The USCCB has determined parents may use fetal tissue vaccines if they are the only available means of protecting against "serious diseases." A USCCB communiqué reads: "Catholic moralists have concluded that individuals, when they have no practical alternative, may use vaccines to protect their health and the health of their loved ones without serious sin, even if the vaccines were cultured in fetal cells that ultimately came from an elective abortion." A recent paper by the Pontifical Academy for Life similarly concludes that while "doctors and fathers of families have a duty to take recourse to alternative vaccines," parents may use the tainted vaccines in cases of "serious risk."

We don't talk about it, and when something is mentioned, it is just brushed off. I can't treat this like something minor anymore, I can't wait around to figure out what to do.

I wanted this baby, and I wanted a family with him... I don't know how he could do this with me and suddenly change his mind. To me, it isn't some petty decision, it is something to be taken seriously... I am not against abortion, but I don't want to have a family with someone who no longer wants one.

The infamous Silent Scream video was of a suction-aspiration abortion. If you have a spare 30 minutes or so, you would do yourself a service to watch the whole video and determine for yourself whether abortion is a simple matter of "what kind of health care a woman receives." Notice especially that the fetus deliberately tries to avoid the suction tube several times.

"I sadly predict that if this measure stays in the bill... the number of abortions will go up, the human and financial costs will go up, and many women will be really out of luck," Clinton said during debate on the Senate floor.

"We obviously have very strong opinions and deeply held convictions about abortion, but are we also divided about contraception and family planning? Are we not in this body committed to reducing the number of abortions? Apparently we're not," Clinton said.

If one were looking for a predominant influence on the Supreme Court, it would seem to be Harvard Law School, not Catholicism. In addition to those listed above, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer attended Harvard Law, which means that if Alito is confirmed, the school will have seven graduates on the high court... The orthodoxies of this legal academy will probably be more influential on certain legal issues than any religious affiliation.

"I was physically backed into a corner, separated from the rest of our group," Talbot said. "One person kept hitting my arm with a party sign, trying to get me to lower my daughter's picture - it was humiliating and uncalled for."

The latest findings are consistent with the falling rate of abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based nonprofit group that researches reproductive health issues.

In 1995, for every 100 pregnancies that ended in abortion or a birth, almost 26 ended in abortion. In 2002, 24 ended in abortion, according to Guttmacher data.

That information seems to be in sync with the federal data released Monday, said Lawrence Finer, Guttmacher's associate director for domestic research.

"The two statistics together suggest - but don't confirm - that a greater percentage of unintended pregnancies resulted in births rather than abortions," Finer said.

He gestured toward the examining table with a courtly flourish. I sat between the leg supports while he stood close and asked questions: Last period, how many times had I had sex, was I married, how many men had I had sex with, did they have large or small penises, were they circumcised, what positions, did I like it?

He moved the floor lamp closer. I put my legs in the apparatus and looked up at the chandelier.

He didn't bother with a glove, either. He thrust several fingers in, hard, so I could feel the scrape of his nails.

Ouch! I said politely.

Ouch, he mocked. Never mind your ouch. He pushed his fingers in harder and pressed down on my belly with his other hand.

You are very far along, he said. It will be a very difficult procedure. Come back tomorrow. Be here at seven o'clock in the evening. Give me one hundred dollars now because this will be difficult. You can pay the rest when you come back. Bring cash. Five hundred more.

WHO's coding rule no. 12, together with its recommendation no. 7, states that deaths due to medical and surgical treatment must be reported under the complication of the procedure and not under the condition or reason for treatment. In effect, this makes abortion a "ghost" category under which it is impossible to code a death. Medical coders have, in fact, relayed that any attempt to code a death due to abortion under an abortion category yields a "reject message" from the computer programs providedby the National Centre for Health Statistics of Washington D.C., a division of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. (This computer program is now used in Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and will be introduced in the British Isles this January.) These computer programs simply incorporate the same problematic coding rules already used throughout the world. Only a minute number of abortion-related deaths actually qualifyto be declared under abortion, i.e. those for which the medical certificate of death categorically and unequivocally gives abortion as the underlying cause of death. If abortion is mentioned anywhere else on the death certificate, on the underlying cause line, the death gets coded as an accident of some kind, a sudden or unexpected death, an illness (like septicaemia-blood poisoning) or an injury, etc.

