Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, who heads the Pontifical Council for the Family, reiterated traditional Roman Catholic Church positions and criticized some European countries, including Belgium, the Netherlands and France, for giving legal recognition to civil unions.

"We worry especially that, with current laws, speaking in defense of life and the rights of families is becoming in some societies sort of a crime against the state," Lopez Trujillo told the Catholic news magazine Famiglia Cristiana for its issue scheduled to hit the stands Thursday. The remarks were posted online on Wednesday.

"The church is at risk of being brought before some international court if the debate becomes any tenser, if the more radical requests get heard," the cardinal said, speaking ahead of the Roman Catholic Church's World Meeting of Families in Valencia, Spain from July 1-9.

Life Decisions International (LDI) will release a revised edition of The Boycott List on Wednesday, July 5, 2006. The Boycott List identifies corporations that are boycott targets due to their support of Planned Parenthood, the world's primary abortion-advocacy group.

"As a direct result of the commitment, action and prayers of pro-family people, at least 130 corporations have stopped funding Planned Parenthood," said LDI President Douglas R. Scott, Jr. It is estimated that the boycott has cost Planned Parenthood more than $35 million since the Corporate Funding Project (CFP) began nearly 15 years ago. "This should be a testament to those who believe it is impossible to change corporate philanthropic behavior," Scott said.

As a Catholic, Renae believes her difficult decision is morally wrong.

Renae is having an abortion.

"I found out that I was pregnant and it is definitely unplanned and unintended. I was on birth control at the time," said Renae. "I'm faced with a decision between keeping or aborting (the fetus)."

Renae realizes there are other options available to her. A senior in the College of Liberal Arts, she doesn't feel adoption or marriage are feasible options for her.

"For me, I don't believe in the other options, that being adoption or marriage at this point," said Renae. "For me to be able to bring that pregnancy to term, I think I would be worse off emotionally if I had to give it up."

Mammograms may increase the risk of breast cancer in women with a genetic predisposition to the disease, researchers revealed today.

A study of 1,600 women with BRCA 1 and 2 mutations, defective genes linked to breast cancer, found they were 54 per cent more likely to suffer the disease if they had ever had a chest X-ray.

For women given chest X-rays before the age of 20, the risk of developing breast cancer before their 40th birthday more than doubled.

Dr David Goldgar, who led the investigation while heading the Genetic Epidemiology Group at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, said: "This is one of the first studies to demonstrate that women genetically predisposed to breast cancer may be more susceptible to low-dose ionising radiation than other women.

"If confirmed in prospective studies, young women who are members of families known to have BRCA 1 or BRCA 21 mutations may wish to consider alternatives to X-rays, such as MRI (magnetic resonance imaging)."

Geraldine Griffiths is now 58 years old but when she was pregnant with boys on two previous occasions in the early 1970s, she underwent tests at a hospital in the Midlands. Doctors wrongly advised her she was a carrier of a chronic muscle wasting condition.

Not wanting to pass the Duchenne muscular dystrophy gene, which only affects boys, on to her children, Griffiths reluctantly had two abortions.

Now she has learned the tests were wrong.

"To a large extent it has ruined my life. We have lived with this damned disease all my life," she told the Trinity Mirror newspaper.

"I needlessly aborted two children. I took life when it was unnecessary. I think about how they would have turned out and when their birthdays would have been," Griffiths added.

You might be surprised to learn that the young woman seeking an abortion in the United States today is not somebody's careless teenage daughter.

She is a mom.

She is in her 20s, she has attended college, she earns a manageable living, and she is either living with the father or in a long-term relationship with him.

And she already has a child.

This is the profile that emerges from the work of Brookings Institution economics scholar Melissa Kearney, who drew on abortion statistics collected by the Alan Guttmacher Institute.

And it contradicts a lot of assumptions out there about the woman who seeks an abortion.

"Most women who are having abortions are already mothers, as opposed to women who don't want to be mothers," says Kearney, who has a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "That was the biggest surprise to me.

"I also think it is surprising that a woman who has already given birth would find herself back in this position," she says.

At 25,209, the total of abortions performed in Michigan last year was the lowest since detailed record-keeping began in the 1970s.

The abortion rate - abortions per 1,000 women - also dropped last year, from 12.8 in 2004 to 11.9 for women ages 15-44, equaling the previous low rate in 1999.

In the ongoing travesty of the debate over whether abortion and infanticide should be condoned, a voice in the wilderness continues to cry out, "what about the children?" We have been fueled by the fire of "women's rights," so long that we have become deaf to the outcry of the real victims whose rights are being trampled upon, the babies and the mothers. Of course a woman has a right to decide what to do with her own body. Thank God for the Constitution. Yet, she also has a right to know the serious consequences and repercussions of making a decision to abort her child. Then too, what about the rights of each baby who is artificially breached before coming to term in his or her mother's womb, only to have her skull punctured, and feel, yes agonizingly "feel" the life run out of her before she takes her first breath of freedom. What about of the rights of these women who have been called to pioneer the new frontiers of the new millennium only to have their lives snuffed out before the calendar even turns?

