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1:18 am
Biology and Babies
by Richard G. Rose, Professor Emeritus, West Valley College Biology Department
Biology is the knowledge, or science, of life. If rational biology was the only factor in our attitude toward unborn babies, there would be much less debate about caring for and protecting them. But irrational emotions and personal philosophies play a huge additional role in our attitudes and choices. What does biology, by itself, tell us about life before birth, beginning with the single, fertilized egg cell?
First, that this new life is a separate and distinct individual from all others. Modern molecular genetics has taught us that this new person’s specific pattern of genetic information is not duplicated among all the other people on earth and is clearly distinct from the mother. Twins result from the separation of developed cells slightly later in development. Christianity has long taught that each individual is unique and valuable. And now biology has confirmed that uniqueness. We may debate when this new life becomes human, but we can no longer argue about it being a separate individual from the very beginning.
Second, we now know that the whole structure and function of the independent adult is laid out in the DNA blueprint of this one original cell, including contributions from each parent. Although the realities of birth and adulthood lie in the distant future, no additional information or specifications need to be added. The adult who results from this single cell may be modified as the complexities of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects develop. But all the programming instructions for the nervous system and all the other specific cell types and complex systems needed to be a human adult are already present. We still have much to learn about the ways that cells control what they will become, including stem cells.
Third, we have learned from biological study of human development that all these systems develop at surprisingly early stages. There have been attempts to define pregnancy as beginning only when the developing embryonic baby has attached to the mother’s uterine lining. Yet even before this, complex and irreversible developments have occurred – nerve cells are laid down and the brain and spinal cord begin to develop, our three basic tissue layers have separated, and the support structures needed during pregnancy (placenta, etc.) are developing so that the mother can supply needed food and oxygen. Heart tissue even begins to beat about day #23, and before the month is out, the embryo is a recognizable, tiny human body. Such knowledge of early development heightens concerns about chemical and other stresses undergone by the mother during this critical time of rapid development.
Fourth, we are learning more and more about a developing baby’s responses to stimuli, both by nervous system and endocrine reactions, although there is not yet a firm scientific consensus in this area. In 1996, English physiologist Peter McCullagh spoke in support of a pro-life position to the British Parliament. He said, “At what stage of human prenatal development are those anatomical structures subserving the appreciation of pain present and functional? The balance of evidence at the present time indicates that these structures are present and functional before the tenth week of intrauterine life.” Studies of the specific brain structures which are the means by which pain is perceived indicate to others that they are not formed in a fetus until 20 weeks or more. However, there are many anecdotal descriptions of fetal response to loud noises, music, mother’s stress level, and other stimuli to indicate that sensory systems in the brain are active and processing at very early stages.
Finally, progress in medical sciences in the last thirty-seven years has resulted in ever shorter duration before the developing baby can survive outside the womb. In 1973, that limit was sometime after the 24th week of pregnancy. Now that time is down to 22 weeks and still being reduced. There are problems, of course. Babies at this early stage have barely formed respiratory systems. They need special medical support systems, which are also being developed. Sonograms and other measures of fetal weight can be used to indicate the state of development of the baby. Yet these biological advances are dismissed by some medical ethicists and abortion advocates, who say that other, non-quantifiable factors should be used instead. Such arguments are used most loudly in arguments about late-term abortions, when survival outside the womb is clearly possible and where avoidance/pain reactions are clearly observable.
With areas of medical science, genetics, human development and other parts of the biological sciences giving us so much new information over the last three decades, it is important to make rational use of this new knowledge in evaluating the fate of a developing baby.
References:
Fetal image from www.creationwiki.org/Developmental_Biology
Foer, Franklin. “Fetal Viability” Slate Magazine. Posted online May 25, 1997
McCullagh, Peter. Foetal sentience. London: All-Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group (1996).
Dr. McCullagh is a Senior fellow in developmental physiology at the John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University. This report was reprinted in the Catholic Medical Quarterly, XLV11 no 2, November 1996, p6.
Popularity: 4% [?]
