Anglican Mainstream

By Daniel Martin, Mailonline

The father of the Abortion Act has spoken out to warn of the growing ‘problem’ of women having repeat terminations as an alternative to contraception.

Lord Steel, who introduced the 1967 Bill which legalised the practice, said it was ‘thoroughly undesirable’ that 36 per cent of terminations are now to those who have already had at least one abortion.

In a dramatic intervention, he said it was ‘never the purpose’ of his historic reform that tens of thousands of women would use abortion as a ‘form of contraception’.

The indication that the former Liberal leader, who brought forward his Bill when he was a young backbencher, now believes his legislation has gone too far seems set to reignite the debate over abortion.

Latest figures show that in 2011, there were 189,931 abortions, of which no fewer than 68,105 were on women who had already had a foetus terminated – a proportion of 36 per cent.

This compares to 64,303 repeat terminations the year before – a proportion of 34 per cent. Repeat abortions cost the cash-strapped NHS almost £1million every single week.

Lord Steel made his comments in the Lords last week during a question-and-answer session on abortion with health minister Earl Howe.

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By Steven Ertelt, Life News

By Ben Johnson, LifeSite News

President Barack Obama has announced that, if Trent Franks' bill to restrict late-term abortion nationwide passes, he will veto it.

In a Statement of Administration Policy, the president called the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” (H.R. 1797) “an assault on a woman's right to choose” and said it shows “contempt for…the Constitution.”

“The administration strongly opposes H.R. 1797, which would unacceptably restrict women's health and reproductive rights and is an assault on a woman's right to choose,” he said. “This bill is a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade and shows contempt for women's health and rights, the role doctors play in their patients' health care decisions, and the Constitution.”

He contended his administration is working to “minimize the need for abortion” by “expand[ing] access to contraception,” a reference to either the HHS mandate or his decision to allow the abortifacient Plan B to be sold over the counter to minor girls without a prescription.

Just last week, White House spokesman Jay Carney refused to answer a reporter's question about the president's view of the abortion ban, saying on that Obama "has been absolutely clear about where he stands.”

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From ProLife Alliance

Our project to publish a small leaflet on Abortion and Informed Consent has come to fruition and was completed in time for this year's Anniversary of the Implementation of the 1967 Abortion Act.
 
This leaflet is intended as a resource tool for all those involved in the pro-life campaign against abortion, but particularly those who have an interest in tackling the battle from the legal perspective, whether students or graduates in law or medicine.
 
Our special thanks go to Merve Jones who designed the leaflet, and please note that the baby on the front cover is his grandson who was aged 7 minutes at the time the photo was taken! Merve has been designing graphic material for the ProLife Alliance since 1996 and we are immensely grateful to him for his tireless and highly professional support. A big thank-you as well to the two ProLife Alliance legal interns, Majel Braden and Charlotte Kynaston, who worked so assiduously on the text.
 
If anybody would like copies of the leaflet please contact us at:

ProLife Alliance
PO Box 13395
London
SW3 6EX

by Mishka Gora, MercatorNet

Euphemisms and sophistry cloud the realities of abortion. It's time for straight thinking.

From Salvo Magazine

Poverty think-tank founder Star Parker interviews Marcia Segelstein on the biggest cultural challenge facing America, and what she believes is the single most important thing Christian parents should be doing.

In your books you talk about the church being the best institution to battle cultural problems. How does that happen?

First, I believe leaders in the church need to recognize their role in charity, their role in their communities. As an institution, they need to get the government out of competing with them. Otherwise, they're allowing the continuation of a welfare state that destroys family life.

You write about how your life changed when you became a Christian. You heard from the pulpit the message to get off welfare and to abstain from sex until marriage. It seems as though not too many people are getting those messages today.

I think they get the message; they just don't want to do it. Christians know they're not supposed to be sexually promiscuous—that the Bible says not to be. They just don't want to heed the message.

Do you think churches are doing enough to counter the messages children get in public schools, from sex education for example?

That's the problem. The most important thing Christians should be doing, in my opinion, is pulling their children out of secular schools. They should be demanding vouchers so they can put their children in schools that teach their values, and where the emphasis is on learning and morals. Too many parents put their children in a Christian setting only on Sunday mornings, which means the secular world has them Monday through Friday.
 
