"I will never be silent about the death of those who cannot speak for themselves," the former senator wrote in "Here's Where I Stand," which is scheduled for release Tuesday.

The North Carolina Republican, known as "Senator No" for his consistent efforts to block what he considered liberal initiatives and unqualified foreign policy appointees, makes clear his views on abortion and other issues have hardly moderated since he left office in 2003.

He repeatedly introduced bills seeking to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion and, in his book he defends his criticized comparisons of abortion and the Holocaust.

"I reject that criticism because this is indeed another kind of holocaust, by another name," he wrote. "At last count, more than 40 million unborn children have been deliberately, intentionally destroyed. What word adequately defines the scope of such slaughter?"

Helms, 83, writes that when 3,000 people died on Sept. 11, 2001, "the American people responded with shock, sadness and a deep and righteous anger - and rightly so.

"Yet let us not forget that every passing day in our country, more than three thousand innocent Americans are killed" through abortion.

Hurricane Katrina weakened as it moved across Mississippi after pummeling the Louisiana coast with winds as high as 140 mph. New Orleans was spared a direct hit.

The center of Katrina, a Category 1 storm with winds of 95 mph, was about 20 miles (32 kilometers) west-southwest of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, moving to the north at about 18 mph (29 kph), according to the National Hurricane Center at 2 p.m. local time. The storm, which pushed oil prices to a record, knocked out power to hundreds of thousands along the Gulf Coast.

Katrina is moving through southern Mississippi on a northeastern path that will bring the storm into Tennessee by tomorrow morning. The storm's surge has caused flooding, trapped people in buildings and caused an unspecified amount of damage, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour said today.

"It came in on Mississippi like a ton of bricks,'' Barbour, a Republican, said at a press conference. "It's a terrible storm."

An earlier projected path had Katrina directly striking New Orleans, some of which lies 20 feet below sea level. Officials and area residents -- millions of whom fled for higher ground -- had been concerned the storm would cause flooding that would overwhelm the city's system of levees and pumps. Katrina lashed the city with winds as high as 135 mph.

"It looks like a war zone, with tree branches down everywhere,'' John Hazard, 44, said today from the uptown New Orleans home of his brother-in-law Bill Hines. Looking out on Audubon Boulevard, he said, "garbage cans are floating in 3 feet of water. The wind is howling and the trees are dancing like crazy.''

Many women have been brainwashed into thinking that abortion is socially acceptable and that their unborn child is not a living human being.

Children, women and families are truly victimized by the abortion mills.

Our culture tells women that it is not the right time to have a child, they are to young, they can't afford it or it might interfere with their plans. Relative to the human suffering and loss this is a cultural lie. It is a profound mistake that a woman will never get over her entire life. Abortion doesn't solve any problems but rather increases the exploitation, pain and suffering of women. It fails to benefit the physical, emotional and social well being of women. Women aren't better off they are worse off. It makes it easier for husbands and boyfriends to leave their wives and girlfriends. Women who have had abortions have a history of significantly more health problems, many of which are very serious. These women are many times confused and frightened, and there is little point in pointing an accusatory finger towards them. These women are the losers. Their child will never live in this world. It is the people gaining monetarily who work in the abortion office and the clinic itself who benefit.

It might appear a quixotic crusade -- a blind peasant with limited legal training taking on the Communist Party's one-child policy, which has long been considered a pillar of the nation's economic development strategy and off-limits to public debate. But the Linyi case marks a legal milestone in challenging the coercive measures used for decades to limit population growth in China.

While there have been scattered cases of individuals suing family planning officials, legal scholars say the Linyi farmers appear to be the first to band together and challenge the state's power to compel people to undergo sterilization or abort a pregnancy since the enactment of a 2002 law guaranteeing citizens an "informed choice" in such matters.

"The population and family planning law affects everyone's individual rights, so a case like this is an important test," said Zhan Zhongle, a law professor at Beijing University who helped draft the legislation. "By suing the government, the Linyi peasants are merely asserting their legal rights. Whether the courts accept the case, and how they handle it, will be a test of China's justice system and of whether China can govern according to law."
[...]

