wyandotcountyrightolife

By Brent Bozell

Vanessa Hudgens

What happens when a teenager who came into the world as an unplanned teenage pregnancy ends up with an unplanned pregnancy of her own? Will she bend to all the “helpful” insistence that she needs to exercise her “right to choose” before she is, as one callous presidential contender put it, “punished with a baby”?

This is the plot of “Gimme Shelter,” a new movie that departs from the feminist pack mentality of Hollywood. Agnes “Apple” Bailey — played in a breakout role by “High School Musical” star Vanessa Hudgens — looks like a poster child for Planned Parenthood at the film’s beginning: sixteen years old, down and out after living in a series of foster homes, and now living with a drug-addicted mother who sometimes beats her.

As the story begins, she walks out on her mother and goes hunting for her father, who is now a wealthy stockbroker. She asks her father, who has not seen her since she was a baby, for a place to stay temporarily. When she discovers she is pregnant, her father’s wife drives her to the abortion clinic. It is there that she simply cannot bring herself to accept the “choice” that her parents avoided and made her (fairly miserable) life possible.

Women who choose abortion can easily rationalize about the miserable lives their children might have lived. Teenage girls in this crisis can easily see a baby as an almost life-ending event – but it’s possible to see even bad choices turn into promising lives. It’s possible to squeeze the lemons and make a terrific lemonade.

It’s amazing that this film has been made, and more amazing that it’s studded with stars — not only Hudgens, but Rosario Dawson as her mother, Brendan Fraser as her father, and James Earl Jones as a friendly and patient Catholic priest. (How many of those have we seen in the movies lately?)

After Agnes crashes a potential abuser’s car and ends up in the hospital, she meets Father Frank. With the childhood that she’s endured, it’s understandable that Agnes isn’t the most receptive prospect for a God-loves-you message. But she agrees to move into a home for unwed mothers that can help her have her baby. The journey will not be easy – her drug-addict mother wants to pull her out of the home – but in the shelter, Agnes finally finds a home — with strangers who are in the same jam that she’s in.

Inspired by the real-life story of Kathy DiFiore, the founder of Several Sources Shelters, writer and director Ronald Krauss wrote his original screenplay while spending a year in a shelter for pregnant teens, and based it on the lives of several of the shelter mothers.

Krauss wasn’t the only one who was inspired. Brendan Fraser asked to be in the movie after reading the script and spent time in the shelters with the mothers and the babies. On the last day of shooting, Krauss said Fraser “quietly told Kathy that he was donating his salary to the shelter, so he actually did the movie for nothing. It was a complete surprise to all of us.”

The movie critics will probably see this film as a preachy pro-life movie, but it should be remembered that some of these critics believe deeply that abortion is one of America’s greatest liberties. Avoiding abortion is like avoiding reality.

Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday bitterly complained a few years back that movies like “Knocked Up” and “Waitress” cheated American womanhood by failing to ponder and explicitly cherish the A-word: “It’s a setup that has some viewers, especially women who came of age in a post-Roe v. Wade America, wondering just what world these movies are living in.” She accused the film-makers of “moral hypocrisy.”

It’s odd that pro-abortion movie critics might dismiss “Gimme Shelter” as preachy when they don’t oppose sermonizing in the movies. They just oppose the sermon of life. For example, Hornaday loved “After Tiller,” a documentary sermonizing about the great hearts and deeds of late-term abortionists. The doctors “emerge as thoughtful and dedicated” and the women who enter their clinics are lauded as “the world’s experts in their own lives.”

After watching “Gimme Shelter,” it’s quite obvious that the people who run these shelters for unwed mothers are thoughtful and dedicated, and why wouldn’t the women who enter their shelters also be hailed by feminists as experts on their own lives? It’s refreshing that we can go to the cineplex and exercise the right to choose a movie that doesn’t bow to the conventional “wisdom” of feminism when it comes to teenagers in trouble. It shows there really are people out there to give hope to the hopeless — all of the hopeless.

Learn More:

http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2014/01/youre-right-to-choose-this-movie

By Dave Andrusko

It was about the same time that a speaker at today’s March for Life told the huge audience that Pope Francis had tweeted his support for unborn babies and the Marchers that somebody tweeted me that President Obama had rolled out his annual January 22 message pledging his solidarity with the Abortion Industry. (You can see both below.)

When I got back to the office I read it. It’s written so mechanically it doesn’t even qualify as boilerplate. A couple of thoughts as I thaw out.

Contra the President, Roe has a different “guiding principle.” Roe (and its companion case Doe v. Bolton) stood for the proposition that there is only body involved—the mother; that it’s perfectly okay to short-circuit the legislative process and announce from on high that a hundred years worth of protective state statutes were suddenly null and void; and that, as the New York Times wrote in a supportive editorial two days later, opponents should fold up their tents and go home. Here are the key paragraphs from the Times’ editorial:

”The Supreme Court has made a major contribution to the preservation of individual liberties and of free decision-making by its invalidation of state laws inhibiting a woman’s right to obtain an abortion in its first three months of pregnancy.

