Remembering Terri Schiavo: A Five-Year Anniversary Marked By Cruel Bigotry

Townhall ^ | 3/31/10 | Bobby Schindler

[wagglebee]

March 31st will mark the five-year anniversary of the needless death of my sister, Terri Schiavo.

It is difficult to believe this much time has passed since that horrible event which will be forever seared into my memory.

I wish I could say things have changed for the better since my sister’s death or that people with cognitive disabilities are now better protected in response to the horror she had to endure.

Tragically, however, it seems the rights of the brain-injured, elderly and others are still being violated.

All one has to do is look at what happened just last week. On March 21st, Fox aired an episode of The Family Guy that featured a "sketch" called "Terri Schiavo: The Musical." I was astonished at the producer’s cruel bigotry directed towards my sister and all cognitively disabled people.

Sadly, although more offensive than what my family has seen in the past from the media since Terri died, the bald-faced ignorance expressed in that episode of The Family Guy was nothing new. In fact, all signs indicate that we have embarked on a very disturbing path.

There is no disputing that Terri’s life – and death – had an astonishing impact on our nation. Our family still receives letters, emails and phone calls almost every day from people who tell us how Terri’s story touched them in profound ways, particularly when they come to know the facts.

Indeed, it was because of my family’s experience trying to protect Terri that we realized how all persons with similar cognitive disabilities are completely vulnerable to state laws that currently make it “legal” to deny them the most basic care – food and water.

This horrifying realization was why we established Terri’s Foundation. In Terri’s name, my family now works to protect tens of thousands of people with similar brain-injuries from having their fundamental freedoms taken away by an aggressive anti-life movement hell-bent on portraying severely disabled and otherwise vulnerable human beings as nothing more than “useless eaters”.

If the amount of phone calls we receive is any indication, what happened to Terri has become common. I think most people have no idea how our individual rights to make decisions about basic care like food and water, antibiotics, etc., have been so dramatically eroded. This not only includes family members advocating for loved ones but also protecting oneself by medical directive.

We recently heard from a woman whose mother was being cared for at a hospice facility. The daughter was powerless to effectively advocate for her mother because she had no power of attorney.

Even though she was her mother’s next-of-kin, and despite the fact her mother was begging her for food, the daughter was not allowed to feed her. It had been determined the mother was no longer able to swallow. But the daughter said her mother was eating safely just prior to being sent to hospice and questioned whether she still could. The mother was not given a feeding tube, and died just a short time later.

Perhaps the “Death Panels” Sarah Palin spoke of sounded like bombastic language. Yet when Palin added this term into our nation’s debate on health care, I believe she did not realize that many hospitals and facilities already have something frighteningly similar. Ethics committees are making many life and death decisions about patients, including whether to withhold simple provisions.

In a seemingly clandestine way, these ethics committees – comprised of medical and legal professionals – are empowering facilities to make life and death decisions independent of the family or a person’s own wishes.

The chilling stories we receive make it clear few citizens have any idea how vulnerable they are when it comes to judgments left in the hands of these ethics committees and facilities. And with the federal government now controlling our health care, there is no reason not to believe that these types of committees won’t become nationalized. Particularly when a health care system has been sabotaged by cost factors and quality of life judgments.

When our office receives phone calls from people fighting for their loved ones, I cannot help but look back and reflect on the courage of many individuals and groups who advocated on behalf of my sister.

As time has passed, however, many of those people, organizations and politicians – even many of our own friends – have fallen silent. Many who once ardently supported Terri’s life no longer actively educate or advocate for vulnerable patients.

With each troubling phone call from a frantic family, I am reminded there are countless other Terris in desperate need of our voice. Terri’s Foundation has been successful helping to save some, but sadly so many others have fallen victim.

I understand our nation faces many challenges today that may threaten our very existence. But how can we claim to be a just and honorable society, deserving of any blessing at all, if we richly reward hateful bigots while refusing to protect our weakest citizens?

Moreover, how did the tremendous courage and kindness we saw when we were fighting for Terri’s life have faded? How can any of us abandon this issue when all signs are that things are getting worse?

There are still many who support our efforts, who recognize the erosion of the value and dignity of the medically weak and who believe in protecting the life and liberty of all human beings.

The problem is their voices are often drowned out by the din of the pro-death lobby that claims death is the only dignified answer to a complicated problem.