Embedded in the anti-choice stance is the basic notion that sex for pleasure is wrong. Sex is for procreation, which is why every fetus (in some minds every sperm) is holy. But most people, even Christians, want sexual pleasure a lot more than they want children.

.. all those placards with dead babies aren't just there to spook the clients of Planned Parenthood. They are reminders of the horrors that await those of the faithful who fall prey to carnal desire.

I'd like to understand why a virtual stranger would accuse me of being a baby killer..

one of the hallmarks of the Right in this country: an abject refusal to face their own rage. Any act of aggression is invariably framed as self-defense.

the rage of the anti-choice movement gives way, briefly, to despair. They want to believe in a world where every soul truly is precious, as God promised, in which every fetus -- if allowed to come into the world -- will become part of His divine plan. The unborn child becomes, in other words, a powerful object within their emotional cosmology, a means by which they can connect to their own quasi-divine nobility, the sanctification of potential life over actual life.

The problem is that unborn children eventually get born and must live in the actual world. In this sense, "pro-lifers" are like the baby daddies of the spiritual world: full of promised love for the abstraction, and nowhere to be found when the kid shows up. They don't want to deal with the fact that some children in this country grow up starved of love, and warped by poverty.

We believe that Jesus would recognize the inherent hypocrisy in decreasing support for family planning or reducing access to contraception while simultaneously seeking to criminalize abortion. Such actions deny women and men access to basic help and information on family planning while, at the same time, forcing them to bear children. Abstinence-only education programs pushed by the right are actually associated with an increase in the rate of abortions. Such approaches like these increase the rate of abortions. They are not about protecting life; they are about controlling and punishing desperate women, especially poor women. Criminalizing abortion would also disproportionately target poor women who could not go abroad for a legal abortion.

Whether Samuel Alito would vote to overrule Roe v. Wade and whether his vote would be the last necessary step to Roe's demise are not the only questions before the Senate or the American public. For overruling Roe is not the only way to end legal abortion or make access so difficult, expensive, and dangerous that abortion's legality is practically meaningless. Indeed, overturning Roe outright is not the most likely avenue for the Court and anti-choice legislatures to take in the near term.

Stacking the Court with Justices who are indisposed to find a state regulation to be an "undue burden" is as sure a way of ending legal abortion for many women in much of the country as is overturning Roe . It's just far more subtle and less likely to create political backlash.

Shayna Richardson was making her first solo skydiving jump when she had trouble with her parachutes and, while falling at about 50 mph, hit face first in a parking lot. Although badly hurt, she survived and doctors treating her injuries discovered she was pregnant. Four surgeries and two months later, Richardson said she and the fetus are doing fine.

"Just this last week we went and saw the doctor and we've got arms, we've got legs. We've got a full face. The baby is moving around just fine. The heart rate looks good. So not only did God save me but he spared this baby," she said.

The Family Research Council has emailed an interesting analysis of the situation:

According to California state law Planned Parenthood may be criminally negligible for not reporting the crime and there is a chance the statute of limitations still applies for the rapist. In the guise of protecting an 11-year-old child, Planned Parenthood has instead further made her a victim, while protecting her rapist. According to California state statistics almost 70% of teen births are children of adult men, and teenage girls are twice as likely to have sexually transmitted diseases as teenage boys. Who is watching out for the children? This is standard operating procedure for Planned Parenthood and in this case California's attorney general needs to investigate and, if necessary, prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.

She is out of work now but is attempting to stabalize her condition so that she can find another job (which will probably pay minimum wage0. Because of these issues she knew she would not be able to keep up the mortgage payment on her home, and she was going to abort her child so that she could go back to work to ensure that she would not lose her house.