“The Courts seven-to-two ruling could bring to an end the emotional and divisive public argument over what always should have been an intensely private and personal matter. It will end the argument if those who are now inveighing against the decision as a threat to civilization’s survival will pause long enough to recognize the limits of what the Court has done.”

Note that from the get-go, the decision was misrepresented as allowing abortion only in the “first three months of pregnancy.” Minimizing the impact of a law that has resulted in the deaths of over 56 million babies and whose ethos has greased the skids for infanticide and physician-assisted suicide is at the core of the Abortion Industry’s wholly dishonest messaging.

Just one other comment, so obvious it only bares mentioning because it captures the pro-abortion mind at its most evasive. The President concluded

“Because this is a country where everyone deserves the same freedom.”

Not if you are an unborn baby. Your freedom was flushed down the toilet 41 years ago by a High Court whose arrogance was matched only by its ignorance of the fundamentals of human biology.

Indeed, the decision was so slipshod that over the years even constitutional scholars who were “pro-choice” lamented Blackmun’s addlepated decisions. (See “Abortion defenders explain why Roe v. Wade was a terrible legal decision”)

LEARN MORE:

http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2014/01/pope-francis-cheers-march-and-life-president-obama-cheers-abortion-and-death

By David Prentice, PhD

Dr. David Prentice

This year we mark the 41^st anniversary of the onset of tragedy; a tragedy because of the horrific loss of life, and many more lives than we realize. The legalization of abortion in the U.S. by the Roe v. Wade decision has cost over 56 million preborn babies their young lives since that fateful day in 1973.

The numbers are staggering, difficult to grasp; the U.S. has lost more lives than the population of many entire countries such as South Africa or South Korea, almost as many deaths as the entire population of Italy or the United Kingdom. But those aren’t the only lives lost or scarred as a result of abortion in the U.S. There is no accurate number of the women who lost their own lives, as well as those who have been physically and psychically scarred by abortion. The victims are often silent and unknown, but seriously harmed.

And yet the number of lives lost as a result of abortion is even more than that. Because many lives could have been saved from the delivery of those babies, by the collection and use of adult stem cells from the umbilical cords of those born babies. We could have doubled the lifesaving, by letting babies live and be born, and using their umbilical cords to save life from that life saved.

This life-saving resource is an important part of the vast array of safe, proven, ethical alternatives to embryonic stem cells. It is a largely untold story that outlets such as National Right to Life News Today are doing their best to publicize.

Umbilical cord blood stem cells have become an extremely valuable alternative to bone marrow adult stem cell transplants, ever since cord blood stem cells were first used for patients over 25 years ago. The first umbilical cord blood stem cell transplant was performed in October 1988, for a 5-year-old child with Fanconi anemia, a serious condition where the bone marrow fails to make blood cells. That patient is currently alive and healthy, 25 years after the cord blood stem cell transplant.

Since that time, over 30,000 cord blood stem cell transplants have been done around the world, and transplants have increased for various blood and bone marrow diseases and leukemias, as well as for genetic enzymatic diseases in children. Cord blood stem cell transplants have also become more common for adults with leukemia. Cord blood transplants have been especially helpful for racial and ethnic minorities.

Bone marrow adult stem cell transplants require an exact match between donor and recipient, and it can sometimes be difficult to find a donor match for a patient, especially for minorities. But umbilical cord blood stem cells can be used with some mismatch and still provide successful treatments.

The Wall Street Journal recently noted the increased interest in umbilical cord blood by scientists and doctors seeking stem cell cures. Besides current treatments, cord blood stem cells are now being studied for their potential to treat many more diseases, including Type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, as well as congenital heart disease and cerebral palsy. The story quotes Dr. William Shearer, professor of pediatrics and immunology at Baylor College of Medicine:

“It’s a disposable item that Mother Nature provides us with… It’s a renewable source. It’s free and why not use it?”

Since the first umbilical cord blood stem cell transplant over 25 years ago, over 600,000 cord blood units have been stored away around the globe for future lifesaving transplants. Just two examples of public programs to collect and store umbilical cord blood stem cells are the National Marrow Donor Program (motto: “You could cure someone’s blood cancer by giving birth”) and the National Cord Blood Program, and additionally there are commercial cord blood storage companies, involved in collection, storage, and research. The data so far show that cord blood stem cells can be stored frozen for over 20 years without loss of potency.