Do you think people have blinders on, that they don't realize what's happening in the culture?

It's hard to live a Christian life. And it's hard to have your children live a Christian life. Most Christians don't take their faith seriously enough. Far too many call themselves Christians but live exactly like the rest of the world, and allow their children to live like the rest of the world, which values materialism and selfishness.

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By John Smeaton, SPUC

Today I am pleased to publish a reflection by Anthony McCarthy on the desecration of the human body, promoted by those who are lobbying in support of legalised abortion – not least at present in Ireland – and those who are lobbying in support of same-sex marriage, not least in Britain.

Our society is one where people are taught to believe that a person’s body is what the person chooses to make of it. It is "self-owned": it has no inherent meaning, no in-built complementarity, no ‘givenness’. Only what we choose to value has value – there is nothing valuable in itself.

In 1791 the French revolutionaries expunged from the penal code prohibitions on suicide and sodomy, regarding these prohibitions as based on mere superstition. The use and abuse of the human body, its desecration, ceased to be seen as absolutely morally wrong. That which isn’t sacred (consecrated) could hardly be desecrated. And the very idea of the sacred was one that the promoters of ‘liberte’ were out to expunge.

Yet there remains, in the minds of many, a particular horror about suicide. Even that great philosopher of pessimism Arthur Schopenhauer, whose world view would seem to encourage "self-slaughter", was against it. GK Chesterton captures the horror we feel about suicide – as opposed to our admiration for those like Christian martyrs who accept their deaths but do not intend them:

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By Maryclaire Dale, Huffington Post

PHILADELPHIA — An abortion doctor convicted of killing three babies born alive at his rogue clinic dodged a possible death sentence on Tuesday in a hasty post-verdict deal with prosecutors.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell waived his right to appeal in exchange for a sentence of life without parole. Gosnell, 72, was convicted Monday of first-degree murder in a case that became a flashpoint in the nation's abortion debate.

Former clinic employees testified that Gosnell routinely performed illegal abortions past Pennsylvania's 24-week limit, that he delivered babies who were still moving, whimpering or breathing, and that he and his assistants dispatched the newborns by "snipping" their spines, as he referred to it.

Prosecutors had been seeking the death penalty because Gosnell killed more than one person and his victims were especially vulnerable given their age. But Gosnell's own advanced age had made it unlikely he would ever be executed before his appeals ran out.

Gosnell's lawyer, Jack McMahon, said his client accepts the verdict and isn't sorry he went to trial. He said Gosnell gave up a somewhat better deal early on but wanted to air the issues in court and is satisfied that he did so.

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By Tim Stanley, Telegraph

By John Jalsevac, LifeSite News

Much of the trial of late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell revolved around the question of whether prosecutors could prove that the babies Gosnell killed were born alive.

Under Pennsylvania law, if the babies were killed in utero then the killings would have been perfectly legal abortions, or, at worst, violations of the state’s 24-week abortion cutoff date at worst, rather than murder.

Today’s guilty verdict means that the jury was convinced that Gosnell killed living, breathing newborn babies outside the womb, rather than unborn fetuses. 

However, some mainstream media outlets are continuing to report that Gosnell was found guilty for killing “fetuses,” or for illegal late-term “abortions.”

New York Times reporter Jon Hurdle appeared to go to considerable lengths to avoid using the word baby in his report on the guilty verdict today, instead using the term "fetus" six times.

“The verdict came after a five-week trial in which the prosecution and the defense battled over whether the fetuses Dr. Gosnell was charged with killing were alive when they were removed from their mothers,” wrote Hurdle in the second paragraph.

At one point Hurdle wrote incongruously of a “fetus,” even when referencing the name given to the baby in question by the prosecution: Baby D. 

“Clinic workers who appeared as witnesses for the prosecution said some of the fetuses appeared to move or make noises,” he wrote. “One, known as Baby D, was delivered into a toilet and appeared to make swimming motions before one of Dr. Gosnell’s assistants cut its neck, according to a worker cited during closing arguments by Edward Cameron, an assistant district attorney.”

