Free Republic

Legal abortion is going to take center stage during Thursday’s State of the Union address. The first lady and Senator Patty Murray (D., Wash.) are each bringing as a guest a woman who recently obtained an out-of-state abortion after learning her preborn child had serious fetal anomalies. President Biden, Democratic elected officials, and countless media commentators will doubtless highlight the tragic stories of these women in an attempt to generate greater support for permissive abortion laws. However, what will receive far less attention is the compassionate option of perinatal hospice for pregnant women who receive adverse prenatal diagnoses. Indeed, many...

The Daily Signal has an in-depth article today on doctors’ controversial efforts to perform successful surgeries on babies. Of course, no one would ever find such a story controversial if it didn’t center on babies who have not been born yet. The Signal piece profiles Drs. Michael Harrison and Scott Adzick, two pioneers in the field of fetal surgery who set about “upending science as the world knew it” in the early ’80s. “The idea arose from the frustration of caring for babies after birth and realizing it was too late: the damage was already done,” said Adzick, chief of...

Zachary Diamond and Angie Nunes look at their "wonderfully healthy" 6-month-old son Solomon, knowing they might have terminated the pregnancy — all because of a popular prenatal test that was wrong. The Portland, Oregon, couple was encouraged to use a new noninvasive blood test that their doctor said was "99 percent" accurate in predicting chromosomal abnormalities. The test revealed the fetus had Trisomy 18 or Edwards syndrome, a painful genetic condition that is nearly always fatal, and their doctor told them to prepare for the worst. "If you google Trisomy 18, your heart will just shatter with the prognosis," Diamond,...

BERKLEY — Stacie Chapman’s heart skipped when she answered the phone at home and her doctor — rather than a nurse — was on the line. More worrisome was the doctor’s gentle tone as she asked, “Where are you?” On that spring day in 2013, Dr. Jayme Sloan had bad news for Chapman, who was nearly three months pregnant. Her unborn child had tested positive for Edwards syndrome, a genetic condition associated with severe birth defects. If her baby — a boy, the screening test had shown — was born alive, he probably would not live long. Sloan explained that...

It is well-known that women who receive so-called poor prenatal diagnoses are pressured by genetic counselors and obstetricians to abort the baby. Often, as in the case of Down syndrome, the diagnosis comes with just a week or two left before the legal limit to have an abortion. In the midst of the shock and bewilderment, the feelings of inadequacy in the face of certain special needs (Feelings which are completely normal), often comes severe coercion by physicians who will refuse to treat unless an abortion is obtained. Mothers and fathers are asked why they would make their child suffer....

Prenatal screening won't tell us anything about what each individual will do with the life God has given them. That is up to each individual. It's time for American to trust in the power of our potential. It's time for America to trust in the power of life.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum stood by comments he made Saturday opposing prenatal testing, saying it leads to selective abortions, and he said the president is "continuing" policies that encourage such abortions. CBS News "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer asked the former Pennsylvania Senator to respond to comments Santorum made in Ohio Saturday where he said President Obama required free prenatal testing in the health care law "because it ends up in more abortions" which "cull[s] the ranks of the disabled in our society." Santorum told Schieffer that the policy is the "continuation" of the president's support of aborting...

U of A researcher questions whether genius might be a result of hormonal influences A longstanding debate as to whether genius is a byproduct of good genes or good environment has an upstart challenger that may take the discussion in an entirely new direction. University of Alberta researcher Marty Mrazik says being bright may be due to an excess level of a natural hormone. Mrazik, a professor in the Faculty of Education's educational psychology department, and a colleague from Rider University in the U.S., have published a paper in Roeper Review linking giftedness (having an IQ score of 130 or...

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...

My friend's wife is about 4 - 5 months pregnant. She recently had a blood test that looks for genetic abnormalities (a quad marker I believe). She was called in today and told by a nurse (still waiting to see a doctor) that she tested positive for TCHG, a birth defect that causes death although the test could have been a "positive negative" requiring further tests. I understand that this test is not conclusive but does anyone have any idea what TCHG is? I can't find anything on the net about it.

TORONTO, NOV. 12, 2005 (Zenit.org).- A growing demand for "perfect children" is leading to the elimination of unborn babies with health problems. The Globe and Mail newspaper reported Oct. 28 that the number of children born with cystic fibrosis has fallen sharply in recent years. According to research published in the Journal of Pediatrics, currently 1 in 3,608 babies born in Canada suffer from cystic fibrosis, compared with 1 in 2,714 before a genetic test for this disease existed. "Our hypothesis," Mary Corey, a senior scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, told the Globe and Mail, "is...