I have been attempting to find donors to cover her mortgage payments for her entire pregnancy in order to assure her that pregnancy will not be a factor where her home is concerned. By providing this economic relief, the hope is that the mother will not feel forced to kill her child to avoid homelessness, a choice no woman should ever be faced with .

During one quiet, meditative time we were asked to imagine our baby. We were told to give that baby a name. I saw my baby as a girl... I called her Jane Marie--Jane after my father, John, who's nickname was Jaynor; and Marie after Mary, to whom my father had great devotion but whom I didn't understand or even like until very recently...

I first envisioned Jane Marie today as a healthy young 27-year-old woman. Then I saw her as an angel with a lot of little children around her. She seemed to be guiding their play. Christ stood off to the side of the field watching. All were happy and busy in their play. Then she looked at me--it was a look of ecstasy. She came toward me along with all the children who were just as happy to see me. I was Jane Marie's mother! I felt so loved. At first I couldn't imagine why they would be so happy to see me. But then it came to me: the children and Christ were happy for Jane Marie that her mother finally acknowledged her existence. It was all she ever wanted, since I had made her unimportant, nonexistent. At this moment of acknowledgment I felt a release I cannot explain, as if a plug had come out of me and let the clean air of truth run throughout my mind and body. When finally I opened my eyes, I shared the experience with the other women. I didn't know, I said. I just didn't know. I had always tried to let people know how important they were to me, yet I had never acknowledged my own child.

Let us, for the sake of discussion, accept the proposition that there is no Hell. What follows from this denial? First, no ultimate requital of rewards and punishments in terms of deeds done takes place. What is wrong is not punished and what is right is not rewarded. Secondly, what follows, on the basis of this hypothesis that Hell does not exist, is that no human action really makes any difference for good or bad. The acts of the worst sinner or tyrant and the greatest saint become equivalent. Both end up the same way no matter what anyone does. Any effort to distinguish a noble and ignoble life falls apart if ultimately it makes no difference what we do. To be sure, we can introduce some taste criterion that would say that I prefer what are now called just deeds. But no ultimate reason exists why my deed or yours are preferable. Thus, in logic, the denial of Hell is not at all a neutral proposition.

It is this consequence that inclines me to affirm that Hell is a very positive doctrine. More almost than any other teaching, it, indirectly perhaps, established the worth of my daily actions. At any moment, I can perform an act worthy of da James V. Schall mnation, or one worthy of transcendent dignity. These actions do not take place in the clouds, but right here in my daily relationship with others and with myself. This realization is what it means "when you did this to the least of my brothers..." And this consequence is both for good and for evil. The ultimate dramas of existence take place everywhere, among the rich, the poor, the ordinary, the unusual. No one is in a privileged place where this drama, with its consequences, does not regularly take place.

Obviously, this is not to maintain that such ultimate things happen every day as we brush our teeth or greet our neighbor. But they can and often do take on, through what the Catechism calls "mortal sins" or through acts of charity, transcendent meaning, They become a part of the free life and character we make of ourselves. Thus, Hell has the paradoxical function of enhancing our awareness of the meaning of our daily lives. This effect is not something morbid or upsetting, but something reassuring. Our lives are so ultimately important that we can lose them. But this possibility is placed before us so that we do not lose them. And we are not supposed to lose them. Hell exists to help us achieve what we are given in the first place, the promise of eternal life. But this life cannot just be automatically structured into our being so that we have nothing to do with its coming to be.

I was raped at 11, by my 17 year old boyfriend. I chose not to tell my parents because I didn't think their involvement would help, that was the right choice for me. Planned Parethood helped me deal with the aftermath of the rape allowing me to deal and cope as best as I could in my own way. I was 14 when I decided to start having sex, the day I made that choice I made an appointment to get birth control pills. I'm 17 now, I've been with my current boyfriend for about two years. During that time i've been HIV and STD tested four times. Right now I'm sitting in the waiting room while my boyfriend gets the results for his HIV test. We love each other so we're responsible and Planned Parenthood helps us to do that.