Oh, God, what would Martin Luther King, Jr., who dreamed of having his children judged by the content of their characters do if he'd lived to see the contents of thousands of children's skulls emptied into the bottomless caverns of the abortionists pits?

It is time for America, perhaps the most blessed nation on earth to lead the world in repentance, and in restoration of life! If only we can carry the freedom of repentance to its fullest potential. If only America can repent and turn away from the sins of our nation. Abortion is at the forefront of our destruction. Partial Birth Abortion is perhaps the most heinous form of this legal genocide. Direct links connecting abortion and serious conditions such as breast and cervical cancer, emotional disorders and other serious ills must be considered! The only healing and redemption is in the blood of Jesus, blood willingly shed so that we could stand today and cry out for the blood of the unborn that is drenching the land of our children.

What terribly mixed signals we are sending to our society today? We allow and even encourage them to engage in promiscuous sex. Then when their sin conceives, we pretty much tell them, "don't kill your babies, let our abortion facilities do it for you." We march to cure breast cancer, yet promote one of the biggest contributors. I am a mother of six living children, and I am a grandmother. I am also a post-abortive mother. In the early 1970's, I suffered one involuntary and one voluntary abortion.

My involuntary abortion was performed just prior to Roe v. Wade by my private physician without my consent. I had gone to the doctor to ask why my cycle had not resumed after the birth of my son. I did not ask for and did not want an abortion. The doctor said, "You don't need to be pregnant, let's see." He proceeded to perform a painful examination which resulted in a gush of blood and tissue emanating from my womb. He explained that he had performed a "local D and C."

Soon after the Roe v. Wade decision, I became pregnant again. There was adverse pressure and threat of violence from the baby's father. The ease and convenience provided through Roe v. Wade made it too easy for me to make the fateful and fatal decision to abort our child.

I went to a doctor and was advised that the procedure would hurt no more than "having a tooth removed." The next day, I was admitted to the hospital, and our baby was aborted. My medical insurance paid for the procedure. As soon as I woke up, I knew that something was very wrong. I felt very ill, and very empty. I tried to talk to the doctor and nurses about it. They assured me that "it will all go away in a few days. You will be fine." They lied.

Over the next few years, I experienced medical problems. I had trouble bonding with my son, and his five siblings who were born after the abortions. I began to suffer from eating disorders, depression, nightmares, sexual dysfunctions and a host of other issues related to the abortion that I chose to have. I felt angry about both abortions, and very guilty about the abortion I chose to have. The guilt made me very ill.

My children have all suffered from knowing that they have a brother or sister that their mother chose to abort. Often they ask if I ever thought about aborting them and have said, "You killed our baby." This is very painful for all of us. Also, my mother and grandparents were very sad to know about the loss of the baby. The aborted child's father also regrets the abortion. If it had not been for Roe v. Wade, I would never have had that abortion, only Jesus can.

My birthday is January 22, and each year, this day is marred by the fact that it is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and the anniversary of death for millions of babies. I and my deceased children are victims of abortion, and subsequently the Roe v. Wade decision has adversely affected the lives of my entire family. I pray often for deliverance from the pain caused by my decision to abort my baby. I suffered the threat of cervical and breast cancer, and experienced the pain of empty arms after the baby was gone. And truly, for me, and countless abortive mothers, nothing on earth can fully restore what has been lost, only Jesus can.

My grandfather, Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr., once said, "No one is going to kill a child of mine." Tragically, two of his grandchildren had already been aborted when he saved the life of his next great-grandson with this statement. His son, King once said, "The Negro cannot win as long as he is willing to sacrifice the lives of his children for comfort and safety." How can the "Dream" survive if we murder the children? Every aborted baby is like a slave in the womb of his or her mother. The mother decides his or her fate.

I join the voices of thousands across America, who are SILENT NO MORE. We can no longer sit idly by and allow this horrible spirit of murder to cut down, yes cut out and cut away our unborn, and destroy the lives of our mothers. I am very grateful to God for the Spirit of Repentance that is sweeping our land. In Repentance there is healing. In the name of Jesus, we must humble ourselves and pray, and turn from our wicked ways, then God will hear from Heaven and Heal Our Land.

I can only beseech the powers that be to hearken to the voice of the Lord and remember that human life is sacred. By taking the lives of our young, and wounding the wombs and lives of their mothers, we are flying in the face of God. We cannot play God. If we continue down this path of destruction, we will be met at the gates by our own doom. This is the day to choose life. We must live and allow our babies to live. We must end the pain of post-abortion trauma. If the Dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is to live, our babies must live. Our mothers must choose life. If we refuse to answer the cry of mercy from the unborn, and ignore the suffering of the mothers, then we are signing our own death warrants.

