James Louis DeGasperin, a 35 year-old teacher from Preston, is charged with killing his 25 year-old girlfriend Lori Casteel and her unborn child.

Casteel, her son Collin, and her unborn baby, were all killed when DeGasperin hit her with a baseball bat and then killed Collin with a shotgun blast.

In addition to his indictment on first degree murder in the deaths of Casteel and Collin, DeGasperin was indicted for first degree murder in the death of the baby as well because Casteel was six months pregnant at the time.

Allen Palmer, who operates a private abortion facility in Bridgeton, Mo., will appear in federal court Friday morning, asking that a restraining order issued earlier this week also apply to his clinic, Women's Care Gynecology, Inc.

Palmer, who performs first-trimester abortions in his office, also argues that the new requirements would shut down his practice.

She called me several days later to tell me that she had miscarried a "blot clot". I knew in my heart that this was not true. The phrase "blot clot" rings eerily similar to the lie that abortionists tell women before the "procedure". We parted ways for good after that phone call.

Thus began my spiral into depression and darkness--and drug and alcohol abuse. For a time, I thought hat if I only knew the truth, the pain would subside. But a year or so later, when an encounter gave me the truth about the abortion, my life and mentality did not improve. I had no interest in love or relationships for a very long time.

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, is the second UK bishop to leave the group because of its vote to support the decriminalisation of abortion in developing countries.

He said today that he was resigning as "a matter of conscience and with great sadness".

Cardinal O'Brien, who joined Amnesty as a student more than 40 years ago, said that throughout his ministry he had been committed to defending life in all circumstances.

"In recent years I have spoken out strongly on pro-life issues, including our necessity to ensure life for the poorest of the poor people of the world and have shown my care and concern by visiting some of those poorest countries, especially in Africa and Asia and including also my visit to Darfur."

Cardinal O'Brien said: "I hope I act in a manner that is 'pro-life', following what I believe is the teaching of Jesus Christ and the teaching of my Church. That basic and most fundamental of all human rights, the right to life, is recognised by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the document upon which Amnesty International was founded. Sadly now Amnesty International seems to be placing itself at the forefront of a campaign for a universal 'right' to abortion in contravention to that basic right to human life .. For me it is a matter of conscience that I have decided to resign from Amnesty International. Others must follow their own consciences."

The United Way chapter denied Planned Parenthood's request for funds to merger its Erie and Niagara County chapters. Planned Parenthood CEO Laura Meyers told WIVB, "When a donor gives to the United Way and says, 'I want this money to go to Planned Parenthood', the money comes to us.

The San Paolo hospital in Milan yesterday confirmed a report of the blunder in the daily Corriere della Sera. A statement from the hospital said the twins had changed places inside the womb between the first ultrasound scan and a second one carried out shortly before the operation, which took place in the 18th week of the pregnancy.

The group has been accused of "duping" the singers Christina Aguilera and Avril Lavigne, who have both made statements against abortion and are among contributors to an Amnesty CD released to raise money for survivors of the atrocities in Darfur.

Two weeks ago, just two months after the album's release, Amnesty adopted a worldwide policy to back the right of women to abortion in carefully defined circumstances - for example, when their health or life are in danger or when they have been victims of rape in areas of conflict such as Darfur.

The album, which has already sold more than 400,000 copies, features cover versions of hits by John Lennon such as Imagine, and Give Peace a Chance. It was made possible by Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono, who gave the rights to all his solo works to Amnesty in 2003.

Rock for Life, a collaboration of musicians linked to the antiabortion movement, has accused Amnesty of using the album to promote abortion without making its intentions clear to the singers.

Erik Whittington, director of Rock for Life, said: "The human suffering going on right now in Darfur is horrific. To add insult to injury, however, using this tragic abuse of human rights to raise money for a pro-abortion organisation is hypocritical and beyond belief... The manipulation of musicians to fund this hypocrisy is maddening."

"The great irony," she said, "is that abortion has done what the Klan only dreamed of."