In 2000, when she was just four years old, Alex told her parents she wanted to raise money for cancer research. She chose a time-honored kid's project--a front-yard lemonade stand--but unlike most lemonade stands, she raised $2,000 in a single day. Soon, Alex's friends joined in to help, opening lemonade stands in her name. Word spread about Alex's dream of raising $1 million for pediatric cancer research. On June 12, 2004, she raised nearly $40,000 in three hours at her lemonade stand, while supporters nationwide raised $220,000 in one day at hundreds of Alex's Lemonade Stands nationwide.

A woman may be more likely to cry the next morning; it's not so easy to sleep with a man who won't even call you back. But a man pays a price too. He probably thinks he can instrumentalize his relationships with women in general, yet remain capable of romantic intimacy when the right woman comes along. Sorry, fellow. That's not how it works.

Sex is like applying adhesive tape; promiscuity is like ripping the tape off again. If you rip it off, rip it off, rip it off, eventually the tape can't stick anymore. This probably contributes to an even wider social problem that might be called the Peter Pan syndrome. Men in their forties with children in their twenties talk like boys in their teens. "I still don't feel like a grown-up," they say. They don't even call themselves men-just "guys."

We aren't designed like guppies, who cooperate only for a moment. For us, procreation requires an enduring partnership between two beings, the man and the woman, who are different but in complementary ways. But this implies that union isn't a different purpose, independent of procreation; rather, it arises in the context of procreation and characterizes the way we procreate.

A parent of each sex is necessary to make the child, to raise the child, and to teach the child. To make him, both are needed because the female provides the egg, the male fertilizes it, and the female incubates the resulting zygote. To raise him, both are needed because the male is better designed for protection, the female for nurture. To teach him, both are needed because he needs a model of his own sex, a model of the other, and a model of the relationship between them. Mom and Dad are jointly irreplaceable. Their partnership in procreation continues even after the kids are grown, because then they are needed to help them establish their own new families.

The study, by the University of Oslo, published in the journal BMC Medicine, measured the extent of intrusive thoughts, feelings and flashbacks about the end of pregnancy. The researchers also assessed how much women avoided thinking or talking about the event.

They found that after 10 days 47.5 per cent of women who had miscarried suffered from mental distress compared with 30 per cent of the abortion group. The proportion of women who had a miscarriage suffering distress fell to 22.5 per cent at six months and 2.6 per cent at two years and five years.

However, levels of distress remained high in the abortion group, falling to 25.7 per cent at six months and 18 per cent at two years but rising to 20 per cent at five years. The women in the abortion group also had high levels of anxiety, guilt, shame and relief.

Kupelian: The pro-choice side instituted abortion by fabricating the most outrageous lies, that 5,000 to 10,000 women were dying every year, which did not happen. And to this day, they are ...

Carlson: Of back-alley abortions?

Kupelian: It was all a lie, Tucker, the whole thing about the back-alley abortions. We had to legalize abortion to save these 5,000 to 10,000 women every year who were dying, which is a pretty strong argument. The fact is, it never happened.

Carlson: How do you know that?

Kupelian: Because, in the year 1972, which was - that was the last full year before Roe vs. Wade ...

Carlson: Right.

Kupelian: ...Do you know how many women died that year from illegal botched abortions?

Carlson: I don't know.

Kupelian: According to the Centers for Disease Control - I'll give you hint. There were not 10,000. There weren't 5,000. There were 39.

Carlson: Nationally?

Kupelian: Thirty-nine. Thirty-nine nationally, the United States of America. Even counting for underreporting, there is nobody who thinks there were more than 200 to 300 all during the '60s. It was just a big, huge marketing lie that the NARAL people and their other marketers fed to the public. And the media were basically convinced that this was a great cause that they - you know, it was something that we needed to do. And they went along with it uncritically.

