KeloLand television is reporting that Oglala Sioux tribal council has voted to ban abortion on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and to "suspend tribal President Cecelia Fire Thunder on grounds she asked for donations for an abortion clinic without the council's OK." Fire Thunder will be suspended for 20 days until an impeachment hearing can take place.
Michigan's Coercive Abortion Prevention Act (S.B. 1177 and H.B.5882) are proposed legislation to amend the penal code to define specific actions as criminal if they are intended to coerce a pregnant woman into seeking an abortion. The penalty of jail time up to 15 years or a fine of not more than $7500 or both would be added to acts or threats that are already physical crimes (assault, stalking, attempted murder). These threats must be part of a pattern of repeated, harassing behavior, not a single statement or angry remark. If the pregnant woman is under the age of 18 and the perpetrator of the coercion is the adult father of the unborn child, the punishment can be doubled.
Not surprisingly, Planned Parenthood opposes the bills.
From LifeNews
This is appalling. What next? Will mothers start aborting babies with overbites or because they don't like their eye color?
A British religious official who earlier spoke out on abortions of children with cleft palates is speaking out about new reports showing abortions there on children who have clubbed feet. The condition is operable and not life-threatening and Rev. Joanna Jepson says such abortions should be illegal. She accused doctors of pressuring women to have abortions when unborn children are diagnosed with any physical or mental disability."Women shouldn't be put in the position where they are under pressure to abort from the medical profession," she told the Birmingham Post newspaper.
Crossposted at Marlowe's Shade
When exactly is a pregnancy terminated? Abortion proponents attempting to answer that question should run into a problem. By trying to protect one flank, they've exposed another.
To be consistent, the abortion industry's definition of when a pregnancy begins should agree with its definition of when it ends. But the two don't jibe. For over 30 years, abortion proponents have maintained pregnancy begins when an embryo implants in the uterus and ends after a completed delivery.
According to pro-aborts, a fallopian tube carrying a newly created embryo has no bearing on pregnancy. It merely provides the portal of entry into the uterus. How then can they claim the portal of exit, the birth canal, has anything to do with pregnancy either? Once the baby is outside the uterus, they should consider the pregnancy over, terminated. This becomes problematic when considering partial birth abortions.
Read my column today, "Pro-abort PBA paradox," on WorldNetDaily.com.
Kristen Day, the head of Democrats for Life, points out that in 1978 the Democrats had 90 more seats in the House than they do today. The Democratic caucus also included 90 more pro-lifers than it does now.
This just in:
The Oglala Sioux tribal council banned all abortions on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and suspended President Cecelia Fire Thunder on Tuesday, charging that she solicited donations on behalf of the tribe for a proposed abortion clinic without the council's approval.
And this was published in IndianCountry.com last week:
Hat tip: Stacy and Rod.
Terence Jeffrey reports on an interview with Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman:
Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman doesn't mind telling you that he sees the pro-life cause as a moral and political winner for his party.Here's the best part:
Mehlman insists, however, that the GOP should advance the pro-life cause "because it is morally right," not because it is politically advantageous.Hence, Sen. John Kerry was pounded during his unsuccessful 2004 bid for the Presidency for agreeing with his republican opponents that "life begins at conception.""Those people that say we should abandon our pro-life platform, I believe, are wrong from a political perspective, and I think are wrong from the perspective of what's right for this party," he said.
Mehlman's analysis can explain the self-contradictory behavior Democrats often exhibit on abortion. But it cannot explain similar behavior by Republicans. Democrats find themselves caught between the demands of commonsense and good morality on the one hand and a core constituency adamant about preserving legalized abortion on the other. They forsake commonsense and morality to appease their base.
Now women in China will no longer know the gender of their child prior to an abortion:
The northern Chinese province of Hebei has closed more than 200 clinics for telling women the sex of their fetuses so they can abort girls, a state newspaper said on Wednesday.No word on China's Policies of Coercive Abortion.China launched a one-child policy in the early 1980s to curb its population, now over 1.3 billion, but the restrictions have bolstered a traditional preference for baby boys and have come under fire from Western countries and human rights activists.
