Monthly Archives: February 2014

Planned Parenthood Gets Away With Killing a Woman in an Abortion

by Cheryl Sullenger | Chicago, IL | LifeNews.com | 2/10/14 2:09 PM

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Tonya Reaves was 24 and the mother of a one-year-old son when she walked into a Chicago Planned Parenthood clinic in July of 2012 and asked for a second trimester abortion. She never walked out.

Reaves died from complications to her abortion, leaving unanswered questions about circumstances that led to her death.

Soon after, Reaves’ family filed a wrongful death suit on behalf of her surviving son, Alvin. On January 22, 2014, the family petitioned to settle the suit with Planned Parenthood for $2 million. Attorneys will received over a half million in fees and expenses, leaving the just under $1.5 million to be paid out in a structured settlement to Alvin when he reaches the age of 18. The delay in payment ensures that Alvin — not a guardian — can decide as an adult how the money will be spent.

“While two million dollars seems like a lot of money, that’s just pocket change for Planned Parenthood. If this case had gone to trial, we believe Planned Parenthood may have been forced to pay a judgment much, much larger, and details about Planned Parenthood’s suspicious and possibly criminal behavior would have become public,” said Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue who called for a criminal investigation into Planned Parenthood’s conduct soon after it discovered that Reaves had died.

While much is already known about what happened to Reaves, including a time line of events that led to her death and her autopsy report that showed she suffered three serious injuries during the risky second trimester abortion, the settlement denied the public a look into the inner workings of how Planned Parenthood fatally mishandled Reaves’ abortion and her ensuing complications.

On the other hand, the settlement is evidence that Planned Parenthood simply could not deny culpability for wrongfully ending Reaves’ life.

“Now we have documentation that Planned Parenthood is accepting responsibility for Tonya Reaves’ death. Their appalling treatment of Reaves exposes how little concern they actually have for the lives of vulnerable women, especially urban women of color who are particularly targeted by Planned Parenthood for abortions,” said Newman. “Planned Parenthood’s behavior, in my opinion, rises to the level of criminal conduct and should still be investigated as such, especially now that Planned Parenthood has agreed to cough up cash.”

Reaves was sixteen weeks into her pregnancy when, according to court documents, abortionist Mandy Gittler conducted an abortion on Reaves at the Loop Health Center Planned Parenthood, located at 18 S. Michigan Avenue in Chicago. The fact that her abortion was said to have been done at that facility remains a mystery since Planned Parenthood’s own website indicated that no surgical abortions were available at that particular office. Since second trimester abortions are more complicated procedures requiring special training and equipment, questions remain about whether that facility was adequate for such an abortion and if Gittler was qualified to perform the procedure.

Certainly during Reaves’ abortion, something went terribly wrong. Reaves’ autopsy report confirmed that she suffered from a perforated uterus, an “extensive” perforation of her broad uterine ligament with a probable severing of her left uterine artery, and an incomplete abortion. As a result, she immediately began to hemorrhage internally. The medical examiner found 1.5 liters of blood inside Reaves’ abdominal cavity, which amounted to about half her total blood volume. (Suspiciously, the Medical Examiner initially withheld critical pages of the autopsy from Operation Rescue.)

But if Reaves had been rushed to a nearby hospital immediately, she probably would have survived.

“We have documentation that women suffering injuries similar to those inflicted by Planned Parenthood on Tonya Reaves have survived when the they have received emergency hospital care in time,” said Newman.

A case in point was a botched second-trimester abortion conducted by Steven Chase Brigham and Nicola Riley in September, 2010, at a “secret” abortion clinic in Elkton, Maryland. So egregious was the lack of skill shown in the patient’s injuries that the Maryland Board of Physicians revoked Riley’s medical license and Brigham faces revocation in New Jersey over the incident.

“Even quacks like Brigham and Riley had enough sense to get their injured patient to the hospital, albeit in the most negligent way imaginable,” said Newman. “Planned Parenthood showed a far more callous attitude toward Reaves’ plight.”

However, in Illinios, Mandy Gittler’s license shows no disciplinary action. In fact, her name failed to appear as a defendant on the settlement documents even though she was named in the original complaint. A receipt for attorney fees indicates she was deposed in the case.

In fact, Planned Parenthood staff allowed Reaves to languish at the clinic after having botched her abortion while she hemorrhaged for 5½ long hours before seeking emergency care. Operation Rescue obtained records that show, like Brigham and Riley, Planned Parenthood did not call 911 for an ambulance, which was the quickest way to get help for her, even though they were instructed to do so by an emergency dispatcher during a separate call placed by Planned Parenthood during an unrelated incident earlier on the day Reaves died.