1:38 am
POEM: What Could Have Been?
by Timothy Jarmon
(c) copyright 2007
Tiny little fingers
and tiny little toes
What she could have been
only heaven knows
Growing in the safety
of her hiding place
A beautiful little head
and a precious little face
Yawning and stretching
and kicking around
Moving and responding
to her mother’s sound
A future chemist
or an astronaut in space
Someone to cure cancer
for the human race
A wonderful mind
that could have found
answers to the questions
that have kept us bound
A precious life
so quickly is gone
And now we’re reaping
the death we’ve sown
To take her life
is a horrible sin
And it’s sad to think
What could have been?
Popularity: 2% [?]
8:12 pm
Pro-Abort Kagan Confirmed to SCOTUS
Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, President Obama’s pro-abortion Supreme Court nominee, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, was confirmed by the Senate last week Thursday. Kagan has a track record of personal and profession support for the putative right to abortion: She was once a member and financial contributor to the National Partnership for Women & Families, a pro-abortion legal group, and during her tenure in the Clinton administration, Kagan played a key role in keeping the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban from becoming law.
Popularity: 1% [?]
2:31 am
Live Action Youth Rally for Life
On July 22nd, Live Action San Jose youth gathered to rally for life and in protest of abortion giant Planned Parenthood. Watch coverage of the event by CBS5 and see pictures of the demonstration below:
Popularity: 2% [?]
12:47 am
How I Impacted My Campus for Life
Interested in spreading the Pro-Life message on your campus? Be brave and take a direct stand at your college. Here is what I did:
I ran the above quarter page Pro-Life Ad in our daily school newspaper. 10,000 copies printed in our presidential election paper which ran over a two day period, reaching approximately 18,000 students.
Here I am standing as the paper was printed.
Looking to spread the message to more students, I decided to pass out the Live Action, Pro-Life quarterly magazine, “The Advocate,” during school concerts and in front of our library.
Passing out the Advocate magazine.
This magazine can be obtained from Live Action’s website, http://liveaction.org/advocate. I handed out 400 copies in 3 days. With creative ideas and a strong will to make a difference, many people can be reached. YOU TOO can do this! Be brave and take a stand! Your student body depends on it! Please feel free to use that ad that I used in my school’s paper! A picture is like a thousand words.
Popularity: 3% [?]
5:21 am
Lila Rose in Fort Wayne – Watch Full Speech
Live Action President Lila Rose gave the following speech on July 9th, 2010 at a pro-life training event in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Popularity: 3% [?]
5:33 am
Nick Cannon Thanks His Mother for Not Aborting Him; Feminists Jeer
One of the most terrifying experiences a woman can undergo is surely to become pregnant while still in high school. You’re afraid of getting in trouble, of getting shunned by your friends. You worry that you won’t be able to finish high school, that your future is ruined. You wonder if you can take care of a baby and if you’d even be a good mother. It isn’t surprising that teenage girls find abortion so appealing — it’s a quick solution to a problem they feel like they have no way out of, and if they go to the right place, their parents never even need to know. And, as Live Action has repeatedly documented, abortion clinics are there waiting with open arms to exploit and manipulate these young girls into getting an abortion. After all, who is there to tell the scared, confused young girl that she can do this? That it won’t ruin her life? Or that there are other options besides having an abortion if you can’t have the child?
This was the situation my maternal grandmother found herself in at 14. Instead of having an abortion, she gave my mother up for adoption, and my mother was adopted by wonderful, loving parents and got a great family. Had my biological grandmother chosen to have an abortion, my mother would not be here — and neither would I. We do not have a relationship with her, but she chose to give my mother a life. I’m proud of her for that.
Apparently, rapper/actor Nick Cannon’s mother was in this exact situation. She got pregnant at 17, and was going to have an abortion. She ultimately changed her mind, giving birth to her son, Nick. He wrote a song thanking her for her decision and the sacrifices she made entitled “Can I Live?” (lyrics here). Here is the touching music video:
Chloe at Feministing found this video, and proceeded to blast it as “anti-woman”… and cruelly mocked it, sneering that his mother chose life and ended up with a “C-grade celebrity”. I guess if babies don’t grow up to become A-list celebrities, then they aren’t worth the hassle — in Chloe’s world, anyways.