In rural areas of Hebei, there were 134 boys born for every 100 girls, the Shanghai Daily said.
“Twenty-five years later, I still cannot talk about it without tears and pain in my heart. It all looks simple on paper and seems like an easy way out of a bad spot, but no one tells you that the easy way out will cost you later in emotional damage and physical problems.” – Scherrie
Compassion means speaking the truth:
“The women of South Dakota are no longer suffering in silence. Because the governor signed the Bill to Protect Women and Children, and because the pro-abortion rights groups are challenging the legislation, women are coming forward to say, ‘My abortion hurt me,’” stated Leslee Unruh, upon hearing word that a group will be filing signatures on a petition to keep abortion-on-demand legal in South Dakota. “We’re glad this effort will give us the opportunity to educate the citizens, just as we educated the legislators, about how abortion hurts women."
Jackie Maxwell Brown is facing additional charges of attempted intentional homicide in the death of a 5-month-old fetus. The Kane County man is accused of kicking his 31-year-old pregnant girlfriend, allegedly causing her to miscarry her unborn baby.
A Texas mother and her baby are the latest victims in an ongoing battle against a Texas law that allows medical facilities to tell the family of a patient that they have 10 days to find another medical center willing to treat the patient because their doctors think the case is hopeless. (LifeNews)
The exclusive story was reported by the Dallas Morning News:
Baby Daniel is nearly brain-dead. He cannot breathe without a ventilator. He cannot eat without a feeding tube.As with other cases involving the Texas Futile Care Law, the family is frantically looking for another medical facility that will care for 10-month-old Daniel.And if his mother doesn't find another hospital, the doctors at Children's Medical Center Dallas will disconnect him from the machines and he will die. The hospital's ethics board has ruled that it would be futile and inappropriate to keep Daniel alive – despite his mother's wishes to try.
The child's fate could be settled after a judge hears the case Friday.
"Something deep down inside is telling me not to unplug my 10-month-old," said Dixie Belcher, Daniel's mother. "I know it's going to take him quite a while to pull out of this, but I know he's my little fighter, and he's got to pull through. He's got to pull through."
Don't look at me, I didn't say it, an anti-war politician in England did.
Asked by GQ magazine if Blair's assassination by a suicide bomber would be justified as revenge for the Iraq war, he said: "Yes, it would be morally justified."
Rigghht. So Pro-Life people would be "morally justified" if they killed pro-abortion people?
Last weekend graduates of Saint Thomas University were treated to a surprising speech by 21-year-old graduating student Ben Kessler. Some graduates walked out, many jeered, and others spewed profanities in response to his speech.
Just what did he speak of which caused such an outcry? The War in Iraq? Border control? NSA spying? None of the above.
So, what exactly did Mr. Kessler do wrong? He touched society's third rail: contraception. Mr. Kessler had the audacity to call the use of birth control "an act of selfishness."
This is a follow-up to the Mohler piece I posted yesterday - and the comments some of you made there. I want to tell the story of my evolving thoughts on birth control and children.
As anyone who's been around my blog MommyLife for a while knows, I come from a very bad background - divorce, abandonment, foster homes, sexual abuse, poverty marked my early childhood. No family love, no spiritual foundation. In the 60's and 70's, the counterculture provided a sense of identity and meaning for me that I never had. I was a Washington DC antiwar activist and a radical feminist - a spokeswoman for the pro-abortion movement. At the same time, there was part of me that was very positive: I married, had two daughters Samantha Sunshine and Jasmine Moondance, got my education as a Montessori teacher and taught impoverished preschool children to give them a better start.