I too, like Martin Luther King, Jr., have a dream. I have a dream that the men and women, the boys and girls of America will come to our senses, and humble ourselves before God Almighty and pray for mercy, and receive His healing grace. I pray that this is the day, the hour of our deliverance. May God have mercy on us all.

Trouble for the lawyers began on Thursday, when one, Li Jinsong, was detained when he tried to visit Chen, Beijing-based activist Zeng Jinyan said. When a second group of three lawyers travelled to Shandong, they were beaten by men who emerged from an unmarked car. The lawyers called emergency numbers hoping for help, but instead the police took them in for questioning, Zeng said. "Strangely, the police used all kinds of reasons to detain the three beaten lawyers at the local police station and would not let them leave," Zeng said in an e-mail.

All four lawyers were later released, but when two of them - Li Jinsong and Li Subin - tried to travel to Chen's village on Friday they were again harassed. "When they got there, about 20 people surrounded their car and forced them to retreat," Teng Biao, one of Chen's defence lawyers, said.

Maloney, however, apparently missed the vital nuance of Agwunobi's statement, which only expressed the administration's support for "safe and effective products" which "prevent" or "delay" conception. Besides the fact that Bush assiduously avoided using the term "birth control", Maloney overlooked the fact that so-called "emergency contraception" is also a known abortifacient, often preventing the implanation of an embryo after conception has already occurred, causing the death of the child; emergency contraception, therefore, would not qualify as a product which "prevents" or "delays" conception.

In the official letter Agwunobi made a point of adding that, "Additionally, this Administration strongly supports teaching abstinence to young people as the only 100 percent effective means of preventing pregnancy, HIV, and sexually transmitted infections (STIs)."

A 25-year-old unmarried woman was seven months pregnant when staff members from the local government family planning office forcibly took her to a clinic to give her an abortion.

Wang Liping lives in a suburb of Zhengzhou City, Henan Province. She became pregnant in November 2004. Because her boyfriend could not afford a wedding, they did not get married right away. She is the oldest sibling in her family, and her parents were excited about having grandchildren. Without a marriage certificate, however, she could not receive a government permit to give birth.

At about 6 p.m. on May 31, 2005, Wang was stopped on the street by a group of people who identified themselves as staff members from the township family planning office. They forced her into their car and took her in turn to the town clinic, an air force hospital, and Tangli Clinic. All three institutions refused to abort her fetus. At about 11 p.m., they took her to Laoyachen Clinic.

Without her consent or any pre-operation tests, the staff from the family planning office and several doctors and nurses held her arms and pushed her to the ground. She screamed for help. They also beat her, stripped off her pants, and injected a syringe of drugs into her abdominal area. She was then taken to a patient room and tied to the bed.

Wang Liping said, "I was both shocked and scared, and lost all strength to fight back. My calls for help were unanswered. I could not believe such a brutal, horrid thing was happening to me."

She said that at about 3 a.m. on June 2, after violent pains, the infant was born. The infant cried for a few minutes and then became silent and motionless. At that time, no hospital staff was around to help her. Deeply fearful, she shouted for a while before a yawning nurse appeared.

The nurse asked, "What are you shouting about?"

Wang said, "Could you check on my baby?" The nurse walked over to the bed, looked at the baby, and said, "The baby is already dead." She then tossed the body aside.

PPGO Awarded 2006 Disney's Helping Kids Shine
Grant for $20,000

Planned Parenthood of Greater Orlando, Inc. was one of 38 recipients of Walt Disney World's annual Helping Kids Shine Grant on March 28. Chosen from over 200 entries, the PPGO Empowerment Grant will develop a peer education program for young women culminating with a summit on the importance of positive decision making. In a news release, Walt Disney World chose to support "community organizations that demonstrate such a deep dedication to improving the lives of children in Central Florida." PPGO received a $18,500 Disney grant in 2004 for our Teen Resource Center, and is the only Planned Parenthood in the country recognized by Walt Disney World.

This year's $20,000 grant will give PPGO much needed seed money for our student to student education program and underscores PPGO's importance as a voice for adolescents in our community.

I guess I am meant to stay pregnant, have somebody's baby I don't want and be miserable. I mean it makes sense. I'm suspended from school, I'm not doing anything.....so why not get a dead-end job, work to get a cheap rinky dink apartment because I can't live with no one and have a baby.....not my parents, they already have my sister and her kid living here. So I live here while I'm pregnant, work, sleep in the bed with my sister (it's a king), save my money. I have no car, fuck, I don't even have a license.

