The bishop slammed legislators for redefining abortion "with one stroke of the pen" as "the interruption of pregnancy after the twelfth week of gestation." He encouraged people to look at photos and videos of the unborn during the first trimester and see for themselves that what is inside the womb is not a "worm" or a "frog," but "a human being."

Bishop Aguilar Martinez stressed that while the new law forces no one to abort, "it opens a wide door to permissiveness," which will lead young people more sexual promiscuity, "seeking pleasure without the responsibility of procreation."

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Beth Edmonds, would require the state to pay for abortion services for women covered by Maine’s Medicaid program – known as MaineCare.

Gov. John Baldacci has indicated would sign the bill.

"Abortion is not a fundamental human right," Bishop Richard Malone told pro-lifers gathered outside the State House. "Pregnancy is not a disease, nor is it a disorder that needs eradication."

The pro-abortionists are livid at such a display of realism. They typically call the practice 'intimidation' or 'emotional blackmail'. But as Star Parker explains, "Intimidation or blackmail implies some kind of threat. What exactly might that threat be?" When has asking a doctor to explain something to you been better than a picture?

There is no doubt in my mind that the five Catholic justices who concurred in the opinion agree that partial-birth infanticide is cruel and inhumane. What is not clear is whether this decision is really a step toward re-criminalizing surgical abortion and defining it as an act that kills a human person.

For example, the decision explains, "If intact D&E is truly necessary in some circumstances, it appears likely an injection that kills the fetus is an alternative under the Act that allows the doctor to perform the procedure." Additionally, the justices tell opponents of the law that if they believe the act should have contained a health of the mother exception, they must bring those arguments before the court in an appropriate case, which thus far they have not done.

To my mind, this decision is fraught with deliberately crafted language that not only accommodates Roe v. Wade and its progeny, but does little to suggest that the justices are even concerned about setting forth adequate protections for a single preborn baby whose body is not 90 percent outside the womb.

So while so many on the pro-abortion side are screaming, and too many on the pro-life side are cracking open the champagne, nearly everyone is being left in the dark; and I am left with a real dilemma.

Not once in that decision did the justices even remotely suggest that the preborn child is a human being. Not once did they stipulate that the act of abortion is direct killing. So while the Houston Chronicle opines that "The court's ruling assaults the autonomy not only of women's physicians, but of women, themselves," I get this sinking feeling that public relations, politics and polemics have completely taken over and nobody is any longer interested in pointing out that if those five justices were truly attempting to do something historic, they would have at least mentioned the four-letter word b-a-b-y. Or is that word now too pejorative to be considered part of the legal lexicon?

"I do not issue this veto lightly. I believe every abortion is a tragedy, and I have a strong record of support for common-sense, reasonable restrictions on abortion," stated Gov. Henry, calling the measure flawed for not including exemptions in cases of incest and rape.

"Although I have no doubt SB 714 is well-intentioned, I have grave concerns that its inadvertent consequences would prove disastrous," he continued. The Governor said the bill would severely compromise health care in Oklahoma by placing undue restrictions on the "sacred relationship" between doctors and patients, and could force a woman to carry a fetus to term with a fatal birth defect.

I suppose I could have listened to all of the voices calling out for her murder, just because she may not be perfect. I could have listened to the voices of Planned Parenthood, and the "genetics counselors" who said it was OK to "just forget her" and get on with my life. "She'll just be a burden," they cried.

I CHOSE to hear the ONLY voice that mattered, the voice of truth. I put my hand on my swollen belly and felt her moving around, and I knew that her life did not belong to me, she belonged to her creator, God. He was giving me a gift, for however long, to enjoy, not to destroy.

A security guard who saw the woman delivering the baby on Fifth and Stevenson Streets at 9:30 p.m. was calling 911 when he saw the mother get up and walk away, according to police Capt. Al Casciato.

"The kid was lying on the street and she was walking away," Casciato said.

Casciato said police found the mother in blood soaked clothing within minutes just two blocks away. The woman, who police have tentatively identified as Nadine Matthews, denied giving birth, he said.

"She denied having a baby, but her clothing was soaked in blood," Casciato said.

Paramedics arrived within moments of the birth and the baby boy -- who weighed 5 pounds 12 ounces -- was taken to San Francisco General Hospital and is in the custody of Child Protective Services.

"We call on journalists to challenge Michels et al. to conduct a proper study that allows sufficient follow-up time between exposure to abortion and the development of breast cancer," said Karen Malec, president of the Coalition.

At least four other studies [2,3,4,5] in recent years have been criticized for the same reason. [6,7]

"This isn't the first time that Harvard Nurses Study researchers [8] have produced the wrong epidemiological results," said Joel Brind, president of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute. "They were wrong about combined hormone replacement therapy {HRT) reducing the risk of heart attack and stroke [9], and they're wrong about abortion."

The U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) funded the new study, Michels et al. 2007. Ten years ago, NCI expert Patricia Hartge concluded, "In short, a woman need not worry about breast cancer when facing the difficult decision of whether to terminate a pregnancy." [10]

"So why has the NCI continued to spend millions of dollars to fund studies on the abortion-cancer link?" asked Malec. "Clearly, its scientists must either suspect a link or know that it exists."

