Tiller shows his true colors

Numerous secular sources have also reported on this story, reported by LifeNews here.

The Kansas AG has subpoenaed patient records from late-term abortionists (a list bound to include Tiller, who is the busiest, most well-known late-term abortionist in the country. The abortionists are balking at cooperating, citing concerns about patient privacy. But Tiller's web site indicated that unless a patient chooses to opt out, her information will be given to fund-raisers to contact her!

Of course, once the press started calling the notice came down off the web site, and Tiller's spokesman said it was a "mistake." Yeah, a mistake to admit in public that patient privacy is only a high priority when it comes to protecting sexual predators, not when it comes to collecting money to promote the abortion agenda.

On a local note regarding true colors, Johnstown people might want to look more closely at Jeff Minana before having any dealings with him.

Abortionist charged with sexual assault of patients

Michigan abortionist Rodolfo Finkelstein, age 55, has been arraigned on two charges of first degree criminal sexual assault. According to LifeNews, Finkelstein could face life in prison for these charges. He also faces five other charges.

Two abortion patients, a doctor, and a nurse testified in a hearing.

LifeNews published this report.

A Daily Oakland Press report said much of the testimony of the women was graphic and one 21 year-old who had Finkelstein perform a second trimester abortion on her described his inappropriate advances and sexual acts.

Meanwhile, a 19 year-old woman who had an abortion in January 2003 at his abortion facility says Finkelstein kissed her and squeezed her buttocks following a post-abortion examination.

Finkelstein still performs abortions at the Women's Advisory Centers in Livonia and Bloomfield Township.

Assistant Oakland County Prosecutor Barbara Morrison told the Press that the witnesses did a good job of describing what happened to them.

"The complainants held up remarkably well. It took a lot of courage," she said.

....

Police said Finkelstein made it a practice of seeing women alone for examinations and he kissed, fondled and sexually assaulted them when nurses were not around.

LifeNews also says that two other abortionists have recently been charged with sexual abuse of patients.

In February 2004, abortion practitioner Ronald Stevenson, of Oregon was convicted on two counts of inappropriately touching or kissing a patient.

....

Meanwhile, in January 2004, Arizona abortion practitioner Brian Finkel was sentenced to 34 years in prison after he was found guilty of 22 counts of sexual abuse against women who complained he touched their breasts and private parts inappropriately during abortions and examinations.

Read Lime 5 for more examples of sexual misconduct by abortionists. We wrote up a whole chapter on just this issue.

Possible Kansas crackdown on abortionistsw covering up child rape

Well it's about time! The Kansas Attorney General's Office is subpoening records from abortionists on patients under the age of 15, to see if instances of child rape are being reported by the practitioners, or if they're part of the perpetrators' cover-up. See the AG's press release.

“Senator and Dr. Barnett and Senators Wagle and Journey are correct: rape is a serious crime and when a 10, 11 or 12 year old is pregnant - they have been raped under Kansas law.

“As the State’s Chief Law Enforcement Official I have the duty to investigate and prosecute child rape and other crimes in order to protect Kansas children.

....

In the 2003 report KDHE reports that 78 Kansas children ages 14 years and younger received abortions in Kansas.

Tiller death update

Life Site News has this update on the investigation into George Tiller's dead patient.

An investigation into one of two deaths at a late-term abortion facility in Kansas is continuing and Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline on Tuesday confirmed that a mentally disabled Texas woman died after having a late-term abortion at George Tiller's Women's Health Care Clinic abortion business.

This verifies what we suspected, that she was indeed an abortion patient and indeed late-term. Mystery still surrounds the case, and the second death Life Site News refers to. Life Site News says that Tiller's spokesperson indicated that Tiller's facility wasn't the only aboriton business subpoenaed by the Texas Attorney General. The Texas AG is not investigating the woman's death, but rather the circumstances that took place in Texas prior to the fatal trip to Wichita.

Defining deviancy down

Well, after 30+ years of abortion being treated as normal, now we're getting celebs, evidently, treating self-mutilation as normal:

The new youth craze: Self-mutilation

On a local, totally different note, there's a bit of deviancy in Johnstown, PA named Jeff Minana.

Three murdered in Ft. Worth

The father of a Ft. Worth woman's unborn child was arrested for her murder, and the murder of her 7-year-old son.

