Update (May 15): The Associated Press reports that Kermit Gosnell has been sentenced to a third life term in prison.

"Gosnell received another 2 1/2 to five years in prison for the 2009 overdose death of a patient," AP reports. "He is not eligible for parole, and will die in prison."
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Update (May 14): According to the Associated Press, abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell has been sentenced to two life terms in prison.

Gosnell agreed not to appeal yesterday's conviction on three counts of first-degree murder and, as a result, did not face the death penalty in the sentencing phase of his trial.

BREAKING: Pa. abortion doc convicted of killing babies agrees to forego appeal, is spared death sentence. -SS

— The Associated Press (@AP) May 14, 2013

A jury has reached decisions on more than 260 charges against Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, finding him guilty of first-degree murder on three of four charges involving the deaths of four babies.

The Washington Post reports that the trial will now transition "into a sentencing phase to decide whether Gosnell should receive the death penalty or face life in prison."

VATICAN CITY (RNS) American anti-abortion leaders will be in Rome on Sunday (May 12) to participate in Italy’s third March for Life and lend their expertise to the nation’s small anti-abortion movement as it tries to learn from its American counterpart.

Culture wars issues like abortion long have been fought by adults in public arenas. Now, though, abortion is heading to a different kind of public setting: schools.

And recent court cases—one on the heels of the other—involving the students' rights to express their pro-life views could mean that public schools are the "newest battleground over abortion—much to the dismay of beleaguered school officials," writes Charles C. Haynes in a Washington Post column.

Catholic midwives in Scotland have won the right to abstain from all aspects of abortions, thanks to an appeals court overturning the ruling of a lower court against two Glasglow women.

Update (April 23): The New York Times reports that Pennsylvania Judge Jeffrey Minehart has thrown out three of the seven murder charges in the case against Kermit Gosnell. Minehart "also granted a motion for acquittal in five charges of abuse of a corpse against Dr. Gosnell, who, according to prosecutors, killed fetuses that were alive after they were aborted by plunging scissors into their necks. Dr. Gosnell was also acquitted on one charge of infanticide."
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The absence of reporting on the murder trial of Pennsylvania abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell has outraged some pro-life groups, and they're taking to social media to protest.

Colombia's highest courts aren't on the same page when it comes to abortion—which actually signals a victory for Catholic hospitals that oppose the practice.

Update (May 14): The Associated Press reports that Red River Women's Clinic, North Dakota's only abortion clinic, has filed the first lawsuit challenging the state's new, restrictive anti-abortion law that "requires doctors who perform abortions to obtain hospital-admitting privileges."

According to the AP, Red River Women's Clinic argues that the law "could effectively make abortion illegal in North Dakota."
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Update (April 19): Kansas Governor Sam Brownback has signed a new "anti-abortion bill that creates new restrictions on the procedure and defines life as beginning 'at fertilization,'" according to Reuters.

The Associated Press adds that "the declaration that life begins at fertilization is embodied in 'personhood' measures in other states," including Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri, and North Dakota.
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Update (April 9): As of Tuesday, Alabama is the latest state to tighten its abortion restrictions, the Washington Post reports.

Local Alabama news reports that the bill, which was signed into law by the governor this morning, "requires abortion clinics to use doctors who have hospital admitting privileges in the same city where they do abortions, which supporters of the bill said is an important requirement for follow-up care when women have complications."
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Update (April 4): The Washington Times notes the growing pro-life split between "purists" and "incrementalists" in conservative states.

CT previously has examined the pro-life split in its extensive earlier coverage of abortion, which includes several articles on disagreements between pro-life groups on legislative strategy at the state level.
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Update (Mar. 28): The Washington Post has an interesting interactive graphic that allows viewers to visually explore abortion laws by state.
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A U.S. district judge has overturned Idaho's so-called "fetal pain" law, a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Update (Mar. 12): The New York Times reports on how the ban has inspired pro-life activists in other states to pursue similar restrictions, but "traditional leaders of the anti-abortion movement, like National Right to Life and the Roman Catholic Church, think such laws will quickly be overturned in federal courts."

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Overriding governor’s vetoes, the Arkansas state legislature voted to bar most abortions after 12 weeks’ gestation—the point at which fetal heartbeats can be detected with abdominal ultrasounds.

About 100 Indian doctors will serve six-month to five-year jail terms and have their licenses canceled or suspended for performing sex-determination tests and sex-selective abortions.