The study, Michels et al. 2007, focused on the debated breast cancer risk - whether abortion leaves women with an increased number of cancer-vulnerable breast lobules. It did not focus on the recognized breast cancer risk - the loss of the protective effect of a full term pregnancy.

"Even the NCI agrees that increased childbearing, starting at an early age, protects women from breast cancer," said Malec. "Legislators have a moral obligation to require abortion providers to inform expectant mothers that if they have an abortion, their breast cancer risk will be higher than it would be if they have a baby. That's settled science."

Contrary to what they say, this decision was not an attack on "women's rights". It is still legal in the United States to kill your unborn child at any time during your pregnancy. What this did do, is outlaw a specific procedure, Partial Birth abortion. In fact, as long as you keep the fetus intact, you are still free to abort up to the time of delivery. What was found unacceptable, is pulling out the baby�s entire body and then crushing the skull to pull the bay the remaining way out. The procedure was found by the court to be 'inhumane' and 'never medically necessary'.

I am a pro life woman, and I am tired of apologizing for it. In fact I would applaud a real 'step back for women'. How did we become a society where killing your own child in the womb is acceptable for any reason, at any time (all nine months), and up until yesterday, in any way? When we did begin to believe that the right to abortion supersedes everything, and makes any limitations unacceptable? When did we become so blind that we willingly abort over a million babies a year in the name of women�s rights? Are we to believe these are all �for the health of the mother�?

The FOCA bill would "bar government, at any level, from interfering with a woman's fundamental right to choose to bear a child or to terminate a pregnancy."

Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, is behind the bill in the Senate and Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, is the sponsor of the bill in the House.

"We can no longer rely on the Supreme Court to protect a woman's constitutional right to choose," Nadler said in introducing the bill and responding to the high court's decision to uphold a national ban on partial-birth abortions.

Respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child. The Act recognizes this reality as well. Whether to have an abortion requires a difficult and painful moral decision. Casey, supra, at 852–853 (opinion of the Court). While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon, it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained. See Brief for Sandra Cano et al. as Amici Curiae in No. 05–380, pp. 22–24. Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow.

Fidelis President Joseph Cella stated: The Philadelphia Inquirer has breached the line of reasonable editorial commentary. This cartoon is venomous, terribly misleading and, blatantly anti-Catholic. We call on the Inquirer to repudiate the cartoon's anti-Catholic sentiment.

The cartoon suggests that the United States Supreme Court decision to uphold the ban on partial birth abortion was a result of the Catholic Church influencing the votes of the five Catholic Justices on the Supreme Court, who are portrayed as Catholic Bishops in the cartoon.

"The Supreme Court did not 'follow marching orders' from the Vatican or the Bishops in the United States. Instead, the Court deferred to deliberative judgment of the people's elected representatives protected by the Constitution," Cella said.

This decision is a new front in the war on reproductive rights. And its intent affects a new sector of women, men and families. I just got married. I will never say never, but at this point I cannot imagine having a pre-viability abortion, because I want to have children. As a dedicated pro-choice activist, I march with NARAL and send checks to Planned Parenthood, but certainly parental consent and interstate laws do not impact me right now. This ruling is different. But what if my husband and I were the couple with the Trisomy baby? What if my health depended on having an IDX?

Melinda Casino quoted BitchPhD: "Because there are other surgical options for late-term abortions, it is highly unlikely that banning IDX will prevent a single abortion. It may, however, prevent some women from having the safest procedure for their particular circumstances."

This ruling takes away not only women's rights, it takes away family rights. Men should be mad about this ruling too. The mere spirit of this ruling takes away the right for families to make decisions with dignity and self-reliance.

For many years, Sandra Day O'Connor had kept an uneasy peace in the court and maybe the country. She upheld Roe v. Wade while allowing states to regulate abortion as long as they didn't place an "undue burden" on a woman's right to decide.

In many ways, the first justice who had ever been pregnant defined which burdens were "undue." She said it was an undue burden to ban any procedure without a health exception. She said that if there was any disagreement among doctors about safety, it was to be decided in favor of the woman's health.

But the new court majority has decided something quite different. In an opinion tortured by an attempt to deny what he was doing -- overturning a precedent -- Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that since only a small minority of women seeking abortions would be affected and since there was another possible procedure, the ban was constitutional.

Writing for the majority, Kennedy said it was fine for the politicians to make medical decisions, fine to eliminate health exceptions, fine to overturn precedent. He even pretended to leave the door ajar for individual suits by women in the midst of a pregnancy crisis. From where? Her hospital bed, or perhaps her gurney?

Let me remind you of something else. When Samuel Alito was a justice-wannabe seeking to replace O'Connor, he reassured lawmakers he'd respect precedent on abortion. When John Roberts talked about his reverence for both precedence and the court, he said he got a "lump in my throat whenever I walked up those marble steps." That lump in his throat is now a chill up my spine.

As Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights said, "It took just a year for this new court to overturn three decades of established law."

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg did more than hint at the loss of O'Connor in her blistering opinion for the now-minority. The court, she noted, is "differently composed" now.

The court's opinion "tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists," Ginsburg wrote. "The court's defense of [the ban] cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this court."

