THE GREATEST SHAME: One of the seldom spoken reasons why young girls have abortions is the social stigma that their own parents apply to other unwed mothers.

Parents and society at-large share a great deal of blame for abortion, for it's our gossip and condemnation that helps turn the blessing of life into a great shame, and these young girls - often pro-life themselves - see killing their own child as a better alternative than facing ridicule from their parents, family, friends and the rest of society. With every critical comment and disapproving glance that's directed toward an unwed mother, we actively contribute to abortion.

Society heaps shame upon unwed mothers, but the greatest shame is all our own.

Dr Sangeeta told Newsline that every woman has a right to discard any part of her body if it is troubling her or if she does not want it.

Preparing for the Supreme Court fight, pro-lifers were told by White House surrogates to stay out of the light and out of the newspapers, to be quiet so as not to scare the horses. Even before Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement this summer, while liberal reporters worked to connect conservative concern over the Supreme Court with the abortion issue, pro-lifers were measuring their words, beating each other up, and trying not to appear too demanding of the president that, in the small margins that matter, they had elected. [...]

There was the White House communicator who called MSNBC to berate them over a headline that suggested that John Roberts was pro-life; as if such news would bring down the Roberts nomination. And even now, the president is being advised by timid senators and aids to avoid a next selection that will cause commotion. How alarming then it must have been for the children of country-club Republicans scattered throughout GOP officialdom to hear nearly every Republican senator in the Roberts hearings make it resplendently clear that the fight of our times is over Roe:

Lindsay Graham of South Carolina: "Roe v. Wade: It divides America...There are plenty of women in South Carolina who have an opposite view about abortion... I dare say that 90% of the Republican Caucus is pro-life.

Jeff Sessions of Alabama: "You committed to Sen. Specter that you would bring no hidden agendas to this matter, that you would consider any case that came up under Roe... We will take you at your word that your mind is open and you will evaluate the matter fairly according to the high standards of justice that you can bring to bear to that issue and any others like it that come up. Will you give us that commitment?"

Tom Coburn of Oklahoma: "I've delivered 4,000 babies... And I won't pressure you on this issue.. But for the listeners of this hearing, if, in fact, life is the presence of a heartbeat and brain wave, it's important for everybody in the country to know that at 16 days postconception, a heartbeat is present."

The problem is abortion rights groups themselves, who can always be counted on to say or do something sufficiently extreme that it makes it just that much harder for the rest of us to defend our position out in the public square.

The most recent example, of course, was the television ad that the leading abortion rights organization, NARAL Pro-Choice America, chose to run against Supreme Court nominee John Roberts this summer, which strongly implied that Roberts found common cause with abortion-clinic bombers. An independent fact-checking organization run out of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center quickly determined that the ad was ''misleading" and ''false." Even pro-choice senators called it ''not helpful to the pro-choice cause."

This was not a rare misstep. The Roberts ad was rooted in an ongoing strategy on the part of the choice movement to demonize their pro-life opponents and energize those supporters who believe abortion should always be legal, with no restrictions. Unfortunately, that's not how abortion politics works.

As William Saletan explained in his 2003 book ''Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War," ever since Roe v. Wade became law in 1973, the side that has held the advantage in the abortion debate has been the one that figures out how to turn the issue into a wedge that divides their opponents. Abortion foes realized this almost immediately, and worked with newly mobilized religious conservatives to raise moral objections. The pro-choice movement fought back in the late 1980s by using a privacy argument to split libertarians from social conservatives. In the 1990s, conservatives used the issue of so-called ''partial-birth" abortion to make Americans queasy about how abortions are actually performed, and public support of abortion began to plummet.

Now, however, the momentum may be shifting back to the pro-choice side. Their unlikely hero is the pro-life Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who has won support for a strategy to lower abortion rates by reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies. But abortion rights groups are blowing this opportunity, using inflammatory rhetoric that alienates moderates and imposing a litmus test on the political party that is, for the foreseeable future, the one most closely aligned with their interests. [...]

Reid has introduced legislation he calls ''Prevention First," which aims to reduce unwanted pregnancies by improving access to birth control and making it more affordable. The approach is far from new--choice groups have promoted it themselves for years. It provides a lifeline to Democrats, who finally have a win-win issue. If Republicans oppose it, they risk being labeled extremists; if they support it, and it passes, Democrats can rightly claim to have done more to cut abortion rates than their political opponents.