A federal court has ruled against a former pro-life congressman, Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-Ohio), who sued the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List (SBAL) for defamation that allegedly contributed to his election defeat in 2010.

On January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in Roe v. Wade, guaranteeing a woman's legal right to an abortion. And although new research suggests that evangelicals are almost alone in their desire to completely overturn Roe, others have noted the pro-life movement is stronger than ever.

State lawmakers passed the second-highest number of abortion restrictions ever this past year, with 19 states enacting 43 measures in 2012 that limited access to abortion services, according to the Guttmacher Institute. The record was set last year, when 24 states enacted 92 restrictions in 2011.

Ireland has announced plans to reform the country's restrictive abortion policies, allowing women access to abortions in cases where the mother's life is in danger.

Tough economic times may be responsible for America's declining abortion rate, which is at a 10-year low.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported last week that the rate and number of abortions performed in the United States fell by 5 percent in 2009, the most recent year for which data is available. According to the CDC, this represents "the largest single-year decrease" for legal, induced abortions since 2000.

(Update: Ireland has pledged to decide on a new abortion law this month.)

Pro-choice activists from Ireland to India are protesting the death of Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old Indian woman who was denied an abortion at a hospital in Galway, Ireland, in late October.

In Dublin, an estimated 6,000 protesters rallied to legalize abortion in heavily Catholic Ireland, which has stringent anti-abortion laws. Similar marches in Galway, where Halappanavar died, and at the Irish embassy in the Indian capital Delhi called for the Dublin government to amend the abortion law or abolish it entirely.

Irish prime minister Enda Kenny says he will not rush into a decision on the right to abortion. He called any connection between Halappanavar's death and Irish abortion law a "tragic coincidence."

Doctors are still investigating Halappanavar's death to determine whether an abortion would have made a difference or not. Meanwhile, pro-life groups are protesting the spin being put on her death before all the facts are known.

Update (April 15): As part of the Supreme Court ruling last winter, a South Carolina federal district court has found that a Columbia Christians for Life member who won the right to display images of aborted fetuses is not entitled to an award of attorney's fees in his case.
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In its first decision of the 2012-2013 term, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that anti-abortion protesters who won the right to "carry pictures of aborted fetuses" may also be entitled to attorneys' fees.

Abortion activist Theodore Shulman will serve 41 months in federal prison for threatening to kill Priests for Life director Frank Pavone and Princeton University's Robert George in 2010. Shulman pleaded guilty to "one count of transmitting a threat to injure another person" in May.

Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas will likely lose state funds following a federal appeals court ruling Tuesday.

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas can restrict state Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood, due to the clinics’ affiliation with abortion providers, until an October trial is resolved.

The three-judge panel said Planned Parenthood failed to show it is "likely to succeed in demonstrating that the ... restriction on promoting elective abortions violates their First Amendment rights," notes Baptist Press.

After Texas banned funds from the Texas Medicaid Women's Health Program going to groups linked to abortion providers in 2011, Planned Parenthood sued the state, arguing that the clinics do not perform abortions but instead provide family planning and healthcare to low-income women.

Nellie Gray, a leader in the pro-life movement, died Monday night. She was 88.

Gray was best-known for her role as founder of March for Life, a pro-life organization that sponsors an annual rally in Washington, D.C. However, she also helped influence a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution and mobilized support for the pro-life movement in the late twentieth century.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a 2009 Baltimore ordinance yesterday that required "limited-service pregnancy centers" to post signs announcing they do not provide or make referrals for abortion or birth control services. The 2-1 ruling, which also struck down a similar ordinance in Maryland's Montgomery County, comes on the heels of a flood of pro-life legislation that hit the courts last year.

In the majority opinion, judges Paul Niemeyer and G. Steven Agee wrote: “In compelling that speech, the Pregnancy Center is, in this case, required to participate in the city’s effort to tell pregnant women that abortions are available elsewhere as a morally acceptable alternative, contrary to the moral and religious beliefs of the Pregnancy Center.”

Dissenting judge Robert King called the majority’s decision “indefensible,” and argued there was "ample evidence that the centers engage in 'deceptive practices' that create health risks for the women who seek help from them."

CT has reported how disclosing information to pregnant women—a long-established pro-life legal strategy—is now cutting both ways as a number of cities have passed laws similar to the Baltimore ordinance. San Francisco requires such disclosures by crisis pregnancy centers. A Texas federal court will decide this summer whether an Austin ordinance can stand. New York City passed such an ordinance but a federal judge stopped it for being "overly broad."