How many times must it be said that those who support a woman's right to decide want abortion to be safe, legal, and rare? As of today, women whose pregnancies come with alarming words and dangerous diagnoses live in a world that is a little less legal and a lot less safe.

Eyewitnesses report to CAA that at around 5:00pm on April 18, more than 20 more pregnant women were transported into the same hospital by the Family Planning officials. Within 30 minutes, about 10 of them were injected forcefully for an abortion. This means within last 24 hours, at least 61 babies were killed by forced abortions.

At bed number 37, Ms. He Caigan was 9 months pregnant. Officials injected her baby's head and 20 minutes later, her baby stopped moving and died.

About 6am on April 18(BJ time), pastor James Liang's wife Ms Wei Linrong gave birth to a boy, but he was dead because of the injection. She received three injections - one is to induce the birth and the other two to kill the baby in the womb.

Doctors advised Lori Vance in 1991 that her unborn child Donna Joy should be aborted in the seventh month due to no fewer than five major brain defects being detected.

The most serious was holoprosencephaly caused by a failure of the embryo's forebrain to divide to form bilateral cerebral hemispheres - the left and right halves of the brain.

Any one of the five defects would likely have prompted the same advice from a doctor, but Vance made the choice not to follow that advice and see the pregnancy through.

Today Donna Joy is a 15-year-old eighth-grader at Rogersville Middle School who despite her disabilities is enjoying a happy childhood. She and her family have lived in Rogersville for two years.

In 1991 Vance was given a choice - complete the pregnancy or follow the doctors' advice and agree to a procedure commonly called a "partial birth abortion." From now on the government will be making that decision for pregnant women.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 in favor of upholding the constitutionality of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. Vance said the Supreme Court decision is cause for celebration.

"I chose not to go through with the late-term abortion because Donna Joy's life doesn't really belong to me, it belongs to God, so it's only his for the taking," Vance told the Times-News Wednesday. "I wasn't going to be a part of killing my own child. I knew that she could have awful handicaps, but it didn't matter to me because I still loved her. She was still my child."

For the past decade she and Donna Joy have crusaded for the partial birth abortion ban, addressing Congress and appearing in the national media.

Donna Joy, the girl who lived, became a poster child for the partial birth abortion ban cause.

"When I was pregnant with my daughter, doctors said that she had a fatal brain disorder and was completely incompatible with life," Vance said. "Every doctor I went to told me that I had to have a late-term abortion, and when they described it, it's obviously what's known as partial birth abortion. I refused it, and I had her, and when she turned 5 she became the oldest survivor that we knew of at the time of her group of brain disorders.

"Now she's about to turn sweet 16. She has friends. She sings in the church choir. She took the blue ribbon in the Special Olympics for bowling. That's quite a feat considering she does have cerebral palsy and peripheral blindness. She's beautiful, and she's a little bit of a ham."

"It is laudable that the people involved with 'American Idol' want to help the poor," Douglas R. Scott, Jr., president of Life Decisions International (LDI) said. "But it is tragic that they would choose to do so through groups like UNICEF and Save the Children. These groups have far too much deadly baggage."

During the middle of the trial, Steven Schiovone, 37, plead guilty to manslaughter and he is now expected to get 30 years in prison for the 2005 death of Susan Ambrosino.

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown sent out a press release about the case and said the plea came "moments before prosecutors were about to give their opening statement ... charging that the defendant shot and killed the 26-year-old woman to prevent her from telling his brother, her ex-husband, that she was pregnant with the defendant's baby."

Police found Ambrosino's body in the truck of an abandoned car in February 2005.

According to a Newsday story, Ambrosino's brother, Anthony Napolitano, indicated that Schiovone wanted her to have an abortion -- something she refused to do.

"We believe it was this love of life, of her refusal to get an abortion, that compelled her killer" to shoot her, Napolitano told the news outlet.

China Aid Association has learned that a massive forced abortion campaign is ongoing in China's Guangxi Province (Autonomous Region). One Christian lady, Ms. Linrong Wei, 7 months pregnant, was dragged into the hospital from her home on April 17 at 8:45 AM (Beijing time) by ten officials from the Population and Family Planning Commission in Baise City, Guangxi. Her husband Yage "James" Liang was formerly a pastor in the government-sanctioned TSPM church before he became a House church pastor a year ago.

According to eyewitnesses' reports to CAA, 40 other pregnant women were forcefully moved to the Youjiang District People's Hospital of Baise City on the same day to perform forced abortion. Eyewitnesses told CAA that pastor Liang's wife was pregnant accidentally and they wanted to keep this baby because of Christian principles. Ms. Wei was injected with medicine to induce birth at 11 AM on April 17.

Ms. Wei's hospital bed number is No. 39. Eyewitnesses report that another woman, 9 months pregnant, on bed number 38 was also injected at 12 PM. One Church leader in that area who has visited Ms. Wei told CAA that these so-called "illegal pregnant women" were treated so bad that they were just forced to lay down on the very simple beds in the hospital corridor before the injections were done.

The family planning officials told relatives of the women that their babies will be born and most likely die within 24 hours. House church leaders in Baise city are praying some babies can be born and survive before officials kill them.