On the outside, I looked confident and together - though definitely very antisocial. In 1976, after moving to San Francisco, the demons from the past became bigger than my ability to keep them down. I became a drug addict, abandoned my first husband and Samantha, and had an abortion which at the time I almost regarded as a rite of passage. You can read more about that in this article I originally published a few years ago in The Washington Times.
A remarkable report by LifeSiteNews.com reveals that Amnesty International is evaluating a proposal to move into abortion advocacy. The human rights group claims that their planned departure into child killing is related to their support for women's and homosexual rights.
As he watches his life fade, the imprisoned Dr. Death isn't sorry he killed his patients - he regrets getting caught:
"He did what he did, and it brought it to public awareness [of physician-assisted suicide]," said Kevorkian's attorney, Mayer Morganroth. "He now realizes that having performed it when it was against the law, wasn't the, probably, appropriate way to go about it. … What he should have done was work towards its legalization verbally. … Pursuing that cause, and not performing it because it still was against the law."
Testifying before yesterday's Senate Judiciary Subcommittee titled "The Consequences of Legalized Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia", Wesley J. Smith had this to say about infanticide:
In the Netherlands, infants are killed because they have birth defects, and doctors justify the practice. A 1997 study published in the British medical journal, The Lancet, revealed how deeply pediatric euthanasia had metastasized into Dutch neonatal medical practice. According to the report, doctors killed approximately 8 percent of all infants who died in the Netherlands in 1995. Assuming this to be typical, this amounts to approximately 80-90 infanticides per year. Of these, one-third would have lived more than a month. At least 10-15 of these killings involve infants who did not depend on life-sustaining treatment to stay alive. The study found that 45 percent of neonatologists and 31 percent of pediatricians, who responded to study’s questionnaires, had killed infants. A follow up study of end-of-life decisions made for infants published in the April 9, 2005, found that nothing had changed. In 2001, “in 8%” of cases, drugs were administered to infants “with the explicit intention to hasten death.”
In 2004, Groningen University Medical Center made international headlines when it admitted to permitting pediatric euthanasia and published the “Groningen Protocol,” infanticide guidelines the hospital utilized when killing 15-20 disabled newborns each year.” The Protocol creates three categories of killable infants: infants “with no chance of survival,” infants with a “poor prognosis and are dependent on intensive care,” and “infants with a hopeless prognosis,” including those “not depending on intensive medical treatment but for whom a very poor quality of life…is predicted.” Par for the course, authorities refused to prosecute even though pediatric infanticide is clearly murder under Dutch law.
The Kansas Senate today fell four votes short in a bid to override a veto of a bill requiring more detailed reporting of late-term abortion statistics and added protections for babies born alive during attempted abortions. Previously, Governor Kathleen Sebelius vetoed the measure, claiming her beliefs as a Catholic support a "women's right to privacy." Ironically, Sebelius also asserted that her personal beliefs as a Catholic tell her "abortion is wrong."
Kansans for Life provides the following report:
In Kansas getting an abortion when the baby is already viable (able to live outside the womb) is illegal unless necessary to prevent the woman's death or to prevent "substantial and irreversible bodily damage" to the woman.But official state abortion statistics in Kansas show there have been 3,800 abortions at 22 or more weeks gestation in the last 8 years (when the first abortion statistic bill was passed). They show 2,300 of them were on viable babies (those able to live outside the womb at the time of the abortion), and that none of the 3,800 were to prevent the death of the mother.
When justices consider challenge to partial-birth abortion ban, they will know stories of children who survived the gruesome procedure. - CitizenLink
The mistake that saved her baby's life:
"When I woke up, Dr. Rubel walked over to me and he said, 'Tina,' — and he was shaking his head and he took his little surgical mask off," she said. "And he said, 'I just want to tell you this is a miracle. You have a three-pound, three-ounce baby girl.' "
... when you listen to them weeping--and think back to a comment made by another woman ("Sometimes abortion is the most morally responsible and loving choice we can make. Amen.")--you are reminded of the almost infinite capacity of the human mind to deceive itself.
Brookfield, WI – In a May 22nd letter to Governor Doyle, signed by Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan and Bishop Robert C. Morlino, the Wisconsin Catholic Conference of Bishops strongly urged the Governor to “rethink our state’s policy regarding the destruction of human embryos.”
In a written response, stridently defending his utilitarian policies facilitating the killing of embryonic people, Governor Doyle defied his Bishops. In the May 24th letter, released to the public on official Wisconsin letterhead, Doyle stated, "I must respectfully disagree with your position."
This press release gives us a preview of his testimony.
In his testimony, Smith will "argue that there is a proper public policy role for the federal government against assisted suicide, such as prohibiting federally controlled substances from being used to intentionally end life."Update:Smith, named by the National Journal as one of the nation's top experts in bioethics, notes that: "In the thirty-plus years since euthanasia was redefined in the Netherlands as a legitimate tool of medical practice instead of a serious crime, ... rather than being rare, statistics show that euthanasia is now almost a matter of medical routine."
For those interested, testimony from the hearing can be found here.
In his lengthy comments, Smith stated:
There are two deep ideological beliefs asserted by advocates for legalizing assisted suicide. The first is radical individualism that perceives the right of personal autonomy as being virtually absolute. Accordingly, promoters of assisted suicide generally believe that “the individual’s right to self-determination—to control the time, place, and manner of death” is a paramount liberty interest. The second ideological principle underlying assisted suicide advocacy is that killing (ending life) is an acceptable answer to the problem of human suffering.
Kansas Lawmakers will attempt to override Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ veto today of a measure that would compel abortion mills to report the reason for each abortion on viable babies past 22 weeks. Although most post-viability abortions are illegal in Kansas, Attorney General Phill Kline is investigating allegations related to illegal late-term abortions outside the exceptions allowed by Kansas law. The legislation vetoed by Sebelius would have made the abortion mills more accountable for their actions. [HT: Operation Rescue]
Sebelius’ media spokesperson, Nicole Corcoran, told the Topeka Capital-Journal, “She’s very clear about her personal beliefs as a Catholic and supports a woman’s right to privacy.”
Sebelius stated, “My Catholic faith teaches me that life is sacred. Personally, I believe abortion is wrong.”
Kathy Ostrowski, legislative director for Kansans for Life voiced shock at Sebelius’ statement. “Gov. Sebelius’ attempt in her veto explanation to portray herself as pro-life is outrageous. She cannot re- invent the term, no matter how carefully she chooses her words,” she said.
The generation who told us to "question authority" and railed against "the man" has become the authority and "the man". So what are they telling the youth now? They are challenging the youth to be conformist and believe the way they do or else. They indoctrinate our children with their beliefs such as homosexual, transgender, anti-war, anti-Bush, pro-Palestine and more. No longer do the 60s & 70s generation believe in "power to the people", now it's "listen to us, we know what's best for you."
Earlier this week, Liberty Counsel filed an amicus brief on behalf of fellow pro-life blogger Jill Stanek in the case of Gonzales v. Carhart, which challenged the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act passed by Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2003. Jill is a former nurse who testified at the hearings on the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, offering Congress her first-hand accounts of watching babies born alive and then left to die. This prominent pro-life advocate helped bring this disturbing practice to Congress's attention.
Erik Stanley with Liberty Counsel says the procedure is never necessary to protect the health of the mother. "Abortion doctors use the health exception, which contains no standards, to justify the procedure," he states. "This is a classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse." In addition, he says, if the same procedure were performed on a convicted criminal, it would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. "The partial-birth abortion procedure is gruesome and barbaric," Stanley notes.
The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act is only part of a continuum of protection enacted by Congress to protect the unborn, partially-born and newly-born children, including the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, and "Laci and Connor's Law," which provides that a person who kills an unborn baby, along with the mother, is guilty of two crimes.