Baltimore archdiocesan spokesman Sean Caine told CT that the issue for conservative clinics is less about disclosure, and more about governmental control.

"They're not against disclosure; they're against the government compelling their speech," Caine said. "What they reject is being told by the government that we have to discuss, through a sign, abortion."

NEW YORK (RNS) -- When blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng made a daring escape from house arrest this spring and found refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, he instantly became a popular hero in the West and a rallying point for human rights activists everywhere.

For abortion opponents in the U.S., however, Chen was much more than that: he was an icon of the pro-life cause, a man whose campaign against forced abortion in China made him a potent champion in the fight against legal abortion in America.

Anti-abortion groups in the U.S. regularly cited Chen in their press releases and fundraising materials, using Chen’s plight – and the slow pace of the diplomatic negotiations that eventually brought him to safety in New York – as fodder for promoting their cause and galvanizing opposition to President Obama.

Conservative media critic Terry Mattingly even detected a secular bias in the news coverage, complaining that reports were ignoring the fact that Chen “is actually a pro-life activist” and a “Christian activist who sees China’s often brutal one-child policy as a violation of human rights as well as religious liberty.”

[Mattingly later walked back his criticisms, saying "It appears that we can strike the word 'Christian'" from Chen's biography.]

But the reality differs significantly from the scenario laid out by Mattingly and others: for one thing, Chen Guangcheng is not a Christian, and, more notably, he may not even be what most abortion opponents would consider “pro-life.”

That’s because Chen’s cause in China was not an effort to halt legal abortion per se, but to make Chinese authorities comply with their own laws against forced abortions and sterilizations, a position also advocated by the Obama administration.

“If it’s not forced abortion, I don’t think he’s necessarily against that,” said Bob Fu, a Chinese-born Christian and close friend of Chen who heads Texas-based China Aid, which lobbies for religious freedom in China.

Chen would not oppose “voluntary abortion,” Fu said, since Chen’s focus is on “the rule of law” – on making China a society that respects its own laws, which are routinely flouted, and on promoting the human rights and dignity of its citizens.

Indeed, in Chen’s two principal public statements since arriving in New York on May 19 – an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper and an op-ed in The New York Times on Wednesday (May 30) – Chen himself did not mention abortion. Instead, he repeatedly stressed that the “fundamental question the Chinese government must face is lawlessness,” as he wrote in The Times. “China does not lack laws, but the rule of law.”

Chen was initially targeted by Chinese authorities in 2005 after he filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of poor, rural women who said they were subjected to forced abortions and sterilizations as part of China's one-child policy. That landed him in jail until 2010, and he was then placed under house arrest, which he escaped on April 22, injuring his foot but still managing to reach the U.S. Embassy.

That prompted an international crisis that was only resolved when Chen and his wife were allowed to travel on student visas to New York, where he has pledged to continue speaking out for the rule of law in his homeland.

“In the U.S., ‘pro-life’ connotes opposition to abortion, per se, so Chen isn’t an anti-abortion activist in the U.S. sense,” as Lindsay Beyerstein wrote in the online magazine Religion Dispatches.

Fu echoed that point. “It’s very hard to place him (Chen) in a category here.”

Still, that hasn’t stopped some abortion opponents from trying.

“Obama administration abandons Chinese pro-life activist Chen,” ran a headline at the Right Wing News site at the height of the diplomatic standoff in May. “Chen is not the kind of activist that American authorities would have wanted to help,” blogger Julio Severo wrote at LifeSiteNews. “Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are shamelessly pro-abortion, while Chen is pro-life.”

The National Right to Life Committee has cited Chen in fundraising appeals, telling supporters that nothing they contribute “will cost nearly as much as what brave activists like Chen Guangcheng have been forced to give.” And Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council welcomed news of Chen’s flight to New York by hoping that “Chen's influence extends to his new home, where the inhumanity of abortion is so often ignored.”

Whether Chen can avoid being swept up in America’s culture wars and election-year battles is unclear. Marjorie Dannenfelser, head of the Susan B. Anthony List, told The Washington Post that she is unsure of Chen’s general views on abortion, adding: “What we will not do is take his suffering and his family’s suffering and use it for a cause he doesn’t believe in.”

Chen’s advisers have also been counseling him on how to avoid the political pitfalls, especially as he continues to recuperate from his foot injury and from the toll taken by years of confinement and abuse.

But he has already been asked to tell his story in Congress, and friends say Chen has been swamped with invitations to speak at anti-abortion rallies and to churches and religious groups.