The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

The opponents of the act "have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.

The administration defended the law as drawing a bright line between abortion and infanticide.

The decision pitted the court's conservatives against its liberals, with President Bush's two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, siding with the majority.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia also were in the majority.

As part of a campaign to stop violence against women, Amnesty International (AI) is in the process of developing policies on whether it should promote access to abortion in cases of rape, sexual assault and incest, and whether to support the removal of criminal penalties for those who seek or provide abortions. The human rights group currently purports to hold a stance of neutrality on issues related to abortion.

AI also will consider whether access to abortion falls under a woman’s right to physical and mental integrity at its August 2007 International Council Meeting (ICM) in Mexico.

"Our Declaration of Independence states that our freedom rests on self-evident truths about the dignity of the human person. Throughout our nation's history, Catholic Americans have embraced, sustained, and given their lives to defend these truths," the president told the crowd.[..]

"Renewing the promise of America begins with upholding the dignity of human life," Bush said Friday, according to a transcript of his remarks the White House provided to LifeNews.com.

"In our day there is a temptation to manipulate life in ways that do not respect the humanity of the person," he added. "When that happens, the most vulnerable among us can be valued for their utility to others instead of their own inherent worth."

"We must continue to work for a culture of life where the strong protect the weak and where we recognize in every human life the image of our Creator," Bush explained.

"I had asked a few questions about abortion. After a lot of debate, I decided to have the baby. It was the best decision I have ever made."

The stance by staff, taken on ethical grounds, has led to a doubling of abortions carried out by private clinics, according to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

The swell of medical staff joining the unprecedented moral revolt means that there may soon not be enough doctors to carry out sufficient terminations to meet the public demand.

Katherine Guthrie, a spokesman on family planning for the RCOG, said: "You get no thanks for performing abortions. You get spat on. Who admits to friends at a dinner party that they are an abortionist?

"There is an increasing number of young doctors who are not participating in training. The Department of Health is really worried." [..]

James Gerrard, a GP in Leeds, said: "Out of the six doctors in our practice, three of us object to abortion. I had made up my mind on abortion before entering the medical profession. I feel the foetus is a person and killing that foetus is wrong."

Scientists believe that stem cells have the potential for medical breakthroughs in treating debilitating medical diseases and disorders. However, the advancement of science and medicine need not conflict with the ethical imperative to protect every human life. I am a strong supporter of scientific research -- which is why I authorized the first federal funding for research on embryonic stem cells, under careful safeguards, starting in 2001.

My policy unleashed an unprecedented scientific effort using the stem cell lines my policy approved for funding. While encouraging -- not banning -- research, my policy also ensures that federal funds are not used to create incentives to destroy, or harm, or create living human embryos for purposes of research.

The Senate today voted in support of legislation to overturn these safeguards. I believe this will encourage taxpayer money to be spent on the destruction or endangerment of living human embryos -- raising serious moral concerns for millions of Americans.

Research using human embryonic stem cells is still at an early stage, and it will be years before researchers know how much promise lies in therapeutic applications. I believe this early stage is precisely when it is most important to develop ethically responsible techniques, so the potential of stem cells can be explored without violating human dignity and life.

S.5 is very similar to legislation I vetoed last year. This bill crosses a moral line that I and many others find troubling. If it advances all the way through Congress to my desk, I will veto it.

Karen Malec, president of the Coalition, commented, "There would be fewer cancer cases and deaths if women had been told the truth in the 1980s when conclusive evidence became available showing that breast cancer is associated with combined (estrogen plus progestin) hormone replacement therapy, combined oral contraceptives, and abortion."

The Society misleads women about abortion-breast cancer research. Its website says, "Several studies have provided very strong data that induced abortions have no overall effect on the risk of breast cancer." [13]

It does not report that a scientific review in 2005 concluded that these studies are seriously flawed and cannot be used to dismiss the larger body of evidence supporting an abortion-breast cancer link.[8] No scientist has challenged these conclusions.

I looked at the other women in the clinic - Most looked young, few looked well-off, and I felt that when I looked at them, I saw candidates for abortion - When I looked at myself, I thought, "I could be a mother." When I saw the ultrasound, I realized that I could not do this - I saw a little clump of life inside of me, and became instantly protective of it. I kept going with the rest of my appointment and scheduled my procedure regardless, because I knew that a crowded abortion clinic would not be the place to discuss this with my boyfriend.

Saturday afternoon, I told him I wanted to keep the baby. For the first time since we found out I was pregnant, he cried. We live roughly two hours apart - He's bound to his home by school, and I'm bound to mine by a solid job and infirm parents. For us to raise a child, we would have to move in together, forcing one of us to sacrifice our commitments. I wouldn't be able to re-attend school in the fall, and he would have to take some time away from school to work. [..]

I've thought and thought and thought for the past two days. Do I destroy one life (which technically -isn't- really life yet, it's just the possibility thereof)... Or do I kill my boyfriend's educational endeavors, my career aspirations, and set a third life off on a very rocky start? While I'm at it, there's also the commitment to my current "baby" - My handicapable polydactyl kitty, who underwent some trying times until he arrived with me, and for whom relocating (due to that whole "pregnant woman vs kitty litter" issue) would be a death sentence.