Meanwhile the pro-death movement has not fallen silent. Rather, it has grown more vocal. The issue for them did not die with Terri. Indeed, their success in killing her seems to have only bolstered their determination to gain wider acceptance among the American people.

There will always be people with needs, there will always be others who work tirelessly to help them, and there will always be those who turn the other way; or worse – sit behind their drawing tables, disseminating cruel bigotry and hatred toward the disabled and vulnerable.

Until we all recognize that our inherit worth doesn’t change because of life’s circumstances, illness, disability or other events, we will continue to rob our most vulnerable of their right to fairness, justice and the ability to guide their own course in life.

[Lesforlife]

That’s why Rebecca Kiessling ~ www.rebeccakiessling.com ~
and others conceived in rape support Personhood! Every baby in the womb should be protected by love and law.

Persons not property!

We are on the ballot in Colorado!
Woo Hoo 62!

[Lesforlife]

[wagglebee]

Archbishop Chaput tells the absolute truth here.

Thread by thisisthetime.

Abortion Is the Foundational Human Rights Issue of Our Lifetime

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, Colorado, USA, spoke recently on the vocation of Christians in American public life. In his address at Houston Baptist University, the Archbishop said, “I’m here as a Catholic Christian and an American citizen—in that order. I believe abortion is the foundational human rights issue of our lifetime.

We need to do everything we can to support women in their pregnancies and to end the legal killing of unborn children.

We may want to remember that the Romans had a visceral hatred for Carthage not because Carthage was a commercial rival, or because its people had a different language and customs. The Romans hated Carthage above all because its people sacrificed their infants to Ba’al.

For the Romans, who themselves were a hard people, that was a unique kind of wickedness and barbarism.

As a nation, we might profitably ask ourselves whom and what we’ve really been worshipping in our 40 million ‘legal’ abortions since 1973”. ELN. March.

(Excerpt) Read more at thewoodwardreport.com ...

[wagglebee]

The duplicity of Big Murder is beyond disgusting.

Thread by julieee.

Expose' Video Shows Planned Parenthood Pressuring Young Woman to Get Abortion

Expose' Video Shows Planned Parenthood Pressuring Young Woman to Get Abortion

Milwaukee, WI -- A new undercover video taken of staff at a Planned Parenthood abortion business in Milwaukee, Wisconsin shows them pressuring a woman to have an abortion. The video also has staff members giving medically inaccurate abortion counseling and distorting basic facts of fetal development at the taxpayer-funded abortion center.

(Excerpt) Read more at LifeNews.com ...

[wagglebee]

Great news out of Nebraska!

Threads by NYer and me.

Breaking News: First-Ever Abortion Ban Based on Fetal Pain Passes in Nebraska

OMAHA, Nebraska, April 13, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Nebraska legislature has given final approval to a new law banning abortion after 20 weeks gestation on the basis that an unborn child feels pain at that age.

The new law is the first of its kind in the United States and pro-life advocates believe it could pose a direct and historic challenge to the 1973 Roe v. Wade case, which deprived the states the power to regulate or restrict abortion.

The “Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” (LB 1103), authored by Speaker Mike Flood, passed Tuesday on the third and final reading of the bill by an overwhelming pro-life majority of 44 in favor and 5 against.

Gov. Dave Heineman is expected to sign LB 1103 into law.

The law’s passage is especially historic, because it portends a fresh new challenge and look at the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton cases, which led to the virtual legalization of abortion on demand. The Nebraska law applies a different standard – that of the unborn child’s ability to feel pain - for restricting abortion, while the high court used the standard of what they then considered to be point of fetal viability.

"The Nebraska Legislature took a bold step today which should ratchet up the abortion debate across America," said Julie Schmit-Albin, Executive Director of Nebraska Right to Life in a statement today.

"LB 1103 creates a case of first impression for the courts to acknowledge the capability to feel pain as a compelling state interest to protect those unborn babies from an excruciatingly painful death.”

The legislation, which now awaits the governor’s signature, bans abortions after 20 weeks of post-fertilization age with two exceptions: first, when the pregnancy puts the mother in danger of death or “substantial and irreversible” physical harm to a major bodily function. The second exception was added in an amendment and allows an abortionist to perform late abortions for the sake of increasing the probability of a live birth, or to preserve an unborn child’s life and health after a live birth.