“In the end, though, he’ll have to decide what he’ll want to say,” Jerome A. Cohen, co-director of New York University’s U.S.-Asia Law Institute and a friend and adviser to Chen, told the Post.

Chen may even wind up being more supportive of religious groups and abortion opponents than his record so far indicates. Fu noted that almost all of Chen’s friends in China were Christians who faced government repression, and said Chen himself might be considered a believer in “natural religion.”

“He’s sort of a natural pro-lifer,” Fu added. The question is whether that will be pro-life enough for American pro-lifers.

KRE/LEM END GIBSON

Worldwide, Christian leaders who are resisting China's one-child policy and forced abortion were greatly encouraged to hear today's news that lawyer-activist Chen Guangcheng has escaped from house arrest in his rural village.

He has fled to Beijing and there are reports in major news media that he's taken refuge in the US Embassy. Obviously, this is a developing story. But here are comments from Chen's supporters:

From All Girls Allowed, a leading Christian organization fighting gendercide:

"Chen Guangcheng has battled tirelessly on behalf of Chinese women who face forced abortion and sterilization by the government. He has suffered deeply for speaking out against the One-Child Policy and its brutal enforcement. We call on China to abide by its own laws and uphold his rights. We call on the US to keep China accountable, and to protect Mr. Chen if he is indeed at the US Embassy."

Founder and president Bob Fu was in touch with Chen’s friends and family and was told by a source who brought Chen to Beijing that he is not in any danger and is “100% safe.” There is speculation that Chen is in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

ChinaAid was asked on Friday to convey to the outside world Chen’s intention to “fight to the end for the freedom of my family inside China. I want to live a normal life as a Chinese citizen with my family.” Meanwhile, police have arrested one of the friends who helped drive Chen on April 22 from his home in Dongshigu village, Shuanghou town, Linyi city, Shandong province to a safe location in another province. He Peirong was in communication with ChinaAid when she was arrested at her home in Nanjing, coastal Jiangsu province, on Friday at 11:11 a.m. She has not responded to later efforts to reach her.

ChinaAid has also learned that police have also taken into custody Chen’s older brother and his nephew, Chen Guangfu and Chen Kegui, respectively. The father and son were taken from their home early Friday morning. Chen Kegui reportedly had stabbed some government officials who broke into his home early in the morning by climbing over the back wall and Chen, mistaking them for burglars, attacked them.

“We must report the true fact of this case and not let the Chinese propaganda machine spin this story as they see fit," said Fu. “We will stand with Chen and work with the international community and world media to fight for his freedom.”

“We admire Chen’s extraordinary courage and his unwavering desire to fight for the fundamental rights owed every Chinese citizen,” Fu said. “We urge the U.S. government and other democratic nations to show the courage of their convictions and protect this brave rights defender.”

Debate over a pro-life bill currently before the Ohio state legislature highlights the growing rift among pro-life groups, according to The New York Times.

Dubbed the "heartbeat bill," the legislation would ban abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detectable, generally six to eight weeks into the pregnancy. Proponents hope the inevitable legal fight over the bill will be a stepping stone to overturning Roe v. Wade, arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court is ready to reconsider the matter.

The state’s Catholic conference and Ohio Right to Life have voiced opposition to the bill, saying it would potentially prompt a legal setback for pro-life advocacy. If the case eventually reached the Supreme Court, they argue, it would likely result in the affirmation of a woman's right to have an abortion.

Six county chapters of Ohio Right to Life, including the state’s oldest and largest chapter in Cincinnati, have withdrawn their membership because of the organization's opposition to the bill, according to the NYT. National Right to Life has taken a neutral position on the bill.

CT highlighted the pro-life debate over personhood laws back in October 2010, and recently reported on Mississippi's failed attempt at a personhood amendment in November.

In June, CT reported on this year's record amount of pro-life legislation in state legislatures across the country.

In ongoing disputes between national Catholic groups and the federal government, victims of sex trafficking might suffer the most damage.

The Washington Post reported this week on mounting friction between the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). HHS decided in late September to end a contract underwriting the conference's service to trafficking victims. The $19 million contract, awarded to USCCB since 2006 under President Bush's faith-based funding initiative, helped provide housing and counseling to trafficking victims.

Following church teaching, USCCB had refused to refer victims to contraceptives or abortion services. HHS officials decided to award the grant to three other groups, despite some HHS staff's protests that the USCCB should continue to get funding based on its score from an independent review board. The Post reports the review board scored two of the competing groups significantly lower than USCCB.

