When California health officials refused to relax clinic licensing standards demanded by Planned Parenthood, the abortion giant turned to a close ally in the state legislature to weaken Department of Public Health oversight of Planned Parenthood operations.

Assemblyman Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, a featured speaker at Planned Parenthood's "Lobby Day" on April 22, introduced a bill at the behest of Planned Parenthood to undo an interpretation of state law on clinic licensing it did not like. The bill, AB 2010, rescinds a 2007 letter from the Department of Public Health to its district offices telling administrators that "affiliate clinics" are subject to onsite inspection before they can open.

The video was posted a week ago by prochoicenz as a "message to Ken Orr right-to-life.org from the women of Aotearoa New Zealand".

It shows women giving the fingers, with messages such as "p... off" and "Mind your own f...... business".

One image is a photo of Orr with a gun pointing at his head.

Parent Kerry Knott complained to the library director after discovering the link.

"This is horrible stuff," she said. "It promotes birth control, sexual activity (and) makes a joke of abstinence. It mocks parents and makes us out to be idiots."

She and about 60 other parents took their case to the library board recently. Knott claims they were cut off early by the board.

"We the people, the taxpayers who fund the libraries, are no longer in control of the libraries," Knott said.

State investigators told Dr. Reginald Sharpe of the Women's Advisory Center in Livonia that his clinic violated the state Medical Waste Regulatory Act by placing medical waste in containers with nonmedical waste, putting medical waste in non-labeled containers, not having a medical waste management plan and not being registered as a medical waste producing facility.

Investigators found bloody gauze pads, bloody examination gloves and a curette tube with blood and bodily fluid in the trash with nonmedical garbage, according to a letter the department sent to Sharpe in May.

Department officials said Thursday they did not find fetal remains or patient records that members of the Citizens for a Pro-Life Society said they found in the clinic's garbage in April.

Parsley's center will push parenting and adoption, but it won't manipulate, Stacy said. It says right on the intake form that the center does not provide abortions. "Can't be more clear than that," she said.

Inside, women will find a portable ultrasound machine and pamphlets about sexually transmitted infections, RU-486, sometimes called the "abortion pill," and how to say no to unwanted sex. The reading material all focuses on abstinence. The center does not distribute information about birth control.

In two comfortable "coaching rooms," volunteers talk to women about the options of parenting and adoption, Stacy said.

"We find if people have information, they can make the best choice for her life," Stacy said.

In the latest move the Romanian Health Minister Eugen Nicolaescu announced on Wednesday that an inter-ministerial panel would be formed to decide whether she can have an abortion in Romania.

But the family has taken up the offer of a trip to the UK for the termination at a clinic in London.

The cost of the procedure and the airfare is being met by a wealthy benefactor in London who made direct contact with her family.

The girl's mother said: "Panel after panel, meeting after meeting. In the meantime, my poor girl gets more and more terrified.


"The last thing she needs is more talk. Thank God for the Romanian woman in Britain who has come to her rescue," she added.

A premature baby girl declared stillborn by doctors in Mumbai "came to life" several hours later as the relatives were carrying her to a cemetery to be buried. The baby was born two months early after her mother, Aruna Gaikwad, 30, was taken to hospital suffering from convulsions and high blood pressure. Gaikwad was being treated for hypertension at the municipal Lokmanya Tilak hospital when staff were forced to induce her labor. Some of the nurses present at the birth, on Monday, reportedly claimed the child had a very faint heartbeat but the doctor on duty, who has been suspended while an inquiry is carried out, declared her to be dead and signed a death certificate. Several hours later, relatives were taking the body to be buried when the baby made a gurgling noise. Gaikwad is said to be responding well to treatment but her daughter weighs only three pounds and her lungs are not fully developed. "The child is very ill," said Dr. Sandhya Kamath. Officials believe that the baby was affected by drugs given to her mother, suppressing her heartbeat and that once the effect of those wore off she "came alive."

"We want to demand that men assume responsibility over their paternity," said Abascal. "Legalizing abortion promotes machismo and men’s irresponsibility because in all cases, the physical, psychological and social consequences of abortion fall solely upon women."

A murder investigation has been opened involving Shelley Sella, a California abortionist employed by George Tiller, who is reported to have intentionally stabbed to death an infant born alive during an abortion at Tiller’s Women’s Health Care Services abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas.