On a recent visit to Maxiagou village, in another rural part of Linyi, he interviewed Feng Zhongxia, 36. She recounted that she was seven months pregnant and on the run when she learned that local officials had detained more than a dozen of her relatives and wouldn't release them unless she returned for an abortion.

"My aunts, uncles, cousins, my pregnant younger sister, my in-laws, they were all taken to the family planning office," she said. "Many of them didn't get food or water, and all of them were severely beaten." Some of the relatives were allowed to call her, and they pleaded with her to come home.

Feng called the family planning officials. "They told me they would peel the skin off my relatives and I would only see their corpses if I didn't come back," she said. The next day, she turned herself in. A doctor examined her, then stuck a needle into her uterus. About 24 hours later, she delivered the dead fetus. "It was a small life," she said quietly.

Afterward, she said, the family planning workers insisted on sterilizing her, too. "I'm a human being. How can they treat me like that?"

Just had a sonogram, myself, today, and almost wept at the sweetness of the sight of daughter #4 SUCKING HER THUMB. Had heard this happens but have never seen it. Also she was yawning. Admittedly, she's not at the coarse, unfeeling age of 20 weeks; she's 34 weeks, so clearly she's MUCH more evolved, yet still, naturally, not quite human enough for pro-choicers to think worth saving...

Apparently, the lesson to be learned is that abortions are OK, especially if it means less welfare payments later. The animation ends on the high note of referring to the Rev. Jerry Falwell as a "schmuck."

The video is a shameful and disrespectful take on the very sensitive issue of abortion and reproductive rights, where good, reasonable people disagree for good and reasonable reasons. By taking the low road and appealing to the lowest - and juvenile - common denominator, Planned Parenthood demeans its opponents and, even more, its supporters.

you know, to take it to the degree of stem cell research, stem cells which, I don't know if people are aware, are not even cells. They're things that become cells. And we know how small a cell is. And for these people once again, once again, the idea of no doubt. They have this certitude that life begins when the sperm hits the ovum.

I mean, the man is not even lit the cigarette. And there is a third person in the room, Larry. He hasn't even gotten up to get the towel. The woman doesn't even have to say, what are you thinking? And there is already three people in that room. That's a little ridiculous.

If we have laws that it's ok to kill a baby in the womb, it isn't too far a leap to some men thinking that because a woman has a legal right to kill that baby in utero, they ought to, and therefore must take full advantage of that right. When women don't, it upsets the men's apple carts. It takes away their supposed birthright to free, unfettered sex and fun living and how dare she decide to take that away from him? She doesn't have that right!

We've taught men that it's ok to kill the baby in the womb: a helpless, defenseless, insignificant, disposable obstacle to fun-fun-fun, and something that can be easily replaced with another at a later time if so desired. When they view their women as this very same kind of "entity," is it any wonder they feel it's ok to kill the baby and the woman, in one fell swoop?

Defense attorneys had sought an acquittal, arguing there was never a risk of harm to another person -- because a fetus doesn't meet the definition of a person under state law. But a Talbot County judge ruled that the person who suffered the risk was the baby after it was born.

I have five daughters, and I didn't want them ever to be in the position of having an unwanted pregnancy with nowhere to turn. When my hospital formed an abortion approval committee, I voted yes in every instance. I didn't feel guilty, because I knew how wrong the law was.

Many women outside of that hospital had no choice but to risk their lives and health. These women were desperate. They used coat hangers. They used knitting needles. It was a horrible, unnecessary, pervasive problem for physicians. We were powerless.

Those are the stakes with this Supreme Court nomination: not just individual rights and freedoms, but also public health. A Supreme Court justice who opposes legal abortion is a threat to the health and lives of women nationwide.

If Roe v. Wade is overturned or gutted, as Judge Roberts has advocated, the consequences would look different than they did decades ago - but women would still suffer. Already, women in Pennsylvania and other states suffer at the hands of laws that restrict access to abortion and delay medical treatment.

