Illinois Right to Life News for Tuesday, January 29, 2008

More victories for Choose Life license plates

Federal judges and Federal appellate courts continue to decide that Choose Life license plates must be allowed because denial violates freedom of speech.  Two recent decisions came in Missouri and Arizona. 

In the Missouri case U.S. District Judge Scott Wright ruled in favor of the sponsors of the Missouri Choose Life license plate.  LifeNews.com reports, “Missouri officials must let a proposal for Choose Life license plates move forward despite a rejection from a committee of lawmakers. Using a new 2004 law that allows lawmakers to block nonprofit groups seeking specialty license plates, two Missouri state senators halted the plates in February 2006.”  The ruling declared that law was unconstitutional because there are no safeguards to prevent discrimination against some groups of people, such as pro-life advocates.

In Arizona, a lower Federal court had ruled against the Choose Life license plate, but the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling in a unanimous decision. The panel of judges said the sponsor would have its First Amendment rights abrogated, especially because other specialty license plates have been approved for sale in the state.  Judge Richard Tallman wrote the appellate court decision.  He noted denial of the plate by a state commission “clearly denied the application based on the nature of the message.”

These decisions are encouraging for the Illinois Choose Life license plate.  Federal Judge David Coar ruled in favor of the Illinois plate, but the state appealed.  Now the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is deciding the case.  These recent decisions in Missouri and Arizona add to the precedent in favor of Choose Life license plates.   Virtually every court decision has ultimately favored Choose Life plates, at least on appeal.  No court decision has yet blocked a single state from offering Choose Life plates.   Missouri and Arizona would become the 19th and 20th states to offer Choose Life plates.

 Illinois Right to Life News for Friday, January 25, 2008

And now a word from the opposition

“It is time for a serious reassessment of how to think about abortion in a world that is radically changed from 1973.”  That is the closing statement from an article jointly written by Frances Kissling, former president of Catholics for a Free Choice, and Kate Michelman, former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, that appeared in the Los Angeles Times on January 22, 2008, the 35 anniversary of the tragic Roe v. Wade decision on abortion.  Note that both women have retired from directly fighting for so-called abortion rights.

Now they are looking back at where they think the national debate on abortion has traveled over the last 35 years.  They express concern when they state, “If pro-choice values are to regain the moral high ground, genuine discussion about these challenges needs to take place within the movement.”   Apparently, they do not know that they never had the moral high ground.  Even though abortion was legalized before 1973 in a few states, the nation never supported abortion on demand.  In 2008, not only do they not have the moral high ground, they are losing on other fronts that they acknowledge in their article.

Before covering those areas, however, let’s first review a few misconceptions they currently have about the status of abortion in our nation.  They write, “Now, on this anniversary of that landmark decision, the United States has some of the most restrictive policies on abortion in the developed world.”  They are referring to restrictions on the use of federal funds for abortions and state laws on parental consent or notification, mandatory waiting periods and counseling.  They claim laws in Europe are less restrictive, but they ignore that late-term abortions are not allowed in most of Europe like they are under Roe v. Wade.   They believe “U.S. public opinion has been relatively stable and favorable to legal abortion.” because they believe the biased opinion polls that mislead people to think abortion is only allowed in the first trimester.  In fact, unbiased surveys reveal a solid majority of the public opposes abortion on demand, only supporting about 5-10% of the over 1.2 million abortions currently committed annually in our nation.

They acknowledge losing on a number of fronts.  They bemoan, “The court's 2007 decision on so-called partial-birth abortions was an unprecedented infringement on physician autonomy.”

Then they discuss how “the anti-choice movement” changed tactics.  “It no longer focused primarily on banning abortions but concentrated on restricting the circumstances under which abortion would be available.   It succeeded in shifting public attention from broad support for legal abortion to strong support for restricting access.”  Even in their view, the results have made being pro-life “a respectable point of view.”

They admit their strategy was to make sure the fetus “stayed largely invisible” by using messages like “a woman's right to control her body” and later switching to the “who decides” question.  They recognize a turning point was achieved by “the anti-choice demand that we look at what was being decided, not just who was deciding.”  They observe, “Science facilitated the swing of the pendulum. Three-dimensional ultrasound images of babies in utero began to grace the family fridge. Fetuses underwent surgery. More premature babies survived and were healthier. They commanded our attention, and the question of what we owe them, if anything, could not be dismissed.”

