Al Mohler’s latest article reflects on the combination of two disturbing developments: (1) 95% of mothers who discover the high risk of Down syndrome in their babies through prenatal screening choose to have the lives of these babies terminated. (2) New technologies for prenatal diagnosis are on their way. The almost-certain result is that there will be more prenatal testing, and therefore more termination of human life.

Dr. Mohler also cites this journal article by Dr. Brian Skotko (an expert in DS), who cites evidences that nearly 1 in 4 doctors either actively “urge” termination or “emphasize” the negative aspects of DS so as to encourage termination.

Dr. Skoto writes:

. . . health care providers have historically operated under the assumption that if a woman consents to prenatal screening or diagnosing, she must believe that having a child with DS would be an undesired outcome and wish to terminate her pregnancy if such a diagnosis were made prenatally.

Knowing that assumption is crucial. As Dr. Mohler writes: “Expectant parents should read that sentence over and over again, and so should those who counsel them.”

Go here to sign a petition to keep abortion out of federally funded healthcare.

. . . . .  Yesterday a media-relations executive from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, giving a talk here in Washington on Planned Parenthood’s health care reform strategy, made a comment that revealed the impact we’ve been making in thwarting the abortion industry’s agenda. She lamented that because the “anti-choice” movement — meaning pro-lifers like you and me — had attracted so much attention to her organization’s efforts to mandate abortion funding in health care reform, Planned Parenthood was being forced onto the defensive.

Bad news for abortion advocates is great news for champions of life! But Planned Parenthood has an extremely well-financed public-relations department. Planned Parenthood — enabled by the more than 350 million of your tax dollars each year — and its president, Cecile Richards, don’t stay on the defensive for long.

Perfect example: Planned Parenthood’s spin machine has issued a “Reality Check,” attacking what Richards says are “myths” spread by pro-lifers — and twisting the truth so much it made my head feel like it was in a spin machine. I showed it to our legal team, and they responded with some masterful mythbusting of their own. Here’s their take on the abortion industry’s three biggest myths about health care reform:

• MYTH: Pro-life groups want to strip reproductive health from health care reform.

Reality: Pro-life groups want to protect women’s reproductive health. And we do not want to deny women insurance coverage. However AUL, along with the vast majority of Americans, believes that “Real health care respects life!” No matter what Planned Parenthood says, abortion does not equal reproductive health. And health coverage should not include the destruction of unborn children. Furthermore, no one should be forced to violate their conscience by performing, referring for, paying for, or providing coverage for abortion. And make no mistake, that’s what the bills under consideration would do.

• MYTH: The health care reform bills before Congress will not change the “status quo” regarding insurance coverage of abortion.

Reality: An amendment added to H.R. 3200 permits the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to include abortion in the public health insurance plan, and requires abortion coverage if the Hyde amendment is ever reversed. The current Secretary of HHS, Kathleen Sebelius, is staunchly pro-abortion and would certainly include abortion, allowing for immediate federal funding of elective abortion coverage. The provision also requires that all areas of the country contain one private plan that covers abortion and permits taxpayer funding of private plans that cover elective abortion.

The Senate HELP bill delegates to a “Medical Advisory Committee” the role of deciding what benefits any private or public health care plan must offer. This Committee is expected to include abortion as a required minimum benefit. Further, based on court precedent, private plans would be forced by the government to include coverage of abortion — this is a drastic change from the status quo in which private plans may elect to cover abortion and individuals may choose whether or not to purchase health insurance that offers coverage of abortion. Ironically, “pro-choice” activists are trying to take consumer choice out of health care.

• MYTH: The health care reform bills before Congress do not mandate abortion coverage.

Reality: Both H.R. 3200 and the Senate HELP bill mandate abortion in several ways:

1. an amendment to H.R. 3200 permits and may require abortion coverage in the public health insurance plan, and permits taxpayer funding of private plans that cover elective abortion;
2. prior court holdings which state that abortion is included within several of Medicaid’s mandatory categories of care (inpatient services, outpatient services, and preventative care) will certainly apply to any federal statute revising Medicaid and involving health care reform, and;
3. the rejection of several key pro-life amendments in the House and Senate Committees, where the inclusion would have ensured that abortion was not funded in the bills, demonstrates that the bills are intended to mandate abortion.

If you’re trying to sort out the myths from facts on health care reform, the best place to start is AUL Action’s RealHealthCareRespectsLife.com. The site features in-depth analysis from our legal team, showing how the health care reform plans currently under consideration by Congress would mandate abortion coverage, strip providers of their rights of conscience, and threaten the ill and elderly with denial of care. Also, if you’re going to a town hall meeting this month, download our special town-hall flyerReal Health Care Respects Life. and distribute it to show your friends and neighbors to show that

A Brooklyn nurse claims she was forced to choose between her religious convictions and her job when Mount Sinai Hospital ordered her to assist in a late-term abortion against her will.

The hospital even exaggerated the patient’s condition and claimed the woman could die if the nurse, a devout Catholic, did not follow orders, the nurse alleges in a lawsuit.