Although the topic of fetal pain is still under much discussion (and controversy, owing to its implications to the abortion debate) a growing consensus of medical knowledge has pointed to the fact that unborn infants experience pain by 20 weeks and possibly earlier. The pain may even be more acute than for older humans, as some research indicates their immature nervous systems have not developed coping mechanisms that help the body better endure pain.

The law notes that unborn children have been observed to “seek to evade certain stimuli” in a manner that “would be interpreted as a response to pain.” Additionally, the bill says unborn children exhibit “hormonal stress responses to painful stimuli” that were reduced with the application of pain medication.

Abortionists who break the law would face a Class IV felony charge, which carries a penalty of a five year maximum prison sentence, $10,000 fine, or both.

The bill would allow women and even the fathers of aborted unborn children to sue and seek damages from abortionists who violate the law.

The law, if passed and signed into law, would become operative on October 15, 2010.

Developing …

Late-Term Abortion Practitioner LeRoy Carhart Hampered by New Nebraska Pro-Life Laws

Bellevue, NE (LifeNews.com) -- LeRoy Carhart, one of the few late-term abortion practitioners left in the wake of the death of George Tiller, has to be frustrated by legislation in Kansas and Nebraska that makes continuing or expanding his abortion business more difficult. Nebraska yesterday saw two new pro-life bills go into law that adversely affect his business.

In Nebraska, one new law makes abortion practitioners engage in better screening and gives women a chance to file lawsuits over post-abortion mental health problems.

The other bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy because unborn children can feel pain.

Operation Rescue president Troy Newman tells LifeNews.com the legislation will hamper Carhart's abortion business when they go into effect in October.

"We are extremely happy that the Nebraska fetal pain bill has been signed into law, along with another that will require mental health screening for abortion patients. These laws will essentially ban all abortions beginning at 20 weeks when it has been determined that pre-born babies can feel pain," he said.

Last year, Carhart threatened to reopen an abortion clinic in Kansas and continue post- viability abortions after the closure of Women's Health Care Services that Tiller ran.

Operation Rescue launched a campaign that successfully prevented Carhart from coming back to Kansas where he had worked for over 10 years doing abortions on women in their latest stages of pregnancy.

"It soon became clear that Carhart planned instead to conduct the late-term abortions at his existing clinic in Bellevue, Nebraska," Newman said. "[We] later confirmed that Carhart has in fact been doing a small number of post- viability abortions in Nebraska, possibly as late as the thirtieth week of pregnancy."

In response, the group conducted an outreach in Nebraska last summer that garnered a great deal of publicity. During interviews generated by that event, Carhart boasted that Nebraska laws were lenient enough to allow him to conduct late-term abortions in that state.

"Those statements caught the ear of Speaker Mike Flood, who sponsored the two groundbreaking bills aimed at preventing Carhart from conducting late-term abortions while providing new protections for pre-born babies," Newman said.

Newman said the bills were passed thanks to hard work from Nebraska Right to Life and Flood and that the bills combined with complaints against Carhart, based on affidavits from former Carhart employees that were submitted by Operation Rescue, Nebraskans United for Life, and Rescue the Heartland, are hurting Carhart's abortion business.

"It is our prayer that one day soon there will be a peaceful end to Carhart's entire abortion business," he said.

Meanwhile, Julie Schmit-Albin, Executive Director of Nebraska Right to Life, agrees with the analysis.

"Speaker of the Legislature Mike Flood, like many Nebraskans, was very troubled when he heard that Carhart wanted to become the go-to late term abortionist of the Midwest after George Tiller's death last summer." said Schmit-Albin. "Carhart moonlighted with Tiller for ten years in Wichita, Kansas. Speaker Flood was in a position to do something to ensure that Nebraska does not become the late term abortion capital of the Midwest and we thank him for his diligence and leadership in introducing and prioritizing LB 1103."

"For years LeRoy Carhart has thumbed his nose at Nebraska's outdated post viability statute which contains a health exception you could drive a Mack truck through," the pro-life Nebraska leader added.

"LB 1103 creates a case of first impression for the courts to acknowledge the capability to feel pain as a compelling state interest to protect those unborn babies from an excruciatingly painful death. The more narrowly defined medical emergency exception with an objective standard should go a long way towards closing the loopholes in current Nebraska statute," she told LifeNews.com.

