For a fascinating view of unborn babies in the womb, visit www.yourdevelopingbaby.com/sampleChapters/7.htm.   Harvard radiology professors Peter Doubilet and Carol Benson made the amazing video confirming the humanity of the unborn child.   The professors, a married couple, have also written a book titled, Your Developing Baby, which includes 250 images of unborn life.

Euthanasia proponents in Washington State turned in 300,000 signatures in early July, making it likely their measure will qualify for the November ballot.   Initiative 1000, if passed, would allow doctors to write a prescription for lethal drugs for patients who have less than six months to live and who meet certain guidelines.   The measure will pit euthanasia supporters against pro-lifers, disability group advocates and medical organizations.   Former governor Booth Gardner, who has Parkinson’s disease, is a spokesperson for the measure.   In July, the Vancouver Columbian showed proponents having a 12-1 advantage in fundraising.   Proponents have raised $1,124,000 (with $315,000 coming from an Oregon pro-euthanasia group); opponents have raised $95,600, all from the state of Washington.   

Oregon is the only state in which physician-assisted suicide is legal.   In the decade the law has been operative, 340 patients have taken their own lives, with 49 deaths confirmed in 2007.   California, Hawaii, Michigan, Maine and Vermont have all recently turned back either ballot initiatives or legislative attempts to legalize assisted suicide.   [ www.lifenews.com, 7/7/08; www.lifenews.com/bio2509.html; www.noassistedsuicide.com]

A construction company recently dropped its plans to help build a large Planned Parenthood facility in North Portland.   Walsh Construction Company owner Bob Walsh said he pulled his company out of the project due to concerns about pro-life activism, not based on a moral judgment.   Pro-lifers have sent e-mails and letters, made phone calls and protested in front of the company’s offices since the Portland Development Commission approved the $900,000 sale of the city-owned property in April 2007.   A group involved in the protests, Precious Children of Portland, points out that the neighborhood where the massive facility will be built has a Black population of 43 percent (overall, Portland has a Black population of 6 percent).  

The developer, Beech Street Partners, and Ankrom Moisan Architects will continue with the project, expected to be completed in July 2009. [ The Register Guard, 7/1/08; www.lifenews.com/state3351.html; www.preciouschildrenofportland.org]

British teen becomes 14th to die from RU 486

Eighteen-year-old Manon Jones died one week after using the dangerous abortion drug mifepristone, also called RU 486.   She is believed to be the fourteenth woman reported to have died from the abortion drug, including two other British women.   Jones’ mother, who was with her during the abortion, described the experience saying, “She was scared, and I tried to reassure her.   It was a very emotional experience for us both to witness her pass her baby and my grandchild into the bedpan.”   In days following the abortion, the teen was light-headed and experienced abnormal bleeding.   Seizures and cardiac arrest followed.  

Eight women in the U.S. have died from the drug.   There has been one death in Canada, three in the UK, one in Sweden and one in France. [ www.lifenews.com/int784.html]

The Bush administration again withheld nearly $40 million from a United Nations organization deeply involved in programs of forced abortion and coercive sterilization in China.   This is the seventh consecutive year that U.S. dollars have been withheld, with the amount totaling nearly $235 million since 2001.   That money has been redirected to child survival programs and anti-trafficking programs, among others.   The U.S. continues to be the world’s largest donor to women and children’s health programs.

The research prompting the yearly decisions was done by the Population Research Institute, headed by Steven W. Mosher.   The group’s investigators studying China’s barbaric one-child policy found “strict birth limitation regulations, obligatory contraception services, mandatory abortion, involuntary sterilization and financial penalties, such as job loss and destruction of homes or property, to induce compliance.”   Mosher’s book is titled, Population Control – Real Costs, Illusory Benefits. [ LifeNews.com report 7/5/08; Christian Newswire 7/2/08; C-FAM Friday Fax, 7/3/08]

When Eugene cancer patient Barbara Wagner learned that the Oregon Health Plan would not cover the cancer drug prescribed by her physician, but would cover doctor-assisted suicide, she was incredulous.   “To say to someone, we’ll pay for you to die, but not pay for you to live, it’s cruel.”