They observe that, “Advocates of choice have had a hard time dealing with the increased visibility of the fetus. The preferred strategy is still to ignore it and try to shift the conversation back to women. At times, this makes us appear insensitive, a bit too pragmatic…”  Pro-Life arguments “present a sophisticated philosophical and political challenge” by expressing that “Caring societies seek to expand inclusion into "the human community." Those once excluded, such as women and minorities, are now equal. Why not welcome the fetus (who, after all, is us) into our community?”

They continue, “To some people, pro-choice values seem to have been unaffected by the desire to save the whales and the trees, to respect animal life and to end violence at all levels.  Pope John Paul II got that, and coined the term "culture of life." President Bush adopted it, and the slogan, as much as it pains us to admit it, moved some hearts and minds.  Supporting abortion is tough to fit into this package.”

Then they note, “In recent years, the antiabortion movement successfully put the nitty-gritty details of abortion procedures on public display, increasing the belief that abortion is serious business and that some societal involvement is appropriate. Those who are pro-choice have not convinced America that we support a public discussion of the moral dimensions of abortion. Likewise, we haven't convinced people that we are the ones actually doing things to make it possible for women to avoid needing abortions.”  If they did convince people, that would be another deception because their approach never leads to reduced abortion.

What is their solution to all these losses?  They note, “It is inadequate to try to message our way out of this problem. Our vigorous defense of the right to choose needs to be accompanied by greater openness regarding the real conflict between life and choice, between rights and responsibility.”  In summary, they admit they are losing not only the battle, but also the war.  Pray that the election results do not hinder us from continuing forward to that ultimate victory.

Illinois Right to Life News for Friday, January 18, 2008

Abortions down in Illinois?

The Chicago Tribune 1/17/08 front-page article "Abortions at 30-year low" raises some concerns for me.  It is certainly good news that abortions have dropped to 1.21 million from 1.3 million over the last five years, but abortion is still killing 20% of the next generation.

After thinking about the 19% drop in Illinois abortions reported in the Tribune article, I did not recall such a drop being consistent with the data published by Illinois Dept of Public Health (IDPH).  I checked the IDPH web site to look at the Illinois data again. 

Abortions in 2000 were 45,884 and in 2005 43,409.  That change is only a 5.4% drop, far lower than the stated 19% drop.  In my mind, this raises questions about what data is being used in the Guttmacher Institute report quoted by the Tribune and what level of reliability it should be given.  If such inconsistencies exist for Illinois, what about the data for other states?

To further emphasize my point, IDPH data for 2006 shows 46,467 abortions in Illinois, higher than the total for 2000, so no decrease at all.  Unfortunately, abortions are not dropping in Illinois.   Of course, Illinois does not have any informed consent or parental notice laws in effect.  Such laws have allowed women to make more informed decisions, decreasing abortions in many states and contributing to the reported national reduction in abortions.  We need such laws in Illinois.

On another point, both Jones (author of Guttmacher report on which the Tribune article was based) and Chaiten (ACLU reproductive rights director quoted in the 1/17/08 article) reference the 1.21 million abortions as an indicator that there are too many unwanted pregnancies.  They then claim that more "comprehensive sex education" and "increased access to family planning" is needed to reduce unwanted pregnancies.  Then they claim that abortions are down because of more state restrictions and less availability of abortion providers and locations (e.g. 87% of counties have no abortionist). 

Talk about wanting to have your cake and eat it too!   On the one hand they imply that abortions should be able to drop substantially if only there is more access to family planning, but then they imply that the number of abortions should be much higher if only there were less state restrictions and more counties had abortion providers. 

If that is not totally illogical, consider this.  The Guttmacher report reveals that abortion rates per 1000 women are much higher in states like New York, Connecticut, California, etc.  Yet these are the states that a Guttmacher report from February 28, 2006 were praised for their state programs to provide increased access to family planning.   Thus, Guttmacher's own statistics (putting multiple reports side by side) reveal that states with "better" access to family planning have higher abortion rates compared to states that Guttmacher criticizes for "poor " access to family planning.  This evidence reveals that "better access to family planning" will increase the abortion rate, not decrease it, contrary to the constantly repeated claims of Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and the ACLU. 