[wagglebee]

That ANYONE would oppose this is sickening.

Thread by me.

North Dakota Measure Seeks to Ban Decapitation, Skull Crushing during Abortions

MINOT, North Dakota, April 14, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A measure to prohibit physicians from decapitating and crushing the skulls of live unborn children during abortions is seeking clearance to begin gathering signatures for the November ballot, a North Dakota grassroots pro-life organization has announced.  

Daniel Woodard, head of North Dakota's Stop Decapitation Network, filed the paperwork to the North Dakota Secretary of State and Attorney General on Tuesday.  The group aims to collect 12,844 signatures by August 4 in order to place the measure on the 2010 ballot.

"It's unconscionable and unthinkable that any physician who claims to care for the health of others would remove the heads of children or crush them and toss them in the trash," Woodard told LifeSiteNews.com in an interview Wednesday.

Woodard said that he was inspired to pursue the ballot initiative after reading the quotes of abortion doctors who, in federal court hearings regarding the partial-birth abortion ban, testified to decapitating and crushing the skulls of unborn infants in other types of abortions. Woodard's measure would apply not only to partial-birth abortions, but also to abortions inside the mother's womb.

During a federal district court case out of New York in 2004, abortionist Dr. Stephen T. Chasen said that “the fetal head is extracted by placing the forceps around it and crushing it.” Dr. Chasen went on to say that he did not have “any caring or concern for the fetus whose head [he was] crushing.” Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, another abortionist, said, “For the vast majority of D&Es [it is] necessary either [to] crush or collapse the fetal skull.” She told the judge she does not use the word “crush” when speaking to her patients.

According to Woodard, the initiated measure would provide a class A felony penalty to physicians participating in skull-crushing or decapitation abortions. That penalty would become a class AA felony if a skull fragment from the unborn child were to cause serious bodily injury to the mother during or following a decapitation or skull crushing abortion.

When asked about this legislation, state Rep. Dan Ruby from Minot said, “I can hardly believe these crimes happen, especially when physicians can do fetal brain surgery. Any sane American knows that life-saving physicians are supposed to do no harm, most especially not crushing or removing the skulls of children who did nothing to deserve this. I wish Stop Decapitation Network every success on this inspiring endeavor.”

The Secretary of State Al Jaeger has until Thursday, April 22 to approve the measure to begin collecting signatures.

Red River Women's Clinic (RRWC) of Fargo declined to comment to LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) on the legislation because they had not yet seen the initiative. RRWC, North Dakota's lone abortuary, only provides abortion until the 15th week of pregnancy - at which point the child's head is too small to purposefully crush or decapitate.

LSN's attempt to reach Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota for comment was unanswered as of press time.

Woodard said he had spoken to about ten state legislators, and had so far only found support for his anti-decapitation measure. "Even if a legislator was against it, I doubt he'd say it, it would be unpopular," he noted, adding that "even the most liberal newspapers in the state" have had fair coverage.

"It's because they have to be, because the way the bill is framed, [the media] can't really say 'these are evil anti-choicers who hate women,'" he said.

Woodard said he chose the ballot route instead of the legislature to expedite the process: the soonest that it could become law legislatively would be in the summer of 2011, "whereas if I put it on this November ballot, it becomes law right away," he said. Even should the ballot initiative fail, he said, he would "absolutely" expect to see state legislators take up the measure.

[wagglebee]

There is NO SUCH THING as a "wrong" baby!

Two threads by me.

Doctor Who Killed “Wrong” Unborn Twin Has License Revoked

TAMPA, Florida, April 12, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- The Florida Board of Medicine has revoked the medical license of a Sarasota doctor who killed the “wrong” unborn baby in a "selective reduction" procedure.

Selective reduction is a procedure in which a doctor kills one or more of multiple unborn children by injecting a feticide into the fetus slated to be aborted.  Its use has increased because of modern fertility treatments, which often result in women carrying multiple babies.

In 2006, Dr. Matthew Kuchinas attempted to kill one of two twins because it had Down syndrome and a possible heart defect, despite the fact that he had never performed the selective reduction procedure before. He found out a week after performing the procedure that he aborted the wrong fetus; the other child was killed shortly thereafter.