And yet, as the ad against Roberts showed, abortion rights groups have the impressive ability to marginalize themselves in the public debate even when they represent a majority position.

The groups' most common tactic is to label the pro-life position ''intolerant" and ''misogynistic" at best, and in cahoots with violent extremists at worst. And when they're not demonizing their opponents, they're busy mocking them. Although many religious Americans consider abstinence an acceptable moral and personal choice, in the rhetoric of abortion rights advocates it becomes prudish and unnecessary. Earlier this summer NARAL's Washington affiliate held what was advertised as a ''Screw Abstinence Party"; last year, the Pennsylvania affiliate urged members to send ''chastity belts" to state legislators in protest of the state's ''Chastity Awareness Week."

In addition to alienating moderates, choice groups also make it hard for their friends to trust them by relying on misleading appeals and arguments. When the partial-birth abortion debate first emerged, they insisted that the procedure in question (dilation and extraction) was used only a few hundred times each year, and only in the most tragic of caseswhen a fetus had severe abnormalities that threatened its mother's health. Democratic senators dutifully trotted out and repeated these arguments, only to learn several months later that the procedure is in fact used thousands of times each year (usually in the second trimester) and for any number of reasons.

PLEASE COME NOW!!!!!!!!! we are DESPERATE for reliable people to assist in feeding and watering animals trapped in homes. We have thousands of animals still trapped WITHOUT FOOD OR WATER AFTER 3 WEEKS! We do not have enough rescuers to save them. Volunteers are stressed and overworked and heading home. We need as many people as are able to come down immediately with tents and sleeping bags. If you have a van, SUV, ryder truck, ETC. you're expecially needed since you can ferry in supplies. Report to barn 5 when you arrive or go to the 6am meeting to be deployed with a rescue team. Just come, no need to respond to this email. THANK YOU!!!!!!

There is an urgent need for volunteers to come for three day shifts in Louisiana to help starving dog and cat victims of hurricane Katrina. HSUS and other organizations need people to staff what is now the nations largest animal shelter. Which is in truth, nothing more than a makeshift facility with over 2,000 animals.

We also need people to go into the city and feed and rescue thousands of starving animals. Volunteers need only report to:

La Mar Dixon Center Command Center

9039 S. Saint Landry Road

Gonzales, LA Anytime - Day or Night

Be prepared for a chaotic situation. Bring a tent, sleeping bag or be prepared to sleep in your car. There is also an air conditioned area with cots. People that are physically fit and can enter New Orleans must bring sturdy shoes, long pants, sun visor or hat, crow bar and a utility knife. If you can just commit to a three day shift you will save more animals than we can express. Please come now! Just do it.

This request is coming from: David Meyer Executive Director 1-800-save-a-pet.com Acting Feed & Rescue Commander HSUS at La Mar Dixon

I've been livid ever since I heard Kansas Republican senator Sam Brownback say on Fox News, some weeks ago now, that President Bush should appoint a woman to fill the second Supreme Court vacancy of his administration. Even Brownback, who should be one of the sensible ones, was buying the silly conventional wisdom.

There is no good reason that this next pick (or any subsequent one) has to comply with anyone's identity-politics rules. The real rules are that the president is president and can pick who he wants. He needs to pick the most qualified man - or woman - for the job.

But it can be a man.

What's perhaps most frustrating about the conventional wisdom that the president needs to pick a woman - or a minority - is the disingenuousness of it on the Left and the naivete on the Right.

No one seriously believes that any woman would satisfy the Dianne Feinsteins of the world. Sure, a chick pick for the Court might be able to talk to the "lone woman" on the Senate Judiciary Committee as a woman, a mother, a daughter, a sister... blech... But let's be honest: A Janice Rogers Brown or a Priscilla Owen wouldn't count. They wouldn't be woman enough. They'd be considered self-hating women. It's easy to know this in advance, considering we've been there before.

France isn't alone in worrying about the need to encourage births. Across Europe [there is]... a decline in fertility rates that some fear could lead to economic decline.

In the 25-nation European Union, the average fertility rate has sunk below 2.07 children per woman -- the minimum needed to prevent a drop in population without immigration.

"It is a kind of creeping crisis," said Jan Hoem, a director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany, where the fertility rate of around 1.3 is among Europe's lowest ...

The family-friendly policies have helped keep France's fertility rate among the highest in Europe -- 1.9 children per woman, second only to Ireland's 2.0 but still below the 2.07 level needed to keep population stable.