According to the Dallas Morning News (I'm not linking because they require registration, which annoys me.), Stephen Dale Barbee, 37, of Fort Worth was booked on capital murder charges in the deaths of Lisa Underwood, 34, and her son, Jayden. The investigation indicates that Barbee suffocated Underwood during a fight, then suffocated the child when he came running into the room, screaming. Barbee then took the bodies north, to Denton County, and buried them. He evidently enlisted the help of a friend who merely thought Barbee was planning to break up with the woman. The friend saw the bodies and notified police.

Lisa Underwood's unborn baby was seven months old. No charges seem to be pending regarding the unborn child's death.

Tiller patient death prompts two-state investigation

Operation Rescue West has been reporting on the death of one of George Tiller's patients on January 13. Recent news reports indicate that the woman was a 19-year-old abortion patient from Texas. She had developmental disabilities. The Kansas medical board is investigating the death, and the Texas Attorney General is investigating what transpired in Texas before the woman travelled to Kansas for her abortion.

There's a lot more in this than meets the eye, evidently. I hate to speculate. Until I learned of the woman's disability, I had been hoping that the Texas AG was investigating Tiller's advertising, but this apprears to be an investigation into the circumstances involving her pregnancy and the decision to pursue an abortion for her. She must have been in an advanced state of pregnancy, since abortion is available on an outpatient basis in Texas up to 24 weeks.

Reading:

Woman Who Died After Abortion Is Under Investigation
Woman's Death Possibly Connected to Abortion Clinic
Texas AG investigating death of Tiller patient
Texas AG investigating death of Tiller patient

It's difficult to maintain a detachment on this. It looks like we may have another situation like the Diane Boyd case. The death of the woman and baby is tragic enough, but the thought that she may well have been pregnant and aborted against hr will just adds another layer of abuse and tragedy. Prayers for everybody involved, that they'll take this opportunity to speak the truth, for the sake of others and for their own immortal souls.

Celebrating diversity

After Abortion cued me into this great piece, The Personal is Political. The author, a prochoice woman, takes on Ayelet Waldman's piece justfying her decision to abort her baby because he wasn't "normal." Among the most pithy of the author's reflections:

She trots out all the usual justifications - her family isn't prepared to raise a child with a disability, it will take too much time and attention away from her other kids, she doesn't want her son and daughter to be "burdened" with caring for their brother after her death, etc. Of course I can't help but have a visceral, stomach-twisting reaction to this incredibly privleged, wealthy woman whining that she simply didn't have the wherewithal to take on this challenge. I wish she could log on to my online Down Syndrome support group and meet the dozens of working-class, struggling parents, who often live in far-flung rural outposts with little to no community resources - and who STILL manage to lovingly raise happy, healthy children with and without extra chromosomes.

There's also the issue of how people who bail on a fetus with a disability will cope if one of their "normal" children develops a problem. Life is unpredictable.

Once a diagnosis of Down Syndrome is confirmed, termination is expected and encouraged - it is those of us who choose to give birth to our imperfect, hopelessly compromised babies who are shunned, or at least treated with utter bewilderment. I can't count how many times people approached me after Bug was born to bluntly ask "Didn't you know? Beforehand?" The tacit implication being, of course, why didn't you get tested like everyone else does, so you could have had an abortion before it was too late?"

For all our talk of "celebrating diversity," we as a society aren't practicing what we preach. We consider it grounds for abortion as soon as we find out a baby is different.

Egyptian baby's parasitic twin removed

CNN reports, Surgeons remove baby's second head

Ten-month-old Manar Maged had an incomplete conjoined twin connected to her head. The second twin had a seriously underdeveloped body, but had a head and face that could smile and blink. The coverate doesn't say if the second "head" smiled, blinked, and slept and woke independently of little Manar, or just seemed to be echoing Manar.

More coverage is at Egyptian Doctors Remove Baby's Second Head, Reuters photos, an identical story with a different picture.

Was this a growth, or a second person living a parasitic existance? Should the ethics of killing the parasitic twin even enter into the equation? Personally, I think that we should at least consider the possibility that the parasitic twin is a second individual, and ponder the possibility of saving her life. I'm not saying the parents and doctors made a wrong choice; I'm just concerned that there seems to be no consideration whatsoever given to a "growth" that might be another human being. At which point are we no longer talking about additional parts of one child's body, but talking about a second, seriously disabled, child?

