Bob and Mary Schindler, and the pro-life community, were unprepared for the fight to save Terri. They did not then understand what they were up against. Today, the Schindlers, through their newly reorganized Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation are working to educate people on these issues. They are working with right-to-life organizations to promote and lobby for legislation that would offer greater protection to those whom some in our society would deem unworthy of continued life. They, and many others, are working to create a network of doctors, lawyers, and clergy who are knowledgeable about the legal, medical, and moral issues involved in end-of-life cases and who can be trusted to approach them from a "reverence for life" point of view.

It is clear now that the battle to protect the lives of people like Terri is best won at the very outset - by amassing the best scientific and medical evidence to support the position that even lives that seem profoundly limited are nonetheless worthwhile and human. Ultimately, this is a battle for people's hearts and minds: Once people understand that there is hope in life, even when that life is limited or entails suffering, they will be unwilling to embrace death as a solution to problems.

Unsurprisingly, the Dutch, ever prickly about international criticism of their peculiar institution, were outraged. Giovanardi's critique cut so deeply that even Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende felt the need to respond, sniffing, "This [Giovanardi's assertion] is scandalous and unacceptable. This is not the way to get along in Europe."

As is often the case in the New Europe, what is said matters more than what is done. Thus, the prime minister of the Netherlands thinks that killing babies because they are born with terminal or seriously disabling conditions is not a scandal, but daring to point out accurately that German doctors did the same during World War II, is.

That being noted, one wishes Giovanardi had thought twice before raising the Nazi specter. Partly, this is because nothing we are talking about today matches the scope or magnitude of Nazi crimes. As a result, accusing people of Nazi-like behavior allows those amply deserving of moral condemnation to deflect reproaches. Thus, Giovanardi says that killing disabled babies is what the Nazis did, and the Dutch merely retort (correctly) that they are not Nazis.

Still, the "Nazi" analogy is worth exploring, precisely because it is unequivocally true that German doctors did kill thousands of disabled babies, for which a few such physicians were hanged at Nuremberg. Dutch apologists know this, of course. But they claim that the Netherlands' infant euthanasia program is substantially different: Dutch doctors are motivated by compassion whereas the Germans' were motivated by the bigotry of racial hygiene. Of course it is the act of killing disabled and dying babies that is wrong, not the motivation. But even leaving that aside, the Dutch defense is not as persuasive as Prime Minister Balkenende would like to believe.

"Sadly, the tragic and preventable deaths of these two women remind us that not only is RU-486 used to kill babies, it is a poison that continues to harm women," said Smith at today's Capitol Hill press conference. "Even proponents of RU-486, such as Planned Parenthood, have recognized the danger that it has caused to women. How many deaths, investigations and warnings will it take before RU-486 is properly labeled as lethal and removed from the market?"

Major research firms and universities in America, Canada, and England have arrived at the same conclusion as the new study reported in the Australian Sydney Morning Herald, that "daycare damages babies' brain chemistry and affects their social and emotional development."

It was reported, "significant among the reams of research are the so-called cortisol studies, which measured the presence of stress hormones in young babies -- consistently finding levels to be higher in children in long hours of day care." Children in daycares and preschools are not developing properly, and equally as troubling, in later public schooling.

A 31 year old British mother put off treatment for leukemia when her diagnosis and eagerly-awaited third pregnancy were confirmed on the same day in 2004. The BBC reports that Sarah Peck of Plymouth, was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) .

Mrs. Peck said it was their haematologist's agreement to manage the pregnancy that turned their decision away from abortion, or "termination" as it is called in England. "It's because he agreed to manage the pregnancy that we decided to go ahead," she said.

The Pecks were informed, however, that delay could cause difficulties in treating Sarah’s illness. Dr. Simon Rule, a consultant haematologist at Plymouth's Derriford Hospital, said, "If you delay (treatments) then the risk you run is that it can become acute at any time."

After the birth of baby Charlotte 19 March 2005, Sarah was treated with bone marrow stem cells from her sister, Vicky. This week, while the Peck's celebrated Charlotte's first birthday, Sarah was informed that she was in the final five picks for the Daily Mail's Mother of the Year award.

Sarah was informed a month ago that her illness is in remission. She told the BBC, "What I am really looking forward to now is spending quality time with my children. My family has always come first but now even more so. Every day is a gift now."

... there is absolutely nothing beautiful about abortion. Aside from the tragedy of a poor child who will someday read terrible headlines about a father who went to great lengths to make clear he wanted nothing to do with her..