Renouncing Roe would reshape the nation in which the girls will live their lives, just as Roe has formed the nation in which my sister and I have lived. The day after Roe, the red-blue U.S. election map would begin turning into a hazard map for low-income women. In deep red states, reproductive rights would become a class system. Daughters of fortunate families would go to blue states to get abortions. Daughters of unfortunate families would risk abortions from clandestine providers close to home, or order the abortion pill from shady Internet operators, or attempt to induce abortions themselves, as did thousands before Roe.

Or, just as tragic, they'd bear children they never wanted. Unwanted births bring more infant deaths, more abuse and neglect, more school failure, more foster care and juvenile courts and more mothers who blame themselves.

Such a reproductive schism would have impacts for all Americans. My sister and I have lived in a country that reserved to women the difficult choice of whether to end early pregnancies. This fundamental right has been part of the foundation of equality that all Americans knew they stood upon.

Overturning Roe would demote reproductive choice from a right to a privilege: a privilege distributed on the basis of money. And thus, even if my daughter and her friends suffer little loss of choice themselves, overturning Roe would nonetheless deprive them of something of surpassing value.

It would deny them the sense they live in a country that stands up for all women. It would rob them of another reason to believe that as Americans, we're not just a collection of workers and consumers who happen to share a currency, we're a nation. We're all in this life together.

"This is not primarily a religious issue. It is a human issue. Abortion is the wrong answer to fear and insecurity."

"The Catholic Church favors ethically acceptable stem cell research, but opposes destroying innocent human lives on the pretext that it may help other lives in the future," said Deirdre McQuade, director of planning and information for the USCCB Pro-Life Secretariat.

"These patients attest that there are solutions we can all live with," she said.[..]

"No one should think that the stem cell debate forces us to choose between ethics and science," she added. "We can support both. There is no need to sell our souls in the quest to heal our bodies."

"I have great esteem for Amnesty but doing this, they cut off their hands. I hope they don't do this because if they do, they are disqualified as defenders of human rights," Cardinal Renato Martino told Reuters in an interview during a visit to Singapore.

Martino, who heads the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice and the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, said Amnesty would lose support from Catholic activists if it defined abortion as a human right.

"When they say 'reproductive rights', they mean abortion. Do they defend the rights of everybody? No! Not of the unborn because the unborn will be killed," he added.

An ambulance arrived at the Family Planning Associates (FPA) abortion mill in Montclair, California, at approximately 10:30 AM this morning, and transported an injured woman to a nearby hospital.

Veteran sidewalk counselor Sharon Guengrich was on hand and photographed the incident.

First to arrive was the fire department paramedics, followed shortly by the ambulance. The woman was loaded into the ambulance and taken to Doctors Hospital Medical Center, located next door to the abortion mill.

The extent of the woman's injuries were unknown.

The abortionist at the Montclair FPA is said to be "Dr. Monet", but license searches of the California Medical Board showed no current license for such a person even though variations of the spelling were used.

FPA is a chain of abortion mills in California and Illinois owned by the notorious abortionist Edward Allred. Allred once boasted of having personally committed over 500,000 abortions in his career. He is also responsible for the abortion deaths of several women, including a 16-year-old Hispanic girl who bled for five hours during an abortion of her six-month-old preborn baby and died of cardiac arrest.

Chavonna Thomas discovered her daughter had received the prescription, along with two boxes of condoms, when the pharmacy phoned her home.

"The school is not going to put clothes on her and her baby's back if she gets pregnant. That school is not going to feed and take her and her baby to the doctor, that's going to be me," Thomas said, expressing her anger that the school would condone her daughter's sexual activity.

Thomas herself was 13 years old when her daughter was born. Knowing firsthand what life is like as a teenage mother, she said, she wants to protect her daughter.

"I'm doing everything I can to keep my child from being a young mother, because none of these people who are giving her permission to do what she wants [are] going to be here when and if she gets pregnant," she said.

I noticed that my jeans havent been fitting right lately. Scale tells me I have gained 8lbs. Since I've been pregnant, I've gained 8lbs. My youngest sister had an abortion and she said, no matter what, I'm going to gain weight. So I'm not happy about that. The crack is waiting for me when I get home.

I can't wait for this week to be over. I can go through my 3 minutes of pain and be back to normal and go home and get back to my life as I knew it. I can't fucking wait.

The New York-based law firm Parker & Waichman said it is suing Ortho-McNeil -- a division of Johnson & Johnson -- on behalf of a 37-year-old woman and her husband.

The plaintiff's complaint -- filed in a New Jersey District Court -- alleges she suffered a bilateral pulmonary embolism after using Ortho Evra for just over one year.

The plaintiff claims she suffered the injury June 17 of last year and had to be hospitalized.

A woman at odds with a hospital over whether it would be futile to continue life support for her 11-month-old son has been given two weeks to find a facility willing to take the baby.