According to Health News Florida, he defended himself by stating that his patient knew he had never done the technique before and that he hated to tell patients "no." Kachinas has also said that there must have been a problem with the ultrasound machine he was using to target one of the fetuses.

Such testimony was found unpersuasive, and the Florida Board of Medicine revoked Kachinas' license last weekend. He has now been involuntarily hospitalized after telling a reporter that he intended to kill himself.

Kachinas had also been charged with two, less-serious offenses.  In 2002 he attempted to smuggle the anesthesia drug Propofol with him when going to his job in Tampa by taping vials to his legs beneath his pants.  He said that the clinic did not keep it in stock and he preferred that drug to others.

In 2004 he allegedly falsified records by claiming that an aborted fetus had died naturally.

Dr. Kachinas had also previously been accused of headbutting pro-life protestor Linda McGlade after she attempted to speak to him peacefully.

Aborting the 'Wrong' Baby?

The news out of Sarasota, Florida caught many people by surprise. A doctor in the city has lost his license because he aborted what is now described as the “wrong” baby. Back in 2006, Dr. Matthew Kachinas had been asked to perform an abortion on a baby that had been identified as having Down syndrome and other congenital defects. Instead, the doctor aborted that baby’s healthy twin.

As reported in The Miami Herald:

A Sarasota doctor has lost his license for mistakenly aborting a healthy twin during a procedure targeting a deformed fetus. Immediately after the Florida Board of Medicine’s decision Saturday, Dr. Matthew Kachinas was involuntarily hospitalized because he said he planned to commit suicide. Kachinas had blamed faulty ultrasound equipment for the 2006 mistake. He was targeting a fetus with Down syndrome and signs of a heart defect.

CBS News added further details: “The woman had asked the doctor to perform a selective termination procedure on the male fetus, which had congenital defects. An ultrasound later showed that the other fetus, a female that did not appear to have medical problems, had been terminated.”

What are we to make of this? We now know that the vast majority of babies identified prenatally as carrying the genetic markers for Down syndrome are aborted. National statistics indicate that 80-90% of such babies are now aborted - meaning that we have launched a search and destroy mission on Down syndrome babies in the womb.

The situation with Dr. Kachinas reveals the horribly confused morality that marks modern America and, in far too many cases, the practice of medicine. This doctor was asked to perform what is now euphemistically called a “selective reduction.” Instead, he aborted “the wrong baby,” killing a healthy baby instead of the baby identified as carrying the markers for Down syndrome.

Consider what this means for the sanctity of human life. We are now looking at babies as consumer products. We will accept babies that meet our specified qualifications, and abort when medical tests or other factors reveal that the baby does not meet our standards. Human life is reduced to just another consumer product subject to consumer preferences and demand.

Do we recognize what this means? The abortion of Down syndrome babies is a scandal of the first degree, and this nation is growing more complacent and complicit in this scandal by the day. Beyond this, we can be certain that babies are now being targeted in the womb for reasons far beyond Down syndrome. Specialists working with autism are concerned that forthcoming genetic tests will put babies who carry markers for autism next on the list for prenatal search and destroy missions.

This news story out of Florida is a warning to the entire nation. What is the real scandal here - that this doctor was ready to kill a baby with Down syndrome, or merely that he aborted “the wrong baby?”

The answer to that question will tell us all we need to know about the conscience of the age.

[wagglebee]

Wesley J. Smith gives us a glimpse of what Zero would bring to America.

Thread by me.

Dutch Infanticide: Bioethicists Say Killing Isn't Wrong, Insufficient Reporting Is

Ah, the Dutch: Having jumped off a vertical moral cliff when it comes to doctors killing patients, they seek to replace virtue with “transparency” through official reporting.  The idea is that control over such practices can be maintained if the homicides are done in front of an open window rather than behind a closed curtain.  But it doesn’t actually turn out that way.  Several studies have shown that active euthanasia is dramatically under reported by death doctors–despite explicit legalization.  The same is proving true of the quasi-decriminalized infanticide license–at least according to an article published in the Journal of Medical Ethics. (“Dutch experience of monitoring active ending of life for newborns,” J Med Ethics 2010;36:234-237, no link, here’s the Abstract.)