Do I screw up our lives, our baby's life, and kill my cat?
Or do I end the possibility of life for this grape-sized thing growing in my stomach?

"When they hear 'pro-life,' the first thing they think is 'white Republican.'"

"We are extremely fortunate to have someone of Gloria's stature on our board," said Toyna J. Chin, president of Hygéia Personal Care Products Inc. of San Francisco, in a prepared statement. "As we look back at our achievements, we know that Gloria's support and insight will help us to expand our offerings to the nearly 25 million young women nationwide."

Though he gave his formal consent to the new law, President Anibal Cavaco Silva described abortion as "a social evil to be avoided."

He said in a statement that women seeking the procedure should be shown an ultrasound of the fetus, and doctors who oppose abortion should be allowed to counsel them.

Women also should be informed about the possibility of their child being adopted and be told about the possible psychological and physical consequences of an abortion, he said.

Siomara Senises, who owned abortion businesses in Miami and Hialeah, was charged with multiple violations after a two-year investigation by health officials.
Senises is accused of not having a licensed physician on staff and allowing a doctor whose license was revoked to do abortions.

She is also accused of assisting in abortions herself, although she has no medical license, and allowing a secretary to hand out prescription drugs.

Police records the Miami Herald newspaper obtained show that no one at either abortion business was licensed to do abortions in the last five years, putting women at risk.

Senises, a 42 year-old Davie resident, was charged with a third degree felony that could land her as much as five years in prison.

Five other people have been charged in association with the investigation, including Belkis Gonzalez, who owns the A Gyn of Miramar abortion center and is Senises' partner. Gonzalez was jailed on two felony counts related to abortions at the facility, also known as the Miramar Women's Center.

Charles D. Young received 76½ months in prison Tuesday after pleading guilty to first-degree solicitation to commit manslaughter. State law allows for such a count when a viable fetus is the intended target.

Prosecutors allege Young, then 17, offered an undercover officer posing as a hit man $3,250 last October to injure his estranged 17-year-old girlfriend so badly that her fetus would die.

Young was arrested after a classmate learned of his plan and went to police, who arranged to have Young and the undercover officer meet, prosecutor John Troberg said. Young told the officer in a recorded conversation that he didn't care whether his former girlfriend survived the attack, Troberg said.

Young, of Suncrest, Washington, northwest of Spokane, apologized to the girl and her family at sentencing, Troberg said.

Young, who learned of the pregnancy after breaking up with the girl, initially expressed interest in raising their child but later told his ex-girlfriend he wanted nothing to do with the baby, the prosecutor said.

The Next Magazine, a weekly publication from Hong Kong, reported that infant corpses and fetuses have become the newest supplements for health and beauty in China. Not only is the placenta considered a beauty remedy, but also aborted fetuses are much sought after delicacies. In Guangdong, gourmet body parts are in high demand and can even be purchased through hospitals. The magazine's investigations into this form of cannibalism took them to Liaoning province.

According to The Next Magazine, during a banquet hosted by a Taiwanese businessman, a servant Ms Liu from Liaoning province on the mainland inadvertently revealed the habit of eating infants/fetuses in Liaoning province and her intention to return for the supplement due to health concerns. The Taiwanese women present were horrified.

Ms Liu also disclosed that even though people can afford the human parts there are still waiting lists and those with the right connections get the "highest quality" human parts, which translates to the more mature fetuses. A male fetus is considered the "prime" human part.

At the The Next Magazine's request, Ms Liu personally escorted the reporter to a location where a fetus was being prepared. The reporter observed a woman chopping up a male fetus and making soup from the placenta. During the process, the woman even tried to comfort everyone by saying, "Don't be afraid, this is just the flesh of a higher animal."

I discovered I was pregnant in February 2005, after several weeks of heavy drinking and flying to and from the States for work. I was 38, in a settled relationship and, despite my non-ideal lifestyle, our baby was planned. So far, so straightforward. What was unplanned, for me, were the questions that resulted. Was I having a boy or a girl? Would we like the same music? Would we like each other? But I also found myself pondering other, trickier, dilemmas. I spent some time thinking about the precise point when our baby came into existence. Was he there before I did the test? Something was, or the test couldn't have come up positive. But what? A person? A potential person? Life? What was life exactly?

Life and death, and when they lurch from one into the other, had been preoccupying me ever since my grandmother had died five months previously. In her final month of life - she was 101 - Granny was isolated in her own room, pumped full of morphine and saline. Gradually, her body wasted away to skin and bone and her mind withered too. Eventually, her personality retreated so far within, it was hard to tell if she was conscious, even when her eyes were open.
At one point, when my mum and I were sitting with her, Granny suddenly began moaning, clawing at the tubes going in and out of her body. I looked into her face. She gazed back, distraught, still grabbing and waving, imploring. I suddenly became convinced that she wanted me to pull out the drips. She needed me to help her to die. And I thought about doing it, but I just couldn't. No matter how much I loved my Granny - and I did - and no matter how horrible the situation she was in - and it was - I couldn't end her life. I told her so. I watched her flail in frustration for a while. Then she stopped. She died two days later.