Daniel Wayne Cullen II was hospitalized in early April after suffering from a lack of oxygen when he pulled out a tube that was helping him breathe. He had a tracheotomy after his premature birth.

Brian Potts, an attorney for Daniel's mother, Dixie Belcher, said the boy is in stable condition and exhibiting some brain function, but not at normal levels. He also is on a ventilator and feeding tubes, Mr. Potts said.

Last month, the ethics board of Children's Medical Center Dallas agreed with the child's doctor that continued treatment would be futile. On May 19, a judge granted the mother a temporary restraining order blocking the hospital from ending life support. The parties agreed to a two-week extension at the end of May, and confirmed that they have agreed to a second extension.

"We're about supporting whatever choice a woman wants to make, and adoption is one of those choices," said Liz Carroll, Planned Parenthood's vice president for patient services.

The concept has been percolating for several years, but Carroll made it a priority when she joined Planned Parenthood about a year ago, said President and Chief Executive Officer Betty Cockrum.

"We're making certain that every woman knows her entire spectrum of choices," Cockrum said.

For couples looking for fertility treatment, India is an attractive destination. They can avail themselves of treatment at a relatively low cost. Besides, it is easier finding a surrogate mother here, and the cost of renting her womb to carry the fertilized egg is a fraction of what it would be back home.

In-vitro fertilization treatment involves the fertilization of the egg and sperm in a test tube. Once fertilized, the embryo is transferred into the uterus of the biological mother. In some cases, where the biological mother's medical condition does not permit her to carry the fetus, a surrogate mother does the job. In the United States, a couple would have to fork out about US$15,000 to the surrogate mother and another $30,000 to agencies involved. In India, they can do this on a smaller budget - the entire cost ranges between $2,500 and $5,000.

As the applause began to die down, I raised my hand to be recognized one more time.

Mr. Speaker, members, if you would allow me just a few more moments I would appreciate your time.

My name is Ted Harvey, not Paul Harvey, but, please, let me tell you the rest of the story.

The cause of Gianna's cerebral palsy is not because of some biological freak of nature, but rather the choice of her mother.

You see when her biological mother was 17-years-old and 7-and-a-half months pregnant, she went to a Planned Parenthood clinic to seek a late-term abortion. The abortionist performed a saline abortion on this 17-year-old girl. This procedure requires the injection of a high concentration of saline into the mother's womb, which the fetus is then bathed in and swallows, which results in the fetus being burned to death, inside and out. Within 24 hours the results are normally an induced, still-born abortion.

As Gianna can testify, the procedure is not always 100 percent effective. Gianna is an aborted late-term fetus who was born alive. The high concentration of saline in the womb for 24 hours resulted in a lack of oxygen to her brain and is the cause of her cerebral palsy.

Members, today, we are going to recognize the 90th anniversary of Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood..."

BANG! The gavel came down.

Just as I was finishing the last sentence of my speech -- the climax of the morning -- the speaker of the House gaveled me down and said, "Representative Harvey, I will allow you to continue your introduction, but not for the purposes of debating a measure now pending before the House."

At which point I said, "Mr. Speaker, I understand. I just wanted to put a face to what we are celebrating today."

Silence.

Deafening silence.

I then walked back to my chair shaking like a leaf. The Democrats wouldn't look at me. They were fuming. It was beautiful. I have been in the Legislature for five tough years, and this made it all worthwhile.

The House majority leader wouldn't talk to me the rest of the day.

Was it because I introduced an abortion survivor, or was it because we touched her soul? She could congratulate an inspirational cerebral palsy victim and advocate, but was outraged when she discovered that the person she congratulated was also an abortion survivor.

"Research instrumentalizing human life and using it as a raw material" is "not just a Catholic position," said Msgr. Noel Treanor of the Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Community (COMECE).

Treanor said embryonic stem cell research raises "fundamental anthropological and ethical problems" that cause many to have problems with it.

"Human dignity does not depend -- and must not be made dependent -- on decisions of other human beings. Every human life begins at conception and needs particular protection if it is created outside the woman's body," Msgr. Treanor said.

An abortion business that has come under fire for a non-doctor giving a woman with a late-term pregnancy the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug and falsified its records of what happened has surrendered its medical license. The woman, who had a severely high blood pressure and needed medical attention, later gave birth to a stillborn baby.

Summit Medical Center in Birmingham has been closed since May 17 when the Alabama Department of Health suspended its license.

With Summit relinquishing its medical license, the abortion facility will be closed permanently.

Abortions in New Zealand declined almost 4% in 2005, continuing a trend of a lowering of the number of abortions in the island nation. New statistics from the government's health agency show abortions dropped from 18,210 in 2004 to 17,530 in 2005. The decrease of 680 abortions is a decline of 3.7%.