One potential reason is the apparent  increase in eugenic abortion:

The introduction of ultrasound examination in 2006 at 20 weeks’ gestation as part of the routine prenatal screening in The Netherlands is another relevant development in medical practice. Although our data provide no explanations, ultrasound examination is expected to result in higher detection rates of structural congenital abnormalities, as shown in other countries where routine ultrasound examination has been an integral part of prenatal care much longer. This increased prenatal detection rate may result in more induced abortions before 24 weeks of pregnancy, fewer infants born with a congenital abnormality, and fewer postnatal deaths as a result of congenital abnormalities.” The fact that the abortion ratio (the number of induced abortions per 1000 newborns) is still increasing in The Netherlands supports this assumption. The impact of such developments is probably that the frequency of end-of-life decisions in infants in The Netherlands has decreased.

Still, aborting infants who would be disabled or dying if they were allowed to be born does not fully account for the dearth of reported infanticides.  Rather than the 15-20 cases expected (in contrast, the Lancet has published two studies claiming about 80 infanticides per year), apparently only one was reported for 2007.  The authors–who are Dutch bioethicists and/or physicians with different university medical centers–aren’t buying that figure, and so they seek to find out the reasons for the under reporting of the killing.  It is a sickening read because it presumes the propriety of infanticide, euphemistically called “active ending of life,” and further assumes that the only real problem with the whole pogrom against what are clearly presumed to be defective infants, is one of bureaucratic i-dotting and t-crossing.  From the conclusion:

We identified several changes in the practice of end-of-life decision-making for infants that may explain the lack of reporting of cases of the active ending of life. Furthermore, it seems virtually impossible to comply with the requirements in the current regulation, due to either time constraints or the nature of the suffering that is addressed. If societal control of active ending of life in newborns is considered useful, a different regulation is needed. Attention should be paid to the requirements for careful practice in the current regulation, to physicians’ awareness of when they should report their act, and to a safe legal environment
for reporting.

Yes, with euthanasia the impetus is to almost always to loosen regulations, in this case of babies, not to stop killing.  But I don’t know why these authors are surprised. Killing is always best done in the dark.

Culture of death, Wesley?  What culture of death?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[wagglebee]

God creates ALL LIFE exactly the way He wants it to be.

Thread by NYer.

Father of Down Syndrome Child: "it is the soul of our nation that is 'deformed'"

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania, April 19, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Kurt A. Kondrich is a 20 year veteran of the Pittsburgh police force. Six years ago his daughter Chloe was born with Down Syndrome. This motivated Kondrich to return to college to earn a masters degree in Early Intervention. After graduation he retired from his law enforcement career to become Director of Community/Family Outreach for Early Intervention in the Pittsburgh area. Kondrich read a news report last week about the Sarasota, Florida abortionist who lamented killing the "wrong" unborn child during a selective reduction procedure to eliminate a Down syndrome fetus. The father of Chloe and advocate for Down syndrome children could not sleep that night and got up at 3 a.m. to write the following response to the news article:

Targeted for Termination

This past week I read an article that disturbed me deeply concerning a Florida doctor who had his license revoked .  The article stated that the doctor "lost his license for mistakenly aborting a healthy twin during a procedure targeting a deformed fetus."  The doctor was "targeting a fetus with Down syndrome", and he admitted he "screwed up".  Based on the facts presented in this article one can conclude that if the doctor had properly targeted the unborn child with Down syndrome and successfully terminated this twin then he would have kept his medical license.

My beautiful 6 year old daughter Chloe has Down syndrome and has brought immeasurable good and Blessings into this world, and I have observed no "deformities" about her. Parents of children with disabilities have fought very hard over the past decades to have our children fully included and accepted in schools and communities.  We have made great progress with "inclusion" since the days of institutionalization, but with prenatal testing we have now entered a slippery slope that is rapidly turning into solid ice.  If our society devalues the life of a person with a prenatal diagnosed disability and targets them for termination then this represents the ultimate "exclusion" and eventual "extinction".

Currently 90%+ of children diagnosed prenatally with Down syndrome are "excluded" from ever shining their bright light in a lost world that has become obsessed with perfection and unrealistic traits.  If the proper practice of medicine in our culture includes the skill of identifying and eliminating a prenatal twin who fails to meet the criteria of "normal", then we truly do need a massive overhaul of the "health care" system, and it is the soul of our nation that is "deformed". 