When I terminated my first pregnancy, I asked myself, did I kill a baby? I honestly don't think so. Did I stop the potential for life? Absolutely. Insofar as life itself is simultaneously the most mundane and most divine fact on our planet, this means something.

But I'm willing to say that I don't know what that something is. I can only function in the cold reality of my own world - and as such, I alone can judge whether my abortion was a moral choice. It wasn't easy, it wasn't happy, but it was the least-bad of two bad choices. It was moral.

One woman I hosted had five kids and a husband in the military in Iraq. "He's got an immature streak that the war is making worse. I think he's running around on me over there," she told me. "What's for sure is he can't handle another baby right now, and neither can I." Her pants strained over her girth. She'd waited this long, she said, because her mother, whom she worshipped, told her that if she went through with it she'd burn in hell. And also because "my sister told me abortions hurt." I kept my face straight.

Most of the time, it feels good to have helped. I remember a mother who came with her 15-year-old daughter. For a while the girl - her boyfriend was also 15 - had tried not to think about the pregnancy. Then she tried to raise the money while keeping the whole thing a secret. When her mother figured it out and got the girl to a doctor, they were told she must have an abortion in four days or it would be too late. The two arrived here in a fever of activity: multiple ATM transactions, hours of driving through the night, and sudden, heart-to-heart conversations. Over tea at my house, the mother gazed at the daughter as if she'd been hit by lightning and lived.

Lately, there's been a rash of female balderdash coming from women who sound like they're thinking with their ovaries. And for post-menopausal women, that's especially fruitless. What else can we conclude when every other sentence is peppered with "concern" for "reproductive rights"? Enough already.

"You are not going to find me saying that I believe that that is something that should be the choice of an individual any more than I believe that homicide in any other circumstance should be the choice of a specific individual."

This legislation does not seek to provide women with more information to make informed decisions. Instead it is redundant and politically driven, and does not have the best interest of women in mind.

R. L. Walley. FRCSC., FRCOG., MPH Executive Director and Honourary Research Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at MaterCare International, issued the following statement:

"MaterCare International an international group of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists was presented with the evidence of the link between abortion and breast cancer at its international conference in Rome in October 2004 by Dr Joel Brind's research group. The medical explanation and the epidemiological evidence convinced our group that there is a significant increase in breast cancer risk after induced abortion, especially before the first full term pregnancy. This evidence has been denied by the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) and other researchers. Recently ten studies have been published in an attempt to discredit Brind's conclusion.

"In turn Brind has examined these ten studies and in a peer reviewed paper published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (Vol 10, No 4, Winter 2005, ) he has shown that they have serious methodological weaknesses and flaws and therefore do not invalidate the conclusion that there is a increased risk of breast cancer.

"Women have a basic right to know of this increased risk of breast cancer and it is unacceptable that the information should be denied to them by the medical and cancer research establishments. MaterCare International as an organisation of women's health specialists recognises its responsibilities in this matter and will do all it can to publish this evidence."

Because of is commitment to education and individuality, Girls Inc. endorses Roe v. Wade and embraces homosexuality. While this is shocking to some mothers and pro-life students at Loyola, I find it comforting. Girls Inc. and American Girl embrace all girls, with all of their questions, fears and differences. They teach that every girl is special and has the capability to make something beautiful out of her life. I am shocked and disgusted by those who would want to ruin a place of such perfect innocence because it chooses to sponsor the betterment of girls everywhere.[...]

Imagine a young girl on her first trip into a big city with her mother: She's carrying her Samantha doll with her, and they are going to American Girl Place to buy Samantha a new outfit. She sees the pictures, hears the yelling, and starts to cry. She asks her mom why those people are so upset. Surely these people have the right to protest, but how will the mom explain to her confused eight-year-old girl why there are so many angry people in front of her favorite store? Aren't there more important issues to concern ourselves with than a simple children's doll?

