Tag Archives: Abortion

News

Woman fakes cancer for late-term abortion money, baby died after being born alive

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Chalice Renee Zeitner
Chalice Renee Zeitner

Here’s the story from ABC Local News.

It says:

A convicted con artist duped the state into paying for her late-term abortion, a procedure which otherwise would not have been funded with public money, according to court records.

Chalice Renee Zeitner made up a story about having cancer in order to qualify for an abortion while on Arizona’s Medicaid insurance, and forged a doctor’s note to support her claim, according to charging documents.

A doctor performed the abortion when Zeitner was 22-weeks pregnant.

Arizona’s Medicaid, known as AHCCCS, will only pay for an abortion in cases of rape or incest or “medical necessity,” which include cases where the pregnancy causes or worsens a serious health risk to the mother.

Zeitner, 29, received “what was thought to be a medically necessary late-term abortion,” court documents state.

“Zeitner claimed she had stage IV sarcoma in her abdomen and lower spine, had received chemotherapy and radiation treatments and was scheduled to receive a life-saving surgery in Boston,” documents state.

That was later determined to be a fraud, according to documents.

Zeitner had produced a one-page letter, purportedly from a Massachusetts doctor, that supported her claims, documents state.

The abortion was performed in 2010.

But one year later, it was another pregnancy that led to the discovery of Zeitner’s alleged scam.

She returned to the same doctor who performed the abortion to deliver a full-term child by cesarean section.  During that birth, the doctor found no signs of cancer, documents state.

That led to a check with the Boston doctor, which revealed that “he did not know Zeitner and had never treated her,” so the cancer letter from him was a fraud, documents state.

Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office on Tuesday charged Zeitner with felonies including fraud, theft, and forgery. She has a history of skipping town when she gets into trouble with the law, according to court documents. While a warrant was issued Wednesday, records do not yet indicate that she has been arrested.

Zeitner’s aborted child was born alive, weighing just more than one pound, documents state.

“The baby lived for approximately 20 minutes and received no life-saving measure by hospital staff,” according to documents.

[…]Zeitner has a previous forgery-related conviction in Maricopa County, documents state.

She could not be reached for comment.

Now, if you ask a typical Democrat, they will say that this woman did nothing wrong from start to finish, and that the real solution is for pro-life taxpayers to pony up the money for her late-term abortion. The Democrat position on abortion is that it should be allowed through all nine months of pregnancy, that it should be taxpayer-funded, that doctors and nurses should have to assist without objection, and that babies who are born-alive should be left to die. Our current President, Barack Obama, voted for that last one multiple times when he was a state senator in Illinois.

I sent this story to a Christian woman friend who is strongly feminist and very anti-male. She told me that although she personally opposes abortion, that the law should allow this woman to choose to kill her baby. I was not surprised by this, because whenever I tell her stories about women making horrible decisions, she always either blames men, or gives a counter-example of where someone else made the same stupid decision and it worked out for them. I think that’s what scares me the most about the abortion issue. How many apparently nice people are so convinced that whatever a woman wants to do must be OK.

I can imagine Zeitner posting news of her late-term, born alive abortion and having all her friends click like on it. Yay, Chalice! You didn’t do anything wrong. After all, the baby is dead and gone now, and the mother still alive, and we want her to like us. Why rock the boat by telling her that she did anything wrong? A dental hygienist our family knows has had 3 children out of wedlock, and each time she changes boyfriends, she posts a picture of herself with the new boyfriend on Facebook, and all her friends click like on the picture. What could be wrong with changing boyfriends every year when you have 3 young children to take care of? I think the same cheering on of bad decisions must have happened many times with Zeitner – people around her refusing to set boundaries on her long before she started killing her own babies. It’s easy for a woman to surround herself with people who just approve of everything she is doing – especially when she is young and attractive. Anyone who cautions her can just be blocked out. And the guaranteed failures that result from following her heart can just be declared “unexpected” by her carefully picked entourage of supporters. Life is so unpredictable, so she is not responsible.

