warning about the dangers of teenwire.com, Planned Parenthood’s website for teens. (Pro-life blogger Dawn Eden wrote one of the best articles on why Teenwire is so bad in the Christian magazine Touchstone a few years back.)

But now, Teenwire is no longer Teenwire.

It’s now Teen Talk, according to teenwire.com’s Facebook page:

Basically: new look, same content.

But no matter how “fancy-pants” Planned Parenthood wants to dress it up, the advice it gives is never in the best interests of teens’ physical health (not to mention spiritual health).

Use your own good judgment to decide if you want to check out Teen Talk, and definitely don’t watch any of the videos if little kids are around. (more…)

For years, many people who call themselves “pro-choice” have said that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare”.

Many pro-lifers have pointed out how strange it is that abortion advocates would want abortion to be “rare”, because, after all, if abortion is supposedly “safe”, and if it isn’t actually the killing of an innocent human person (and therefore is the moral equivalent of having a tooth pulled), why does it matter if abortion is “rare” or not?

Now, though, it turns out that many abortion supporters admit they really don’t care if abortion is rare—including people like Dr. Andre Lalonde, executive vice president of the Canadian Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, who “worries” [!] that Sarah Palin’s decision to give birth to her son Trig, who has Down syndrome, “may cause abortions in Canada to decline as other women there and elsewhere opt to follow suit”.

Worrying that fewer babies with Down syndrome will be killed?

The brutal honesty is very revealing.

Related

• McCain’s VP Pick
• More Down Syndrome Testing Will Lead to More Abortion

We in the pro-life movement are pretty excited about John McCain’s choice for a running mate - Sarah Palin.  She’s solidly pro-life and is loved by the people of Alaska whom she governs.  But that’s not all, folks.  She’s a pro-life witness to boot.

When Sarah was pregnant with her last child, Trig, she was told that he had Down Syndrome.  This sort of news alone can be difficult to embrace, but her doctors went on to encourage her to abort.  Sarah and her husband refused.  This is the quote we are seeing all over the media:

“We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives. We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed.”

God bless Sarah Palin and God bless America.  This continues to be an most interesting presidential race.

We’ve heard before how bad Teenwire is. Now, Planned Parenthood has a new website aimed at teens, and American Life League looks at it in the latest ALL Report.

Use your own good judgment to decide if you want to watch the ALL Report, and keep in mind ALL’s disclaimer:

While our report does NOT present the nasty stuff, please use great discretion when viewing the contents of the site, and be sure not to watch any of the videos with kids around.

For those in the “pro-choice” movement, all they have to say about how to prevent STDs is: Use condoms. That’s all they have to say because it’s all they can say, and it’s all they can say because they believe it’s unrealistic to expect anyone—especially teens—from practicing self-control and chastity.

And yet we know that’s not true. (more…)

**UPDATE, 4/18, 4:55pm: A Yale spokesperson says Shvarts’ project was a hoax. Shvarts disagrees.

There has already been a lot of reaction among pro-lifers to the news that a Yale student, Aliza Shvarts, plans to display for her senior art project “a documentation of a nine-month process” during which she repeatedly got pregnant and took drugs to induce abortions on herself.

An article in the Yale Daily News also reports:

[Shvarts] said she was not concerned about any medical effects the forced miscarriages may have had on her body. The abortifacient drugs she took were legal and herbal, she said, and she did not feel the need to consult a doctor about her repeated miscarriages.

Kristan Hawkins, executive director of Students for Life of America, has issued a challenge to the major pro-abortion groups:

“I call on Planned Parenthood, NARAL, NOW and all other so-called pro-choice groups to condemn this. Abortion should never be trivialized as a matter of ‘art.’”

It will be hard for them to do that, as these groups have been saying for decades that women should be able to have abortions for any reason at all. (more…)