A longtime friend of mine is married to a doctor who also performs abortions. At the dinner table one recent evening, their 9-year-old son - having heard a word whose meaning he didn't know - asked, "What is an abortion?" His mother, choosing her words carefully, described the procedure in simple terms.

"But," said her son, "that means killing the baby." The mother then explained that there are certain months during which an abortion cannot be performed, with very few exceptions. The 9-year-old shook his head. "But," he said, "it doesn't matter what month. It still means killing the babies."

An Auckland woman claimed the advertisement, which ran in newspapers with a combined circulation of more than 400,000, was "very emotive and misleading" and said she hoped it was within the ASCB's "jurisdiction to have these advertisements removed."

Louise Richardson said the information contained in the advertisement, which cited studies and gave recommendations for women who had abortions and were worried about the risk of breast cancer, "masquerades as a warning to women" but is "actually, simply anti-abortion propaganda."

Voice for Life, in a response explaining why it chose to run the advertisements, refuted the complainant's allegations and compared its advertisements with others that the ASCB has ruled on in the past. The pro-life group also provided the board with copies of studies examining the link between abortion and breast cancer.

In its judgement, the majority of the ASCB believed the advertisement breached rule 6 of the advertising code of ethics - it played on fear. The majority also said the research cited in the advertisement was selective and the board said the analysis should have been more current; the studies referenced were completed in 2000.

The advertisement also presented opinion as fact, the board ruled, and Voice for Life hadn't met the onus of substantiating the claim made about the link between abortion and breast cancer. It was "likely to exploit the lack of knowledge of the target audience," the majority of the board said.

Doctors who perform abortions often exist in a Manichean universe where there are only two kinds of people: Those who leave them alone about their work and the "terrorists" who stand in front of their clinics with picket signs and rosaries. Some hire extra security to escort them in and out of their abortion clinics. The idea of actually having a relationship with one of the protesters is unthinkable.

Yet in early 2005, Dr. John Rivera, an abortionist, found himself having coffee with Luis Mendoza, a protester who had videotaped him coming to work at Chula Vista's Clinica Medica Para La Mujer de Hoy. Mendoza was surprised when Dr. Rivera told him, "I think God wants us to sit down and talk."

A family is embroiled in a feud over a 31 year-old man injured in an automobile accident that left him comatose. Doctors say they have no more hope for Mark Leigep's condition to improve and his mother wants a feeding tube supplying him with food and water to be removed.

But, Mark's brother Brian Leigep disagrees with the doctors and says he sees Mark's condition improving.

Leigep suffered head injuries as a result of the March 26 accident and doctors say scans show no sign of improvement. His mother, Joanne Dunn, who newspaper reports indicate did not raise him, is siding with physicians who want to remove the feeding tube.

However, Brian Leigep tells the Australian newspaper that Mark, a single father of one, has opened his eyes for several minutes and indicated that physiotherapy sessions have shown enough success that he thinks his brother can recover.

"I call out 'Mark look at me' and his eyes roll back and it looks like I'm getting through," Brian, a nurse, told the Australian. "But the doctors want him to do more ... to respond when he's pinched on the skin ... but he doesn't respond."

It was just two months into marriage that Gunjan, 21, got pregnant. Uncomfortable with letting either her in-laws or her family know that she had decided not to keep the baby, she opted for a bedroom abortion.

"I wanted to have it in the privacy of my home so I went and bought an abortion pill (Mifepristone or RU-486 as it's known) from a chemist. But it turned out to be a complete nightmare - both physically and emotionally. Contractions for 10 hours, sweating, screaming and a lot of bleeding.

Her condition became so bad that her husband had to rush Gunjan to a clinic where she spent almost two days under medical supervision. Gunjan isn't the only one heading to a gynaecologist after a botched up case of abortion.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals allows private groups of health care providers to partner with the U.S. federal government to defend the federal Weldon Amendment from a lawsuit brought against it by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer.

The Weldon Amendment, which Lockyer says is unconstitutional, prevents federal, state and local governments from receiving federal funds if they discriminate against health-care providers that refuse to offer abortion services.

The court's decision allows the Alliance for Catholic Health Care and the Medical Groups, which represents health organizations opposed to abortion under nearly all circumstances, to work with the Bush administration to defend the rights of health-care providers opposed to abortion.

California's health code may be construed to require abortions in emergencies to preserve the life or health of a patient, so the state is challenging the Weldon Amendment to prevent the loss of federal funds in those cases.

The panel ruled the two health-care groups should be allowed to intervene in the lawsuit because, if the Weldon Amendment is declared unconstitutional, they may be forced to choose between their beliefs and losing medical licenses.

..out of the 3 million pregnancies in the Philippines every year, 450,000 are miscarriages while another 450,000 are induced abortion. Unplanned births number to 930,000 while planned births, 1,170,000.