Before Zeitner’s abortion decisions ever materialized, there were a million bad decisions that Zeitner made in order to find herself facing the choice to abort. She was acting on selfish motives – she wanted to have fun. So she broke moral rules more and more, and pushed away anyone who would judge her. All her friends and family standing around said nothing or even approved of her, because they were afraid to tell her “this will not work” or “this is wrong”. She had to have an exciting life, and hang out with exciting men. It’s the failure to draw the line with women beforehand that causes them to get to a place where a baby has to die. But we want so much to be her friend. And to be liked. Maybe to get attention from her, or affection from her, or even sex with her. Judging her seems so… intolerant and mean. We don’t want to be mean, do we? The Christian version of this is even more insidious, where the woman’s feelings are “God’s mysterious will for her life” and cannot be questioned or assessed rationally. It all ends the same, though.

News

Is it wrong to pass incremental pro-life laws?

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I'm Scheming Unborn Baby, and I approve this decision
I’m Scheming Unborn Baby, and saving a life is a good thing

Pro-life debater Scott Klusendorf summarizes a recent debate between a pro-life incrementalist and a pro-life abolitionist. An incrementalist is a pro-lifer who wants to pass laws that save lives right now, while still working for a full ban on abortion. An abolitionist is a pro-lifer who does not want to pass laws that solve part of the problem, preferring to hold off on laws that save lives until they can get all abortions banned.

So there was a debate, and Scott watched it, and here is his review.

First, the intro:

T. Russell Hunter issued a very public challenge calling for any pro-life leader to debate him on incrementalism. Gregg Cunningham, a former member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and Executive Director of the Center for Bioethical Reform, accepted. The formal debate structure was as follows: 20-minute opening statements, 15-minute rebuttals, 15-minute cross-examination, 5-minute closing statements. An informal audience Q&A followed the formal debate.

[…]Gregg Cunningham won the formal exchange handily and he did so early by pointing out a fundamental flaw in Hunter’s argument—namely, the mistaken claim that pro-lifers have the power to end abortion immediately but won’t. Again and again, he exposed Hunter’s fallacious either/or reasoning by demonstrating that pro-lifers don’t have to choose between incremental legislation that saves some children right now or total abolition that saves all at a later time. Rather, they can advance both strategies simultaneously and save many lives in the process. Cunningham also demonstrated a superior grasp of social reform history, noting that while Wilberforce, Lincoln, and Martin-Luther King were in principle moral absolutists, in practice they functioned as strategic and tactical incrementalists—as do pro-lifers today. During cross-examination, Hunter stumbled badly when asked if those babies saved through incremental legislation should have been left to die. When he refused to give a clear answer—despite being repeatedly pressed to do so—the debate was effectively over. In short, Hunter could not preach his way to victory, even when invoking his understanding of Scripture. His claim that incrementalism is not found in the Bible was decisively refuted when Gregg cited three examples from Scripture where God dealt incrementally with His people.

I watched this video clip to get a feel for how it went down:

In the clip, Cunningham asks if the babies who are saved by incremental legislation should be allowed to die instead. He has some evidence from a law professor saying that incremental laws do save some lives, and he is asking the AHA person should we not enact these incremental laws that save the lives of unborn children.

Scott has the transcript:

GC: I’d like to return to the question with which I began, which Russ hasn’t answered. Should we allow these babies to die rather than enact incremental legislation?

TRH: No.

GC: I’m sorry?

TRH: Like, should we allow – should we allow babies to die?

GC: Should we allow these – because…

TRH: The charade is – the charade is not even what we’re talking about – the incrementalism/immediatism debate. Focusing the ax at the tree, getting all the people who follow incrementalism to become immediatists and help put that ax to the branch – to the root…

GC: Would you answer this question?

TRH & GC: [unintelligible]

Moderator: That was the last question. Russ, go ahead and answer that, and then we’re gonna end this.

GC: Just for the record, Russ didn’t answer the question: Should we have allowed these babies to die, which this university professor says would have died had that legislation not been enacted. Should we have allowed them to die rather than enact the incremental legislation?

Moderator: Okay, Russ, answer that question, then we’ll change.

TRH: Um, well, I firmly believe that abortion is evil, and it is one of these things that the powers and principalities of darkness and high places are very in to. It’s the crown jewel of darkness, and I actually believe that if they can keep abortion going by deceiving people into becoming gradualists, they will do it. And if to deceive them they have to give them empty, illusory victories, and law professors may claim that babies were saved, they’ll do it. But I – if someone goes to an abortion mill and shoots a doctor, a baby might be saved that day, but that’s not going towards abolishing abortion. It’s not establishing justice that day [unintelligible] a baby that day.