Decreasing the abortion rate occurs because of:  informed consent, parental involvement, ultrasound images, more people recognizing that abortion is a poor choice based on testimony of women who have been there, more abortionists put out of business because of their violations of medical care standards, and abstinence education.

 Illinois Right to Life News for Tuesday, January 15, 2008

AUL ranks Illinois 38th out of 50 states on Pro-Life laws

Americans United for Life (AUL) has released their fifth annual ranking of the most and least Pro-Life states.  This new national ranking of states shows Michigan in the lead, followed by Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Kansas.  AUL works with state legislators across the nation to pass effective Pro-Life laws.

AUL's criteria covers each state's treatment of all Pro-Life issues and the final ranking depends largely on each state's enactment of prudent and well-supported laws limiting abortions as much as the Supreme Court has allowed.  Among the laws that AUL looks for are informed consent, parental involvement for minors, abortion facility regulations, and abortion funding limits.   Illinois falls far short in all of these categories, leading to a ranking of 38th out of the 50 states.  About the only positive to be drawn from this ranking is not falling into the bottom 10 – yet.

AUL’s overview for Illinois states, “In recent years, Illinois has been plagued by Governor Rod Blagojevich's unilateral decisions regarding human life. In 2005, the Governor attacked the authority of the state legislature by issuing an Executive Order mandating that pharmacy owners who dispense contraceptives provide emergency contraception "without delay." In 2006, the Governor continued his unchecked use of power by requiring that pharmacies post signs stating that women can purchase emergency contraception over the counter at any pharmacy in Illinois. He also issued an Executive Order directing the Department of Public Health to develop a grant program for finding treatments and cures from destructive embryo research. In 2007, the state codified this allocation of funds.”

Illinois has no informed consent law on abortion so women are not given any facts about the adverse consequences of abortion before receiving one.  Illinois has a parental notification of abortion law, but it still sits dormant waiting for a decision from Federal Judge David Coar on removal of the Federal injunction preventing enforcement of the law.  Meanwhile, abortions on out-of-state minors continue to rise because Illiniois is a haven for bypassing the parental involvement laws in effect in all surrounding states.  Only vigorous efforts from Pro-Life lobbyists and concerned citizens prevented passage of a bill in 2007 that would have revoked parental notification even before it could take effect.

It has been stated that veterinary clinics are more regulated than abortion clinics in Illinois.  Weak abortion clinic regulations in Illinois can be attributed to a 1989 settlement accepted by pro-abortion Attorney General Neil Hartigan in a lawsuit filed by Dr. Richard Ragsdale, a Rockford, IL physician, against Dr. Bernard Turnock, the state's Public Health Director, challenging Illinois abortion regulations.  lllinois taxpayers are required to fund so-called "medically necessary" abortions, essentially funding abortion-on-demand given the Federal courts' broad definition of "health" in the context of abortion.

Beyond abortion, some positives do exist under Illinois criminal law.  The killing of an unborn child at any stage of gestation is defined as a form of homicide and Illinois defines nonfatal assaults on an unborn child as a crime.   Illinois law also requires that viable infants who survive an abortion must be given appropriate medical care.  These may be about the only positives keeping the Pro-Life ranking of Illinois above the bottom 10 states.

Regarding the dispute over pharmacists right of conscience, some progress has been made.  In October 2007, a settlement was reached in one of several cases challenging Governor Blagojevich's 2005 Executive Order regarding the provision of emergency contraception.  The parties agreed that pharmacy owners, not individual pharmacists, would bear the burden of stocking and dispensing emergency contraception.  That result should protect pharmacists who work for Walgreens or other large pharmacies.  However, other challenges to the law remain because owners of small pharmacies are not protected under that settlement.

AUL lists a number of opportunities for improvement of Illinois laws, including informed consent, regulation of abortion clinics, and better protection of patients’ end-of-life decisions.  Unfortunately, with the current anti-life composition of the Illinois legislature, it is unlikely that real progress can be made on any of these issues in 2008.