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By Ben Johnson, LifeSite News

A Philadelphia jury has found late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell guilty of murdering three of four babies in his capital murder trial.

By John Jalsevac, LifeSite News

Judge Jeffrey Minehart, who is presiding over the capital murder trial of late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell, has sent the jury back to continue deliberations after the jury announced this morning that they were hung on two counts.

It has not yet been revealed on which charges the jury is hung.
 
If the jury fails to reach a verdict on the two counts, the judge could reportedly declare a mistrial on those crimes, but accept the jury's verdicts on all remaining counts.

According to a reporter in the courtroom, Gosnell entered the courtroom this morning "smiling" and shook hands with his attorney. He has now been returned to a holding cell while the jury attempts to come to a consensus.

Another reporter said that the jury looked "weary" and did not react when the judge told them to continue deliberations.

The jury, composed of seven women and five men, is considering more than 250 criminal counts against the late-term abortionist, including four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of newborn babies. According to witnesses the babies were born alive and then killed by having their spinal cords snipped.

Defense attorney Jack McMahon has argued that the prosecution cannot prove definitively that the babies were born alive. He told the jury that Gosnell first injected the babies with the drug Digoxin to ensure "fetal demise" before inducing labor to deliver the babies, and that any motions the babies may have made after birth were merely reflex reactions.

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by Hilary White, LifeSite News

An American scientist and ethicist has blasted the Irish government’s “Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill,” which would legalize abortion in cases of threat to the life of the mother, including threat of suicide, for including an erroneous definition of human life.

By Piero A Tozzi, JD, Turtle Bay & Beyond

By Stefano Gennarini, JD, Turtle Bay & Beyond

If a woman already is pregnant, the morning-after pill has no effect. It prevents ovulation or fertilization of an egg. According to the medical definition, pregnancy doesn’t begin until a fertilized egg implants itself into the wall of the uterus. Still, some critics say Plan B is the equivalent of an abortion pill because it may also be able to prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus, a contention that many scientists – and Korman, in his ruling – said has been discredited.

By Hilary White, LifeSite News

Irish pro-life groups have slammed the government for presenting draft legislation that ignores expert “medical evidence” that abortion is no cure for suicidal ideation and allows the direct killing of Irish children.

The coalition government’s bill was released to the public yesterday and includes no restrictions on gestational age limits, allowing abortions to be carried out through all nine months of pregnancy.

The draft legislation says it is not an offense to take action “as a result of which unborn human life is ended.” Under the current law, it is possible for a doctor to induce early labor if it is medically warranted to save the mother’s life, but they are required to give equal consideration to the life of both mother and child. The new bill will allow doctors to act directly to end the life of the child, based only on a demand for abortion, backed up by a threat of suicide.

The Life Institute has said that the governing party, Fine Gael has “caved in” to pressure from their heavily pro-abortion Labor coalition partners.

“Fine Gael made a deal with Labor – ‘Support our austerity measure, and we’ll give you abortion,’ but it is Fine Gael who will now become known as the abortion party,” said Niamh Uí Bhriain, head of the Life Institute.

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by Calvin Freiburger, LifeSite News

The election of America’s first black president was supposed to symbolize how far our nation has come in its respect for human equality…which makes Barack Obama’s speech to Friday’s 2013 Gala for Planned Parenthood – an organization dedicated to violently disposing of “inconvenient” children – all the more grimly ironic.

But obviously this is a special national conference, because it’s been nearly a hundred years since the first health clinic of what later would become Planned Parenthood opened its doors to women in Brooklyn.

By Elise Italiano, Public Discourse

President Obama’s recent address to Planned Parenthood’s National Conference sweepingly mischaracterized abortion restrictions and pro-life views as culturally inaccurate and outdated.

By Peter Saunders, CMF

The 45^th anniversary of the implementation of Britain’s Abortion Act passed on Saturday unnoticed by the national media.

The Abortion Act 1967 came into effect on 27 April 1968. Since then, around 8 millionbabies have been aborted, now 200,000 each year.

Currently one in five pregnancies ends in abortion and 98% are carried out on spurious mental health grounds when in fact there is absolutely no evidence that abortion protects mental health.