Tag Archives: Abortion

News

Bobby Jindal signs major abortion reforms into law

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Bobby and Supriya Jindal

Story from Life Site News.

Excerpt:

Gov. Bobby Jindal signed three landmark abortion bills on Tuesday that significantly tighten the state’s regulations on abortionists and their practices, and opt out the state from the national health care reform’s abortion mandates.

Jindal signed two bills that were introduced and shepherded through the legislature by the Louisiana Right to Life Federation (LARTL). The Ultrasound before Abortion Act (SB 528) adds strict ultrasound requirements to the state’s informed consent laws.  The law requires abortionists to perform an ultrasound on a woman at least two hours before she undergoes the induced abortion of her child, and before she is put under any kind of anesthesia.

Abortion facility employees must also follow a detailed script set forth in the legislation, offering pregnant mothers the opportunity to see the ultrasound image, hear a description of the image, and receive a printout of the ultrasound image. To guarantee compliance, legislators added a provision stating that abortionists failing to adhere to the law could expect to find themselves sued in civil court by their clients.

The other bill, the Abortion Insurance Opt-Out (HB 1247), prohibits health insurers from providing abortion coverage within the state-run health insurance exchange that will go into operation in 2014, as mandated by the national health care reform. A provision of the national law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, gives states the explicit right to ban health insurance companies receiving public subsidies under the state health exchange from providing abortion coverage.

The Louisiana measure even protects children conceived in situations of rape and incest, leaving just one exception for insurance companies – allowing them to pay for abortion in cases where the mother’s life is in danger from “a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury” including “a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.”

This is why we like him.

News

Another study confirms the link between abortion and breast cancer

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Unborn baby scheming about new pro-life arguments

Story from the UK Daily Mail. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

An abortion can triple a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer in later life, researchers say. A team of scientists made the claim while carrying out research into how breastfeeding can protect women from developing the killer disease. While concluding that breastfeeding offered significant protection from cancer, they also noted that the highest reported risk factor in developing the disease was abortion. Other factors included the onset of the menopause and smoking. The findings, published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, are the latest research to show a link between abortion and breast cancer. The research was carried out by scientists at the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka. It is the fourth epidemiological study to report such a link in the past 14 months, with research in China, Turkey and the U.S. showing similar conclusions.

[…]There has been an 80 per cent increase in the rate of breast cancer since 1971, when in the wake of the Abortion Act, the number of abortions rose from 18,000 to nearly 200,000 a year.

Earlier this year, Dr Louise Brinton, a senior researcher with the U.S. National Cancer Institute who did not accept the link, reversed her position to say she was now convinced abortion increased the risk of breast cancer by about 40 per cent.

Note that there were only 300 people in the new study, so it is a small study. The only reason that I blog this is because it confirms the Turkey study that I blogged on before, and the China study that I blogged about before, and the American study that I blogged about before.

There is an interesting comment on this story at Secondhand Smoke.

Here it is:

But let me tell you, as a former trial lawyer, the potential is here for tobacco company-type litigation against certain groups if cancer info was suppressed.

That’s from Discovery Institute fellow Wesley J. Smith, who majors in bioethics.

News

Adult stem cells used to restore sight to patients blinded by chemical burns

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There are two kinds of stem-cell research. The first kind is called embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR). This kind is opposed by pro-lifers because it kills unborn persons by extracting their stem cells for use in medical research. The second kind is called adult stem-cell research (ASCR). This kind is supported by pro-lifers.

You may be surprised to know that ESCR doesn’t work as nearly as well as ASCR.

From the Family Research Council blog. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Italian scientists report that they have restored sight to patients blinded by chemical burns using the patient’s own adult stem cells. The team treated 112 patients blinded in one or both eyes; some of whom had been blind for years. Adult stem cells were taken from the edge of a patient’s eye and cultured on fibrin, then the cell layers transplanted onto the damaged eyes. The adult stem cells produced healthy corneas and functioning eyes. Some patients regained sight within two months, while for others with deeper injuries the process took a year before vision was restored. Patients were followed up to ten years after the transplant. After a single transplant, 69% of patients regained vision; in some cases a second transplant occurred, with a total success in 77% of patients and partial vision restoration in 13% of patients. The long-term restoration was an especially encouraging success of the study.

Still more cures for adult stem cell research… nothing much for embryonic stem cell research.

FRC is rapidly becoming my second favorite think tank. You would expect them to be social conservatives through and through. But these are not naive fundamentalists – they understand how fiscal policy relates to social policy. Anyone who favors increasing government power to solve social problems, (e.g. – universal health care), is not a social conservative. When a secular government runs huge sectors of the private economy, morality goes out the window. Morality is reduced to claiming a “right” to your neighbors money.

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