Thread by Morgana.
Dozens of girls as young as 12 or 13 are regularly having abortions, Government figures show. More than 450 youngsters below the age of 14 ended unwanted pregnancies between 2005 and 2008 - including 23 girls aged just 12, the Department of Health statistics reveal. Over the same period, 52 teenagers terminated four or more pregnancies before they reached their 18th birthday, helping the number of repeat abortions hit record levels. Across all age groups, 64,715 repeat abortions were carried out last year. This is the biggest figure on record and includes 46 women who had terminated at least eight pregnancies. The figures will fuel fears that abortion is being used for lifestyle reasons by a generation that feels it has the right to have babies to order. They follow research published earlier this year, which found that the number of abortions performed on teenage girls who have had at least one before has risen by almost 70 per cent since 1991. In 2007, 5,897 girls under 20 had their second, third or even fourth termination. Sixteen years earlier, in 1991, the figure stood at just 2,934. Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley said the statistics were evidence of the failure of Labour's teenage pregnancy policies. He said: 'When you look at the cases of young girls having abortions repeatedly, this is not just tragic and disturbing, but totally unnecessary.' The Department of Health spokesman said the Government had invested almost £50million in efforts to prevent teenage pregnancies and that the rates of abortions for teenagers as a whole had fallen by 4.5 per cent in the past year. . .
Two threads by me.
BELLINGHAM -- The initiative that made Washington the second state to legalize physician-assisted suicide is the stuff of double-edged language and hard ethical choices.
"It is a fact of life. We need to live with it," Arline Hinckley of Compassion & Choices of Washington State, which supports the initiative, told a packed house Wednesday at Bellingham City Club.
"We have had two persons take advantage of the law in this state," she added.
But the Whatcom County Medical Society has asked opposing physicians -- those who will not help patients kill themselves -- to identify themselves. "Many have done that," said society president Dr. David Lynch.
St. Joseph Hospital, run by the Catholic-affiliated PeaceHealth organization, will not permit hospital employees to be present when a person commits suicide, and no on-duty physician can prescribe a lethal drug dose. . .
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Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- President Barack Obama's health secretary claimed in a weekend interview that a government health care plan wouldn't include rationing. That a governmental health care plan could lead to euthanasia and assisted suicide is one of the top concerns of pro-life advocates.
Kathleen Sebelius, the pro-abortion former Kansas governor who now heads the Health and Human Services Department, made the claims on Fox News Sunday.
“I don't think there’s anything about the public option that would ration care," she said.
She deflected concerns about the Congressional plans by saying that health care is already rationed, though the three plans in Congress could make matters worse. . .