Pro-life blog buzz 9-28-12

from Jill Stanek.com

by Susie Allen, host of the blog, Pro-Life in TN and Kelli
We welcome your suggestions for additions to our Top Blogs (see tab on right side of home page)! Email Susie@jillstanek.com.

• ProLifeBlogs has a Wisconsin Right to Life post on the Obama campaign’s dishonest phone calls to Catholic voters in an attempt to get them to believe Obama doesn’t support abortion and that Planned Parenthood is really about “children get[ting] health care and prenatal care.” After promoting abortion ad nauseum to the American public via the Democratic National Convention, this is incredible. But could it be an indicator that abortion isn’t as winning an issue as they expected?

• ProLife NZ shares the horrific story of one mother who was pressured by her physician to terminate her child, prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome. The doctor was high-ranking fetal medicine advisor, Professor Peter Stone (pictured left), who also happens to have “been extensively involved in developing screening practices for Down syndrome in New Zealand” and “trains our medical students at Auckland University“:
  
  He recommended terminating the pregnancy and offered a late-term abortion in Australia, despite the fact that the unborn child was protected under New Zealand law.

Not only that, but Prof. Stone appeared to botch the diagnostic amniocentesis by removing almost all the amniotic fluid, nearly causing the death of the child. A must-read case.

• The Road to Roe has an interesting post on Justice Lewis F. Powell’s unexpected vote for Roe v. Wade. Powell was considered a “careful, restrained, lawyerly judge,” but according to reports from Powell’s former clerk, John C. Jeffries, “he voted his ‘gut,’ which was influenced by his wife and daughters.” There was also a “sense of momentum” and “lack of antiabortion sentiment” in the courtroom:
  
  Describing Powell’s vote as “a personal attitude” more than anything else, Jeffries says it was “easy” at the time. But one of the take-aways from that chapter is Powell’s admission to Jeffries after leaving the Court that “the abortion opinions were ‘the worst opinions I ever joined.’”

• Reflections of a Paralytic applauds an effective smackdown on the “war on women” meme – from Oklahoma’s pro-life Democrat Rep. Rebecca Hamilton (pictured right):
  
  When you have people who claim that they own the whole question of “women’s health” but who don’t report sexual abuse and rape of minor children or human trafficking, you know you are dealing with a callous and deliberate lie. When you see people who won’t “judge” attempts to buy an abortion to kill a baby simply because she is a girl saying that anyone who wants to reduce their government funding is “waging war on women,” you should be able to see that the real issue is not women and their well-being but government money.
• At National Review, Michael New disputes pundits who have claimed that universal health care (such as MA’s state health care, also known as “Romneycare”) lowers abortion rates. The reality is that it has little to no effect. In a second post, New describes why anti-abstinence education contraception proponents don’t see the big picture when it comes to teen pregnancy rates.
• ProWomanProLife applauds Canada’s attempt to open discussion on the issue of when life begins. Though the measure failed, there are some positive takeaways, according to PWPL’s Andrea Mrozek:
  
  [S]ince M-312 called only for discussion, voting in favour of it is a vote for debate and democracy and that can only be a good thing. Minister Ambroseis to be commended for having an open mind.M-312 was not expected to pass, and indeed it didn’t. However, it advanced our ability to respectfully ask questions and debate the issue of when life begins…. All Canadians, whether pro-life or pro-choice are served well through respectful debate.
  There is a stranglehold on freedom of expression around abortion, a dictatorial attitude that somehow all women are supposed to be fervently pro-choice…. This is simply not the case; women don’t have one mind on this issue, as with so many other issues.
• Mommy Life has video on a young lady with Down syndrome, Sarah Green, who went from cheerleader to Homecoming Queen! Clearly, a Ds prenatal diagnosis need not be a death sentence: