Monthly Archives: October 2013

The Center for Medical Ethics at the Louisiana Right to Life Federation has produced a 60-second video entitled “Life at Risk” that very effectively highlights the denial of medical treatment authorized by Obamacare. Talking in their kitchen, the members of an extended family express concern about being denied medical treatment, describing the rationing under “President Obama’s health care law” in easy-to-understand terms.

More and PLEASE WATCH the video here: http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2013/10/life-at-risk-effective-obamacare-rationing-video

THEN please promote the video by sharing:

We urgently need to make the general public aware of the rationing in the Obama Health Care Law – please help spread the word about this video!

Carol Tobias
National Right to Life President
ObamaCare, rationing

 

By Dave Andrusko

Using remarkable technology to eavesdrop on the unborn child, it seems as if every day in every way we find that he or she is a remarkable human being. One study builds on another on another, and so forth, showing ever-greater complexity.

Using 4-dimensional ultrasound, a few months ago researchers from Durham and Lancaster Universities published a study of 15 healthy unborn babies that showed how the child’s facial expressions develop and become more complex as the baby grows. On the scans you can see recognizable facial expressions including what can only be described as a smile, followed by even more complex multi-dimensional expressions.

Researchers interpreted the behavior as babies “practicing” facial expressions. The article was published in the academic journal, PLOS ONE.

Just this past week, publishing in the journal “Developmental Psychobiology,” researchers found that that babies get better at anticipating their own movements as they enter the later stages of gestation. Put another way, “For the first time, psychologists discovered that foetuses were able to predict, rather than react to, their own hand movements towards their mouths as they entered the later stages of gestation compared to earlier in a pregnancy,” according to Carolyn Buchanan.

Here’s how Buchanan summarized the way the way “psychologists at Durham and Lancaster Universities tracked movements in a total of 60 scans of 15 healthy fetuses (8 girls and 7 boys) at monthly intervals between 24 weeks and 36 weeks gestation.”

“In the early stages of gestation, fetuses were more likely to touch the upper part and sides of their heads. But as the fetuses matured, they began to increasingly touch the lower, more sensitive, part of their faces including their mouths.

“And by 36 weeks a significantly higher proportion of fetuses were seen opening their mouths before touching them. Researchers say this suggests that in later stages of pregnancy, the babies were able to anticipate that their hands were about to touch their mouths, rather than just reacting to the touch.”

Please join those who are following me on Twitter at twitter.com/daveha. Send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com.

fetal development, unborn facial expressions

More: http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2013/10/new-research-shows-unborn-child-can-anticipate-own-movements-in-the-womb

By Dave Andrusko

image courtesy / © penny yi wang

Yesterday a friend of mine sent me a link to a set of photos on the New York Times webpage. The first of 7 photos showed a set of giant white balloons.

To be honest, I was busy, wasn’t immediately interested, and didn’t bother to investigate the remainder of the photos until today. Lo and behold, when I did, here’s what I found.

The explanation (quoting from the story by Carol Vogel) was “For weeks, 14 giant balloons had been mysteriously parked in front of the Sidra Medical and Research Center, a hulking steel, glass and white ceramic building devoted to women’s and children’s health that is open on the outskirts of this city early next year.” (The city is Doha, Qatar.)

As is suggested by the accompanying photo (© penny yi wan) what those balloons concealed for weeks was “The Miraculous Journey,” 14 HUGE bronze sculptures that depict the unborn child’s journey from conception to birth. The author is a very famous–and even more controversial artist–Damien Hirst.

And what a spectacular opening on Monday evening! To the “amplified sound of a beating heart, members of Qatar’s royal family, government officials and local artists watched as each balloon, bathed in purple light, opened like a giant flower to reveal an unusually provocative public artwork,” Vogel wrote.

Three years in the making, the sculptures conclude with a 46-foot-tall baby boy! Collectively they weigh 216 tons and costs $20 million.

Most of the work, “fraught with secrecy,” was carried out in Hirst’s studio in England. “The first meeting I had with the architects, I was not allowed to tell them what the sculptures were because they wanted it to be a surprise,” Hirst told Vogel.

Vogel added drily, “There is nothing secret about them now: he positioned the sculptures so they can be seen both from the motorway and the desert.”

Hirst traced his fascination with childbirth to having children of his own. “Everyone talks about our life’s journey, but we have a whole journey before you’re born,” he explained.

Without getting into specifics, there was little or nothing in Hirst’s previous work that was remotely life-affirming. That changed as of Monday.

But the life-affirming exhibit marks a change in course for Hirst, whose previous works have included a diamond-studded human skull, and a variety of animals, some dissected, preserved in formaldehyde.

“Ultimately, the journey a baby goes through before birth is bigger than anything it will experience in its human life,” Hirst said. “I hope the sculpture will instill in the viewer a sense of awe and wonder at this extraordinary human process, which will soon be occurring in the Sidra Medical Center, as well as every second all across the globe.”

Please join those who are following me on Twitter at twitter.com/daveha. Send your comments todaveandrusko@gmail.com.

Public Relations Manager

Ohio Right to Life

88 East Broad Street, Suite 620

 

BY RITA DILLER

Oct. 4, 2013 (STOPP) – As a part of American Life League’s just-released meta-study of Planned Parenthood, Stop Planned Parenthood (STOPP) researchers analyzed the teen pregnancy rate in 16 counties of the Texas Panhandle. In those counties, over an 11-year period, closures of Planned Parenthood facilities were ongoing in the face of strong community opposition to the abortion giant’s presence.

Its school programs target children as young as kindergarten age and place a special emphasis on students in middle school—as young as 11 years old—imposing explicit sexual information on them during a period in their lives when it can do great psychological and physical harm. These programs—if they touch on abstinence at all—define abstinence as abstaining from sexual activity that can cause pregnancy, and give the green light to “protected” sex.

The children get the message loud and clear that sex outside of marriage is good, necessary, and expected, but that resultant pregnancies are to be avoided or eliminated at all cost. This lays the groundwork for young women and men who default to abortion when a pregnancy occurs. That results in yet another huge revenue source for Planned Parenthood. In fact, in 2011, it is estimated that abortion accounted for 57 percent of Planned Parenthood’s clinic income.

Planned Parenthood is frequently invited into publicly funded schools and, according to its annual report, spent at least $41.5 million on indoctrinating children with its “comprehensive sex education” programs in 2012. Our study makes it clear that, based on empirical data, Planned Parenthood comprehensive sexuality education programs are not an essential element in reducing teen pregnancy. Since the programs can harm the children they are inflicted upon, they should be removed from all communities.

Read More: http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/study-shows-dramatic-drop-in-teen-pregnancy-rate-as-planned-parenthood-leav

By Dave Andrusko

As they say, imagine my surprise. A friend recently posted a link on Facebook to a story that ran (as it turns out) a couple of years ago–“5 secrets you shouldn’t keep from your GYN”—that had a remarkable truth not ordinarily seen on the “mainstream media.”

Elizabeth Cohen, described as a CNN Senior Medical Correspondent, began with a series of horror stories revolving around the unwillingness of women to tell their OB-GYN certain sensitive (or, seemingly, not so sensitive) information.

Cohen does a good job of discussing subject areas you might not necessarily think of—or would assume women would routinely reveal—before getting to #4: “Whether you’ve had an abortion.” (The “Rankin” in the following quote is Dr. Lissa Rankin, a gynecologist in Mill Valley, California.)

“People who’ve had abortions sometimes worry about saying so if they know their doctor is pro-life, or if they don’t know where their doctor stands on the issue,” Rankin says. While it’s understandable to have that worry, it’s medically important to tell your doctor if you’ve had abortions.

Why it matters: If you’re infertile, it’s important for your doctor to know about past abortions for two reasons. One, it indicates that at least in one point in your life, you were fertile and “the plumbing works,” Rankin says.