The EU average is around 1.5, dropping to less than 1.3 in some countries.

Redbook's October issue includes an interview with Marissa Weiss, MD, founder of the cancer fundraising business, breastcancer.org.  She said, "Two recent research reviews have found that abortion doesn't alter hormone levels in a way that could increase breast cancer risk, as some activists have claimed."

Calling Weiss' statement "sheer nonsense," Professor Joel Brind (Baruch College) said scientists agree that the woman who has an abortion has a greater risk than does the woman who has a baby. She misses the third trimester process that protects her from estrogen overexposure and matures her breast tissue into cancer resistant tissue. Scientists debate whether her risk is greater than what it would have been if she'd never had that pregnancy.  He explained:

"I do not know of any reviews--recent or otherwise--which have ever made such a ridiculous claim. Of course abortion alters hormone levels in a way that could increase breast cancer risk: it terminates the pregnancy! That means it terminates all the hormonal changes that occur with pregnancy, including those which cause breast maturation and decrease breast cancer risk. This is indisputable. What is in dispute is whether or not the changes induced by the pregnancy up until the time of abortion, i.e., the stimulation of rapid growth of breast tissue, is strong enough and long-lasting enough to increase the risk of breast cancer beyond what it would have been in the absence of pregnancy at all. The overwhelming majority of valid epidemiological evidence says it does."

Angela Lanfranchi, MD (Associate Professor of Surgery, Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center) agreed that Weiss' statement revealed a misunderstanding of the biological reason for the link.

Weiss denied that the Pill increases risk, but the World Health Organization acknowledged that combined oral contraceptives are "carcinogenic to humans." [4] These findings support an ABC link.

The Bible speaks of a fetus as a person, not simply tissue that can be discarded if found to be a bother or nuisance. Since the fetus is a person from the moment of conception, then the destroying of the fetus is killing a person. "In the past, some people have mistakenly speculated that perhaps the body might be in the process of formation for some time, and then 'God breathes a soul into it.' They had it backward. The life that is present forms matter into a body for itself' (Joseph Breig, "Life Forms Matter," The Catholic News, Jan. 24, 1974, p. 8).

"Your hands shaped me and made me. Will you now turn and destroy me? Remember that you molded me like clay. Will you now turn me to dust again? Did you not pour me out like milk ... and knit me together with bones and sinews? You gave me life and showed me kindness, and in your providence watched over my spirit" (Job 10:8-12 NIV).

"Before I was born the LORD called me; from my birth he has made mention of my name... and now the LORD says--he who formed me in the womb to be his servant..." (Isaiah 49:1, 5).

"The word of the LORD came to me, saying, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations" (Jeremiah 1:4-5).

In the following passages we note that personality is ascribed to the unborn.

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that fully well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be" (Psalm 139:13-16).

"Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him" (Psalm 127:3).

Exodus 21:22-25 relates how Israel was to judge a circumstance relating to the death of the unborn:

"If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."

All of the latter deals with unintentional hurt that comes to a pregnant woman; how much more will divine penalty come upon those who intentionally discard the fetus? The Gospel of Luke ascribes personality to the fetus within Elizabeth:

"When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit... As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy" (1:41, 44).

Mere tissue does not leap for joy; only personhood leaps for joy. The Bible regards the fetus as having personality. In Galatians, Paul speaks of himself as a person while still in his mother's womb, but more a person consecrated by God for a holy mission (compare Jeremiah 1:5 for the same accent):

"But when God, who set me apart from birth, and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles..." (Gal. 1: 15-16).

Since the Bible regards the fetus as personality, then the aborting of the fetus is murdering personality.

Some verses from Scripture dealing with murder are then appropriate for study, such as Genesis 9:6: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man." Also, read Exodus 23:7: "Have nothing to do with a false charge, and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty." Note I Peter 4:15: "If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer..."

Judge Roberts's chief strategic objective in his confirmation hearing was to secure the support of Chairman Specter - a vocal supporter of Roe v. Wade - without losing the support of conservative Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. It is a testament to Roberts's skills as an advocate that his remarks at his confirmation hearing on abortion and stare decisis have been understood by Specter and many other supporters of Roe as suggesting that he would not vote to overrule Roe. What seems not to have been noticed is that Roberts in fact deftly repudiated Specter's notion that Roe is some sort of "super-duper precedent" entitled to "super stare decisis." In so doing, he marked the path for the eventual overruling of Roe.

he experiment, reported Monday, isn't the first to show that stem cells offer tantalizing hope for spinal cord injury ...