See Kurt Kondrich's blog about his daughter Chloe, "Chloe's Message"

See also Kondrich's extensive blog "Stop Aborting Down Syndrome Individuals Now"

Related LSN article

Doctor Who Killed “Wrong” Unborn Twin Has License Revoked
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/apr/10041210.html

[wagglebee]

Dr. Mark Mostert exposes more of the euthanasia that is already occurring in America.

Thread by me.

Dr. Mark Mostert: Euthanizing Children in the US – Yes, it’s Here

The latest edition of a prestigious medical journal, The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, has published a very disturbing piece of research. While the study is very small, the fact that it was done at all suggests that there might be a larger problem across the country: Euthanizing children right here in the US.

The study, of course, doesn’t talk about euthanasia. Here’s the title: “Considerations About Hastening Death Among Parents of Children Who Die of Cancer.”

I see. It’s not euthanasia, it’s hastening death. Sounds so much more, well, clinical, don’t you think?

Essentially, the researchers wanted to know, in terms of actual cases and presented possible scenarios, what parents’ attitudes were toward euthanasia when a child was terminally ill with cancer. No surprise, the more the actual case or scenario involved high levels of pain and suffering, the more likely parents were to consider euthanasia

Sorry, I meant “hastening death.”

Now, if the study only used contrived scenarios, the findings would be important, because they show, among other things, that parents are ignorant of palliative measures that can make terminally ill children comfortable in their final days.

However, among parents interviewed who literally had terminally ill children with cancer, there were several who actually discussed euthanasia for their child with their doctor, and, in three instances, where parents reported that the euthanasia was carried out.

Frightening, and even more so when you consider how small the study was.

And, it’s absolutely probable that if it‘s happening in the two hospitals covered by the study, it’s going on all over the country behind closed doors after whispered conversations.

Killing children because they are sick.

Here in these United States.

This is how things started in the Netherlands.

Let’s so all we can to make sure it doesn’t happen here.

[wagglebee]

Of course they feel pain!

Thread by NYer.

Abortion, Again: Do Babies Feel Pain?

Nebraska heats this topic up again. Embarrassed about being the late-term abortion capital of the United States, Nebraska changed the law:

Can an unborn child feel pain?

That question will dominate the abortion debate in America for the next several years thanks to Gov. Dave Heineman of Nebraska. Last week, Heineman signed the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act into law, banning abortions in Nebraska at and after 20 weeks based on growing scientific evidence that an unborn child at that age can feel pain.

The legislation was enacted as a defensive measure. After the murder of late-term abortionist George Tiller, a physician named LeRoy Carhart declared his intention to carry on Tiller's work at his Bellevue, Neb., clinic. State legislators did not want Nebraska to become the country's late-term abortion capital -- so they voted 44-5 to stop him.

The new law will probably spark a Supreme Court showdown, because it directly challenges one of the key tenets of Roe v. Wade -- that "viability" (the point at which an unborn child can survive outside the womb, generally held to be at 22 to 24 weeks) is the threshold at which states can ban abortion. In defending the law, Nebraska will ask the high court to take into account scientific research since Roe and push the legal threshold back further.

I have written about this before, from a very personal place. My sons were born at 24 weeks, could feel pain, and felt pain more than the doctors and nurses wanted to admit. Not long after my son left the NICU, the hospital changed a policy on heel sticks (given repeatedly and daily without anesthesia) because they were so painful to the child.

This was a "duh" decision to me: I saw my sons silently scream and writhe to get away (they were intubated) every day during the procedure. Of course they felt pain. Only a moron couldn't see that self-evident fact.

Do babies feel pain en utero? Yes. For years, doctors have noted that babies avoid ultrasound. No one quite knows why, but it's suspected that the ultrasound waves are at the very least, uncomfortable to them. So, ultrasounds, while performed routinely, are carefully meted out by the best professionals, because they do know that ultrasounds stunt growth and interfere in other ways. If the baby avoids it, there must be a reason.

My thought is that unborn babies are more, not less, sensitive to pain. It just makes sense. Their nervous systems are raw and unrefined. They live in a fluid-filled cushion bubble for heaven's sake. I figure it's because the insulation deadens the sensations--the sound, touch, sight, etc.--needfully. The experiences would be too intense otherwise.