Secondly, the infertility might be caused by infection or scar tissue that resulted from the abortion, she adds.

Also, multiple abortions could put you at a higher risk for miscarriage or premature birth, she says.

Finally, if you’re about to have surgery on your cervix or uterus, your doctor needs to know about prior abortions, as scar tissue might make the surgery more difficult.

Wow! How many time have experts—and by no means necessarily pro-life—tried to get these truths across?! Abortion is an unnatural assault on a woman’s reproductive system. There can be, and are, a host of complications.

More: http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2013/10/cnn-explains-why-a-woman-should-tell-her-ob-gyn-she-has-had-an-abortion

I rarely agree with assisted suicide proponents. But an article in Salon may be onto something–that the passage of the Affordable Care Act could boost assisted suicide legalization. From the article:

Currently only three states have Death With Dignity laws – a surprisingly low number given that there isn’t a one among the other 47 in which somebody isn’t dying right now. Could the Affordable Care Act change that? Peg Sandeen, executive director of the National Death With Dignity Center, speculates: “I think the ACA is going to change how we access healthcare and that change is going to come slowly. What I hope it means is that people have access to a wide span of options across the health spectrum.”

In other words, that is the plan!

Assisted suicide is not only about so-called “death with dignity”–a gooey euphemism swallowed whole by the reporter–but despite the article’s spin to the contrary, ultimately about saving money.

Do you remember Barbara Wagner and Randy Stroup? Both were on Medicaid and terminally ill with cancer. Their doctors prescribed life-extending chemotherapy. But Oregon’s death panel rationers refused to pay for their prescriptions. Both received letters telling them not to worry, while the state wouldn’t pay to extend their lives, it would readily fund their assisted suicides.

Hemlock Society founder Derek Humphry told us this was coming, writing in Freedom to Die:

More: http://www.lifenews.com/2013/10/03/euthanasia-activists-say-obamacare-will-lead-to-more-assisted-suicides/

By Dave Andrusko In the run-up to and passage of ObamaCare, there were a number of memorable quotes. We talked yesterday about one grossly mistaken promise from President Obama: “If you like your [insurance] plan, you can keep your plan.”

But that paled in comparison to then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s inadvertent admission. Referring to Obamacare, which was the size of multiple telephone books and whose contents were a mystery to most everyone, she famously said, “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it.”

Pro-abortion House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Pro-abortion President Barack Obama

As ObamaCare continues its rollout, we are finding out more and more about what exactly is in the “Affordable Health Care Act.” And the number and types of critics continues to grow.

Also on Wednesday’s Jennifer Popik, JD, did an excellent job unspooling the truth behind the impact of the massive ObamaCare tax on most health insurance plans (see “Obamacare tax on health insurance will affect most plans over time, reducing healthcare”). Her post is very much worth reading.

Less than 24 hours later we read this in today’s Washington Post: “Fairfax utility: Obamacare will likely lead to dropped coverage.” Fairfax is a city just south of Washington, DC, and the utility referred to is the Fairfax County Water Authority.

To her credit Post reporter Laura Vozzella pulls no punches and refuses to adopt the Obama administration line—that health insurance policies that are not as parsimonious as ObamaCare wants can be derisively mischaracterized as “Cadillac” plans.

The heart of the letter, written by Burton Jay Rubin, chairman of the authority’s government relations committee, is that if the “Cadillac Tax” takes place as planned in 2018 [a 40% excise tax on insurers], the authority “will likely drop insurance coverage for its nearly 400 employees,” Vozzella writes.

“[I]t is irrefutable that the ACA is fatally flawed,” wrote Rubin. “If it is intended to make health care coverage available to those who do not have it, it does so only by jeopardizing the coverage earned by those who have it.”

More: http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2013/10/list-of-companies-that-will-drop-health-insurance-under-obamacare-spreads-to-include-a-quasi-public-entity-the-fairfax-county-water-authority