I am Susan's Father. Aren't you tired of the headline "Brain Dead, Pregnant Woman, Gives Birth to Very Premature Baby Girl, Who May Have Melanoma Too?"]

How about this Headline ?..."An Incredible Miracle Happened at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, VA?" The story then reads. "A 26 year old NIH scientist, who defied most of the doctors who gave her "No Chance of making it past the first week",...Whose strong will, and determination, even after brain being pronounced dead from a brain hemorrhage that left her brain virtually destroyed, delivered a healthy baby girl. Every attending physician, was amazed at the positive outcome because it should never have been possible. There was only one Will stronger than Susan's and he was working with Susan."

Anyone who ever knew Susan (Rollin) Torres, would tell you that they are not the least bit surprised that Susan got the job done. She never could be told that she could NOT do anything. Since she was a very little girl, she defied anyone who told her, "Susan, You Can't Do That. You Are Not Strong Enough". She made them all eat crow.

Anytime I hear of a story about public health scares, I think of the great Alar hoax, where million of people quit buying apples because Meryl Streep went before Congress and said we were poisoning our children with Alar sprayed on apples. If you are too young to remember it, this was the talk of the country for about 6 months. 60 Minutes did a .. story on it and it was in every magazine and newspaper. Thousands of apple growers lost their farms because you couldn't give an apple away. And it turned out Alar was indeed bad for you... If you drank a 55 gallon drum of it, then you might get cancer or something. The whole thing was a hoax.

So when I hear a public heath statistic I wonder, "How many apples is that?"

The United States produces a little over 200 million cartons of apples per year. There are roughly 90 apples per case, so that's about 18 billion apples. If one out of 92,000 apples killed the person who ate it, that would be 195,652 dead people per year or 536 people PER DAY.

Now stop and consider if 536 people died every day from eating apples. Congress would be holding hearings, the news networks would be covering the story 24/7 and survivors of the dead apple eaters would be lynching former apple growers.
The point is obvious. Killing one 1 of 92,000 users of your product is nothing to be proud of. While that mortality rate might be acceptable in medicine, that mortality rate on another product would get it banned.

So why don't we ban Amoxicillin? Simply because it saves many times more lives than it costs. The good outweighs the bad. Where Steve and Bill's analogy falls down is that Amoxicillin saves children, RU486 kills them.

We derive good from Amoxicillin. Do we derive good from RU486? Well, I'll leave that to you the reader.. I don't see any.
But comparing the 2 numbers is, in many ways, like comparing apples and oranges. Sure they are somewhat analogous because they are both pharmaceuticals but that has more to do with form factor than relative worth to a society. If you are look at the larger picture of whether a product should be banned, that is completely irrelevant to the discussion. [...]

People's thoughts on banning of RU-486 is going to closely parallel their beliefs on abortion. And for the record, I'm not arguing in this piece that we should or shouldn't... But I can say without a doubt; if it were apples, we'd ban it.

From the outset, the Times determined to avoid using "partial-birth" in its news headlines. A computer search of the newspaper’s database since June of 1995 shows how persistently this prohibition has been enforced. Only once, on a news story published in April 2004, has "partial-birth" appeared in a headline. Instead, the Times has employed whenever possible a selection of opaque substitutes. The most frequently used terms were "type of" abortion and "form of" abortion, abortion "method" or "procedure" or "echnique," or simply a generic abortion "ban" or "curb." Here is a sample of Times headlines, chosen for their variety of usages and published between 1995 and 2004:

House Acts To Ban Abortion Method, Making It a Crime

President Vetoes Measure Banning Type of Abortion

U.S. Judge in San Francisco Strikes Down Federal Law Banning Form of Abortion

Bush Signs Ban on a Procedure for Abortions

Anyone who has ever written a headline knows that a way could be found in most of these examples to use "partial-birth." From my computer analysis, I think it is obvious that the Times regards "partial-birth" as a toxic term.