McCreary has been a doctor long enough to remember the time when abortion wasn't legal for women. She says, "I saw some of them in my private practice, women who had illegal abortions that had infertility as a result."

What she saw, she says, wasn't pretty. She says, "They would have an illegal abortion and get an infection and then be unable to have children because of the infection and the scarring of the tubes. So if they didn't die, they at least had infertility."

Those women are why today, with abortion now legal, McCreary is willing to travel hundreds of miles, three times a month, to provide services for the women of South Dakota. She says, "An unwanted pregnancy can be a disaster for a woman. There are so many reasons why women want to have a pregnancy terminated."

For half of the women she sees at Planned Parenthood, the pregnancy is the unintended result of failed birth control. For others, financial or lifestyle issues bring them to the clinic. She adds, "We always tell women that adoption is an option for them. We ask them if they would like to consider that option. We don't see very many who do."

From the first line of the latest NARAL e-mailer:

South Dakota has already passed an abortion ban. Now, Tennessee is considering a similar ban of its own.

There is nothing further in the email explaining the particulars of this Tennessee abortion "ban." That's because, strangely enough, no such proposed ban exists.

The situation here in Tennessee is as follows: the Supreme Court of Tennessee has ruled that the Tennessee Constitution also includes the right to an abortion (in point of fact, they went out of their way to declare that the Tennessee Constitution protects a "greater" right to an abortion than does the United States Constitution. I can't fathom how that would be possible, unless they are referring to the Peter Singer view, which allows abortion into the seventh trimester, but that's what they said.) The proposed measure on the table in Tennessee is actually an amendment to the state Constitution which simply says that the State Constitution does not, in fact, contain such a right. There is nothing in the language of the proposed amendment which would ban a single abortion.

Another reason NARAL may not have been keen to talk about the details of this proposed abortion "ban" is that the procedure for amending the state Constitution is amazingly convoluted, and requires quite a stretch of time. If I understand the process correctly (and I am open to being corrected on the details), if the measure passes the House Committe, and then 2/3 of both chambers, it will be placed on a referendum for the voters of Tennessee to consider in 2010. Truly, the Dark Night of Fascism™ is imminent in Tennessee.

Patient trials of a drug that is used in higher doses to cause abortions have shown it to be an effective contraceptive with few side-effects, and animal and cell models have even suggested that it can protect against breast tumours.

Women taking the new Pill, which contains no female hormones, would have no periods and would thus be unlikely to suffer from pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS). The contraceptive is also thought to carry a lower risk of blood clots than existing varieties.

Mike packed away years of newspaper clippings, magazine articles, documents and letters about Terri in two huge plastic bins. They sit in the garage, alongside an old dining room table and outdated toys.

He said he will pull the boxes out one day when his children are old enough to hear about Terri. He hopes they will be proud.

If men want reproductive rights, the right they should be given is the option to raise their child even if the mother wants to prevent her child from ever being born. Abortion rights activists often say it is their goal to make abortions a "safe, rare, and legal" option, but oppose any measure to make the procedure rare. If fathers are willing to raise their child, they should have full rights under the law to do so and prevent the mother from going ahead with an abortion. Fathers should be notified and have to give consent to an abortion.

If the National Center for Men wants to stand up and be men, then this is the reproductive right that they should be standing up for. Men should have the right to be able to stop the unwanted abortion of their child by the mother who is seeking to avoid the "inconvenience" of parenthood.

The myth that Roe v. Wade made abortion safer for women is unraveling. Before abortion became a choice it was a criminal enterprise and abusers were jailed. It's still a criminal enterprise, but the butchers are protected, medical incompetence is rampant and abuses are hard to track down. The consequences of the Roe decision are 47 million dead babies and countless women dead, injured and emotionally scarred. That's a choice nobody should support.

Liberal columnist Nat Henthoff says that media polls about Terri Schiavo are meaningless because the media has not presented the whole truth about Terri's situation.

"[H]ow many Americans knew from the polls that her husband who provided hearsay "evidence" of her wishes, corroborated only by his brother and sister-in-law," he said.

"The polls, which so confused so many millions about Terri Schiavo's actual quality of life and her further potential, are by no means the only polls that have misinformed Americans on a wide range of vital public issues," Henthoff added.

Two Alabama legislators have introduced bills that would ban almost all abortions in the state, except those performed to save women's lives.