Roe heading back to court

One in a Million, a post at Light on the Hill, looks at Norma McCorvy's case. She's trying to get the court to overturn Roe vs. Wade. Amazing how little attention the press pays to what surely is a unique circumstance -- the "winning" plaintiff asking the Court to overturn a decision found in her favor.

Tiny preemie survives pioneering surgery

A tiny, 700-gram premature boy has survived heart surgery and is expected to have no long-term problems. Doctors originally expected the tot to die, but a pediatric cardiac surgeon heard of the case and took on the task of making repairs to the vessels surrounding the boy's grape-sized heart.

Pioneering surgery saves baby born 3 months early

Schindler family to visit Kansas woman

From Life News.com

Sarah Scantlin was unable to speak after an automobile accident ... leaving her in a coma. Though doctors believed her brain was injured so badly in the accident that should would never be able to talk again and spend her life in a vegetative state, Scantlin began speaking a week ago.

...."She's 100 percent Sarah again. The family is back together, and it's just simply a joyous situation," her father, Jim Scantlin, told CNN. ....Now, Scantlin is forming words, counting, and remembering people and places.

....Robert Schindler, Terri's Schiavo's father, says he hopes the courts will see this "miracle" and think of Terri.

"In light of the miraculous awakening of Miss Sarah Scantlin in Kansas and the success of the new brainwave test reported ... this week, my daughter deserves to have this test before she is starved to death by judicial decree," Schindler said.

....The Schindlers say videotape shown on CNN of Sarah interacting with her parents prior to speaking is remarkably similar to videos of Terri interacting her family.

....Terri's parents are traveling to Kansas to meet with Sarah and her family.

Boy, now 2, survived 3 abortion attempts

Life News reports, British Boy Survived Three Failed Abortion Attempts, Now Two Years-Old

A baby in the U.K. survived three failed abortion attempts and was born alive at 24 weeks into the pregnancy. ....Although the mother had been told at an abortion business that the RU 486 abortion was complete, she felt the baby moving on the way home.

....His story has been documented recently in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

The baby was on a ventilator for seven weeks and fought off life-threatening infections to survive. He ... was finally able to go home after seven months of treatment in the hospital.

....A report in the London Times says the mother did not realize she was pregnant until 22 weeks into the pregnancy. Already the mother of one, she felt she could not handle caring for a second child.

She was given ... RU 486 ... over a series of four days at the abortion facility run by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. The abortion drug is not supposed to be used so late in pregnancy.

The abortion business is under investigation by British officials for sending women to Spain for illegal late-term abortions and falsifying medical information....

On the one hand, what a blessing for the baby and the mom. On the other hand, it just perplexes me that she made three attempts to snuff him then was afraid he might die. I mean, what's the deal with that?

Where there's life, there's hope.

Brain-Damaged Woman Talks After 20 Years

For 20 years, Sarah Scantlin has been mostly oblivious to the world around her — the victim of a drunken driver who struck her down as she walked to her car. ....

A week ago, her parents got a call from ... a licensed nurse at the Golden Plains Health Care Center. She asked Betsy Scantlin if she was sitting down, told her someone wanted to talk to her and switched to phone over to speaker mode:

"Hi, Mom."

"Sarah, is that you?" her mother asked.

"Yes," came the throaty reply.

"How are you doing?"

"Fine." ....

Scantlin started talking in mid-January but asked staff members not to tell her parents until Valentine's Day to surprise them, Trammell said. But last week she could not wait any longer to talk to them.

Staff members brought in a speech therapist and intensified their work with Sarah. ....

JWR still not fixing things

Dear JWR:

I am very distressed to see that Ms. Eisner's column, "Pro-lifers shouldn't mix issues," is still posted on JWR, without so much as a caveat that her information is far from accurate. To the contrary, she is bearing false witness, and JWR is giving her the bandwidth to do so.