“There’s little doubt that Planned Parenthood’s incompetence, negligence, and desire for secrecy killed Tonya Reaves, and aside from paying out a sum of money that is essentially insignificant to them, they are getting away relatively scott free,” said Newman.

The Thomas More Society is calling for stricter laws to provide oversight to abortion clinics in Illinois. Currently, there is little – if any – abortion clinic accountability or means of ensuring that abortion clinics have basic safety standards and practices in place.

“Planned Parenthood joins the likes of Kermit Gosnell in providing substandard care to poor urban women of color who they apparently don’t think even deserve as much as a call to 911,” said Newman. “We still maintain that the 5½-hour delay in obtaining emergency care for Reaves meets the criterion for the minimum charge of criminal negligence, but there has been no interest whatsoever shown by authorities in Chicago in seeking justice for Tonya or in protecting other women from her plight. That means what happened to Tonya will likely happen again to another unsuspecting woman. It’s just a matter of time.”

Newman renewed calls for further investigations by the Illinois Medical Board and the Chicago Police in light of the Planned Parenthood settlement.

“This case demands further investigation,” said Newman. “There is still a lot that Planned Parenthood is hiding.”

LEARN MORE:

http://www.lifenews.com/2014/02/10/planned-parenthood-gets-away-with-killing-a-woman-in-an-abortion/

Rare conjoined twins pregnancy to proceed despite pressure from doctors to abort

Renee Young and Simon Howie

Credit: A Current Affair, http://aca.ninemsn.com.au/

SYDNEY, Australia, February 10, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Aussie battler couple Renee Young and Simon Howie, of Tregear, are pregnant with a type of conjoined twins so rare that only 35 cases have ever been recorded, of which none are alive today.  Despite the advice of doctors, they are determined to see the pregnancy through and enjoy the arrival of the twin girls.

As told to A Current Affair, it was at a routine ultrasound at 15 weeks and two days that Renee’s sonographer spotted something unusual and sent her back to her local doctor.  It was only then that her doctor broke the news.  Renee and Simon were told that they were expecting conjoined twins.  Renee described the experience as “difficult” and “hard to take in.”

It left the couple shocked and confused, and not entirely sure how to take the news.  It was unusually quiet on the way home.  When they started to talk about it, the conversation was about “where we were going from that stage” and they both agreed to continue the pregnancy.  As Renee continued to explain, “everything happens for a reason, so what happens … happens.”

After more tests at Bankstown hospital in Sydney, the head of obstetrics confirmed the diagnosis.

The advanced stage of Renee’s pregnancy was also a stated factor in deciding to continue.  She said that even if it was only at the ten weeks stage she wouldn’t terminate.   “I’ve still got to give birth whether it’s now, ten weeks, or full term.  To me it doesn’t make a difference.”

The couple sees this pregnancy as the same as having an unborn baby with autism or Down Syndrome, making no sense to abort babies that are healthy and growing well in the womb.

A 3D animation of the couple’s twins, show their heads connected at their shared brain stem.

Credit: A Current Affair, http://aca.ninemsn.com.au/

Doctors had still advised the couple to abort because the babies would “be looked upon by the public as a freak.”  Issues with schooling, growing up and having friends were also cited.

Renee also has debilitating rheumatoid arthritis, and the couple is living in social housing with their seven children, surviving on disability and carer’s pensions.

Simon and Renee aren’t daunted by this.  With seven children already, they have their support team in place.  Teenage daughters Jess (oldest), Patsyanne and Angel are on side, and wouldn’t abort the babies either, regardless of how big the challenge will be.

According to Patsyanne, “No matter what … it may have a deformity, but (it’s) still a baby.  So … no way.”  “It’s still a human,” she added.  Younger sister Angel said she had thought about a termination in the beginning, but the more she thought about it she decided, “Maybe it’s got something wrong with it, but [it’s] still my sister.”

Simon and Renee are aware of the job ahead and are taking it one day at a time.  They’re hoping that nothing major will go wrong with the conjoined twins, but they’re prepared to re-enter the workforce if that is what it takes in order to provide. They already expect ridicule from some members of the public.

The last diprosopus (craniofacial duplication) conjoined twins were born in India in 2008, lasting two months.  This will likely be the first set for Australia.  This type of conjoined twin has one body and one set of organs, but the head is divided into two faces.  Scans have shown that Simon and Renee’s conjoined twins each have their own brain, both of which are connected to the one brain stem.