On the advice of an attorney, Operation Rescue reported the incident to the Wichita Police Department after a former Tiller employee, Tina Davis, told Troy Newman and Cheryl Sullenger of the stabbing in April. It is believed that the alleged infanticide took place sometime in the past two years.

In addition, the incident has been reported to the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts, which has confirmed that the case has been assigned to an investigator.[..]

"Ms. Davis gave us a very specific eye-witness account about the incident," said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. "We were told that the baby was 35 weeks gestation at the time of the abortion. The baby came out and was moving. Sella looked up at Ms. Davis, then picked up a utensil and stabbed the baby in the left ribcage, twisting the utensil until the baby quit moving. At 35 weeks, there is no doubt about viability. This is murder in anybody's book."

The Rev. Clenard Childress, founder of the Life Education And Resource Network (LEARN), said his pro-life resolution - calling for the NAACP to take action to reduce the high abortion rate in the black community - has been censored at several NAACP conventions.

"It has abortion content in it," he said, "and it appears the board is systematically making sure that that particular resolution is not read to the body.

"The delegates need to hear the alarming statistics. African-American women make up 12 % of the population and account for 36% of abortions. This is an epidemic."

Two elegant new health centers have been built, and at least five more are on the way; the largest, in Houston, will be 75,000 square feet. They feature touches such as muted lighting, hardwood floors and airy waiting rooms in colors selected by marketing experts -- as well as walls designed to withstand a car's impact should an antiabortion protest turn violent.

Planned Parenthood has also opened more than two dozen quick-service "express centers," many in suburban shopping malls. Some sell jewelry, candles, books and T-shirts, along with contraception.[..]

"It is high time we follow the population," said Sarah Stoesz, who heads Planned Parenthood operations in three Midwest states. She recently opened three express centers in wealthy Minnesota suburbs, "in shopping centers and malls, places where women are already doing their grocery shopping, picking up their Starbucks, living their daily lives," Ms. Stoesz said.

The mall sites promise walk-in convenience and "clothes-on" care, with services limited to birth-control counseling and tests for pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections. Most patients are in and out in less than half an hour.

"I like to think of it as the LensCrafters of family planning," Steve Trombley, the top executive in Illinois, said as he toured an express center a few doors down from a hair salon and a Japanese restaurant in the well-to-do suburb of Schaumburg, Ill.

The grants are part of the Positive Alternatives program that Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life successfully got the state legislature to approve.

The legislature ultimately approved the program in 2005 with overwhelming bipartisan support.

Positive Alternatives grants are available to organizations that provide life-affirming care to pregnant women in need who want to bring their children to term.

They help women with services ranging from medical attention, nutrition support and housing assistance to adoption services, educational and employment assistance, and parenting education.

There has likely never been a more misleading name for any major business, of course, because this smooth running industry does anything but "plan parenthood." It quite openly and proudly makes sure, for a great majority of its pregnant clients, that they won't birth their babies at all, and there will be no "parenthood" to plan.

Neil T. Noesen, 34, petitioned the state's highest court to review a state appellate court ruling that upheld sanctions against him.

Noesen, who has listed Cumberland and St. Paul addresses, was reprimanded by the state's Pharmacy Examining Board, which placed practice conditions on his license. Barron County Judge James Babler affirmed the punishment in March 2006.

The board ruled Noesen violated the standard of care applicable to pharmacists by refusing to fill or transfer the prescription for an oral contraceptive. Noesen claimed the board's discipline violated his constitutional right of conscientious objection for religious reasons and that the board abused its discretion with the formal discipline instead of a warning.

In its June 10 order, the court ordered that Noesen's petition for review was denied without costs.

"According to the penal code, after the 14th week of pregnancy, termination is only permissible if the mother's life is endangered or if the foetus suffers from malformation," said Vica Todosiciuc, head of the Cuza Voda maternity section in the northeastern city of Iasi.

"Having examined the girl, the panel observes that the pregnancy is proceeding naturally and therefore that termination should not be imposed."

The girl's parents discovered the pregnancy during a medical check-up two weeks ago after she complained of stomach pains. Police are hunting the uncle, who is said to have fled his home.

"The fact that the pregnancy stemmed from rape was not taken into account by the panel, for two reasons: one, because rape has not been proven; and two, because the penal code does not allow for any exceptions," Todosiciuc said.

With financial backing from worldwide abortion supporters, film maker Eve Reinhardt is traveling through Peru this week seeking interviews with bishops and pro-life leaders for a documentary she is directing and that--far from being unbiased as she claims--is intended to become an instrument for regaining financial support from the United States for making abortion legal in poor countries.

