Pro-life blog buzz 6-21-13

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.

• Wesley J. Smith says that laws dealing with Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) “are increasingly authorizing doctors to unilaterally overturn surrogate wishes and patient advance directives….” The laws vary from state to state, but in Vermont and Maryland, a physician can place a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order on a patient’s chart without the consent of the patient or designated patient advocate. Smith writes:
  
  
  Not coincidentally, Vermont has a single payer healthcare plan it can’t pay for. Some have called for the cost savings to come from assisted suicide legalization – now done – and healthcare rationing.

• Suzy B notes that during her remarks in favor of the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act this week, Rep. Michelle Bachmann showed the sonogram of the son of two SBA List employees. He may have the distinction of helping to save lives before his actual birthday!
• Right to Life of Michigan lauds the passing of a state bill that prevents minors from “judge shopping” to obtain judicial bypass in order to skirt parental consent laws.
• At Secular Pro-Life, Frank Ludwig examines the origin of the feminist movement, showing that early feminists were pro-life. Demands for voting and property rights morphed into demands for contraception at the beginning of the 20th century, and then to abortion in the 60′s:
  
  Some even claim that one can’t be a feminist without being pro-abortion, but fact is that feminists before Betty Friedan strongly opposed abortion as the taking of a human life. In light of the developments of the past 45 years, the remaining pro-life feminists started organizing themselves in groups such as Feminists for Life who were founded in 1972 but “stand on more than two hundred years of pro-life feminist history.”

• Fr. Frank Pavone is getting a lot of press for his open letter to Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (pictured right with HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards, and sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer) in response to her public statements about abortion and her Catholic faith:
  
  “You make a mockery of the Catholic faith,” the letter tells her, and says that her comments “reveal a profound failure to understand your own political responsibilities.” The letter concludes, “Either exercise your duties as a public servant and a Catholic, or have the honesty to formally renounce them.”
  Members of the public can read and sign the letter here.
• Real Choice encourages readers to help the producers of 3801 Lancaster – a must-see documentary on Kermit Gosnell’s atrocities – to finance the next part of their series, which will “expose the truth of what happens when pro-choice groups, politicians, and bureaucrats are trusted to oversee abortion.”
• Alveda King of Priests for Life discusses the 20-week abortion ban passed by the House this week, as well as Rep. Trent Franks’ comments, under fire from abortion supporters:
  
  Congressman Franks stated that the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancies that are aborted in the sixth month of pregnancy or later is “very low.” How is this even controversial?
  We know from studies on the subject that rape results in pregnancy from about 1% to 5% of the time, depending on authors of the studies. According to one study citing the 5% stats, half of those pregnancies are aborted. We don’t know what portion of those 2.5% of rapes result in abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy or later, but government statistics tell us that 1.4% of all abortions occur in the 21st week or later.
  So, is it outrageous to suggest that 1.4% of 2.5% (0.035%) is a very low amount?
  

[Pelosi image via pinterest.com]