Adult-with-the-voice-of-a-fetus Cannon’s argument is that not would his mother be killing someone were she to get an abortion, but she’d be killing him, Nick Cannon, the “Oprah-bound” “star” of Drumline. Drumline, guys.
It’s interesting that this is part of her argument. If he had been the star of, oh, Avatar, would she still be mocking him? Is it about the level of celebrity for her? I’m pretty sure that Cannon’s mother doesn’t love her son just because he’s a celebrity, and the point Cannon makes is a good one, whether a parent is considering an abortion or not. All parents wonder what their child will grow up to be, and how far they might go in life. And while Nick Cannon might indeed be a C-grade celebrity, he’s still more well-known than Chloe is, so does she really have much room to be sneering at him for his lack of fame?
And, believe it or not, even babies destined to grow up to be C-grade celebrities deserve a chance to live. I wonder if Chloe would be willing to tell her mother that she wished she had been aborted, if it was what was best for her at the time. And if Nick Cannon is such an inconsequential celebrity, then why is she getting so upset about him professing his pro-life views?
If this were just a rap to thank his mother for the sacrifices she made for him, it would be really sweet. And I understand that the knowledge that your mother very nearly aborted the pregnancy from which you resulted might color your view of abortion, but Cannon’s not just thanking his mother here. He’s calling on women, all women, who find themselves in a similar situation, to make the same decision she did. There is no other possible way to interpret the message “if your baby could speak, it would beg you not to have an abortion.”
… This video isn’t just about “telling the story of his life,” it’s about encouraging other women to make the same decision his mother did. It’s about telling people that no matter what sacrifices it requires of her, a seventeen-year-old woman who gets pregnant should keep the pregnancy, even if she has to drop out of high school, go to night school and depend on government welfare programs. Even if she has dreams other than the ones in which she sees her baby (“you see me in your sleep, so you can’t kill your dreams”? Really, Nick?). And what’s his reasoning? Because that baby might end up being a C-grade celebrity who will thank you for your strength and sacrifice years later, in the form of a poorly-written rap with a barely-concealed political agenda!
It’s quite clever, really, to focus on what the baby might become, on what the world might have missed out on if someone’s life had never come to pass, whether that person is Nick Cannon or Tim Tebow or you, the person watching this video. It’s clever because it forces us to acknowledge that even if we don’t believe a fetus is a person, it undeniably has the potential to become one. That might feel like a victory for anti-abortion forces, but in fact, it reveals a crucial weakness in the approach of those who argue for restrictions on abortion.
The focus on the baby’s potential life lays bare exactly where pro-life priorities lie, and it’s not with women. Women don’t matter here. Babies, fetuses and the potential they represent are all that matters. What women want, what women need, none of those things are important compared to the potential future life of the fetus. And if a woman has goals that would be impossible to achieve if she had a baby, or if she doesn’t want to make the enormous sacrifices that might be required of her, she’s weak. The admirable women are the ones who are “strong” enough to “make the right decision” even if it’s completely against their interests.
The focus on what the baby might grow up to be reveals just how anti-woman the anti-choice stance really is, despite the lauding of women like Cannon’s mother as strong and admirable. Because, as Cannon’s video demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt, we’re meant to care more about the potential for the fetus’ life than the woman’s. We’re expected to care more about a being that merely possesses the potential to become a fully-fledged person with thoughts, hopes, dreams and accomplishments, than we do about the woman who has already fulfilled that potential.
So just remember, ladies, even though it’s your body and your life, it’s not about you. You don’t matter. What matters is that the next generation of human life not be denied the glory, the greatness and the genius that will be Drumline 2.