The bills are similar to legislation banning abortion that passed in South Dakota.

"I thought if South Dakota can do it, Alabama ought to do it, because we are a family-friendly state," said state Sen. Hank Erwin, R-Montevallo, who has introduced a bill in the Senate that would even ban abortions in cases where a woman became pregnant because of rape or incest.

A similar bill has been introduced in the House by Rep. Nick Williams, R-McIntosh. The bills would make it a felony crime to perform abortions in Alabama.

Dear Michael,

A year ago this week, I stood by the bedside of the woman you married and promised to love in good times and bad, in sickness and health. She was enduring a very bad time, because she hadn't been given food or drink in nearly two weeks. And you were the one insisting that she continue to be deprived of food and water, right up to her death. I watched her face for hours on end, right up to moments before her last breath. Her death was not peaceful, nor was it beautiful. If you saw her too, and noticed what her eyes were doing, you know that to describe her last agony as peaceful is a lie.

This week, tens of millions of Americans will remember those agonizing days last year, and will scratch their heads trying to figure out why you didn't simply let Terri's mom, dad, and siblings take care of her, as they were willing to do. They offered you, again and again, the option to simply let them care for Terri, without asking anything of you. But you refused and continued to insist that Terri's feeding be stopped. She had no terminal illness. She was simply a disabled woman who needed extra care that you weren't willing to give.

I speak to you today on behalf of the tens of millions of Americans who still wonder why. I speak to you today to express their anger, their dismay, their outraged astonishment at your behavior in the midst of this tragedy. Most people will wonder about these questions in silence, but as one of only a few people who were eyewitnesses to Terri's dehydration, I have to speak.

I have spoken to you before, not in person, but through mass media. Before Terri's feeding tube was removed for the last time, I appealed to you with respect, asking you not to continue on the road you were pursuing, urging you to reconsider your decisions, in the light of the damage you were doing. I invited you to talk. But you did not respond.

Then, after Terri died, I called her death a killing, and I called you a murderer because you knew - as we all did - that ceasing to feed Terri would kill her. We watched, but you had the power to save her. Her life was in your hands, but you threw it away, with the willing cooperation of attorneys and judges who were as heartless as you were. Some have demanded that I apologize to you for calling you a murderer. Not only will I not apologize, I will repeat it again. Your decision to have Terri dehydrated to death was a decision to kill her. It doesn't matter if Judge Greer said it was legal. No judge, no court, no power on earth can legitimize what you did. It makes no difference if what you did was legal in the eyes of men; it was murder in the eyes of God and of millions of your fellow Americans and countless more around the world. You are the one who owes all of us an apology.

Your actions offend us. Not only have you killed Terri and deeply wounded her family, but you have disgraced our nation, betrayed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and undermined the principles that hold us together as a civilized society. You have offended those who struggle on a daily basis to care for loved ones who are dying, and who sometimes have to make the very legitimate decision to discontinue futile treatment. You have offended them by trying to confuse Terri's circumstances with theirs. Terri's case was not one of judging treatment to be worthless - which is sometimes the case; rather, it was about judging a life to be worthless, which is never the case.

You have made your mark on history, but sadly, it is an ugly stain. In the name of millions around the world, I call on you today to embrace a life of repentance, and to ask forgiveness from the Lord, who holds the lives of each of us in His hands.

-- Fr. Frank Pavone

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Every school in England will have a nurse who can arrange secret abortions and hand out contraception, it emerged yesterday.

New guidelines will allow them to help pupils get the morning-after pill, pregnancy tests and terminations without their parents' knowledge. [..]

The new guidance to primary and secondary school heads says that nurses will be able to "provide contraceptive advice to pupils and emergency contraception and pregnancy testing to young women".

It claims that nurses are the best people to provide this service because they are "able to assess need and prescribe appropriate medication/ provide specialist contraception advice for the future".

Another booklet, described as a resource pack for school nurses, suggests they "support young women to access services to make timely choices about emergency contraception, pregnancy or abortion".

The South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families coalition filed with the state to begin collecting the 16,700 signatures needed to put the issue before the voters in November, Deputy Secretary of State Chad Heinrich said.

If the petition drive obtains the needed signatures by June 19, the law would be put on hold until the voters decide on its fate in the November election. If not enough signatures are gathered the law would go into effect July 1, leaving opponents with the option of challenging it in court.

"When you take things to the courts you don't have the opportunity to engage the public in the process. You don't have the ability to build a movement," said Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Kate Looby.