The fact is, it makes sense that these tiny humans feel acutely. And anyone who has seen a tiny baby, with a beating heart, cannot fathom that they don't feel pain. It is an exercise in denial to haughtily imagine that they are little lumps of protoplasm feeling, learning, expressing nothing.

It is inconvenient to imagine a baby as a mini-human. If the baby is a mini-human, the baby has civil rights and should be protected.

As the science gets more refined, I expect that people are going to be horrified at what has happened to unborn children. Or, they'll sink deeper into their denial--no one wants to perceive himself as a murderer, little less a pain-inflicting murderer.

[wagglebee]

Canada has banned euthanasia, for now.

Thread by GonzoII.

Breaking [Yesterday]: Euthanasia Bill Defeated in Canada 228 - 59

OTTAWA, Ontario, April 21, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Canadian Parliament overwhelmingly defeated today the private members bill seeking to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide.

The House of Commons rejected Bill C-384, proposed by Member of Parliament Francine Lalonde (La Pointe-de-l'Île, BQ), by a vote of 228 to 59, with two additional members noting immediately afterwards that they mistakenly voted for the bill when they had intended to vote against it.

In a point of order after the vote, Conservative Member and Parliamentary Secretary for Health, Stephen Fletcher, wished it to be recorded that he abstained from the vote. Fletcher urged that all possible support be given to patients in need, but also stressed that he believed "the individual is ultimately responsible" for his fate. Fletcher is a quadriplegic MP confined to a special motorized wheel chair.

Lalonde's campaign to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide began in 2005 when she first introduced her bill into the House of Commons.  Her first two attempts failed when her private members bills were shut down by the 2006 and 2008 federal elections.

This round, her third attempt, began when she introduced Bill C-384 into the House of Commons on May 13th, 2009.  The bill received first reading with an hour of debate in October, but Lalonde has delayed a vote by trading back second reading three times.  It was also delayed by the government's decision to prorogue Parliament late last year, which meant the bill had to undergo first reading again.  The first hour of debate was March 16th and the second hour took place yesterday.

Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, told LifeSiteNews that the defeat of Lalonde's bill means that Canada should now move on to finding better ways of offering true health care to Canada's vulnerable patients.

"Now that the bill's defeated, this gives us the chance in Canada to continue to improve care for the vulnerable, to examine issues around elder abuse and how to prevent elder abuse in Canada, to look at issues around suicide prevention, and ... to ask Canadians to make sure that people with disabilities are offered true dignity and equality in Canada," he said.  "This is the way Canada needs to be going, not to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide."

He did stress, however, that "there's always a need for vigilance on the euthanasia issue."  "There will be another bill in the next Parliament," he predicted.  "That's just what's going on.  Our goal is to get ready for the next battle, which will be in a couple years after the next election."

[Dante3]

It sounds like something out a horror story.

[wagglebee]

The next Chicom export?

Thread by me.

Wesley J. Smith: Mandatory Sterilization in China

Some of the most earnest global warming alarmists look to China as the model for radically controlling human population in order to SAVE THE PLANET!  But that is to long for tyranny.  Example: China is forcing thousands of people to be involuntarily sterilized for violating the “one child” policy. From the story:

Doctors in southern China are working around the clock to fulfil a government goal to sterilise — by force if necessary — almost 10,000 men and women who have violated birth control policies. Family planning authorities are so determined to stop couples from producing more children than the regulations allow that they are detaining the relatives of those who resist. About 1,300 people are being held in cramped conditions in towns across Puning county, in Guangdong Province, as officials try to put pressure on couples who have illegal children to come forward for sterilisation.

Radical environmentalism increasingly seems sympathetic to tyrannical “solutions.”  China is the last country that we should seek to emulate.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Sun]

“Doctors in southern China are working around the clock to fulfil a government goal to sterilise — by force if necessary “

Many antilife people in this country would have that here, if they could get away with it.

[wagglebee]

Many antilife people in this country would have that here, if they could get away with it.

Including some who claim to be pro-life conservatives.

[Saundra Duffy]

I think children with Downs Syndrome are perfect. To be evil and mean one would have to be smart and crafty. In God’s eyes, these children are perfect because they do not have the mental capacity to be mean and evil. I love life!!

[wagglebee]

To be evil and mean one would have to be smart and crafty. In God’s eyes, these children are perfect because they do not have the mental capacity to be mean and evil.

Amen!