One of the pro-life leaders contacted by Reinhardt was Carlos Polo, director of the Latin American office of the Population Research Institute. Polo discovered that the project is called "The Decency Gap" and he met with Reinhardt to unmask her intentions. The encounter was caught on video by Polo.

Polo told CNA that Reinhardt contacted him by phone and said she was an "independent" film maker who wanted to interview people on both sides of the abortion debate, that her project was not yet titled and that she had already interviewed bishops and pro-life leaders in Cuzco and Lima.

However, Polo discovered that the project not only has a title, but also an official web site (http://www.thedecencygap.org). "The Decency Gap" Polo discovered, is not a neutral production but rather is funded by the fiercest abortion supporters from around the world, including the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Marie Stopes International and the Center for Reproductive Rights.

He said the project is intended to push for the end of the U.S. government's Mexico City policy, which prohibits U.S. funding of organizations that carry out abortion or promote its legalization in foreign countries. Polo said the purpose of the documentary is "to influence American public opinion in order to regain access to tax-payer funds and use them for the international abortion industry."

The survey, released by WorldPublicOpinion.org Wednesday, has found that 53% of the respondents in India favour government action for discouraging abortion but only 26% want criminal penalties. In nine nations, the majority believe that their government should leave this matter to individuals.

The measure, which now awaits Gov. Janet Napolitano's action, would allow state and county prosecutors to go after doctors who perform the controversial late-term procedure, which is already barred under federal law. Napolitano vetoed a similar measure earlier this session.

Proponents said the newest version seeks to address the governor's concerns, including changes to make the felony penalty the same as in the federal law. The new version also allows doctors to seek an opinion from the medical board about whether the procedure was necessary to save the mother's life, an exception under the law. advertisement

By May, several students had returned multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and on hearing the results, "some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," Sullivan says. All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. Then the story got worse. "We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy," the principal says, shaking his head.

"The fight to protect life in Michigan is far from over," said Rep. Craig DeRoche (R-Novi). "We're going to keep fighting for the lives of these babies. Partial-birth abortion is a heinous and unethical procedure. I think the partial-birth abortion ban should be something we can all agree on."

With many House Democrats supporting the Senate's partial-birth abortion ban, DeRoche emphasized the need for House Bill 4613 to push through quickly.

"It differs only in procedure and rules of finding its way into law," he said. "There's 74 votes in the House, which is enough to override the governor."

With Granholm's veto of the Senate bill, legislators now have the option of pushing HB 4613 through. The bill is nearly identical, using a Supreme Court decision from August 2007 to update the 2003 law. The only key addition is the provision allowing a vote to override the governor's veto.

Four-month pregnant Tasha Lynn Rossette, who was already the mother of a three-year old girl, who was being babysat by a friend on the evening of the attack, was assaulted upon entering her home after a night out. The 21-year-old was stabbed and killed by Amjad Khan (who was the father of the unborn baby) and accomplice Naim Mohammed Saghir.

"If we want to honor and dignify life, if we are going to respond to the natural call and to grace to protect it and defend it from all evil and from every form of aggression, then each one of us, and society itself, should respect, protect and promote the dignity of each human person, in every moment and condition of his life from conception," the archbishop said in a pastoral letter sent to the faithful.

"It is very interesting that our sensitivity for life and human rights in so many cases does not extend to a right that is primary and fundamental: the right to life," Archbishop Mollaghan said. "This right belongs to human nature as such, and through it to the person, who could not exist otherwise," he added.

The drug misoprostol is FDA-approved to be taken by mouth along with RU-486 to end a pregnancy. But many women have received the drug vaginally as part of the two-drug combination, a method of delivery not evaluated by the FDA.

In animal and cell culture studies, the U-M researchers found that misoprostol, when given directly in the reproductive tract, suppresses key immune responses and can allow a normally non-threatening bacterium, Clostridium sordellii, to gain the upper hand and cause deadly infection. When absorbed through the stomach, however, the drug did not compromise immune defenses or cause illness.

The study, which appears online ahead of print in the Journal of Immunology, also has implications for understanding dangerous infections that occur during pregnancy.

David King, 31, kicked Hayley Cain in the stomach during a row.[..]

King was visiting Ms Cain's home at her request to bring pyjamas for their daughter when an argument broke out and he suddenly kicked her in the middle of her stomach, the court was told.