Related: Visit Jill's Weblog
The introduction of ultrasound machines in pregnancy centers began slowly decades ago as research began to show the effect these images have on a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy. In 1983, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article by Drs. John Fletcher and Mark Evans who found that seeing the image of the baby "in the late first or early mid-trimester of pregnancy, before movement is felt by the mother, may also influence the resolution of any ambivalence toward the pregnancy itself in favor of the fetus. Ultrasound examination may thus result in fewer abortions and more desired pregnancies."[10]
The ultrasound image was a welcomed alternative for pregnancy centers. Showing images of life, the mother's own child, as opposed to a life destroyed, would prove to be a gentler, yet even more compelling approach to educating the client, especially the clients raised in today's more visually oriented society:
This is not a generation that has grown up on the written word. Far from it: they grew up on visual images. They are the product, in perhaps its purest form, of television, where for a generation producers have picked compelling visuals and then assigned writers to match words to the video. It is a generation that scans information quickly; information that can be graphic or text, and one that is more than adept at picking quick meaning out of pictures. It grew up 'reading' visual images rather than text.[11]In 2004, Care Net unveiled its first look at the impact of ultrasound on a woman's pregnancy decision. According to Care Net's annual statistics report on 2003 pregnancy center activity, 22 percent (118 centers) offered ultrasound services. Among those women who were strongly considering abortion or who were at risk, 82 percent chose to carry their pregnancy to term after viewing an ultrasound.
Excerpt from: Pregnancy Centers: A Practical Response to the Abortion Dilemma
Latter day feminists think abortion is not just fine, it's holy.
Wrote Debi Jackson, owner of Cincinnati Women's Services abortion mill, in a web post recently:
Imagine... that a woman may create a ceremony... to be performed during the abortion or afterwards with family and friends in attendance... She may have a circle of women friends take part in the procedure itself - an ancient ritual of fertility, life, death, and rebirth....
A Cincinnati City Beat article last year included a photo of Debi, "practic[ing] an ancient Chinese calming ritual.... Harmonic vibrations caused by rubbing the dragon bowl's brass handles create wavelets and jumping water."
I'll tell you what's jumping, Debi. My skin is, that's what, you sicko.
Then there's...
Read today's column, "The lunatic fringe goes mainstream," on WorldNetDaily.com.
The week of June 5, the Senate will vote on a constitutional amendment on marriage. The text reads: "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman."
On Fox News Sunday, Sen. John McCain announced: "I will vote against it because I believe very strongly, first of all, in the sanctity of union between man and woman, but I also believe that the states should make these decisions."
Promoters of the right to "reproductive health care" (a code phrase that includes abortion) are identified as the protectors of women’s health. The Pro-Life community’s rejection of abortion, opposition to abortifacient contraceptives, concern that "safe sex" is not safe, and promotion of abstinence-only programs for teenagers gets it labeled as dangerous to women’s health. This contrast suggests ideology is controlling what passes for science in today's world.
Real world evidence demonstrates that promoters of “reproductive health care” are definitely not protecting women’s health. Have you heard any of them express concern about unethical and unsafe abortionists? In just the last 13 months abortionists in five states have had their medical licenses suspended or revoked. The latest case occurred in Alabama where the state health department has suspended the medical license of the Summit Medical Center, the abortionist, and a nurse for unsafe medical practices involving RU-486. This drug was being given to women much further into their pregnancies than intended for RU-486 abortions. Beyond that, RU-486 was being administered by a nurse when state law requires that its use be directed by a doctor.
Of course, the safety of RU-486 is seriously questioned, but you can count on the defenders of “reproductive health care” to assure everyone that RU-486 is safe. They question whether the infections that have now killed seven women after using RU-486 were actually unrelated to the abortions attempted using the drug. When scientific evidence suggests that a connection does exist between use of the RU-486 regimen and these infections, RU-486 supporters simply ignore the evidence because it is not politically correct. And they accuse Pro-Lifers of having ideology-driven agendas!
The Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation Center for Health Care Ethics Calls For a Moratorium of Ordinary Care Removal From Persons Diagnosed in a Persistent Vegetative State
ST. PETERSBURG, Florida, May 24 /Christian Newswire/ -- Following reports that the drug Zolpidem can temporarily revive people in a permanent vegetative state (PVS) to the point where they are able to speak, The Foundation is calling for a moratorium of all potential ordinary care removal for persons diagnosed in a PVS condition.
Zolpidem is usually used to treat insomnia. However, South African researchers, writing in the NeuroRehabilitation, looked at the effects on three patients of using the drug for up to six years.
They reported that "All patients were aroused transiently every morning after Zolpidem.”
Their conclusion was that Zolpidem appeared to be effective in restoring some brain function to patients previously determined to be in a persistent vegetative state.
Terri’s family pleaded for years with Terri’s guardian, Michael Schiavo, and the courts to try and use different treatments or medicines that could possibly help improve Terri’s condition, but were denied. The Foundation has been contacted by dozens of families with similar stories of patients improving significantly after being wrongly diagnosed in this PVS condition.
Chuck Colson gets it right in his commentary about the worldview represented in Michael Schiavo's book:
Joking aside, Michael Schiavo’s world is a dangerous and scary place, a place where the “survival of the fittest” is taken to a whole new level—a place where a badly brain-damaged woman should have her food and water taken away simply because she is badly brain damaged and her husband says she would not want to live that way. It’s a place where it’s easy for even a registered nurse like Michael Schiavo to confuse food, which everyone needs, with the kind of life support, like a respirator, which his wife did not need. It’s a place where, as Schiavo is accustomed to saying with a straight face, taking someone’s food away is not starving her to death; it’s simply allowing her to die peacefully and painlessly. (Why a hospice needs to administer morphine to a person dying painlessly is something that Schiavo does not bother to explain, like so many other issues.)
From the Kentucky Enquirer:
Prosecutors agreed Tuesday to dismiss criminal charges against a retired Northern Kentucky University professor accused of dismantling an anti-abortion display if the dispute can be resolved through mediation.Jacobsen was photographed with her students, destroying 400 crosses that wre part of a pro-life display. She originally told the press:Two weeks ago prosecutors had declined to drop the charges against Sally Jacobsen in exchange for community service, an offer that was extended to, and accepted by, six of her students also accused in the incident.
Campbell District Judge Karen Thomas said officials from the university, student government and Northern Kentucky Right to Life would attend the mediation. If the sides cannot come to a mutual agreement by June 27, the criminal case against Jacobsen will proceed.
"Any violence perpetrated against that silly display was minor compared to how I felt when I saw it. Some of my students felt the same way, just outraged."Although she later said she regretted her actions, she sent out an email advising her students to avoid talking to the police and attacking pro-life groups (I guess she is still the victim).
It would certainly be refreshing if, through mediation, Jacobsen actually apologized to Northern Right to Life, a group of students who worked quite hard to set up the display in memory of the unborn who would have attended their school had abortion not claimed their lives.
Update: Lifenews has published an update
What's your reaction to this latest development? Comment below.
Unfortunately, Texas hospitals continue to exploit futile care laws to forcibly remove care from their patients. Yesterday, we received the following alarming email from Texas Right to Life's Elizabeth Graham:
We have two new cases this week: one is a pediatric case in Dallas, and the other is in Houston. The Houston family is not ready to go public yet, or I would be shouting for assistance from the rooftops.Wesley J. Smith has more.Regretably, they are a little squeamish about the name of the patient being in the press. I was invited to participate in the futility review process at the Houston facility, and it was disgusting and appalling. The attending physician stated that the patient was definitely NOT brain dead, simply brain damaged from a stroke. The paitent is NOT experiencing organ failure, meaning her lungs, heart, kidneys, liver,...everything is working. The patient has a trach collar, but she breathes on her own, and she processes food and hydration appropriately. She is free from infection.