GC: May I ask for clarification for your answer? You’re saying this guy’s making this up?

TRH: Uh, no, I have to read it. But I’m just saying that convincing people to be gradualists by saying, “Hey look, we saved some,” while they’re still being – I’m pretty sure that you can convince people to be gradualists for the next 40 years…

GC: Hey Russell, let’s do both. Let’s do both. Let’s do both.

Honestly, I am not sure why anyone pays these AHA people any mind. Just judging from that one clip, I don’t think that Hunter has anything of value to say in this debate. His group seems to be more concerned with attacking other pro-lifers who actually are getting the job done than doing anything. In the real world, incremental pro-life laws save lives. To be persuasive on those incremental laws, you have to talk about the logic and science that supports the pro-life view. That will be persuasive to Christians as well as non-Christians. Building consensus for incremental pro-life laws by appealing to a bigger audience that includes non-Christians makes sense – it solves the actual problem.

News

New study: unborn babies are viable at 22 weeks

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Unborn Baby - 10 weeks old
Unborn baby – 10 weeks old

This story appeared in the radically leftist New York Times, of all places.

It says:

A small number of very premature babies are surviving earlier outside the womb than doctors once thought possible, a new study has documented, raising questions about how aggressively they should be treated and posing implications for the debate about abortion.

[…]The study, one of the largest and most systematic examinations of care for very premature infants, found that hospitals with sophisticated neonatal units varied widely in their approach to 22-week-olds, ranging from a few that offer no active medical treatment to a handful that assertively treat most cases with measures like ventilation, intubation and surfactant to improve the functioning of babies’ lungs.

[…]The study, involving nearly 5,000 babies born between 22 and 27 weeks gestation, found that 22-week-old babies did not survive without medical intervention. In the 78 cases where active treatment was given, 18 survived, and by the time they were young toddlers, seven of those did not have moderate or severe impairments. Six had serious problems such as blindness, deafness or severe cerebral palsy.

Of the 755 born at 23 weeks, treatment was given to 542. About a third of those survived, and about half of the survivors had no significant problems.

You can double-check the details of the study.

Meanwhile, in Congress, the Republicans are getting ready to reintroduce a bill that bans abortions after 20 weeks.

Excerpt:

Republicans in the House of Representatives will hold a vote on or around the anniversary of the murder conviction of late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell on a marquee bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy because unborn children feel intense pain in abortions. This is the second time Republicans have planned a vote on the major pro-life bill — and this vote is expected to take place next week, possibly Wednesday, the anniversary of Gosnell’s conviction.

[…]As pro-life sources have informed LifeNews, other new provisions of the bill that strengthen in include a born-alive infant protection requirement that requires a second doctor be present and prepared to provide  care to the child if he or she is born alive and that the child must receive the same level of care as would any other premature infant. The baby must then be transported and admitted to a hospital.  The woman is also empowered with a right to sue if the law is not followed, and is provided with an informed consent form that notifies her of the age of her baby and the requirements under the law.

Abortionists are explicitly required to follow state mandatory reporting laws and state parental involvement laws.  Finally, abortionists are required to report any late abortions done under the exceptions to the Center for Disease Control and such data will be compiled into an annual public report to ensure accountability.

This bill doesn’t go all the way to banning all abortions – far from it. But pro-life groups are pleased, because they want to save some lives even if they can’t save all:

Top pro-life advocates are strongly supporting the final version of the bill up for a vote next week, according to the Weekly Standard. Two major pro-life groups have already signed off on the revised bill.

“We will have even stronger support than we did in the last Congress,” said Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, a leading pro-life advocate in the House. “It will be good to have a truly unified pro-life conference.”

National Right to Life Committee president Carol Tobias worked closely with Republican leadership staff members and met Thursday with McCarthy. “I felt very comfortable working with leadership staff,” said Tobias. “We were working as allies.”

“We are thankful to our pro-life allies on the Hill, including House GOP leadership and the Congressional Pro-Life Women’s Caucus, who have tirelessly worked to bring this bill to a vote,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List. “This process has yielded a strong bill which we expect to pass next week with enthusiastic bipartisan support.”

Sponsoring Congressman Trent Franks of Arizona says the bill has the potential to save thousands of babies from abortion.

That bill is, of course, opposed by Democrats.

UPDATE: Here’s a news story about a woman who killed a 20-week-old baby who was born alive and left to die.