In the episode titled, "Secrets and Files," Christina, a young, single mother of an infant, is murdered. Investigation reveals that she was still a virgin, but that she had in fact given birth to the baby. How did Christina get pregnant?

Grissom and CSI Willows find out that Christina had been implanted with an "extra" fertilized embryo through a pro-life agency called Project Sunflower. Not surprisingly, the program negatively portrays the agency's director. When Investigator Willows argues with her over the beginning of life, Dr. Grissom presents his argument. He quotes Leviticus 17:11: "Life is in the blood." When blood enters the embryo on the 18th day after conception and the heart begins to beat, it becomes alive, he explains.

According to his argument, there is an 18-day "grace period" when abortion should not be condemned.

However, Scripture has to be taken in context. The full passage in Leviticus 17 reads, "For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul". This reading makes it obvious that the Biblical reference is about sacrifice and atonement, not about when life begins.

REAL MEN - good men - take responsibility for the children they father. If they get a woman pregnant, they do the right thing: They stand by her. They support their child. They don't try to weasel out of a situation they co-authored. They shoulder the obligations of fatherhood, even if they hadn't planned on becoming a father.

In 1985, RU-486 was a very bad idea that was being imported to America from France. Today it is simply another tool in the arsenal of weapons being used to kill innocent preborn children - children who are perceived to be annoyances, inconveniences or simply problems in need of easy solutions.. The mantra of "safe and legal" has shrouded the ugly facts about abortion for years now. These most recent deaths have been accepted as part of the price a culture must pay when it persists in refining methods for aborting the results of people's unwillingness to accept responsibility for their actions. Not only do we hear very little about the mothers who die because of abortion, we also hear very little about any of the side effects of RU-486 - side effects that are unhealthy for some, deadly for others.

"There are no people with physical defects in North Korea," Ri told members of the New Right Union, a group that partners human rights activists with North Korean refugees.

According to a Reuters report, Ri said disabled babies were killed in hospitals or homes and quickly buried. He indicated the North Korean government encourages the practice to "purify" its population and get rid of people who are "different."

Come in for an appointment at any of our 8 health centers before April 30th and enter to win an iPod.

I was taken home, dropped off, took up-stairs (could not climb up or down stairs), and left to lay alone for 6 hours.

Finally, my husband comes home -- drunk, dirty and greasy -- and knelt down beside my bed and said, "Honey you do know I could never hate you for keeping something we created while making love, don't you?"

A female nurse held my left hand as the doctor prepared my body for violation. It felt like my insides were being torn in two. I cried silently when the vacuum came on and I felt its pull. I passed in and out of consciousness from then on. The pain was still there, but sounds and smells became indistinct. I remember saying "is it over yet?" The nurse said "soon" and I drifted away again. When I woke up, I was on a gurney, draped with a sheet in the recovery room. My stomach was cramping and I was lightheaded. My womb felt vacant. There was a girl on my left and another on my right. One was still sleeping and the other was wailing for her dead baby.

Due to health concerns about infection rates and adverse events, we are updating our medical protocol for medication abortion.

Our health centers will no longer recommend the option of administering misoprostol vaginally (misoprostol is the second drug in the two-drug medication abortion regimen). Patients will now receive misoprostol orally or buccally (where the pill is placed between the cheek and gum and dissolves). This change in protocol is effective immediately.

In 2003, Oxford University researchers found a link between the pill and cervical cancer. Researchers from Cancer Research UK's epidemiology unit in Oxford reviewed 28 studies and found that the longer a woman took the pill, the greater her risk of developing cervical cancer. They found a 10% increased risk for women taking the pill for 5 years or less, 60% for 5 to 9 years' use, and 100% greater risk (i.e. double the risk of a non-pill-using woman) if they had taken it for at least 10 years.[..]

In July 2005 The World Health Organization said that the birth control pill is carcinogenic and is associated with increases in cervical, liver and breast cancer.

"At this time we are investigating all circumstances associated with these cases and are not able to confirm the causes of death," the Food and Drug Administration said in an advisory to the public.

Four previously reported deaths were linked to complications from a bacterial infection that developed after the women took the abortion pill, which is sold by privately held Danco Laboratories.

In the two new cases, it is unknown if the women had bacterial infections, and if so, whether they were infected with the same rare bacterium identified in the earlier deaths. The bacterium is called Clostridium sordelli.