Simon and Renee are positive about how the pregnancy is proceeding.  Renee says, “While it’s in my belly it’s healthy.  So … the heartbeat is beautiful.  The brain activity is good in both brains.  We can’t sort of come to grips with not having it.”

“We can’t be fully prepared, but we want its existence to be out there.  It’s going to be here and I want people to know about it.  It does happen.  It may be very rare, but it does happen,” she said.

Simon has been spending many late nights researching the condition on the internet to learn as much as he can.  Not just learning more about diprosopus, but to be reassured of the path that they plan to take.  Breathing difficulties and heart problems are some of the issues to be dealt with.

And for the doctors that think they should abort the babies now rather than wait for them to succumb?  Renee says that even if she only gets two days with the babies, at least she gets some time with them.  Simon agrees, pointing out that the rest of the family would also get to spend that time with their newest sisters.

Their babies are due in July, and the specialist has stated that he can’t think of any reason why the babies won’t survive the birth.  They have also been advised that there is no reason to have a C-section.  A natural delivery is planned.

LEARN MORE:

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/rare-conjoined-twins-pregnancy-to-proceed-despite-pressure-from-doctors-to

Staff Did Abortions, Anesthesia With No Medical Training, “We Had No Idea What We Were Doing”

by Chris Rostenberg | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 2/5/14 5:20 PM

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I believe in the possibility of a world without exploitation – pro-choicers do not. They believe that someone always has to be exploited, either women or children in the womb. Just by lying there asleep, growing, unborn babies exploit their mothers so gravely that the women are essentially enslaved, say pro-choicers, so that pregnant mothers have the right to kill their children through torture.

Women have wombs, therefore society must practice child abuse in the extreme, pro-choicers believe. This claim that there is a perpetual war between unborn children and their pregnant mothers is the height of cynicism and misogyny.

Prenatal homicide is about withholding compassion, not expressing it, and this attitude poses a menace to women. Pro-choicers show love for women through hatred of children (and of course anyone who says, “I don’t hate unborn babies; I just think they can be killed for any reason until birth” is a fool).

Most people who call themselves “pro-choice” are not so heartless as true, nine-month pro-choicers (who are the only real pro-choicers in my opinion). And even most nine-month pro-choice-to-kill activists probably are not so lacking in empathy that they would want to perform abortions themselves. Abortionists are the most callous bastards around, and to unleash them on poor desperate women shows contempt for women.

Nine-month pro-choicers (those who support unqualified abortion) delude themselves when they say pro-lifers don’t care about women. It is much harder to empathize with babies in the womb than it is with women. We interact with women all the time, and half of us are women. Women are “close” to us, while unborn children are “far away.” A person who can care for pre-born children is especially loving and has an easy time sympathizing with women; the opposite is not necessarily true. Furthermore, abortion is self-serving – there are plenty of reasons why pro-choice-to-kill activists would rationalize the “right” to choose to kill children. Why would pro-lifers rationalize their position?

This idea that love of one group (women) through the hatred of another (unborn babies) is cynical and destructive to all parties. That is why Helen Pendley says, “Life or death means nothing in [an abortion] clinic. If you don’t respect the life of the unborn, how can you respect the life of the mother and why? It doesn’t happen.” Pendley is a former administrator of abortion clinics and speaks on a double-documentary, Meet the Abortion Providers and Abortion the Inside Story, which is available free on YouTube. The documentaries feature women and men who once made a living by killing children but who have turned around and become opponents of abortion. I urge the  reader to view them.

Joy Davis, who directed six abortion clinics in Alabama and Mississippi yet became a pro-life activist, said that her boss, Dr. Tommy Tucker, was so greedy, he fired his anesthesiologist, the registered nurses, and the lab technician. He trained Joy Davis to act as an abortionist. “I never spent the first day in medical school. I really know nothing about medicine, other than what I had seen other doctors do, but I started doing abortions.” Ms. Davis, who was trained only as an ultrasound technician, explained that staff had watched the doctors put women to sleep. “We started putting patients asleep ourselves, and we had no idea what we were doing.”

Helen Pendley explained that she, not the abortion provider (dead baby provider), who prescribed the drugs, called in the medications and was the one on call when a woman started hemorrhaging. When women did call in saying they were undergoing physical or emotional trouble after a killing, the women were curtly told that the problem was pre-existing and was not caused by the pre-birth infanticide.