Illinois Right to Life News for Friday, January 11, 2008

Stem cell advance used aborted fetal tissue

Kudos to Children of God for Life.   This organization monitors ethical issues affecting medicine and science, especially regarding use of aborted fetal tissue in development of vaccines.  Their background knowledge of sources of aborted fetal tissue has led to an important discovery about a recent advance in the area of stem cell research.  A January 8th press release from Children of God for Life documents the use of aborted fetal tissue for this stem cell research advance.

Children of God for Life reports that a recent stem cell breakthrough that turns adult skin cells to “embryonic” is not a pro-life solution as currently done.  On November 21^st and 22^nd, Dr. Shinya Yamanaka and Dr James Thomson published back-to-back studies that were hailed as moral alternatives to embryonic stem cell research. Both studies involved introducing genes into adult stem cells through a lentivirus, which reprogrammed them to become “embryonic” or induced pluripotent stem (IPS) cells, without destroying human embryos. But pro-lifers may have celebrated too soon, without studying the methods used in the papers.

Both researchers used several versions of the 293 aborted fetal cell lines to modify the DNA of the host adult skin cells, in order to accomplish the reprogramming.

“Unless you read the papers published by Dr Yamanaka in Cell and Dr Thomson in Science, you would have no idea where the DNA came from that was used to transform the adult cells”, stated Debi Vinnedge, Executive Director of Children of God for Life, a pro-life watchdog organization focused on stem cell research and aborted fetal cell lines in medical products.  “And even then you would have to know what you were looking for to understand it”, she added. 

For example, while Dr Yamanaka reports using PLAT-E, PLAT-A and 293FT cells in his paper, the proper name for these cell lines is HEK (human embryonic kidney) 293. The cells were obtained from an, electively aborted baby by Dr. Alex Van der Eb, Crucell NV, the same company producing aborted fetal cell line PER C6, derived from the retinal tissue of an 18-week gestation baby.

In the second study, Dr James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, also used aborted fetal cell line 293FT to produce DNA used to modify adult cells.  Furthermore, Dr Thomson obtained the DNA sequences he used from human ES cells. And before using foreskin fibroblasts, Thomson tested the reprogramming on IMR-90 aborted fetal cell line, taken from the lung tissue of a 16-week gestation female baby.

“Pro-lifers may be deceived by the excitement about these publications”, Vinnedge cautioned.  “Using aborted fetal and embryonic stem cells from deliberately destroyed human beings is certainly not any kind of moral victory.”

Vinnedge noted that the research is fraught with other moral and clinical problems, such as fatal tumors, which are a well-documented attribute of embryonic stem cells, and which also occurred with the adult reprogrammed IPS cells.  And while Yamanaka and Thomson allege the new cells generated would be “patient specific” with no immune rejection problems, this claim is premature because there is foreign DNA present from the lentivirus used to modify the cells. 

However, it is not necessary to use aborted fetal cells to produce the lentivirus at all, noted Dr Theresa Deisher, R&D Director of Ave Maria Biotechnology Company, a research firm dedicated to pro-life alternatives for unethical human therapeutics.

“There are other ethical ways to produce the DNA needed for transformation, efficiently and morally,” said Dr Deisher.  “If these means were employed to produce the needed DNA, there would be no moral issues with the use of reprogrammed adult cells for research.”

 Illinois Right to Life News for Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Distorting science to drive an agenda

Is science really showing that abstinence does not work?  Planned Parenthood and their supporters keep citing studies they claim prove scientifically that teaching abstinence is not effective in preventing unwanted pregnancy or abortion.  Instead, they insist teaching the use of contraceptives, including easy access to the morning-after pill, is needed to prevent unwanted pregnancies and abortions. 

In the first place, Planned Parenthood conveniently ignores all the studies that show the opposite to be true.  Secondly, their citations of studies claimed to prove their position are almost always refuted once a detail review of the full study is undertaken.  Usually, the claims against abstinence are constructed by taking information out-of-context.  Sometimes, the cited study is so biased that no scientific basis can be found to support the conclusions reached.

Maybe it would be helpful to take a step back from the debate over studies to check out the real world.  Consider the situation in Spain.  LifeSiteNews reported on January 7th that Spain’s abortion rate has doubled since 1997.