We'd never heard the term reduction, but as we looked into it, we discovered that it's become a major feature of the techno-fertility process. When women come out of IUI or IVF more pregnant than they want to be, they see a practitioner like Mark I. Evans, a 54-year-old obstetrician and geneticist who works out of a townhouse in the East Sixties. Though he's been doing this for more than twenty years, he still has a cowboy mentality. "We do some pretty bizarre shit," he says. "I've seen women pregnant with septuplets, octuplets. My record is twelve."

Len Doyal, ex-member of the British Medical Association's ethics committee, said doctor-assisted deaths did take place and should be better regulated.
He said the law should be changed to enable doctors to withdraw treatment even if patients cannot consent.

Professor Doyal said that when doctors withdraw life-sustaining treatment from severely incompetent patients, such as those in a permanent vegetative state, it was effectively euthanasia, the Clinical Ethics journal reported.

"Doctors may not want to admit this and couch their decision in terms such as 'alleviating suffering' but withdrawal of life sustaining treatment from severely incompetent patients is morally equivalent to active euthanasia," he stated.

"If doctors can already choose not to keep uncomprehending patients alive because they believe that life is of no further benefit to them, why should their death be needlessly prolonged?"

My sister says I'm a punk. She said yea it hurts but its only 5 minutes and I go right to feeling like I did before I got pregnant. She says its like a horrible pap and thats it. Nothing else.

Amidst a sea of memorial plaques at the Northern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery, one space remains blank.

That space is waiting to be filled by a plaque honoring the life and sacrifice of 34-year-old Sgt. Patrick Stewart, who was killed in action on September 25, 2005, when his helicopter was struck with a rocket-propelled grenade as it flew over Afghanistan. But it may be some time before Sgt. Stewart is remembered with a memorial plaque. That's because his war widow and the Department of Veterans Affairs are at odds over the Stewart family's request to have the Wiccan pentacle, a five-pointed star surrounded by a circle, placed on the plaque. As of May 31, 2006, government officials have refused to allow the Wiccan symbol to be placed on Stewart's plaque.

Sgt. Stewart identified himself as belonging to the Wiccan faith. Although Wiccans are not considered part of America's mainstream religious establishment, they are a growing minority. According to 2005 Defense Department statistics, approximately 1,800 active-duty service members identify themselves as belonging to the alternative religion that subscribes to magical activities and Earth worship.

According to federal guidelines, only approved religious symbols-of which there are 30-can be placed on government headstones or memorial plaques. Included among the 30 approved symbols are those that represent such mainstream religions as Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism. The list also includes more obscure religions like Konko-Kyo Faith and Seicho-No-Ie. And while the list does not include a symbol for the Wiccan faith, incredibly enough, it does include symbols for atheism and humanism.

Whatever one's opinion might be about the Wiccan faith, there should be no doubt in anyone's mind that the First Amendment to our U.S. Constitution provides for religious freedom for all individuals of all faiths-whether they are Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, Wiccans and others.

The United States Supreme Court has routinely held that viewpoint discrimination by the government against particular expressions of religion is unconstitutional. In the Supreme Court's 1963 ruling in Sherbert v. Vernor, Justice William J. Brennan observed, "The door of the Free Exercise Clause stands tightly closed against any governmental regulation of religious beliefs." In that same opinion, Justice Brennan wrote that "Government may neither compel affirmation of a repugnant belief, nor penalize or discriminate against individuals or groups because they hold religious views abhorrent to the authorities."

Yet by refusing to place the Wiccan symbol on Sgt. Stewart's memorial plaque, while permitting symbols of other religions and non-religions, the government is clearly engaging in viewpoint discrimination-which is a shoddy way to treat someone who has died in service to his country.

Having posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart to Sgt. Stewart, the U.S. government intends that he should be remembered for his bravery and sacrifice. Yet what his widow, Roberta Stewart, will remember is the fact that her husband died defending the country that is denying him the right to express his religious freedom.

While it may be intellectually easier to justify aborting a fetus in cases of severe abnormalities, terminating a pregnancy because of easily corrected imperfections should disturb our sleep. If parents can be moved to abort their babies because of smallish flaws, how long before designer babies become the norm - or abortions are performed when babies have the wrong eye color or are the wrong sex?

These are not mere rhetorical questions. Already women shop sperm banks for idealized traits, from blond curls to blue eyes, the way we now design dream cars online. In such a commodified world, where hope is replaced by expectation, can disappointment and rejection be far behind?