The war in Iraq is forcing fearful choices on expectant mothers. Relatively well-off women are opting for Caesarean delivery to avoid the roads at night. After curfew there's even less assurance than there is during the day that Iraqis, who are ordered to stay in their homes after 11 p.m., won't be killed by mistake. The roads are rife with checkpoints, insurgents and jumpy Iraqi and U.S. soldiers.

Dr. Iman Ibrahim, 38, who works at Saint Raphael, a private hospital in Karrada, in south-central Baghdad, said her pregnant patients came to her afraid. Two of every 10 patients ask for Caesareans to avoid the roads and about half of them ask for labor to be induced during the day.

Most women who can't afford Caesareans opt to spend nights in the hospital waiting for their babies to push out of their wombs, or they induce labor a few days before their due dates. Some wait for the contractions, then call the police. Ambulances stop running at night.

Too poor to afford a funeral, firefighter Tony Scaglione and his wife Claire bury their fourteen-month-old daughter in a secluded woods. While driving around town that night, Tony stops to smoke a cigarette. Out of the darkness, a lost little girl wanders to his Packard coupe and promptly climbs inside. Overwhelmed by grief and blind to the consequences, he takes the child. Tony, Claire, and their new daughter return to the city, not knowing how this crime will affect their future…

Ten years later, druggist John Bartlett has an engaging conversation with the young and vibrant Suzanne. The young girl reminds him of his own daughter, Elizabeth, lost so many years ago. When his family meets and becomes friends with hers, they begin a collision course with fate. When the truth in their lives is learned, everyone will be astounded...

Talk about the remedy being worse than the disease. Through a socially acceptable form of killing, we would take the opportunity to eliminate an entire group of people in order to spare ourselves from having to deal with their differences - because that's what it really comes down to. Anyone who listens to Mia Peterson and others like her knows that lofty talk about making the best decision for the child's sake, to keep that child from suffering, is hogwash. People with Down syndrome and other disabled people are not asking us why we did not kill them. They are asking us why we won't accept them just as they are.

"Children are the major richness and the most precious good of a family," he said.

"For this reason, it is necessary to help all people to be aware that the intrinsic evil of the crime of abortion, which attacks human life at its beginning, is also an aggression against society itself," the pope said.

"I do it for love, not for money. What can be more beautiful than saving a life? And not just one life, but many, because the mother, father and grandparents suffer deep psychological wounding by the death of a child," Wilson said.

Perhaps the most shocking dimension of Dr. Harrison's candor is the manner in which he cloaks his practice of abortion in religious language. In the Los Angeles Times article, Harrison refers to women who have terminated their pregnancies as being "born again" through the experience.

In his statement published in the Reproductive Freedom Task Force newsletter, Harrison claimed to have heard "a still, small voice asking, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?' to which I was at last compelled to reply, 'Here am I, send me.'" Here we confront the breathtaking delusion of a man who would cite God's call to the prophet Isaiah as a parallel to his "calling" to be an abortionist.

Current liberal thought posits that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare" in the words of former president Bill Clinton. Only by stipulating that abortion should remain "rare" can liberal politicians escape popular outrage. Yet these same politicians refuse to answer just why abortion should remain rare. If abortion is a moral good under any circumstances (as abortion-on-demand advocates declare), why should it remain rare? And if keeping abortion rare is a rational goal, why should state governments be barred from taking steps to discourage abortion?

The fact of the matter is that mainstream pro-choice liberals are lying through their teeth when they mouth the "safe, legal and rare" mantra. Abortionists are celebrated as heroes, no matter what type of abortions they perform. The Los Angeles Times' glowing profile of Dr. Harrison ends with a description of the doctor's solemn determination to "keep at it as long as his stamina holds, or as long as it is legal." The National Abortion Federation (NAF), dedicated to unfettered access to abortion, awarded Dr. Tiller its prestigious Christopher Tietze Humanitarian Award. Incredibly, New York Times Magazine describes the NAF as "a mini-AMA" (American Medical Association). Of course, the difference between the AMA and the NAF is as simple as the distinction between preserving life and destroying it, but to the pro-choice crowd, all medical procedures are equal.