Ms Cain fell over and landed on her back. King left, telling her mother who had come outside the house following the disturbance that she had fallen over.

On Christmas Day Ms Cain was concerned about the baby and went to hospital where she was told the baby was dead.

Agata Mroz, who was originally known for her athletic prowess, was buried in her hometown of Tarnow. Mroz was pregnant with her first child when doctors discovered she had a fatal case of leukemia. After consulting with her husband, Mroz delayed a bone-marrow transplant until after she gave birth to her daughter Liliana on April 4, 2008.

Miss Jones's mother, Llywela, told the inquest that after finding out she was pregnant in May 2005 her daughter was keen to keep the baby.

But she was "besotted" with her Muslim boyfriend, Naeem Muzzafar, and did not want to upset or bring shame on his family with the news of her pregnancy.

She said: "Manon found it very hard to make a decision to terminate the pregnancy, she wanted to keep the child but there were difficult circumstances which she had to consider with her boyfriend's family and their Muslim religion."

Eventually Miss Jones accepted she would have a termination and went into hospital on June 11 to take medication, returning the following day to complete the abortion.

However, within 48 hours she began bleeding, feeling light headed and ill.

After a scan failed to spot a problem, she continued with her plans to go on holiday with her friends, but returned home early to Bristol, where she was studying, and took a taxi to the city's Southmead Hospital on June 24th, where she suffered seizures and cardiac arrest.

She never regained consciousness and doctors turned off her life support machine three days later.

Dr Hugh White told the inquest Miss Jones died of hypovolemia, an abnormal decrease in blood volume, and shock caused by "retained products of conception", namely the embryo.

California Superior Court Judge Samuel Mayerson found that there is sufficient evidence to try Bertha Bugarin and her sister, Raquel, for practicing medicine without a license. The determination was made after a three-day hearing. The pair is scheduled to be arraigned on June 19.

"This fraudulent study provides further strong evidence of the continuing, willful misrepresentation by prominent scientists of the well-established link between abortion and breast cancer," said Joel Brind, Ph.D., president of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute.

The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer is providing a commentary discussing the study's serious flaws which caused an underestimation of the risk including:

1) Nearly one in five women with breast cancer in the study were counted as not having breast cancer;

2) Researchers pretended to have evidence of the lack of a loss of the protective effect of a full term pregnancy among aborted women, but, by using the wrong comparison group (i.e., comparing childless women with abortion to those who had never been pregnant), they did not show any evidence of such an effect;

3) They included an outright lie about the study, Howe et al. 1989; and

4) They omitted raw data showing how many controls had induced abortions, but not cancer.

A DeKalb County prosecutor said 44-year-old Cindi Cook pretended to be the girl's mother and illegally signed a parental notification form and paid for the procedure.

Cook was sentenced Tuesday.

Authorities said the girl's parents were not told. Court records showed Cook had pressured the girl to have the abortion.

Four neighbourhood kids recently made the gruesome discover of her dismembered body in a forest near an apartment the couple had moved into six months previous.

Amanda Power, who was already a mother of two, was nine months pregnant according to her father, reported the Canadian Press.

"She was almost due," said Peter Power. "I don't think there's a worse hurt in the world that can compare with this."

All 84 members of the Congress of El Salvador have signed a petition condemning abortion as an "abominable crime."

The condemnation is included in a statement made by the "Yes to Life", a petition that is moving from country to country in Central America with the purpose of affirming the region's rejection of abortion, euthanasia, and other offences against human life.

"Every human being should be protected and respected from the moment of conception…until his natural death. Our primary responsibility as legislators is to unconditionally defend life. We condemn abortion as an abominable crime," says the petition.

The article from Gazeta is 100% lie.

First, the girl was not raped. She got pregnant with a friend from her school.

Second, she was not denied abortion. She refused abortion, and was later forced to abort by her mother and pro-choice activists.

Third, the pro-life activists did not attack her. They offered numerous forms of help, including financial.

Fourth, it was not attack from pro-lifers that stopped the abortion. It was ruling from a local court which quickly figured out that the "rape" version was plain lie.

Less than one month ago, on May 9th, Mari Chamberlain's heart temporarily stopped, and she is now in a coma. Doctors at Providence Hospital in Anchorage, Alaska, believe there is no hope for her to recover.

Anchorage attorney Kenneth Kirk is working with the Alliance Defense Fund, representing the Chamberlain family. "And the hospital, which is Providence Hospital, is trying to put her on what they call 'palliative care,' which just simply means put her on pain killers and such and let her die," Kirk explains.