“I cannot tell you one thing that happens in an abortion clinic that is not a lie,” says Carol Everett, who had an abortion and was an administrator of five abortion clinics. Nita Whitten, who also worked in a Dallas abortion holocaust clinic, says, “It’s a lie when they tell you that they’re doing it to help the woman, ‘cause they’re not. … We were doing it to get her money.” She explained that it was common to bring $15,000 a day to the bank. Norma McCorvey, the woman called “Jane Roe” in the case Roe v. Wade, who was once pro-choice and is now pro-life, talked about her work in an abortion clinic. “It was just a racket. … [The abortionist] was just doing it for the money. He didn’t care about the women.”

Dina Madsen, a former abortion worker from Sacramento, explained that many of the clinic workers had had several abortions and had no confidence at all in the abortionists they worked with, but had no trouble falsely reassuring their prospective clients – “How stupid can you get?” Deborah Henry, a Michigan abortion counselor, explained that she and her coworkers lied about the pain women experience while undergoing abortions, and provided no information on the development of the child.

One former abortionist testified that the ultrasound machine, which shows pictures of the child, is always hidden from the pregnant mother, so she won’t change her mind and the abortionist/killer won’t be denied her money. But can a woman make an informed choice about abortion if she has not seen ultrasound images?

Joan Appleton, who was once a member of the National Organization for Women and quit over the matter of prenatal homicide, explained how she and her coworkers deliberately deceived women and minors in an attempt to get them pregnant again, so the clinic could get repeat business. The pro-choice-to-kill personnel would give out contraceptive pills for free, but neglect to tell the woman that if they went on antibiotics, the ensuing chemical reaction would render the birth control worthless. The contraceptives were marketed in terms of how low the estrogen level was, as in a 30% failure rate, so the killers knew they would get repeat business. (I don’t oppose contraceptives, but I oppose abortion employees entering schools to discuss it.)

Carol Everett discussed the consent form given to women considering abortion, which was six to twelve pages long. “This form is written by an abortion attorney … and it is written to confuse the girl to death.” Ms. Pendley explained her contempt for the desperate pregnant women who came to her for help. “I never saw [the women] as women. If they were so stupid as to believe our lies, they deserved exactly what we were going to give them.”

Dina Madsen said, “I didn’t really have much sympathy for them [the women]. … ‘You got yourself into this position, you better tough it out.’” Joy Davis echoes this view: “Out of the thousands and thousands of patients we [saw], I couldn’t remember one name or face. Because they were just a number to me, by how much money they paid. Oh, that’s a $5,000 case…” Referring to victims of crimes against humanity (such as women subjected to prenatal homicide) as numbers rather than as human beings directly recalls how Nazis tattooed numbers onto the wrists of concentration camp prisoners.

LEARN MORE:

http://www.lifenews.com/2014/02/05/staff-did-abortions-anesthesia-with-no-medical-training-we-had-no-idea-what-we-were-doing/

Remembering When the New York Times Called Abortion “The Evil of the Age”

by Eric Metaxas | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 2/5/14 12:22 PM

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A major American newspaper launched a crusade to stamp out abortion. That’s right. I’ll tell you about it next.    

It’s time for another BreakPoint pop quiz: name the major American newspaper that ran an expose on what goes on in abortion mills entitled “The Evil of the Age.”

Give up? The answer is the New York Times.

No, you haven’t missed anything: the expose ran in the paper’s August 23, 1871 edition.

The story, which is recounted in Cait Murphy’s book about New York in the Gilded Age, “Scoundrels in Law,” is, to use the old sixties phrase, mind-blowing.

As Murphy tells us, while all abortions had been illegal in New York since 1869, not only were both abortifacients and surgical abortions readily available, abortionists openly advertised their services.

One notorious abortionist, an English immigrant who went by the name of “Madame Restell,” made so much money that she built a mansion on Fifth Avenue!  And not just any mansion, but one of the grandest of them all: even the servants’ quarters were “lined with mahogany” and furnished with imported carpets.

Not everyone was impressed: street urchins would yell at her, “Your house is built on babies’ skulls!” as she passed in her carriage.

It wasn’t only street urchins who disapproved of the abortion trade. Anti-abortion activists, who “included most doctors and women’s groups, were disappointed at the ineffectiveness of the [1869] law.”

And that is when the New York Times sprang into action. It made stamping out the abortion trade a “crusade.” It ran “a regular series of editorials and reports on the subject,” culminating in “The Evil of the Age.”

The Times sent one of its reporters, accompanied by a woman, to the “city’s most notable abortionists.” The reporter summed up his findings thusly: “there is a systematic business of wholesale murder conducted by men and women in this city that is seldom detected, rarely interfered with, and scarcely ever punished by law.”