When Wagner’s lung cancer returned after a two-year remission, her oncologist prescribed a drug that could slow the cancer’s growth and extend her life.   However, she was informed that, “Treatment of advanced cancer that is meant to prolong life, or change the course of the disease, is not a covered benefit of the Oregon Health Plan.”   Established in 1994, the Oregon Health Plan rations health care using a prioritization list.   Dr. David Fryefield, medical director of the Willamette Valley Cancer Center, argues that, “The prioritization list and the definitions and tests that are applied are 15 years old and not appropriate in today’s practice of oncology.   There are so many more targeted therapies that specifically target the cancer and have very few side effects.”

Bioethicist Wesley Smith explained, “We have been warning for years that this was a possibility in Oregon.   Medicaid is rationed, meaning that some treatments are not covered.   But assisted suicide is always covered.   And now, Barbara Wagner is faced with that very scenario.   A few years ago a patient who needed a double organ transplant was denied the treatment but would have been eligible for state-financed assisted suicide.   But, not to worry.   Just keep repeating the mantra: There are no abuses with Oregon’s assisted suicide law.   There are no abuses.   There are no abuses.”

Wagner recently received unexpected good news when the drug company offered to provide her the drug at no cost. [ Eugene Register Guard, 3/3/08; LifeNews.com report 6/23/08]

Council of Europe presses member states to OK abortion

A resolution by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe demands that its 47 member states lift any and all restrictions on abortion.   Though non-binding, the resolution pressures states to “legalize abortion if they have not done so” – to make abortion an unconditional “right.”   The resolution, approved by a vote of 102-96, with 69 abstentions, clearly targets three countries which forbid virtually all abortions - Ireland, Poland, and Malta.

Pat Buckley of Britain’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children said, “The resolution represents an attack on the sovereignty of member states by attempting to impose a policy on abortion, something for which the Assembly has no legal right or legitimate justification.   That a committee of the Parliamentary’s Assembly of the Council of Europe even proposed this resolution damages the Council of Europe’s credibility.” [ www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=27858; National Right to Life News, May 2008]

Members of the British Parliament voted to allow scientists to make hybrids combining animal and human DNA in human cloning attempts.   Scientists want to create the clones to obtain embryonic stem cells for research, even though embryonic stem cell research has never helped a single patient.

An amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill that would have prevented the cloning process was rejected 336 to 176.   Former minister Edward Leigh, who offered the amendment, criticized the making of hybrid clones as crossing an “entirely new ethical boundary” and warned that it will turn the UK into a scientific “rogue state.”   He continued, “In many ways we are like children playing with landmines without any concept of the dangers of the technology that we are handling.”  

In the United States, pro-life groups are backing a bill that would prohibit the creation of hybrid clones with both human and animal parts.   Rep. Chris Smith introduced the Human-Animal Hybrid Prohibition Act (H.R. 5910) last April. [ www.lifenews.com/bio2447.html; www.lifenews.com/bio2424.html; www.lifenews.com/bio2421.html]  

Federal court upholds South Dakota abortion law informing women

In late June, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a South Dakota law requiring abortionists to give women seeking abortion information about the procedure.   Abortion practitioners must tell women that “the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”   They are also required to give women the contact information of a local pregnancy center, as well as other information concerning health risks and pregnancy support available.   The court cited parts of the Supreme Court’s recent Gonzales v. Carhart decision referring to post-abortion problems experienced by women.

Melinda Delahoyde, president of Care Net, a national network of pregnancy centers, applauded the Planned Parenthood v. Rounds decision, saying it “sends a clarion call to abortion providers that providing such information to women is straight-forward, truthful, and relevant to her pregnancy decision, and if withheld, deprives her of life-saving information.”

Planned Parenthood was unsuccessful in an attempt to block the law.   On the day it was to go into effect, the only abortion business in South Dakota (a Planned Parenthood affiliate) closed its doors rather than comply with the law.   Whether the closing is temporary or permanent remains to be seen.   [ www.lifenews.com/state3350.html; www.lifenews.com/state3397.html]]

India male-female ratio at all-time low

The British charity ActionAid said in a June report, titled “Disappearing Daughters,” that the boy-girl ratio in India among children up to age six is the lowest it has been since the last nationwide census in 2001, when there were 927 girl babies born to every 1,000 boys.   Both rural and urban areas show declines, and the figures cut across class and wealth lines, and the gap continues to widen!     ActionAid called for the government to take immediate “sustained action” in an effort to prevent a lost generation of women.   The report urged the government to strictly enforce laws banning pre-natal sex selection and sex-selective abortion.   The Lancet reported that more than 500,000 female babies are victims of abortion every year in India. [ LifeNews report, 6/23/08]