While Pratibha Patil, India's first woman president, calls sternly for a nation-wide mobilization to abolish sex-selection abortions that result in the deaths of 7,000 unborn girls a day in India, Consumer Genetics Inc. of Sunnyvale, California, is marketing new home-based tests to uncover even more factors which could lead to a decision to reject one's child.

Consumer Genetics Inc., formed last year, is one of a swelling number of private labs utilizing techniques that make it possible for consumers to collect a DNA sample at home and send it back to the company for testing. Tests which reveal the child’s sex, paternity, and even genetic tendencies to eventually develop cancer or diabetes.. More

"Violence cannot be answered by further violence, murder with murder," said Cardinal Bertone, "for even if the child is unborn it is still a human person."

"It has a right to dignity as a human being."

At the same time, the Cardinal condemned all forms of violence against women, especially rape. Vatican Radio reports that he reiterated that "all forms of violence against women must be opposed and that the inhuman violence of rape be stopped and society be mobilized to defend the dignity of women."

The Cardinal concluded, "We cannot ever destroy life. We must always save life even if it is the fruit of violence."

Lange Fonoti is accused of telling his girlfriend "I don't want you to have this baby, I want you to have a miscarriage," before repeatedly punching her in the stomach.

As a result of the attack, 17-year-old Palu Aholelei's unborn baby died.

"From the point of somebody who, as a young woman, had struggled my way into university and found myself pregnant, I was able to avail myself of a termination in the new clinics that were being set up at the time, Bertram Wainer's clinic, for which I remain infinitely grateful," she said.

"That doesn't mean that I don't have any regrets or that it wasn't awful. Back in those days, though, because we were fighting hard for women's legal right for abortion, you weren't really allowed to admit that you had suffered any distress or trauma ... because we were engaged in a social and political battle."

She discovered she was pregnant just as she made it to university. "So that was the choice for me - something that I worked really hard for or lose it all to be a single mum."

Ms Wilson said that if women did not have the financial support or were not in an emotional state to have a child, it was "probably not wise to do so".

On March 22 of last year, 31-year-old Julie Hennessy was found dead on the floor of her living room, Ireland Independent reports. Although she was a non-smoker of healthy weight, the woman had been taking the drug Mercilon for a number of years. This resulted in her developing deep vein thrombosis (DVT), a condition in which a blood clot forms in a deep vein-usually in one of the appendages. As in the case of Miss Hennessy, a DVT can break off and lodge in the lungs, causing death.

After her inquest on Tuesday, Julie's father Ray, speaking on behalf of his family-his wife Angela and their two daughters-drew special attention to the fact that the pill was the main factor in the death of his daughter.

"The Pill was the major cause of our daughter's death and we want to put it on record that other young women should be aware of these dangers," said Mr. Hennessy.
"Doctors are aware of the risks but I want to warn young women of the possible consequences of taking it. I wouldn't like this to happen to another family."

Speaking before the Dublin County Coroner's Court, pathologist Peter Szontagh-Kishazi emphasized that the contraceptive pill had caused Julie Hennessy's DVT.

"The only important factor was the oral contraceptive pill," he said.

"Clotting is a well-known risk of using the contraceptive pill. There is no other medication that has such a big risk as the oral contraceptive pill," said Dr Szontagh-Kishazi."

25-year-old William Stanley Sutton III added the ProstaMate to a soft drink his 21-year-old girlfriend Lauren Ashley Tucker was about to consume. The chemical is given to cows to stimulate pregnancy or cause an abortion in certain circumstances.

Tucker drank the concoction and reported to doctors later that it tasted foul and burned her throat as she drank it. She told police Sutton told her that the soft drink would help her upset stomach.

Sutton is the father of the baby and Tucker told authorities he wanted her to have an abortion. She refused.

According to an AP report, Sutton went to the hospital on August 9 and complained of a possible poisoning.

Both Sutton and her 15 week-old unborn child survived the incident and Sutton has been charged with reckless endangerment, assault and contaminating Tucker's drink.

The July 2007 report states that abortion on demand is only permitted in 28% of the world's countries. The percentage in the developing world is even lower, where 15% of the countries offer abortion on request.