For the past five years Dr. Gerry Sotomayor of BFL has collected umbilical cord blood from newborns, sending it to cord blood public registries to help patients worldwide with the 65 diseases now successfully treated with umbilical cord adult stem cells-not to mention the at least 97 diseases that can be treated or cured by the various types of adult stem cells found throughout the body. The foundation, established by Sotomayor, has developed a systematic way to collect units at 10 participating Georgia hospitals from women who agree to donate cord blood at no risk to themselves or their babies, thus facilitating a newborn's first act of charity. Reflecting the wonder of God's handiwork, each birth provides 1.5-2.5 million cord blood stem cells. These and other adult stem cells are regenerative, unspecialized cells that are able to differentiate into various specialized cells that form tissues.

"It's the byproduct of a delivery that can be utilized to give life to someone else," said Sotomayor.

Through the BFL nonprofit organization, this Catholic obstetrician-gynecologist from Puerto Rico is "developing relations with several labs" and is also seeking funding in hopes of helping set up a public storage facility at the Medical College of Georgia. Sotomayor is eager to collaborate with companies and universities involved in various types of research on these virile adult stem cells-hoping one day to replace the embryonic stem cell research that involves destroying embryos to extract a small number of stem cells to grow in a lab.

One would think that feminists would have something to say about sex selection abortion given that its victims are almost exclusively female... [but] when faced with a genocidal war on girls--not a figurative war, but a real war where real, live eighteen and twenty week old girls are being singled out and killed in very large numbers solely for the sin of being female--pro-choice feminists are AWOL.

It's their version of virgin sacrifice. The Democrats will betray any special interest group -- except the pro-abortion ladies. If you mean why is it the holiest sacrament of the liberal religion, it is because they think if women have access to easy abortions, they can engage in carefree trysts without consequence.

Surprisingly, it was science and technology that helped me find my voice. First came ultrasound. To see the movement of a grey mass in the womb and to hear the unmistakable rhythm of a heartbeat testified that life existed. As the technology has progressed, we can now see the movement of limbs as early as eight weeks. We can witness a child develop almost from conception.

I have also viewed snapshots of fetuses that have been aborted. They are not so different from some of the more horrendous crime-scene photos I have seen. The pro-choice crowd would say I'm being sensationalist, or they might say nothing at all. They will argue that life only begins at birth.

But as the Rev. Clenard Howard Childress, director of Life Education and Resource Network, or LEARN, puts it, "If you haven't seen what abortion does, then you will never understand what abortion actually is." This is not an easy statement for those who turn away from the reality of abortion to spare their consciences.

Even the co-founder of the National Association for the Repeal of the Abortion Laws (NARAL), Dr. Bernard Nathanson, changed his views after coming to believe that fetology, the study of the fetus within the uterus, removed any doubt that life began at conception.

After performing 75,000 abortions, Nathanson renounced his pro-abortion beliefs and turned his back on NARAL.

Abortion is an "abominable" crime and as such should be punished, the Vatican said on Tuesday in a new document on the family.

In a comprehensive overview of Catholic ethics in the area of the family and reproduction, the Vatican railed against an alleged tendency in modern society to see abortion as an ordinary, or even "banal", act.

"Taking this line means denying that the crime... requires a punishment," said the text, which was prepared by the Pontifical Council for the Family, the Vatican department which deals with family issues. "It is not acceptable that a crime should remain unpunished," it continued.

The document - Family and Human Procreation - did not say what sort of punishment should be meted out to women who undergo abortions and the doctors that perform them.[..]

"Today people want to trivialise abortion with the claim that authorities must not penalise this abominable crime," it said.

This sort of approach meant "transforming a crime into a right," it concluded.

The report showed the pro-abortion group made its second-highest profit ever and set new records for the number of abortions it did and the lowest rate of adoption referrals compared to abortions.

According to its records, Planned Parenthood had a record income of $882 million dollars and a profit of $63 million, the second highest it has ever recorded.

The report also shows Planned Parenthood did more abortions in a single year, 255,015, than ever before.

It also set a new low for the number of women it referred for adoption compared to the number of abortions it performed. Planned Parenthood's annual report shows it did 180 abortions for every one woman it sent to an adoption agency.

The pro-life movement is celebrating a victory, because after over 30 years of Roe v Wade, the scourge of abortion, or at least public support for it, has waned and is now the minority position. South Dakota passed an outright abortion ban, believing the time was right to challenge the law. Poll after poll demonstrates that the public knows that conception is the "moment that changes everything" where a new life is created and begins its journey to birth. Are we a pro-life nation then? The answer to that question is still 'no'.

A state appeals court has ruled that a Birmingham abortion clinic can be sued over an unsuccessful abortion that a woman blames for damaging her child's health.

In the decision released May 26th, the appeals court said the woman, identified only by her initials L-K-D-H-, can sue Planned Parenthood of Alabama on behalf of her child.

Birmingham attorney Eric Johnston says the decision is significant because it holds that a health care provider can be held responsible for injuries caused to a child in the womb. He says it doesn't matter that the injuries occurred during an abortion.