“Evil.” “Wholesale murder.” To see how much has changed in 143 years, just consider what the Times had to say about Kermit Gosnell, who last year was convicted of three counts of murder in connection with late-term abortions at his Philadelphia clinic.

While conceding that the “details of the crimes are horrific,” the Times insisted that “the Gosnell case does not really speak to the broader abortion debate.”

On the contrary, the Times regarded attempts to push back the “commonly defined date of viability from 24 weeks to 20 weeks or even earlier,” to be a “part of a larger push to prevent women from exercising their reproductive rights.”

I look forward to the Times’ next about-face.

And this is not entirely in jest. What the story from “Scoundrels in Law” illustrates is that attitudes toward abortion in America have never been fixed and immutable. The nineteenth century saw abortion go from mostly illegal but winked at, to illegal and strongly frowned upon. Public revulsion, translated into policy, put that century’s abortion mills out of business.

It could happen again. Forty-one years after Roe, public attitudes toward abortions seem to be turning against abortion. While children don’t chant about houses being built on babies’ skulls, most Americans think that there’s something disreputable about abortion and its practitioners.

While I doubt that the Times will be repeating “The Evil of The Age” anytime soon, we should continue to make it clear that the Times was correct when it described abortion that way.

Even if they’re embarrassed to recall that bit of their history.

LEARN MORE:

http://www.lifenews.com/2014/02/05/remembering-when-the-new-york-times-called-abortion-the-evil-of-the-age/

Forgiving the man who raped my mother…my birth father

On a cold morning in January, I made a surprise phone call to my birthmother hoping to reconnect and answer questions that I have had for many years.  A few hours later my husband and I were making the three hour trip in the snow to visit the woman that placed me up for adoption 37 years prior. It was an amazing reunion and she was absolutely beautiful in every single way.

Monica Kelsey

After visiting with her for a while, as I was holding my husband’s hand, I asked her “Who is my birthfather?”  The look on her face is one I will never forget.  Her eyes squinted and an instant look of sadness had overcome her.  After a long uncomfortable silence, nothing prepared me for what I heard next.  It was like watching a movie about someone else’s life.  My birth mother began to tell me about a dark night in 1972 where she was brutally raped and left along the side of the road to die.  My heart sank as she was telling me this horrible story.  I could not immediately comprehend that she was describing the circumstances of my conception and I kept asking myself, “What does this have to do with me?”

My husband’s hand started to grab my hand a little bit tighter.  She went on to say her mother took her to the hospital and then to the police station to press charges.  Her life was in a total tail spin and she was quickly falling into a depression.  Then a few weeks later her worst nightmare come true.  She found out she was pregnant with me.  As my birthmother sat in her living room telling me the graphic details I started to wonder how anyone could do this to another human being.  How could this man, or monster was a better word, force a woman against her will?

With advice from her mother, she went to a back alley abortion clinic hoping to “get her life back” and to forget what had happened.  After showing up to this “so called” clinic and while standing in front of the man who was going to take my life, she changed her mind.  She left the clinic and never looked back.  Her mother hid her from the outside world, she gave birth to me and never even looked at me.  She didn’t even know if I was a boy or girl.  At this point, I was so angry with this man who raped her, I didn’t even truly understand that he was my biological father.  That shock finally hit me for a few days later.

After accepting the truth I grew more and more angry with my biological father for what he had done.  My birthmother fell into a deep depression which led to alcohol and drug abuse for many years.  I wanted revenge on my birthfather for his mistreatment of my birthmother and these emotions eventually consumed my life for many months.

My birthmother passed away in March of 2013.  In one of my final conversations with her, I asked how she had felt about my birthfather.  Her response was shocking to me. She said, “I had forgiven him a long time ago, he doesn’t control me anymore”.  She went on to say that he had controlled her life for so many years and she was finally strong enough to take her life back.  She then said something that I will never forget. She said “you need to forgive him and free yourself also”.  I smiled after she said this statement, for no other reason than the fact that she knew her daughter and she knew I was hurting.

Today, I live my life free and realize that forgiveness is the path to righteousness.  I pray for him and his family as well.  We all fall short of the glory of God sometimes and it’s an absolute blessing that we all have the power to repent because Jesus died for all of us, even my birthfather.  My birthmother once told me, “it’s amazing how something so beautiful has come out of something so horrible”. I couldn’t agree more. God sometimes uses our deepest pain to be the launching pad to our greatest calling.  I am confident that many babies will have a birthday because of my birthmothers’ story and my courage to tell it!

LEARN MORE:

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/forgiving-my-father-the-man-who-raped-my-mother