WHEN A RAP singer is urging a young woman ''to make the right decision and don't go through with this knife incision," America's abortion wars are in a different psychological place.

Clearly, NARAL Pro-Choice America needs to figure out how to fight on the new battlefield.

Hit by critics on the right and left, the pro abortion rights advocacy group pulled an ad that falsely sought to link Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. to abortion clinic bombings. Why anyone connected with NARAL ever believed the ad was a good idea is difficult to understand. The tone was all wrong, displaying ignorance and arrogance about the public's current feelings about abortion.
[...]

These results from a recent CBS News poll also speak to a changing abortion debate. When 1,222 adults nationwide were asked if the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade was a ''good thing" or a ''bad thing," 60% of all respondents said the constitutional right for women to obtain legal abortions is a ''good thing."

However, when asked to describe their personal feeling about abortion, 28% said abortion should be permitted in all cases; 15% said it should be permitted, but subject to greater restrictions; 33% said it should be permitted only in cases such as rape, incest, and to save a woman's life; and 15% said it should be permitted only to save a woman's life. 5% said abortion should never be permitted.

Conclusion: America is pro Roe v. Wade. But what that means varies greatly; individuals draw the prochoice line in different places.

Why? Antiabortion advocates successfully altered public opinion. Science and medical technology changed it as well. Also, the women's rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s is not the driving social force it once was. And frankly, abortion rights activists cried wolf too often.

In 1994 Dr. Janet Daling (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center) et al. reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that women who had induced abortions before age 18 multiplied their risk of breast cancer by 2.5 . (1)  This 150% boost in relative breast cancer risk for under age 18 abortions is triple the overall risk increase of 50% for women in general in the 'Daling' study in Washington state. (1)

In 2003 the overwhelming evidence for the prematurity risk of prior induced abortions was presented in two review articles published in peer-reviewed medical journals. (2,3) Teenage SIAs (Surgical Induced Abortions) produce an even greater risk of subsequent premature births, since such procedures have a greater than normal risk of infection and weakened cervix. (4,5,6,7). Teen U.S. women are 2 1/2 times as likely as women over 19 to have second trimester abortions; such procedures are a significant risk for a very weakened cervix. (8)  Black American women have triple the rate of elective abortions as Caucasian women. (9) Thus, the most disparate impact of future prematurity risk lies with black American teenagers.

Oriane Shevin, a 34 year-old woman from Sherman Oaks, in southern California, is the latest to die from using the abortion pills. She passed away June 14 after she took the Mifeprex abortion drug and the misoprostol pill to have an abortion.

Shevin, an attorney and mother of two children, was taken by ambulance to Encino-Tarzana Regional Medical Center and doctors said she died from sepsis, a blood infection that was also responsible for the September 2003 death of Holly Patterson.

The CDC and state officials are investigating the deaths and trying to determine whether the misuse of the drugs is to blame.

When women use drugs to produce a chemical abortion, they engage in a two part process.

The Mifeprex abortion pill essentially starves the unborn child by denying her the nutrients she normally obtains from the mother's placenta. A second drug, misoprostol, causes contractions and produces a miscarriage that births the deceased child.

However, misoprostol is not a drug meant to be used in abortions and Searle, the company that produces the ulcer medication, has warned doctors repeatedly not to use the drug in abortions.

Meanwhile, FDA protocols call for using the misoprostol drug orally, like the Mifeprex pill. However, Planned Parenthood officials appear to instruct women to take the misoprostol pill vaginally, as they did with Patterson and Shevin.

You have three choices if you are pregnant. You can choose to have a baby and raise the child. You can choose to have a baby and place the child for adoption. Or you can choose to have an abortion and end the pregnancy.
[...]

Abortion is a legal and safe procedure. Most women say that early abortion feels like menstrual cramps. Some say it feels very uncomfortable. Others feel very little physical discomfort.

Serious, long-term emotional problems after abortion are rare. Most women feel relieved. Some women experience anger, regret, guilt, or sadness for a short time. Women are more likely to experience serious regrets after abortion if they have strong religious feelings against it.