During the meeting, I pointed out that the withdrawal of food and water would effectively starve the patient to death, and the doctors dismissed me as if I did not understand medical science. I am not sure what exactly is scientific about starvation, but the patient's mother agreed and was bewildered at the discussion of withdrawal of treatment including food and water.
Oh yes, did I mention that the patient has NO insurance? The medical folks involved in these cases adamantly avow that financial considerations never enter into the futility decisions; however, I have yet to hear from the family of any patients with good, adequate health insurance. Our Dallas attorney is working on the pediatric case, and the family was granted some additional days because the facility did not follow proper statutory procedure. This patient has only Medicaid.
I received this today from a new pro-life friend on South Dakota's Oglala rez. Apparently the Natives are restless with their president's plan to launch an abortion mill on their land and are planning a protest.
... Des Moines Register columnist Dave Yepsin says that Dem guv candidate Mike Bluoin's party of choice and pro-life waffling are messing with his prospects: "While Blouin is pro-life, he now says he wouldn't change anything in Iowa law, which is pro-choice. So I guess that makes him a pro-choice pro-lifer. No wonder neither side trusts him." Wow, he gets it.
... And vandalizing NKU prof Sally Jacobsen is not being let off the hook. Said Assistant Campbell County Attorney Rick Woeste: "We don't live in a country where we're allowed to destroy someone else's property or vandalize someone's else's property when we disagree with what they're saying.... If that were the case, we could never have political signs."
Abortion remains at the heart of the culture wars in America because it pits two absolutely opposed world and life views against each other. Abortion forces us to confront our most deeply held beliefs about God, man, and the definition of what it means to be a human being, protected by the laws of the land. The heart of the abortion issue is the struggle between what is often referred to as the sanctity of life worldview and the quality of life worldview. At the core of the sanctity of life view is the belief that all human life — unborn, handicapped, or elderly — is sacred because it is created in the image of God. Dr. Paul Ramsey states it clearly.
The notion that an individual human life is absolutely unique, inviolable, irreplaceable, non-interchangeable, not substitutable, and not meldable with other lives is a notion that exists in our civilization because it is Christian, and that idea is so fundamental in the edifice of Western law and morals that it cannot be removed without bringing the whole house down.[7]
Excerpt from: Pregnancy Centers: A Practical Response to the Abortion Dilemma
Standards for diagnosis of persistent vegetative state (PVS) have not been widely accepted by the medical community. Yet this designation is used in practice to motivate the withdrawal of care and death of patients through-out the world. Terri Schiavo was one such individual who lost her life while Haleigh Poutre cheated death despite being declared "virtually brain dead" and in a "hopeless" state of "persistent vegetation" by her doctors. Yenlang Vo’s life currently hangs in the balance after being labeled PVS (her family is frantically searching for a doctor in Texas who will care for her – please help).
An absolutley stunning study is now being reported in which sleeping pills were used to revive people classified as PVS to the point where they were able to have conversations.
Zolpidem [also sold as Ambien] is usually used to treat insomnia.Incredible! The drug was used daily over a 3-6 year period to arouse the patients. The efficacy did not decrease over time and there were no long term side effects.
South African researchers, writing in the NeuroRehabilitation, looked at the effects on three patients of using the drug for up to six years.
[snip]Each of the three patients studied was given the drug every morning.
An improvement was seen within 20 minutes of taking the drug and wore off after four hours, when the patients restored to their permanent vegetative state.
Patient L had been in a vegetative state for three years, showing no response to touch and no reaction to his family.
After he was given Zolpidem, he was able to talk to them, answering simple questions.
Patient G was also able to answer simple questions and catch a basketball.
Patient N had been "constantly screaming", but stopped after being given the drug when he started watching TV and responding to his family.
