Tag Archives: Bioethics

My recommended charity for 2012: Life Training Institute

Unborn baby scheming about what to get WK for Christmas
Unborn baby scheming about what to get WK for Christmas

Scott Klusendorf, the best and most experienced pro-life debater in the United States, wrote this on Facebook:

Life Training Institute just received a $45,000 gift toward helping us reach 20,000 additional students next year! That’s half of what we need to complete the project!

The other half ($45,000) must come from concerned donors like you. Would you consider helping us get there?

We’ll use the money to get our speaking team into more schools than any year previous.

Excited to see our work growing,
Scott Klusendorf

Donate on-line at: https://www.prolifetraining.com/donate_general.asp

Scott is one of my favorite Christians, and I fully endorse his pro-life ministry. Some of you have asked how you could help me with the blog or donate. I am fully supplied already, so if you really want to send me a present, please consider making a donation to Scott’s pro-life ministry. They are absolutely solid in their use of evidence as well as in their theology. You couldn’t find a better group to support.

If you are more the kind of person who likes to buy books, then you can do that as well. Scott is the author of the #1 pro-life book at the popular level. It is call “The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture”.

And he has a new book out as well, called “Stand for Life: Answering the Call, Making the Case, Saving Lives”:

And if you want to see Scott in action, here is a recent debate he did with Nadine Strossen:

Abortion can be a complicated issue, but the nice thing about Scott is that he cuts right to the core of the debate and makes sure to clarify what each side is saying. He strips away the rhetoric and gets down to the real arguments on each side and  the pro-life side comes out on top.

Recently, Scott taught two classes on the techniques that he uses when debating abortion.

The first talk was on Tactics. Here is the PDF. In the handout, Scott explains how to use questions to make your opponent give reasons for their views instead of just asserting them.

The second talk was on Relativism. Here is the PDF. In the handout, Scott explains what moral relativism is, and some of the problems with the view.

NYC’s largest abortion clinic stops operations due to pro-life protests

Good news in the New York Daily News, although the article is hopelessly biased against pro-lifers.

Excerpt:

A Sunset Park abortion clinic has shut down after Catholic protesters drove away doctors and patients, according to the owner of the clinic.

The Ambulatory Specialty Surgery Center of Brooklyn on 43rd St., closed earlier this month and will reopen in October as a new medical center providing outpatient surgeries, but not abortion.

Catholic leaders claimed the clinic’s closure after 22 years as a victory for their anti-abortion effort. Abortion advocates said they had never heard of a clinic in the city closing under pressure from protesters.

[…]Julie Kirshner, president of the Brooklyn and Queens chapter of the National Organization for Women, said she was shocked abortions were no longer offered at the medical center.

“It’s really a shame. I feel very badly and I’m disappointed about it,” said Kirshner. “This means that women will have to be inconvenienced to get their health care. If [the clinic on 43rd St.] closed down, this could mean future closings and that’s very disappointing.”

Life Site News adds:

This clinic was apparently a very big, deadly fish. According to The Tablet:

“This was the oldest and largest abortion clinic in New York City and for many years, in the United States,” said Msgr. Reilly. “I believe more than a quarter of a million unborn children lost their lives there.”

A quarter of a million dead. Those numbers remind me of the tens of millions killed by atheists like Stalin, Mao and others like them.

Now contrast that peaceful pro-life approach to change with the approach used by pro-abortion advocates:

An elderly pro-life activist was shot multiple times and killed this morning in front of Owosso High School in Michigan while he was peacefully protesting abortion with a sign depicting a baby and the word “Life,” according to local police cited in the Flint Journal newspaper.

Locals say that the victim, James Pouillon of Owosso, was well-known in the area for his pro-life activities.

[…]Reports indicate that a second individual was shot and killed in a different area of the city earlier in the day, and the two shootings are believed to be related, according to Shiawassee County sheriff George Braidwood. According to M-live.com, the second victim has now been identified as Mike Fuoss, 61, the owner of a local gravel pit. Fuoss was found dead in his office.

Police have confirmed that a suspect – a 33-year-old Owosso man – was taken into custody at the suspect’s home shortly after the 7:30 a.m. shooting. After being taken into custody he confessed to the second killing as well.

The pro-abortion side had nothing to say about that violence in the days after the tragedy, too. But are all pro-abortion advocates really so ghoulish?

Remember this case:

A doctor who gave abortions to minorities, immigrants and poor women in a “house of horrors” clinic was charged with eight counts of murder in the deaths of a patient and seven babies who were born alive and then killed with scissors, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, made millions of dollars over 30 years, performing as many illegal, late-term abortions as he could, prosecutors said. State regulators ignored complaints about him and failed to inspect his clinic since 1993, but no charges were warranted against them given time limits and existing law, District Attorney Seth Williams said. Nine of Gosnell’s employees also were charged.

Gosnell “induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord,” Williams said.

[…]Bags and bottles holding aborted fetuses “were scattered throughout the building,” Williams said. “There were jars, lining shelves, with severed feet that he kept for no medical purpose.”

[…]Gosnell has been named in at least 46 malpractice suits, including one over the death of a 22-year-old mother who died of sepsis and a perforated uterus in 2000. Many others also involve perforated uteruses. Gosnell sometimes sewed up the injury without telling women their uteruses had been perforated, prosecutors said.

Gosnell charged $325 for first-trimester abortions and $1,600 to $3,000 for abortions up to 30 weeks.

When a person supports the murder of innocent little babies for profit, then anything is possible – even forcing pro-lifers to subsidize the massacre. That’s exactly what the Obama administration is always pushing for. Recall that Obama not only supports the murder of unborn babies, but also of born babies. He voted in favor of infanticide several times.

This is election in November is a chance for pro-lifers to roll back some of the pro-abortion measures introduced by the Obama administration. We all need to do what we can before election day.

New study confirms greater risk of birth defects from IVF

From BioEdge.

Excerpt:

The contentious issue of birth defects in babies conceived with IVF is on the boil again after a major study was published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers at the University of Adelaide, in Australia, confirmed earlier surveys that found an elevated risk of defect among IVF babies. The odds for any birth defect in pregnancies involving assisted conception are 8.3%,  compared to 5.8% for unassisted pregnancies.

However, they said that the risk seems due to “patient factors” like obesity or smoking, not to the procedure itself. “In vitro fertilization off the hook for causing birth defects” was the headline in Nature’s news blog.

However, this was only half the story. Some fertility treatments appear to be riskier.

ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection), a technique which involves injecting a sperm into the egg, is one of these. The increased risk of birth defects is 57% over normal IVF, although the absolute size of the risk is relatively small. However, ICSI is very popular. In Europe, for some reason, it is used far more often than regular IVF.

It’s also important to note that IVF often results in abortions because unused embryos are discarded.