Skip forward two years - during which I got pregnant and gave birth to a son, Patrick - and I am making a television documentary about abortion rights in the United States for More4. But what I'm really doing is trying to answer the questions that my Granny's death threw up for me. Is it ever morally right to kill? What if you love the person you're killing? Does it make any difference if you don't want them to die? What if they're a long way from being a full person - independent, full-facultied, vital - should that affect your decision?

The abortion debate in the US isn't always framed in those terms, but it asks all those questions. The anti-abortion groups say it is wrong to take innocent life - though they often support the death penalty. They say it's irrelevant whether the pregnant woman loves or doesn't love her baby, whether she wants it or not: it's alive, so she shouldn't kill it. And they believe that it should make no difference that the life inside her has only just embarked on its journey to fully becoming a person. It's made from a human sperm and egg, it's living, so it is morally wrong to kill it. The pro-choicers say it's up to the woman to decide whether she wants a pregnancy to continue to its full term or not.

Like most women - at least most British women - I have always been firmly in the pro-choice camp because I've spent nearly all of my sexually active life trying not to get pregnant. Throughout my twenties and the better part of my thirties, I did everything that was required for me not to have a child (other than, you know, not having sex). I wasn't always safe - I've necked morning-after pills like vitamin tablets - but I was lucky enough not to end up in a situation where I was pregnant and didn't want to be. I've never had an abortion, though I am mighty glad that legal abortion exists.

When I got pregnant so soon after my Granny's death, it felt weird. My mind kept returning to the pregnancy test. If my reaction to those fateful double lines that said 'baby ahead' had been horror instead of hurrah - and, to be honest, it wasn't unalloyed joy that I felt when I saw them; I was scared, too - then I would have had little hesitation in having an abortion. But it was that very fact that was confusing me. I was calling the life inside me a baby because I wanted it. Yet if I hadn't, I would think of it just as a group of cells that it was OK to kill. It was the same entity. It was merely my response to it that determined whether it would live or die. That seemed irrational to me. Maybe even immoral.

But I couldn't be an anti-abortionist! I'm not religious. I have ethics, but they're nice squishy ones: I'm humanist, liberal, anti-establishment. And I'm a feminist. I have more than one Andrea Dworkin book and I'm not ashamed of that. I certainly don't want to shackle women to their wombs. A civilised society should allow us to have children if and when we desire them.

When I went for the 12-week scan, I was given a picture of our baby, in profile. He seemed to be waving, but that's just the way the limbs move, isn't it? At about 18 weeks into my pregnancy, I felt a kick. It's a strange sensation, like an internal giggle. Traditionally, this is called the 'quickening' and is the point at which the life inside you is named as a baby. But I could still have aborted this quick, kicking thing: legally, in the UK, you can terminate up until 24 weeks, though such late abortions are extremely rare, and they are almost always carried out for medical reasons.

It was a 1990 amendment to the UK's 1967 Abortion Act that reduced the abortion limit from 28 weeks to 24. This was partly due to the viability argument, which holds that if a baby/foetus/whatever you want to call it can survive outside the womb at 23 weeks, then abortion shouldn't really be allowed past that point. Recently, in the US, Amillia Taylor survived after being born at just under 22 weeks into her mother's pregnancy. Science is moving viability closer and closer to conception. So it seems to me to be a loose argument. Why should abortion only be moral when science says it is? Either abortion is right, or it isn't.

My questions weren't being answered in the UK, where abortion isn't really talked about. So I decided to go to America, where abortion is a hot, divisive and political topic. Incremental legislation initiated by US anti-abortionists has brought in more and more restrictions on a woman's right to a legal termination that was established by the landmark Supreme Court case of Roe v Wade in 1973. Since then, Republican Presidents such as Ronald Reagan and the Bushes have installed anti-abortion judges at the Supreme Court: the last time Roe v Wade was challenged, in 1992, it was only upheld by a five-to-four majority.

The pro-choice camp feels under threat. And in the Deep South it is. Most people there are anti-abortion. Their politicians are the same and, thus, there are very few abortion facilities. In Mississippi, a vast state of more than 48,000 square miles with almost three million inhabitants, there is just one abortion clinic. One! Despite my dilemmas, I could feel my feminist hackles rise. The clinic has anti-abortion protesters campaigning outside it every day. They shout, they plead, they put up placards, they hand out leaflets.

They include Roy McMillan. I hung out with Roy outside the clinic as he confronted young, mostly black, women coming in for a termination and tried to persuade them to turn back. It wasn't a comfortable morning. 'Shame on you, coming in here with a cross around your neck!' Roy shouted at one poor girl. 'Are you going to nail your baby to the cross?'

Despite his appalling hectoring, I quite liked Roy. He was an unwanted baby, a foundling dumped in a cardboard box and left in a doorway. We to-and-froed for a while. I couldn't understand some of his logic. Say I was pregnant. If Roy believes that abortion is murder, and I - having listened to his arguments - nevertheless decide to have an abortion, then surely I should be arrested and tried as a murderer? Or at least tried for paying someone else to commit the murder for me. But Roy pulled back from this, saying it's the abortion doctors who should be prosecuted. 'They are,' he declared, 'the pushers of abortion. Women are the victims.' Like we're abortion addicts.