But the new work went an extra step, suggesting the connections that the stem cells form to help bridge the damaged spinal cord are key to recovery.

Surprisingly, they didn't just form new nerve cells. They also formed cells that create the biological insulation that nerve fibers need to communicate. A number of neurological diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, involve loss of that insulation, called myelin.

"The actual cells that we transplanted, the human cells, are the ones that are making myelin," explained lead researcher Aileen Anderson of the University of California, Irvine. "We're extremely excited about these cells."

At Little Rock Family Planning Services, the women filed in without making eye contact, a demographic that remains unrecognized.

Leah works in a clothing boutique. Alicia is in high school. Tammy pulls espresso. Regina is a sergeant in the Army, recently home from Iraq.

Far from Washington and the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Judge John G. Roberts Jr., here in Little Rock on an August weekend, 26 women from as far away as Oklahoma joined the more than one million American women who will probably have abortions this year. [...]

Brittany, 17, brought her mother for support. Linda, 39, brought her daughter.

Alexia, who wore a cross pendant, prayed all through the two-and-a-half-hour drive from Delta State University in Mississippi . At 23, she was having her third abortion. "My religion is against it," she said, adding that she is a Baptist. "In a way I feel I'm doing wrong, but you can be forgiven. I blame myself. I feel I shouldn't have sex at all."

Venetia Grunder, 21, viewed an ultrasound image of the fetus in her womb. She was 12 weeks pregnant, though she had taken birth control pills as directed. "I feel pretty messed up," she said after seeing the image. "It's different, just knowing. My husband told me not to look. This changes my feelings, but I'm sticking by it. Damn it, $650, I'm sticking by it."
[...]

In the squat, nondescript brick building here, the lofty rhetoric that has billowed through public debate for the last 32 years gave way to the mundane realities of the armed security guard and the metal detector, the surgical table and the settling of the bill before the procedure - $525 to $1,800, cash or credit card only...

Regina cried on the operating table.

Kori, 26, who was having her third abortion, asked to watch the procedure on the ultrasound monitor. "I wanted to see what it was like," she said. "It was O.K. to watch. Once you had your mind made up to do it, you just suck it up and go with it."

JOHN G. ROBERTS JR. should be confirmed as chief justice of the United States. He is overwhelmingly well-qualified, possesses an unusually keen legal mind and practices a collegiality of the type an effective chief justice must have. He shows every sign of commitment to restraint and impartiality. Nominees of comparable quality have, after rigorous hearings, been confirmed nearly unanimously. We hope Judge Roberts will similarly be approved by a large bipartisan vote. [...]

Judge Roberts represents the best nominee liberals can reasonably expect from a conservative president who promised to appoint judges who shared his philosophy. Before his nomination, we suggested several criteria that Mr. Bush should adopt to garner broad bipartisan support: professional qualifications of the highest caliber, a modest conception of the judicial function, a strong belief in the stability of precedent, adherence to judicial philosophy, even where the results are not politically comfortable, and an appreciation that fidelity to the text of the Constitution need not mean cramped interpretations of language that was written for a changing society. Judge Roberts possesses the personal qualities we hoped for and testified impressively as to his belief in the judicial values. [...]

Mr. Bush deserves credit for making a nomination that, on the merits, warrants support from across the political spectrum. Having done their duty by asking Judge Roberts tough questions, Democrats should not respond by withholding that support.

The men with the poison-filled syringe arrived two days before Li Juan's due date. They pinned her down on a bed in a local clinic, she says, and drove the needle into her abdomen until it entered the 9-month-old fetus. "At first, I could feel my child kicking a lot," says the 23-year-old. "Then, after a while, I couldn't feel her moving anymore." Ten hours later, Li delivered the girl she had intended to name Shuang (Bright). The baby was dead. To be absolutely sure, says Li, the officials--from the Linyi region, where she lives, in China's eastern Shandong province--dunked the infant's body for several minutes in a bucket of water beside the bed. All she could think about on that day last spring, recalls Li, was how she would hire a gang of thugs to take revenge on the people who killed her baby because the birth, they said, would have violated China's family-planning scheme.

Circumspect and clever Roberts has been. No one really knows. But I predict two things: (a) Chief Justice Roberts will vote to uphold Roe v. Wade , and (b) his replacing his former boss, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, will move the court only mildly, but most assuredly, to the left -- as measured by the only available yardstick, the percentage of concurrences with the opinions of those conservative touchstones, Scalia and Thomas.