The overall theme of this post is common for the pro-abortion fanatics. They love to claim that if women cannot have abortions, it means that they have to give up their entire lives — and call this anti-woman. Is it not, though, anti-woman to assume that women are such victims, incapable of living and working while pregnant? While mothers? Feminists look at pregnancy as something crippling, as if being pregnant somehow means that you aren’t able to function. It’s as if in their world, pregnancy turns women into blind-deaf crippled retards who somehow cannot continue to go to school (you can’t learn when you’re pregnant or something), you cannot keep working (it’s too rough on your fragile pregnant body), and your life is completely over (because obviously you’ll have no future if you have a baby). And, as usual, the idea of adoption is never mentioned. I just can’t quite understand how making women out to be these fragile, weak little victims who can’t handle sacrifices or hardship somehow makes women more empowered.
And while the pro-abortion crowd likes to pretend they only care about the life of the woman, it’s simply not true. Pro-abortion feminists like Chloe don’t care about women at all. They care about abortion. It’s why they are against pre-abortion ultrasounds and laws requiring clinics to give medically accurate information. (They know that if a woman sees an image of her child, or knows that the baby already has a heartbeat, they’ll be much less likely to go through with the abortion.) It’s why they try to drown out the post-abortion trauma women face — from increased health risks (like breast cancer) to higher incidences of miscarriage, they don’t want women to know about it. They also don’t want women to know about the emotional trauma many women face. Post abortion, many, many women are stricken with feelings of guilt, regret, and sorrow. Pro-abortion radicals do not want women to know about any of these things, yet they trumpet themselves as pro-woman. What they actually are is pro-abortion.
I don’t think Nick Cannon’s song is genius or even that good. The video has touching moments, though, especially the scenes of mother and son together at the end. While feminists might like to pretend that women who choose life over abortion will regret it their entire lives (remember, pregnancy is a life-ruiner), I’d suspect the opposite. Many, many parents struggle when they’re first starting out, and especially teenage parents. There will be many, many sacrifices to make, and life will inevitably be harder. But I’d be willing to bet that most of the parents who make these sacrifices for their children ultimately say it was worth it in the long run. They love their children enough that they are willing to sacrifice, willing to work harder, to give their children the chance to have a better life. And it’s because they love their children. Feminists like Chloe, though, would have parents miss out on that love just because the road might be a little bit harder. Because, you know, Heaven forbid life be anything but easy. If you can’t do what you want, when you want to, as much as you want, then it’s not fair! They can’t seem to understand that hard work pays off in the end, and a little sacrifice can be very rewarding in the long run. A life of sacrificing for your children does not mean you somehow love your children less, but pro-abortion feminists can’t understand that, can they?
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Follow Cassy on Twitter and read more of her work at CassyFiano.com and Hard Corps Wife.
Popularity: 5% [?]
1:34 pm
Live Action Releases a New Undercover Video Exposing IN Planned Parenthood Giving False and Manipulative Information
After exposing Planned Parenthood’s willingness to cover up the statutory rape and sexual abuse of young girls with The Mona Lisa Project, and the continuation of Margaret Sanger’s legacy of racism and eugenics, Live Action launched a new undercover investigation: The Rosa Acuna Project. It is named for Rosa Acuna.
Rosa Acuna was examined by her physician, had an ultrasound, and was told she was 6-8 weeks pregnant. When she asked if it was a “baby in there,” she was told,“don’t be stupid, it’s only blood.” Following an abortion, Rosa experienced bleeding and was admitted to a hospital. When she asked a nurse what had happened, she was told that “the doctor left parts of the baby inside of you.” At this point, Rosa realized it was a baby. Subsequently, her mental health deteriorated, and she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Rosa filed a lawsuit, and both the district and appellate courts agreed that she should have been fully informed, including being told that she was carrying a human being. However, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that the abortionist was under no obligation to give her the information she had asked about – that she was carrying a baby! Citing the 35-year-old Roe v. Wade ruling, the court reasoned that the abortionist is not compelled to provide this information because there are “different scientific, moral, or philosophical viewpoint on the issue of when life begins.”