“It felt like a horror film unfolding,” said Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo, 35, who claims she has had gruesome nightmares and hasn’t been able to sleep since the May 24 incident.

The married mother of a year-old baby was 30 minutes into her early-morning shift when she realized she had been assigned to an abortion. She begged her supervisor to find a replacement nurse for the procedure. The hospital had a six-hour window to find a fill-in, the suit says.

Bosses told the weeping Cenzon-DeCarlo the patient was 22 weeks into her pregnancy and had preeclampsia, a condition marked by high blood pressure that can lead to seizures or death if left untreated.

The supervisor “claimed that the mother could die if [Cenzon-DeCarlo] did not assist in the abortion.”

But the nurse, the niece of a Filipino bishop, contends that the patient’s life was not in danger. She argued that the patient was not even on magnesium therapy, a common treatment for preeclampsia, and did not have problems indicating an emergency.

Click here to read more on this story from the New York Post.

Albert Mohler:

Proponents of abortion rights often charge that the rhetoric of the pro-life movement leads to violence. After all, we describe abortion as murder and point to the business of abortion as the murder of the unborn. We make clear that abortion is the taking of innocent human life and that what goes on in abortion clinics is the business of death. We make these arguments because we know they are true. Abortion is murder. What goes on in those clinics is institutionalized homicide, often for financial profit. Abortion is a moral scandal and a national tragedy and a blight upon the American conscience.

But violence in the name of protesting abortion is immoral, unjustified, and horribly harmful to the pro-life cause. Now, the premeditated murder of Dr. George Tiller in the foyer of his church is the headline scandal — not the abortions he performed and the cause he represented.

Read the whole thing.

Robert George:

Whoever murdered George Tiller has done a gravely wicked thing. The evil of this action is in no way diminished by the blood George Tiller had on his own hands. No private individual had the right to execute judgment against him. We are a nation of laws. Lawless violence breeds only more lawless violence. Rightly or wrongly, George Tilller was acquitted by a jury of his peers. “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.” For the sake of justice and right, the perpetrator of this evil deed must be prosecuted, convicted, and punished. By word and deed, let us teach that violence against abortionists is not the answer to the violence of abortion. Every human life is precious. George Tiller’s life was precious. We do not teach the wrongness of taking human life by wrongfully taking a human life. Let our “weapons” in the fight to defend the lives of abortion’s tiny victims, be chaste weapons of the spirit.

JT has some other useful links on this topic.

Angela Mooney also has posted on the matter.  She summarizes as follows.

It was wrong to kill him.  As Christians we are commanded by God to live under the law of the land. Emotionally charged though we may become at injustice, we must rest in God’s Sovereignty.   “Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. Romans 12:17

Read the whole thing here.

As Reginald Finger explains in Embryo Adoption – A Life-Affirming Parenthood Choice”>his article:

“Some medical infertility specialists are uncomfortable saying ‘adoption’ in this context because children are adopted, and if the embryo comes to be viewed as a child in the eyes of the law, couples might lose the choice of discarding the embryos or donating them to research.

Infertility practices might also come under stricter regulation. Pro-choice activists dislike the term for similar reasons. Legal scholars point out that at least in the U.S., statutes define adoption as the placement of a child after birth. Thus, they reason, use of the term might mislead couples as to what has actually occurred in the eyes of the law when an embryo is transferred.”

Read the whole article here.

First Things reports that Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, has declined the annual Laetare Medal from Notre Dame, which she was to have received this spring at the commencement ceremonies. Here’s her letter to the university president.

Kevin DeYoung posts on the connection between the arguments for slavery and abortion as seen in Abraham Lincoln’s arguments against the former. For example, Kevin substitutes the word “choice” for “liberty” in this excerpt from Lincoln’s 1864 speech at a Sanitary Fair in Baltimore:

We all declare for choice; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word choice may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor. While with others the same word may mean for some men [and women] to do as they please with others, and with other men’s labors. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name–choice. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names–choice and tyranny.”

See also John Piper’s post from earlier this year making the same connection between arguments against slavery and against abortion.

Josh Brahm, Director of Education and Public Relations for Right To Life of Central California, writes an articulate and extremely well-researched and documented post entitled 9 Things the Media Messed Up About the Obama Stem Cell Story. Regardless of how well read you are on the embryonic stem cell debate, I think you will find Brahm’s treatment to be accessible and informative. Here are the 9 Things:

1. Omitting the importance of Induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) Cells
2. Omitting that the diseases everyone is talking about curing (diabetes, Parkinson’s, paralysis) have already been treated with adult stem cells.
3. Perpetuating the myth that stem cell research will likely cure Alzheimer’s disease
4. Omitting the dangers of Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research (HESCR)
5. Confusing or combining reproductive cloning with research cloning
6. Creating a false choice that “leftover” embryos will either be used for research or be killed
7. Dehumanizing human embryos
8. Responding to a Strawman argument that pro-lifers are concerned about embryos being misused in laboratories (other than killing them)
9. Bush’s policy restricted tax dollars being used on “all” stem cell research

Read the whole thing.