He says the hospital is, in essence, ignoring the family's wishes and concerns. "They're doing it so quickly that the family hasn't had a chance to really, to test this, to get a second opinion, have her looked at by another neurologist, figure out whether there is some hope of recovery. They're just insisting on their way or the highway," Kirk contends.

A state court ruled in the hospital's favor, but the Alaska Supreme court extended a temporary restraining order indefinitely until the family has exhausted their legal appeals.[..]

Kirk believes the hospital is stepping out of its purely medical role. "They insist that they're just basing it on the fact that they don't think she has any real hope of recovery. But they're pushing it so hard. I mean, May 9th is when she collapsed. This whole thing has happened in a few weeks, and they're very insistent," Kirk says.

Four months into Keri McCartney's pregnancy, doctors spotted a tumor growing on the baby's tailbone - a rare and, in Macie's case, fatal condition striking one in 35,000 babies.

"At that point we didn't know - we didn't know what was going to happen," Keri said. "We just felt all alone, who will take us, who will help us through this."

The McCartneys found Texas Children's Fetal Center on the Internet - one of only a handful of hospitals in the world performing prenatal surgery.

The tumor was stealing blood from Macie, weakening her heart. So, at 25 weeks, surgeons cut into Keri's abdomen, pulled out the entire uterus -- and then half of Macie. The tumor was the size of a grapefruit.

"I felt like, 'whoa, this is huge,'" a surgeon said. "I mean, my hands are big and that tumor filled my hand."

Surgeons carefully cut away the non-cancerous tumor, monitoring Macie's heart and pumping saline into the womb where the other half of her body was tucked inside.

"We don't bring the whole baby out of the womb because we don't want the uterus to think the pregnancy is over and the baby's coming out," said Dr. Oluyinka Olutoye of Texas Children's Hospital.

Once free of the tumor, Macee was placed back in the womb, where she recovered and grew for a record 10 more weeks.

n response to Soria's announcement that a "commission of experts to study reform of the law on abortion" would be created, Blanco said the plan was cause for "grave concern" and simply an effort by the Health Minister and the current government to use the panel of experts as cover for their own complicity in abortion.

Blanco said that rather than listening to a panel of experts, Soria should instead listen to the "thousands of women who have been abandoned and are alone and have considered abortion because of a lack of solidarity and positive alternatives."

She added that the Health Minister should listen to those who for years have been reaching out to such women "with zero support from public officials," and to "those committed to defending life and the rights of the unborn and the mother."

Blanco also said Soria "should remember that the life of the unborn is protected and shielded by article 15 of the Spanish Constitution."

Baby girl Leah had a rare condition in which stray bands of tissue wrap themselves around the developing foetus's limbs or digits, in this case both her legs, and cut off blood flow.

Her parents decided to go ahead with the operation after being told she faced the prospect of both her feet being amputated by the constricting bands as she grew within the womb.

A spokeswoman for Melbourne's Monash Medical Centre said the surgery was believed to be a world first because doctors usually hold back on operating until the mother is 28 weeks' pregnant to better the baby's chances of survival.

"Because of the severity of the bands they decided that the best thing was to operate," she told AFP.

Doctors pierced the mother's abdomen with a two-millimetre (0.08 inch) thick telescopic needle to allow them to apply laser and electric current to cut the band above the baby's left foot.

But the right leg was so badly affected, with the band having cut through to the bone, that surgeon Chris Kimber decided to leave the already swollen and infected foot alone.

"The right leg was so bad that I did not want to touch it," Kimber told The Age newspaper. "This foot was as close to dead as you could get. It was dangling on one tiny artery."

At the time of the operation late last year, Leah measured 15-20 centimetres (6-8 inches). By the time her mother gave birth to her eight weeks later in January, she weighed 1.63 kilograms (3 pounds 9 ounces).

After the birth, doctors operated to save the gangrenous right leg and are now confident she will have full function in the foot and be able to walk.

A Florida woman could face death by starvation if her husband has his way and removes her feeding tube.

Karen Weber, 57, was hospitalized after she suffered a stroke in December. Her mother, Martha Tatro is determined to keep her alive, insisting her daughter is alert and does not want her feeding tube removed.

"She doesn't want this," her mother, Martha Tatro, said.