Live Action launched a multi-state undercover investigation of Planned Parenthood to find that counselors typically use misleading, manipulative, and exploitative information to convince women to get abortions. There have been two videos already released, which were filmed at Planned Parenthoods in Appleton and Milwaukee Wisconsin, and now, Live Action has released a third from a clinic in Indianapolis, Indiana.
When the woman, purportedly 10-weeks pregnant, asks the clinician, named “Sarah,” when her baby’s heart begins to beat, Sarah replies, “It’s around I think the 8th or the 9th week that you can hear the heartbeat.” The heart actually begins beating 3 weeks and 1 day after conception, according to Moore and Persaud’s well-known textbook The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology. The Planned Parenthood clinician also insists, “It’s not a baby, it’s a fetus,” which, she claims, is “not like a person.”
In the video, Sarah assures the woman that “having an abortion is safer than carrying to term.” The woman asks, “The abortion won’t hurt me from having more kids in the future, will it?” and the counselor replies, “Nope.” But a 2009 study from the Obstetrical and Gynecological Survey recently found that a previous abortion increased a woman’s risk of pre-term birth by 20%, and a 2003 report from the Shanghai Institute of Planned Parenthood Research notes a 55% increased risk of future miscarriages for women who have abortions.
Lila Rose, UCLA student and president of Live Action, says the new footage places Planned Parenthood well outside the medical mainstream. “Planned Parenthood’s counseling is based on its abortion-first mentality rather than the medical facts that women need,” observes Rose. “Planned Parenthood gives vulnerable women misinformation to sell them the abortion.” Indiana informed consent state law requires that women receive accurate medical information before undergoing an abortion.
As Lila said, this is entirely about selling abortions. Abortion is a lucrative business. What we see from Live Action’s undercover videos time and time again is that the “counselors” never offer an alternative to these women. They’re confused, they’re scared, they’re vulnerable, and Planned Parenthood takes advantage of them by lying to them with manipulative and inaccurate information. Why? To make money. Planned Parenthood doesn’t get any money if the woman decides to keep the baby or give it up for adoption. In 2007, Planned Parenthood performed 305,310 abortions… and only referred 4,912 adoptions.
It’s all about the money for them. These “counselors” aren’t there to help women during a time of crisis. They’re salespeople, out to make a sale. Planned Parenthood makes millions of dollars off of abortions, on top of the millions of taxpayer funding they already receive, and why would they want to give that up?
This is why pro-life advocates push for mandatory ultrasounds. Women seeking abortions deserve to know the truth, and instead, they’re lied to and manipulated. These Planned Parenthood counselors have goods to sell, after all, and the murders of unborn children must happen no matter what. If women know the truth, they’re not as likely to have the abortion. Lying to women doesn’t matter as long as abortions are being performed — and the femisogynists go right along with it. As I said before,
Meanwhile, feminists (who ardently defend Planned Parenthood and their abortion mill) have been silent about Lila Rose and all that she’s uncovered. Jessica Valenti, for example, seems to have no problem with covering up the sexual abuse of minors, as long as it leads to abortion, the sacred cow of feminism. Planned Parenthood must be defended and the taxpayer funding cannot be revoked. To feminists, “the right to choose” is more important than anything unethical or immoral that an abortionist may do. It can cover all manner of ills.
They self-righteously huff that women know enough to make their own choice, but if they’re lied to and uninformed, how can they really make a choice? If abortion advocates were truly pro-choice, then they’d be outraged over these lies and manipulative tactics. But they aren’t pro-choice, they’re pro-abortion, and abortion clinics like Planned Parenthood are selling the murders of unborn children at any cost.
Forward this story on. These undercover videos will keep coming from Live Action — and how many of them need to be released before people wake up to the evil of Planned Parenthood?
Popularity: 3% [?]
4:43 pm
Will Abortion Stop Being a Political Issue?
Elizabeth Landau recently posted an entry in CNN’s The Chart, posing the question:
If these doctors succeeded in making abortion more mainstream and esteemed in the medical profession, the article asks, “would the politics surrounding it finally change?”