The percentage of countries that allow abortion due to "foetal impairment" is also a minority with 45% offering the option. There is a strongly marked divide, however, between the wealthier and the poorer regions of the world in regards to this so-called ground for abortion. A total of 84% of the richer regions allow abortion for "foetal impairment," versus only 32% of the poorer regions.

The regions are even more divided over the issue of allowing abortion for economic or social reasons. In the wealthier ones, 78% favour abortion on these grounds, whereas only 19% of the poorer areas permit it. Similarly, in the case of rape or incest, the percentage of wealthy to developing regions is 84% to 37%.

To "preserve mental health" is considered a legitimate excuse by 86% of the wealthier regions, but only a slim 57% majority of the poorer ones permit it on this ground. Similarly, in order to "preserve physical health", the ratio of wealthier-to-poor permission is 88% to 60%.

Manhattan Mini Storage's ad causing controversy depicts a coat hanger and takes a stance on abortion, along with the slogan: "Your closet space is shrinking as fast as her right to choose."

Needless to say, it didn't take long for the backlash to come.

"These billboards, we think they're absolutely disgusting," said Kiera McCaffrey of the Catholic League.

"Or one thing, it's strange enough that this company feels the need to advertise their pro-abortion stance on their billboards for mini-storage units, but the fact that they have to do it in so vile a way."

The number of abortions in the communist nation is staggeringly high and government figures show one woman dies every five days from abortions there.

In Boston, three major Harvard-affiliated hospitals -- Massachusetts General, Brigham and Women's, and Beth Israel Deaconess -- have responded to the ban by making the injections the new standard operating procedure for abortions beginning at around 20 weeks' gestation, said Dr. Michael F. Greene, director of obstetrics at Mass. General.

"No physician even wants to be accused of stumbling into accidentally doing one of these procedures," Greene said.

Boston Medical Center, too, has begun using injections for later surgical abortions, said Dr. Phillip Stubblefield, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University Medical School. The decision came "after a lot of anguish about what to do," he said.

The banned method involves partially delivering a live fetus, then intentionally causing its death.

Instead, doctors typically cause the fetus's death surgically while it is still inside the womb and then remove it.

A growing body of research reveals that fathers suffer a variety of ill-consequences following the abortion. Dr. Catherine Coyle recently reviewed 28 studies that reveal men often suffer regret, sadness, and depression. One-third admit to a longing to see the fetus.

Coyle sums up the research with this observation: "Several authors have noted a tendency among men to defer the abortion decision to their female partners as well as a tendency to repress their own emotions in an attempt to support their partners."

Franciscan Father Dan Pattee, a native of South Bend, Ind., and director of graduate theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, and seven young adults departed from San Francisco in May, following the pilgrimage's central route. They started at the same time that two other Crossroads groups left from Los Angeles and Seattle to follow a southern and a northern route, respectively.

"I am inspired by each one of the walkers," Father Pattee told The Criterion, newspaper of the Indianapolis Archdiocese.

"For them, this (pilgrimage) is personal because they are post-1973 babies who were born after women had a choice and could be pro-death," he said, referring to the year the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion during all nine months of pregnancy.

"A lot of their peers have not made it into this world and they feel that. To me, it's been a real lesson on just how motivated this generation feels when they come on to the truth of what abortion is doing to their generation," the priest said.

"To Anna Quindlen and anyone else I would say that women are already serving time for abortion right now in our own prisons," said Georgette Forney, co-founder of SNMAC. "I know this from my own experience and the experiences of countless other women I know. No condescending dismissal of women's torment by abortion ideologues can diminish the daily punishment of guilt, shame, and remorse post-abortive women experience."

"It's not mothers who should serve jail time for abortion," added Janet Morana, also a co-founder of SNMAC. "The abortion profiteers and their shills in the press have been telling society for years that whatever it is that abortion terminates, it's not a baby. This propaganda onslaught has taken its toll in women who believed that lie and who emphatically state today that had they known their child were not just a 'clump of tissue,' as abortionists told them, they would have never aborted. We should not and will not jail women who have been lied to for decades."