And it’s not controversial. As a recent news story in the Washington Times showed, many more states are turning to ethical, successful adult stem cells, providing real hope and real treatments for thousands of people. One such state, Kansas, last year initiated a unique Midwest Stem Cell Therapy Center that will treat patients, do research on new therapies, educate the public and professionals on the advantages of adult stem cells such as those from cord blood and the solid umbilical cord, and train physicians to deliver those treatments. Paul Wagle was appointed by Governor Brownback to represent the patient community on the new Advisory Board for the Kansas Center. Paul received an umbilical cord blood stem cell transplant for his leukemia in 2005. Partly as a result of the successful treatment, Paul developed an interest in science and earned a triple major from Benedictine College in Kansas in 2013, and is now in seminary. The Kansas Center has already treated its first patient and held its inaugural scientific conference.

Here are just a few other examples of the double lifesaving from a born baby and the saved cord blood.

Mary Lou Rusco also received umbilical cord blood stem cells for her leukemia. She received the treatment from doctors at the Kansas University Medical Center, and is now free from leukemia.

Joe Davis, Jr. was diagnosed with sickle cell anemia, at only a few months old. His parents were told that he wouldn’t survive to be a teenager, and they couldn’t find a bone marrow match for him. But along came younger brother Isaac, whose umbilical cord blood stem cells saved Joe Junior’s life.

Chloe Levine received an innovative cord blood stem cell transplant at Duke University to treat her cerebral palsy. She’s now a happy healthy little girl.

As Tom McClusky of the March for Life has noted, this lifesaving stem cell research strikes the right cord for life!

LEARN MORE: 

http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2014/01/save-a-babys-life-save-two-lives-with-umbilical-cord-blood

By Dave Andrusko

Erick Muñoz walked into a packed Tarrant County courtroom for Friday’s hearing. (Tom Fox/Staff Photographer)

As National Right to Life News Today was about to be posted, the Dallas Morning News reported that Texas state District Judge R.H. Wallace “has sided with the family of Marlise Muñoz and ordered JPS [John Peter Smith] Hospital to declare her dead and withdraw life support by 5 p.m. Monday.”

Mrs. Muñoz, who is approximately 22 weeks pregnant, was 14 weeks pregnant when she collapsed on her kitchen floor in November. Her husband, Erick Munoz, tried to resuscitate his wife and called for an ambulance. Doctors restarted Mrs. Muñoz’s heart in the emergency room. She has been on life support since then.

The family has insisted that although she committed nothing to paper, Mrs. Muñoz had made clear that she never wish to be kept on life support.

Erick Muñoz had contended doctors told him that his wife “had lost all activity in her brain stem” and an accompanying chart stated that she was “brain dead.” Last week the family brought a lawsuit in Tarrant County civil court against JPS Health Network.

They requested the court to issue an order requiring John Peter Smith Hospital “to immediately cease conducting any further medical procedures and to remove Marlise from any respirators, ventilators or other ‘life support,’” the Star-Telegram newspaper reported.

The hospital has said consistently that it could not take Mrs. Muñoz, who is the mother of 15-month-old Mateo, off of life support, citing a provision of the Texas Advance Directives Act that reads “A person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment under this subchapter from a pregnant patient.”

Click here to read the January issue of National Right to Life News, the “pro-life newspaper of record.”

But there were two major developments since last we reported on the case. In court documents released late Thursday, the hospital acknowledged for the first time that Marlise Muñoz, “met the clinical criteria for brain death on Nov. 28, 2013.”

However while John Peter Smith Hospital agreed Mrs. Muñoz met the clinical criteria for brain death, “the hospital says she did not leave a written directive and withdrawing life support ‘would cause the death of the unborn child,’” the Dallas Morning News reported earlier today.

The second development was part of a post sent out mid-afternoon by the Morning News’ Diane Jennings, updating her earlier story:

Both sides also agree that the fetus is not viable, and the judge noted that the mother could elect to have an abortion if she were able to make such a decision.

“As I understand the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court that if this fetus were not viable [and] Ms. Muñoz were alive … she could abort the child.”

Wallace has ordered a brief recess, after which he could make a ruling in the case.

Of course just how badly the child may—or may not—have been injured is unknown. CNN closed one of its stories this afternoon with this:

For all the passions on both sides of the debate, others saw plenty of gray area — the kind of thing that might not be resolved until the baby is born and, perhaps, develops outside the womb.

“A lot depends, first of all, on how long the patient here was deprived of oxygen, or otherwise compromised,” said Dr. Jeffrey Ecker of Massachusetts General Hospital, who works on complicated pregnancies and prenatal diagnosis

“We can certainly use tools like ultrasound and MRI to sometimes see where there has been injury as a result of low blood pressure or low oxygen. But just seeing that things look well isn’t the same as saying that things will be well,” Ecker said.

LEARN MORE:   

http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2014/01/judge-orders-hospital-to-declare-pregnant-woman-dead-and-withdraw-life-support-by-monday