I infer this not just by what Roberts has said in his hearings -- that he supports Griswold v. Connecticut , that he deeply respects precedent and that he finds Roe itself worthy of respect. That is little beyond boilerplate. I infer it from his temperament, career and life history as an establishment conservative who prizes judicial modesty above all. Which means that while he will never repeat Roe , he will never repeal it and be the cause of the social upheaval that repeal would inevitably bring.

Quirky America. Everyone decries the elderly people left to die in nursing homes, and the sick people left to die in hospitals, and even the pets left to die in the streets. But killing New Orleans' little bundles of trouble before they are born is a load off.

I wonder if any deserted abortion mills were looted. Likely not, unless thugs thought they might find drugs or money. I imagine even murderers and thieves were creeped out at the thought of little bags and buckets of dismembered babies floating around inside those places.

Quirky America. The American Red Cross has no trouble calling surviving Louisiana and Mississippi pregnancy resource centers for help:

"In our local maternity wards mothers are delivering in the hallways," wrote Dorothy Wallis, director of the Caring Pregnancy Center of Baton Rouge, in a Sept. 2 e-mail. "The hospitals are sending their post delivery patients to us for care. The American Red Cross sent eight families today. The crisis pregnancy centers of Baton Rouge are now responsible for meeting the needs of refugee women and children."

Yet the American Red Cross refuses to give any disaster relief money to pregnancy resource centers to help them help them. Separation of church and state, you know.

Drs. Jerry Edwards, William Harrison and Tom Tvedten, Arkansas' only abortion providers, are offering free abortions to women who have been displaced by the hurricane's destruction.

"This is basically our way to give, the same way people give to the Red Cross," said Edwards, who, with his partner Tvedten, operates Little Rock Family Planning Services. He decided to perform free abortions for the displaced because he said there is "very little governmental help" for women who are away from home and want to end their pregnancies.

Is it an act of compassion? "Yes," said Harrison, the 70-year-old abortion doctor who owns the Fayetteville Women's Clinic. "I know what happens to women who need abortions and can't have them," Harrison said. He claimed they often take matters in their own hands and perform unsafe abortions on themselves.

In a stab at the 50-year-old [John] Roberts, who, if confirmed, will be the youngest chief justice in 200 years, Dershowitz said, "Today, they're trying to nominate fetuses in the hope that they will be kept alive like [Terri] Schiavo."

Already, this experienced and capable embryo has demonstrated during his or her in utero existence a deep commitment to the core principles of the Constitution," Bush said. "It is with great pride that I nominate this unborn American patriot to the highest court in the land."

If possible, please plan to stay for at least two weeks, although one week is ok. Volunteers will be needed to fill these posts for at least the next couple of months:

~ Disaster relief receptionist to field emails, calls
~Webmaster , proficient in Flash, to keep up with website/Internet needs and problems
~ Disaster relief prc volunteers coordinator
~ Disaster relief clerical/secretarial help
~ Disaster relief warehouse distribution/inventory administrator

With great sadness, we are asking for your prayers for the repose of the soul of 5 week old baby Susan Ann Torres. She passed away last night after surgery for a perforated intestine. Please include in your prayers a request for the peace and comfort of her family, especially Jason Torres, who has had a very difficult past several months

... holding daddy's hand

According to Drexler, lesbian moms are "more sophisticated about how they teach their sons right from wrong" than heterosexual couples, and there are "real advantages for a boy being raised in this new type of family." Heterosexual mothers don't measure up in "moral attitude" and are less likely than lesbian moms to "create opportunities for their sons to examine moral and values issues." This in turn slows the "moral development in their sons."

Furthermore, Drexler asserts that boys raised by lesbians "grow up emotionally stronger," "have a wider range of interests and friendships" and "appear more at ease in situations of conflict" than boys from "traditional" (i.e., father-present) households. Fatherless boys "exhibit a high degree of emotional savvy ... an intuitive grasp of people and situations." Best of all, sons of lesbian couples are much more willing to discard traditional masculinity than boys trapped in heterosexual households.

No matter what you 'believe' about abortion, the truth is, when I had been alive and growing for seven months, a woman made a choice that tore my legs off and most of my fingers too. Because of her choice to abort me, I will never be able to walk or run and play with the perfect, healthy legs I was created with, nor will I ever be able to type with the healthy, nimble fingers that used to be mine. That kind of sucks, doesn't it.