Let’s read and understand the source of this piece. She was obtaining her information from a New York Times piece called The New Abortion Providers. On this, rather lengthy piece, Elizabeth Bazelon researches how now many Universities offer a 2 year program that follows their fellowship to sharpen their skills in abortion and contraception. This program started in UC San Francisco, and is called the Family Planning Fellowship, where they will train here or abroad, side to side with the W.H.O., especially in third world countries.
Another program is the Kenneth J. Ryan Residency Training Program, also started in UC San Francisco. This program gives the medical schools two or three years of seed money for abortion training for OB-GYN residents. Another is the Center for Reproductive Health Education in Family Medicine. These programs are not limited to UCSF, or liberal Universities. They are also in Conservative states like Utah, making the purveyors of the residency think that abortion is not only tolerated, but mainstream by conservatives as well. With these programs the founders try to keep a continuity between the older abortionists spawned by Roe v. Wade, and the younger medical students, so this practice is not lost.
According to the author, most if not all the money comes from the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation. Throughout the piece, they talk about how hard it has been for the abortionists to provide this service across America, how from the 70’s clinics had to be formed, since most hospitals or practices wouldn’t do them, thus creating a cottage industry, but also an isolation that couldn’t protect doctors from being murdered by extremists because of the services provided. On and on they go about their struggles and tribulation through history, and how they feel that offering these programs they will finally be a mainstream practice, how in the same practice a doctor could remove a precancerous mole or perform first or second trimester abortions and no one will think anything of it.
The author chose her words very carefully when referring to a pre-born, calling them “pregnancy tissue” and abortion opposers “anti-choice”. She did also brush through the fact that some doctors put a self-limitation on how far along they will perform abortions – mainly to avoid seeing the baby moving on the ultrasound. She also made a note on how much better earlier abortions were, thus avoiding seeing recognizable fetal parts.
If they recognize a life is being (brutally) terminated, then, deep down they know what they are doing is intrinsically wrong. They are just providing a false escape to a woman with a deeper problem.
Returning to the author’s question: “would the politics surrounding it finally change?”
I would dare to answer: No.
No, because, in their own numbers, abortion providers have fallen 37% since the 1980’s.
No, because, even if the same lie has been told a thousand times, it does not become truth.
No, because the younger generations, the survivors of this silent holocaust get it. And through a conciliatory democratic process they will teach the older generations how to love and respect our most important treasure: Life.
Popularity: 3% [?]
10:56 pm
The Philippines Says No to Abortion
Center for Reproductive Rights Meddles in the Philippines’ Cultural and Religious Beliefs. “No thanks,” reply Filipino Leaders.
The struggle to defend human life continues throughout the world, as does the push for pro-choice laws. Recent news out of the Philippines highlights how the gift of life is viewed by the political and religious leaders in that country, but at the same time should remind those on the “life” side of the battle to be ever vigilant for the encroachment of pro-choice ideology from those who will stop at nothing to impose their mandate of “reproductive rights” against the will of a people.
On August 2, 2010, top Filipino lawmakers and religious leaders affirmed their support for human life by rejecting an appeal from various pro-choice organizations which had urged Congress to pass a law allowing “safe and legal abortion”:
The cited report, Forsaken Lives: The Harmful Impact of the Philippine Criminal Abortion Ban, was created by New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR). The request for the Philippine Judiciary to legalize abortion turns out to be a hard sell in a country that’s 90% Christian and whose churchgoing population is so large that some parishes hold their services in megamalls. The responses from Filipino leaders are refreshing for their honesty and bluntness. Below is a selection of the reception given to the pro-choice meddlers:
Neither the Philippines Congress nor the Catholic Bishops’ Conference can necessarily be considered parties of “no.” Many of their members support a bill being sponsored by Congressman Roilo Golez, HB No. 13: Protection of the Unborn Child Act 2010, a proposed law that empowers humanity and glorifies the dignity of human life. The law states, in part:
The struggle for the hearts and minds of people continues on both sides of the abortion issue. However, for those looking to find a shining example of a country that values the gift of life and is more than holding its ground against pro-choice ideology, the Philippines provides welcome news.
Popularity: 4% [?]