She bears false witness against former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, claiming that he "concluded after an exhaustive study that the psychological effects of abortion are minuscule from a public health perspective." He did no such thing. As I pointed out in a previous email, that conclusion was drawn by researchers for the notoriously pro-abortion Alan Guttmacher Institute, and put out under Koop's name by an underling by the name of George Walter. Here is a link explaining how this was done:

http://realchoice.0catch.com/library/weekly/aa041200a.htm

Ms. Eisner is also bearing false witness against the congresspersons who are standing up for post-abortion women, claiming that they are "conflate[ing] that real and present danger [of post-partum depression] with the, so far, unproven assumption that abortion causes widespread depression." She specifically bears false witness against U.S. Rep. Joe Pitts (R., Pa.), saying that in "introducing legislation last June to provide $15 million in research and $1.5 million in treatment" for post-abortion depression, he is wasting money on "a condition for which there is, at best, very weak evidence."

To the contrary, there is abundant evidence of post-abortion depression, including a high risk of suicide. As I stated in my previous email, the most recent research indicates that a woman is seven times more likely to kill herself in the year following abortion than in the year following childbirth. In fact, the post-abortion woman is more likely to die from a variety of causes, including accidents and murder, than the postpartum woman:

http://realchoice.0catch.com/library/weekly/aa061600a.htm

Here's more of a summary of research linking abortion to a higher risk of suicide:

http://realchoice.0catch.com/library/weekly/aa070700a.htm

The link between abortion and women's violent deaths, such as accident, homicide, and suicide, was even stumbled upon and commented upon by the abortion supporters at the Centers for Disease Control:

http://realchoice.0catch.com/library/weekly/aa032700a.htm

Yes, the individual accounts of postpartum suicide are heart wrenching indeed. And yes, we should strive to prevent these needless deaths. But it's unconscionable to also ignore post abortion suicides, such as the cases of:

-Arlin della Cruz: http://realchoice.0catch.com/library/weekly/aa030503a.htm
-Sandra Kaiser: http://realchoice.0catch.com/library/deaths/bl84skaiser.htm
-Carol Cunningham: http://realchoice.0catch.com/library/weekly/aa030603a.htm

Even in her closing, Ms. Eisner bears false witness against helpless newborns, calling them "babies whose births have caused so much suffering." She blames the mother's suffering not on an illness, but on the innocent children who have done no wrong! How much more clear could she make her bias?

In the final analysis, one can even apply common sense. Postpartum depression would have been much easier to spot throughout history, because a pregnancy carried to term, and a newborn infant, are fairly obvious signs that a significant event has taken place in a woman's life. Any aberrant behavior could easily be linked to the birth, even by a casual observer. But an abortion is done in secret. Aberrant behavior afterward would be linked to the abortion only by close examination of the woman's circumstances. Which problem, then, would be more likely to be noticed?

Christina E. Dunigan

Compare to NBC News coverage

Study Reveals Disabled Patients Like Terri Schiavo Show Awareness

Life Site News covers the study that showed surprising brain activity in "minimally conscious" people. Compare this to the tepid coverage given by NBC News.

Disabled people who are treated as if they have no awareness of their surroundings or that they cannot interact with others may be absorbing more than previously thought, according to a new study. ....

Dr. Joseph Fins, chief of the medical ethics division of New York Presbyterian Hospital, told the New York Times, "This study gave me goose bumps, because it shows this possibility of this profound isolation, that these people are there, that they've been there all along, even though we've been treating them as if they're not."

Since the completion of the study, researchers focused on seven additional disabled patients and the results were the same.

Pray that the Schindler family will be able to order an MRI done on Terri! This should clear up any doubts as to her mental state.

Brain-injured people are not vegetating

Research reveals unconscious brains are active

Of course, they had to add that these findings don't apply to Terri Schiavo. But the broadcast did show footage of Terri interacting with her mom. Thank God some information is leaking out that brain-injured people are still people.

Twins born two months apart

Twin boys born nearly 2 months apart

Question for the vehemently prochoice: Why was the first twin human as soon as he was born, when his twin brother, still in-utero, was a non-person fit to be aborted at his mother's request? Or should there have been open season on Twin #1 while his brother continued to gestate? Do they both become human at the same time? What's the huge, morally significant difference between the two?

Slow going for illegal abortion referral investigation

Thanks to After Abortion for the tip.

Police inquiry delays BPAS abortion findings

British police are asking for a delay of a health official's report on illegal abortion referrals until they've completed their criminal investigation.