As I travelled through the Deep South, I read arguments for and against abortion. Moral philosophy, political discourse, rants. If I'm honest, it seemed that everyone - philosopher, politician, crank - just takes a stance and then justifies it. The most recent pro-choice argument likens being pregnant to waking up one day with a gifted violinist attached to your vital organs. If you remove him, he dies. But obviously no one should be made to wander about with a stranger suckered to them, so - ta-da! - it's OK to throw him off and kill him, just as it's OK to remove a foetus from your womb.

To which I say: phooey. Pregnancy is pretty common. Waking up to find Yehudi Menuhin is your Siamese twin is not. They're not the same thing. Other philosophers argue that abortion is OK, and that infanticide is fine too, because foetuses and little children aren't fully human: they can't look after themselves and they have no concept of death. This made me think of Patrick, back home with his dad. I wondered how close his dad was to killing him (joke), and I missed them both.

In Louisiana, I found that one anti-abortion argument - that life begins at conception - had been taken to extremes. Unborn embryos in Louisiana have the same legal status as children. So they can never be destroyed, as it would be legally the same as killing a child. I met a New Orleans couple whose second baby came from an embryo that had been rescued during Hurricane Katrina: during the storm, the fertility clinic flooded and the electricity was cut off, meaning that thousands of frozen embryos had to be rescued, by armed National Guard, because they could not be allowed to die. Meanwhile, of course, actual living people were being left to perish in the Superdome, or being shot for looting shops for food. Who says Americans don't get irony?

And I came across the Snowflake scheme - a favourite of George W Bush - through which, if you're infertile, you can adopt someone else's frozen embryos and have them inserted in your womb. The resulting children are created by the egg and sperm of strangers, but it's you that gives birth to them. I met a Snowflake family whose three children were created from other people's embryos. They are genetically unrelated to their mum and dad, but 'people say, "Oh the boys look just like you!",' said the mum. 'We just smile and say thanks.'

Lord, this was confusing. If an embryo can survive being artificially created, being frozen, being FedExed hundreds of miles and then implanted into someone else's womb, then surely the anti-abortionists were right? Life does begin at conception. So, I agreed with two conflicting arguments. Life begins when a sperm hits an egg, but women should have the right to abortions. I appeared to believe that women should be allowed to kill.

Perhaps only the young and the old are confident enough to see things in black and white. Hit your late thirties and everything's greyer. Either that, or you just get lazy: you believe whatever suits you at the time.

One of the oddest people I met on my travels was Norma McCorvey. She was Jane Roe in Roe v Wade, which established the right to abortion in the US. Norma won her right to a legal termination, though it was too late for her: she had the baby and it was adopted. Once a poster girl for the pro-choice movement, Norma is now - and I couldn't quite believe this - anti-abortion. A lonely woman, she turned to the church a few years ago, converted to Catholicism and rejected abortion.

Unlike Norma, I don't want to be the kind of person who changes her beliefs according to her circumstances: like people changing from Labour to Conservative as they become richer. And I don't want to tell other people - other women - what to do. But when you see women's abortion rights whittled away as they have been in the US, you can't help but get angry. And when you've experienced the out-and-out weirdness of pregnancy and birth and the fantastic beauty of the resulting child, it's hard not to question what a termination does, or is.

Auxiliary Bishop of Barcelona Joan Carrera and Archbishop Jaume Pujol of Tarragona presented the statement in which the bishops of Catalonia expressed their complete rejection of all forms of violence.

"The large-scale terrorist attacks of recent years, as in New York, Madrid, London or Mumbai, and the violence against women in the home are equal to two forms of violence that are taking place at the beginning and at the end of life," Bishop Carrera said. Abortion "cuts off the life of the unborn," he said, and euthanasia entails "the elimination of persons when they are no longer apt for work."

Speaking to a large audience in Robertson 16, Yoest faced a crowd of students and community members anxious to argue with her during the question-and-answer session that followed the lecture.

She maintained that the United States is "on the road, long term" toward the overturning of Roe v. Wade. "There is an intellectual rot at the heart of that decision," she said, noting that even many liberal scholars agree that there is no constitutional basis for the controversial 1973 Supreme Court ruling. She added that the case was an example of the inappropriate use of judicial power.

Yoest argued that abortion's consequences hit home on a more personal level for many women who undergo the procedure. "It's very sad to me when you look at how many relationships break up after abortion when women say they had abortions to save their relationships," Yoest said. She described what she called the problems of Post-Abortion Syndrome, which include effects such as "drug and alcohol abuse, personal relationship disorder, sexual dysfunction ... and attempted suicide."

If we think of hell, we might imagine screams coming out of the flames, or the sinister laughter of the devil. But the sound I recently heard coming from there was that of applause.