The pro-choice crowd has never wanted abortion to be rare. Were abortion rare, women considering abortions would feel subtle societal pressure to preserve the life growing within them. Such societal pressure would create a "coercive" environment for women, inhibiting their ability to choose. For abortion to thrive, it must be common.

When I hear the extremes of both sides argue, I am often discouraged by the fruitlessness of all the yelling and name-calling. Neither side seems to give much thought to the actual hearts of the women involved. I feel like what they are debating is so far removed from the real experiences of women like me. I would love to say to the side that champions my choice; "what do I do about the aftermath once my choice has been made? What do I do about the nightmares, the panic attacks, the devastating waves of remorse and guilt? Who will help me repair the complete shredding of my maternal psyche after I have purposefully set out to destroy the very thing that every instinct and fiber of my being tells me I should risk my life to protect." And to the ones who would yell out to me "Baby killer!" I would say, "Yes I agree with you, so now what? Where do we go from here?" I think there are elements of compassion missing from the extremes of both sides, but not all the voices are accountable to a higher calling. For those of us who consider ourselves followers of Christ, we need to get beyond the rhetoric and interact with real people. We have an example and a role model to follow who was all about changing hearts, demonstrating love and offering healing, and I feel that as a Christian, I am called to do the same. For me personally, I think the one thing that I could have received at that time that would have made a difference would have been a teddy bear with a phone number I could call if I wanted to talk.

California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's appointment of longtime Democrat, lesbian activist and pro-abortion leader Susan Kennedy as his chief of staff is more evidence of The Terminator's disdain for social conservatives.

But the move also illustrates the strong collaboration between homosexual activists and the abortion lobby. For years, the two radical social movements have worked hand in hand to destroy the primacy of marriage and family and the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic.

The pro-choice movement continues to face the challenges of rallying reproductive rights supporters and defining and defending the term "choice." But has it really stopped to consider how "choice" applies to the options and resources available to low-income and minority women?

The pro-choice movement has long established its cause as defending a woman's right to choose. Yet for many women, that choice is nonexistent.

The abortion debate has polarized into a shouting match about two fundamentally different conceptions of conception, as it were. The anti-abortion position asserts that at the moment sperm meets egg a new human has been created, endowed with its own rights. Much of the recent strategy of anti-abortion advocates has been to attempt an end run around Roe v. Wade by establishing legal personhood in subtle ways through administrative fiat. For example, the Bush administration decided to include fetuses under the Children's Health Insurance Program, a tricky maneuver that creates a paradox for liberals who wish to expand the health coverage of pregnant women, but who loathe the idea of establishing legal claims on behalf of fetuses.

Other such tactics include the attempted appointment of a state guardian for the fetus of a severely retarded woman by Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida. In the face of such strategies, the pro-choice movement has desperately clung to the notion that the fetus is part of the mother and not a separate person. Pro-choice advocates argue that the debate is really about a woman's control over her body. Hence my lack of rights to have any say in whether my seed comes to fruition.

In an editorial published along with the study, Dr. Michael F. Greene, professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School, warned that the deaths "have important implications both for the care of individual patients and for public policy."

But he noted that the risk of death from infection after a medical abortion is less than 1 per 100,000, which is much lower than the death rate from carrying a child to term and about the same as that from a surgical abortion.

"As tragic as the deaths of these young, healthy women are... regulators should keep this rare complication in perspective and not overreact to scant data by prematurely foreclosing the only approved medical option for pregnancy termination," Greene wrote.[...]

At least one physician challenged the journal article and editorial Wednesday.

Dr. Donna J. Harrison, who chairs the Mifeprex subcommittee of the American Assn. of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, believes there is a clear link between the deaths and the drug combination.

"When you have five deaths, and they're all the same organism, that's like lightning striking the same place five times," said Harrison, who has been reviewing FDA files on the drug. "There's a huge number of women who have almost died."