A government inquiry into the scandal of British women being helped to have illegal late-term abortions of healthy foetuses has delayed publishing its findings following an intervention by the police. Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, had been set to report this month on his examination of the actions of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), the National Health Service-funded charity that was revealed by this newspaper to be directing women to a Spanish clinic, Ginemedex, which would abort healthy babies beyond 30 weeks' gestation.

....

The West Midlands force and officers from Warwickshire police are conducting criminal investigations into BPAS and a Birmingham general practitioner, Dr Saroj Adlakha, who arranged an abortion for a patient's healthy 311/2-week-old foetus at the Ginemedex clinic in Barcelona in 2003.

Dr Adlakha, who said she had been informed about the clinic by BPAS, also offered to arrange a similar termination for another woman. Dr Adlakha has since been suspended by her health trust and is being investigated by the General Medical Council.

...

Words fail me. I can't imagine what motivates the women who ask for these referrals or the people who provide them.

JWR gets it wrong for a change

Mine Ener was a respected professor at Villanova University until a ferocious bout of postpartum psychosis led her in 2003 to kill her infant daughter, who was born with Down syndrome, and, later, herself. Grappling with how to memorialize Ener, the university decided to remove a recently hung plaque from a library study area and, instead, host a symposium to educate the public on the mental illness that led to these tragic deaths. I hope the U.S. Congress will be invited.

That's because, for years now, the U.S. House has delayed action on the Melanie Blocker-Stokes Postpartum Depression Research and Care Act, named for another young mother who killed herself in 2001 after the birth of her daughter. It's hard to understand who could be against legislation to fund research on postpartum depression and psychosis, and provide services for the families devastated by these related, but poorly understood, diseases.

....

Against the wishes of the sponsor, U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D., Ill.), included in the hearing was discussion of another bill, on "post-abortion depression." I put those words in quotes because there's actually no scientific agreement that such a syndrome exists, and certainly no indication that it affects as many women and families as depression after childbirth.

Ms. Eisner rattles on more about how everybody has known since time immemorial that having a baby drives women off the deep end, and how benign abortion is. She concludes, "The politics of abortion have no place in honoring the memory of Melanie Blocker-Stokes or Mine Ener's baby, or the other babies whose births have caused so much suffering."

Get that: Babies whose births caused so much suffering. Blame the child. While ignoring the real threat to the mothers. So I penned a little response to Ms. Eisner:

RE: Pro-lifers shouldn't mix issues

Dear Ms. Eisner:

1. You wrote, "C. Everett Koop, when he was President Reagan's surgeon general (and personally opposed to abortion), concluded after an exhaustive study that the psychological effects of abortion are minuscule from a public health perspective."

Actually, this isn't true. If you check Congressional Record, you'll learn that Koop refused to write a report on abortion's effect on women. He felt that to do so would be abandoning the moral high ground of fighting abortion's effect on the fetus. When President Reagan insisted, Koop foisted the job off on an underling, George Walter. Walter asked a few prolife clergy for input, (ignoring the material provided to him by prolife physicians and Ph D's) but got the bulk of his "research" from the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood. This is the equivalent of contacting the research department of R. J. Reynolds for information on second-hand smoke risks. Not surprisingly, Walter's report parroted propaganda that the AGI had been putting out for years, and ignored reams of research that painted abortion in a less than rosy light. Walter presented the report to Koop, who told him to shelve it. Instead, Walter released it with Koop's name on it. This little underhanded stunt allowed the abortion advocates to have a report putting out their propaganda under Koop's name. Nice work if you can get it.

2. Extensive research has shown that a woman is more likely to die in the year following abortion than in the year following childbirth. The rate of natural death was slightly higher. Post-abortion women were four times more likely to die of accidents than women who had given birth. After abortion, women were found to be seven times more likely to die by their own hand than were women who gave birth. The most shocking finding, however, was the especial vulnerability of post-abortion women to death by homicide in the year following their abortions. Post-abortion women were eight times more likely to be murdered in the year following their pregnancies than were women who gave birth.

If we're concerned about death risks to pregnant women and their children, clearly we can't ignore abortion per se, which always kills a child and which leaves the woman seven times more likely to take her own life. Only somebody with a political agenda that requires painting abortion in a rosy light could ignore the fact that of all pregnancy outcomes, it's the one with the documented most devastating effects on the woman's chances of survival.

Christina Dunigan