Spain's annual surgical abortion rate, which has increased dramatically since the socialist government's decriminalization of the practice in 1985, has now reached over 100,000 annually, according to recently-released government figures.   The increase represents a doubling of the number of surgical abortions since 1997, when the rate was a little less than 50,000.

As the Spanish pro-family website "Forum Libertas" observes, this increase has occurred despite the promotion of contraception and the introduction of the "morning after pill", which are touted by their promoters as a means of avoiding the "necessity" of a later abortion. 

According to Forum Libertas, the use of contraceptives has increased 60% since 1997, and "morning after pill" use has increased 67% since it was introduced in the year 2000. And still, or more likely because of these factors and some others, the abortion rate has doubled since 1997.

Can we reach a scientific conclusion that increased use of contraceptives and the morning-after pill do not reduce abortions, but rather contribute to increased abortions?  Though the real world circumstances do not achieve the controls of a scientific study, the results speak for themselves.  After a substantial increase in the use of contraceptives, including the morning-after pill, the abortion rate has doubled.  Planned Parenthood claims that such circumstances should cut the abortion rate in half.   The real world results totalled refute Planned Parenthood’s claims.

Unfortunately, if a lie is repeated long enough, it begins to take hold.   Tragically, a report from LifeSiteNews on January 8th reveals that the governors of 15 states are now refusing to accept Federal abstinence funds.  These governors are rejecting the money because it requires the teaching of abstinence, and excludes teaching contraception.  The reality in Spain proves these governors are making a serious mistake by accepting Planned Parenthood’s propaganda and following their agenda.  The children of these states will become the victims of these adverse policies.

 Illinois Right to Life News for Friday, January 4, 2008

IVF is a deadly business from beginning to end

Most likely you have heard about the problem of “excess embryos” from in vitro fertilization attempts.  The language used in discussing this issue seems to suggest that if only all the embryos were implanted, the problem could be solved.  Such a conclusion ignores two other nasty little secrets of the in vitro fertilization (IVF) industry.

A January 2nd LifeSiteNews article covers findings following a UK Parliamentary question on IVF.  Data from a government organization showed that over one million human embryonic children were killed in the UK in the past 14 years as 'waste' embryos from IVF processes.

The acquired data showed that 2,137,924 embryonic humans were created using IVF between 1991 and 2005, but about 1.2m were never used.  Scientists killed the embryos who were not deemed strong enough for implantation, and froze those not considered 'waste' embryos.  Those that survived the freezing process will die in ten years if not implanted.

'Surplus' embryos were created because women responded differently to fertility drugs, doctors told the Times Online. As many as 40 IVF-fertilized eggs can be used in some treatments. The embryos are then assessed for viability, with only about 20% usually considered strong enough to implant successfully in a woman.

Wait a minute!  These numbers do not compute.  If only 20% are deemed viable, then 80% are killed before ever reaching the point where the phrase “excess embryo” might get used.  Does this mean in reality that the death toll was over 8 million non-viable embryos, killed to create over 2 million viable ones, of which 1.2 million were not used because deemed excess?  If a total of 2,137, 924 embryos were created, then only about 428,000 would be found strong enough to implant, so it would be difficult to end up with 1.2 million that were never used.

Thus, IVF nasty secret number one is the killing of many embryos deemed non-viable that never get counted at all.  IVF nasty secret number two is the pressure for “selective reduction” if too many implanted embryos survive.  Once the prospect of multiple births becomes likely, this pressure gets very strong, as we have covered before.  “Selective reduction” is the emphemism for aborting the babies in utero deemed to be excessive.

By definition then, IVF requires the killing of many more embryos than will ever get implanted, beginning with the 80% found to be non-viable for implantation.  Of those deemed healthy enough, more will be threatened with death if too many have the brashness to survive, given that multiple embryos are almost always implanted in an attempt to assure that at least one will survive.  This protocol reflects the poor success rate experienced with IVF, representing more dead embryos along the way.  IVF is a deadly business from beginning to end.

Fortunately, there is a more reliable alternative to IVF, called NaProTECHNOLOGY.   Learn more through FertilityCare Centers of America.

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