What I heard was an audiotape of Dr. Martin Haskell giving a presentation at the 16th Annual Meeting of the National Abortion Federation Conference in 1992 in San Diego. It was a gathering of abortionists - men and women who make their living by killing babies. Haskell was describing to his audience how to do a partial-birth abortion. Listen to his words about how this procedure takes place:

"The surgeon then introduces large grasping forceps ... through the vaginal and cervical canal ... He moves the tip of the instrument carefully towards the fetal lower extremities - and pulls the extremity into the vagina ... The surgeon then uses his fingers to deliver the opposite lower extremity, then the torso, the shoulders, and the upper extremities. The skull lodges in the internal os. The fetus is oriented ... spine up ... The surgeon then takes a pair of blunt curved Metzenbaum scissors in the right hand. ... the surgeon then forces the scissors into the base of the skull - spreads the scissors to enlarge the opening. The surgeon--surgeon then introduces a suction catheter into this hole and evacuates the skull contents."

Haskell, having described these brutal details, shows his audience a video of himself doing one of these procedures. And at the end of the video, after the sound of the suction machine taking the brains out of the baby's head, the audience applauds.

Green Party Sen. Arturo Escobar introduce a bill in the Mexico Senate last Thursday to try to counteract efforts by lawmakers in other parties to legalize abortion.

Escobar said he doesn't want the nation to pass the bill filed by members of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), which holds the second largest bloc of lawmakers in Congress.

"Mexican society is only prepared to allow abortion when the pregnancy is the result of rape, when the fetus has congenital defects or when the life of the woman is at risk," Escobar told AP.

NOW agrees with Hillary that it "takes a village" to raise a child-or to care for an adult, for that matter. Sen. Clinton and her feminist sisters want the federal government to increase subsidies for daycare programs, boost spending for public education, further subsidize college tuition, mandate higher wages, provide healthcare throughout one's life, and provide generous income support during old age. In other words, they want Uncle Sam to be a cradle-to-grave caretaker.

Yet their similar visions aren't the real reason NOW is supporting Hillary. After all, the other leading Democratic candidates also pledge to push big government policies like Sen. Clinton. Both Senator Barack Obama and John Edwards arguably promise to be even more generous with taxpayer-funded programs. NOW has consistently opposed the Iraq war, joining with radical groups like Code Pink to sponsor numerous anti-war protests, while Senator Clinton has waffled between outright support for intervention in Iraq and tepid war critic. If policy principles were the only criteria, NOW likely would have sided with a different candidate.

NOW president Kim Gandy unabashedly ties her support for Sen. Clinton with her desire for a female President: "This is the legacy we can leave to our daughters and granddaughters: a dream realized and a new dawn for all who share the dream of equality and justice." NOW's PAC will now focus on its "Make History with Hillary" campaign, which will urge "women and men across this nation to stand up and say "I'm Ready for a woman president" and work to elect Senator Clinton.

NOW may be enthusiastic about the prospect of a woman president, but political handicappers shouldn't mistake NOW's endorsement of Senator Clinton as a proxy for American women. Few women share NOW's radical vision of greater government and few will cast their vote based on the candidate's gender.

The basic premise upon which the Roe decision based its abortion right was "privacy," a privacy that guaranteed to women, and men, the right to behave as sexually irresponsibly as they wanted to, even if continuation of their sexual recklessness required them to kill their own unborn children. Given the Roe license to behave badly we now have a society that does exactly that. And because it is a generally accepted license we expect bad behavior and we're afraid to criticize it.

Women can take the two components of the so-called "abortion pill" simultaneously, rather than 24 hours apart, as is typically done, a new study found.

And a second study found the drug is safe for late first-trimester abortions.

Mifepristone, or RU486, aborts a pregnancy by blocking the production of the hormone progesterone. When the drug is used alone, materials linked to conception can remain in the uterus, posing a risk of infection. That's why doctors also prescribe misoprostol, which causes the uterus to contract and safely expel this material.

Both studies are published in the April issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

The first study found that giving mifepristone and misoprostol vaginally at the same time is at least as effective for abortion as spacing the doses 24 hours apart.

"It really gets down to convenience for the woman," said study author Dr. Mitchell Creinin, director of gynecologic specialties at the University of Pittsburgh. "We used to have a world where women who wanted to have medications for abortion would have to go through a process over multiple days. It (simultaneous dosing) gives women flexibility. It doesn't mean they need to do it this way, but it opens up a time window."

For this trial, 1,128 women took mifepristone orally and were then randomly selected to either take misoprostol vaginally immediately in a doctor's office or 24 hours later at home.

The rate of complete abortions was similar in both groups and did not differ by how far along a woman was.

The second study looked at 321 women who were 64 to 84 days pregnant. They were from Rochester, N.Y., Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and Pune, India. The women received misoprostol vaginally 24 to 48 hours after taking mifepristone. Up to two additional doses of misoprostol were administered orally or vaginally as needed.

89% of the women successfully terminated their pregnancies. Most women also reported that they were satisfied (64.8%) or very satisfied (28.6%) with the experience. Almost all (94%) said they would recommend the procedure to a friend. Most (90.4%) also said they would opt for a medication abortion if they required another procedure in the future.

Some 55% of the 1.3 million abortions performed in the United States each year occur before nine weeks of gestation. An additional 34% of abortions occur in women who are 10 to 12 weeks pregnant. Surgical abortion during this time period is effective but not always available. And that procedure can carry significant health risks, the researchers said.

This second study shows that a medical alternative to surgical abortion is safe and effective, the researchers said.