In a case very similar to the Terri Schiavo battle, husband Raymond Weber has taken the issue to court. Raymond argues his wife is in a vegetative state, the Associated Press reports.

In a March ruling, a judge ordered that the feeding tube not be removed and selected a committee to evaluate Karen's condition. She has not created a living will and is unable to speak.

According to the report, Raymond would only say he does not want press coverage of his court battle to be mirror reporting of the Schiavo case.

"I don't want this to become a media event," he said.

Attorney Colin Cameron, representing Raymond Weber, said Karen's husband refuses to allow the battle "to turn into a Terri Schiavo-type circus."

"Mr. Weber is of the opinion that Karen does not want to live as a vegetable and that she would prefer the body to take its natural course," Cameron said.

Jodie Percival of Nottinghamshire, England, said she and her fiancee made the decision to abort baby Finley when she was eight weeks pregnant.[..]

"I was on the (birth control pill) when I became pregnant," Percival, 25, said. "Deciding to terminate at eight weeks was just utterly horrible but I couldn't cope with the anguish of losing another baby."

A short time after the abortion, Percival felt a fluttering in her stomach. She went to the doctor for a scan and discovered she was 19 weeks pregnant.

"I couldn't believe it,' Percival said. "This was the baby I thought I'd terminated. At first I was angry that this was happening to us, that the procedure had failed. I wrote to the hospital, I couldn't believe that they had let me down like this.

Antoinette Blanton, 20, is seeking $50,000 from the clinic at 1602 21st in Granite City and from Dr. Allen S. Palmer, of Bridgeton, according to a three-page complaint filed May 20 in Third Circuit Court.

The suit contends Palmer "failed to remove the entire fetus" during the procedure in March 2006 and that the resulting infection made Blanton sterile.The case is assigned the Circuit Judge Andy Matoesian.

At the American kickoff of a religious foundation former British Prime Minister Tony Blair started, Yale University president Richard Levin made a comment sure to upset the majority of Americans who are pro-life.

He said that pro-life Americans who support the current Bush administration policy of prohibiting taxpayer funding of abortions overseas are like Saudi extremists.

Michael Gerson of the Washington Post reported on the statement in a Wednesday editorial column.

"At an event designed to further mutual religious sympathy, two of the panelists -- including the president of Yale University, Richard Levin -- casually asserted that religious Americans who support pro-life restrictions on international family planning aid are as doctrinaire and exclusionary as Saudi extremists," he explained.

Gerson says Blair distanced himself from the comment when reporters asked him about it following the panel discussion.

"Speaking to me after the event, Blair was patient, arguing that 'could not be what they intended,'" Gerson said.

Edward Leigh, the conservative MP for Gainsborough, tried to reduce the abortion limit in Britain down to the European average of 12 weeks. He made his comments to the Universe after several cross-party proposals for new abortion limits of 12, 16, 20 or 22 weeks were all defeated in a series of free votes at Westminster last week.

Mr. Leigh, who said that Parliament had defied overwhelming public opinion, undertook to continue pushing for later abortions to be outlawed. "If William Wilberforce were here, he would have voted with us," said Mr. Leigh. "And he worked to abolish slavery for 30 years."

Mr. Leigh continued: "I am optimistic. We just need to keep the pressure on. Priests, parishes and the Catholic press need to keep the issue alive, especially in the mind of those Members of Parliament who did not vote to reduce abortion at the top end of the limit."

"I am not pro-abortion. I think I've said repeatedly that I think it's a moral issue and a difficult one. What I have said is that ultimately I think women are in a stronger position to make those decisions, in consultation with their pastors and their family and their doctors. But I think we can all agree on the need to reduce unwanted pregnancies that may lead to abortion, and I think we can also agree to increase the use of adoptions where possible."

A Hutchinson woman is suing the local school district, claiming officials warned her son against wearing anti-abortion T-shirts and made him turn them inside out.

The federal lawsuit claims the free speech rights of Jeanne Ibbitson's son were violated and that he suffered "irreparable harm".

"It is an awful story," said Alberta Holt, the young Marine's aunt.

Crutchfield was attacked Jan. 5 while he and his girlfriend were waiting for a bus. He had heeded the commanders' warnings that a Marine on leave might be seen as a robbery target with a pocketful of money, so he carried only $8, his military identification card and a bank card.

"They took it, turned his pockets inside out, took what he had, and told him since he was a Marine and didn't have any money, he didn't deserve to live. They put the gun to his neck and shot him," Holt said.