For years the March of Dimes (MOD) has been boycotted by pro-life groups for its involvement in the abortion industry. Unfortunately, many well-meaning pro-life citizens continue to support MOD, not knowing one of the group's methods of preventing what it calls "Birth Defects" is to promote abortion.MOD was one of the major forces behind the development and widespread use of amniocentesis in the second trimester of pregnancy. Amniocentesis is a test commonly used to determine if an unborn child has a congenital abnormality, knowledge of which can facilitate the decision to abort "defective" children. Pat Robertson of CBN and the...

Pregnant women with poor oral health are more likely to deliver prematurely, researchers report. Their study of nearly 300 women found a significant association between high levels of an oral bacterium, Actinomyces naeslundii genospecies 2 -- associated with tooth decay -- and risk of delivering preterm low birth weight babies. This is the first research to link preterm delivery with oral bacteria other than the bacteria that cause gum disease. The findings add to growing evidence that a woman's oral health affects the health of her newborn. A tenfold increase in bacterial levels was associated with a 60-gram decrease in...

Interview With Neonatologist Carlo Bellieni SIENA, Italy, DEC. 23, 2004 (Zenit) - Far from offering or requesting prenatal diagnosis as a routine examination, people should use it with great care, warns a neonatologist. Dr. Carlo Bellieni of the Santa Maria alle Scotte Polyclinic explains in this interview the risks of using -- or abusing -- prenatal diagnosis. Q: What is prenatal diagnosis? Bellieni: It is the way of knowing the fetus' health conditions. It can be done in an invasive way -- by extracting fetal material: blood, chorionic villi, amniotic fluid -- or in a non-invasive way. In the latter...

Minnesota becomes the fourth state to take advantage of the policy and it joins Illinois, Michigan and Rhode Island. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson approved Minnesota's request. "Prenatal care is crucial to the health of both mother and child, and this change will allow Minnesota to offer prenatal care to thousands of additional pregnant mothers and their unborn children," Secretary Thompson said. "Vital services during pregnancy can be a life-long determinant of health and we should do everything possible to make this care available to everyone." The state expects to enroll more than 3,700 pregnant women under...

First U.S. W. Nile Prenatal Case Reported First Confirmed Case of Prenatal West Nile Virus Infection Reported The Associated Press Print This Page Email This Page See Most Sent • How to Pack Your Bags For Safe Holiday Flying • Denzel Washington Takes On Direct Risk • How Did Oprah Shed Those Pounds? SYRACUSE, N.Y. Dec. 19 — A month-old baby with the West Nile virus was infected before she was born in the country's first documented intrauterine transmission of the disease, according to a report.The case surprised health officials who had believed the disease could not be passed...

SAN FRANCISCO(AP) - Pregnant Hispanic women who apply for public health insurance in San Francisco experience more confusion and immigration-related fears than counterparts in New York and Miami, according to a study released Thursday. Fifty-five percent of such women interviewed in San Francisco feared assistance would make it harder to become a citizen, and feared having to pay back aid in the future. In Miami, those fears were shared by 33 percent of such women, and the number was just 9 percent in New York. "As policymakers we need to address women's fears," said Elena Fuentes-Afflick, one of the authors...

The Choice For Men November 20, 2002 by Isaiah Flair Is it ever right to cruelly kill innocent human life? No, of course not. Quite the opposite: It is always very wrong to cruelly kill innocent human life. From the book, "Who Broke The Baby?", by Jeanne Garton: "At a time when society is calling for greater responsibility on the part of fathers... it seems ironic that the law denies them the appropriate legal rights necessary to protect their children when their children are the most dependent and the most vulnerable." Pro-life men fight valiantly for the right to...

The Fall Of Roe December 1, 2002 by Isaiah Flair With the late-January anniversary of Roe vs Wade approaching, the pro-abortion, anti-baby, empathy-free feminists are expected to bring a cake to several University campuses and then hand it out to other pro-abortion, anti-baby, empathy-free feminists. They do the "abortion is good, now eat this cake" deal every year. It's profoundly macabre. What manner of being celebrates the deliberately-caused abortion deaths of innocent, vulnerable, defenseless little prenatal babies? The annual pro-abortion table gets sponsored by the deeply toxic male-bashing feminist sector of society. Feminism, a movement based upon an insatiable...

Christina Hoff Sommers wrote a book several years ago entitled Who Stole Feminism? in which a former feminist of the 1960s variety explores just was happened to a movement that had general public support during through the early 1970s. In this book, she explores the errors and the outright lies of modern feminists. Although a wonderful book, the premise that feminism was "stolen" is not quite right. It was murdered, and the crime took place several decades earlier.That movement which we call feminism began in the 1840s and it was intimately intertwined with several other movements, all of which were...