Citing anti-Catholic discrimination, USCCB is now threatening legal action, and recently formed an Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty. Mary Ann Walsh, USCCB's leading spokesperson, wrote on its media blog:

. . . [A]t least until now, the U.S. government sought to sincerely address the issue [of human trafficking]. It asked USCCB for help when regional programs weren’t reaching victims outside the usual hotspots for trafficking. USCCB created an extraordinary program in conjunction with several partners, Christian and secular, including Lutheran Family Services, Jewish Family Services, Salvation Army, YMCA affiliates, domestic violence shelters, World Relief and others. Only one-third of its subcontractors were Catholic-affiliated, but with the USCCB infrastructure they reached virtually everywhere in the USA. . . .
Apparently HHS rules about the benefits of experience and cost effectiveness can be waived. So can rules about being fully operational by a certain date. What can’t be waived is the new, albeit unwritten rule of HHS, the ABC rule – Anybody But Catholics.

The recent dispute is not the first between national Catholic bodies and HHS, most notably its August mandate requiring all private health insurers to cover abortion and contraceptives with no out-of-pocket charges or co-payments. At a heated House subcommittee meeting today on the rule, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo wrote that Catholic groups "will have no choice but to stop providing health care and other services to the needy who are not Catholic, or to stop providing health coverage to their own employees." DiNardo wrote,

Is the drive to maximize contraceptive coverage, even among those who do not want it, such an urgent national priority that it transcends concerns about religious liberty, our nation’s ‘First Freedom,’ as well as concerns about women’s health and about access to basic health care for men and women alike?

In a National Review Online op-ed today, Steven Wagner charges that HHS's recent decisions will only hurt sex trafficking victims more. The HHS human trafficking program director from 2003-2006, Wagner noted:

The provision of abortions is banned by the Hyde Amendment and the provision of contraceptives is banned by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, so HHS is demanding that service providers do things which HHS cannot pay for.
Worst of all, the provision of abortions or contraception to victims of human trafficking who have not yet been rescued is tantamount to aiding and abetting the crime of exploitation. Current victims cannot, by definition, provide informed consent, so the only beneficiary is the trafficker/pimp.

For more on how U.S. Christians are helping victims of sex trafficking, visit This Is Our City, which is spotlighting trafficking all week.

One of the highest profile anti-abortion activists in the Catholic Church in the United States says he will abide by but appeal a suspension order from his bishop following allegations of financial mismanagement.

The Rev. Frank Pavone, who developed a huge following through his nationwide campaigns against abortion as head of the New York-based Priests for Life, is under investigation for mishandling his organization's budget.

Pavone said Tuesday that he had appealed the suspension order issued by Bishop Patrick J. Zurek of Amarillo, Texas, but said he would return to Amarillo as Zurek ordered.

Pavone is the third high-profile conservative Catholic leader this year to face charges of misconduct, following allegations leveled against two other priests in different organizations.

Zurek sent a letter to all U.S. bishops on Sept. 9, announcing that he was suspending Pavone from ministry outside his diocese after "persistent questions and concerns" from clergy and laity about how Priests for Life is spending "millions of dollars in donations."

"My decision is the result of deep concerns regarding his stewardship of the finances of the Priests for Life (PFL) organization," Zurek wrote in the letter, which was first reported on Tuesday by Catholic News Service. "The PFL has become a business that is quite lucrative which provides Father Pavone with financial independence from all legitimate ecclesiastical oversight."

According to CNS, Internal Revenue Service records show the organization took in $10.8 million in 2008, the latest year tax forms were available.

Video clips from recent undercover visits to Planned Parenthood clinics by a pro-life group called Live Action have stunned people on both sides of the debate and prompted the clinic to fire the employee caught on tape.

Planned Parenthood says they are "profoundly shocked" by the YouTube clips showing Central Jersey Planned Parenthood manager Amy Woodruff offering advice to Live Action operatives--posing as a pimp and his prostitute--on how to get medical care for underage sex workers without disrupting his business. The organization fired Woodruff for behavior which they say was a "very isolated" response to a "highly unusual" pair of inquirers.

Woodruff was "behaving in a repugnant manner that is inconsistent with our standards of care and is completely unacceptable," said a Planned Parenthood official. Lila Rose, president of Live Action, says the New Jersey video "proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Planned Parenthood intentionally breaks state and federal laws and covers up the abuse of the young girls it claims to serve."

A few weeks ago Planned Parenthood noticed a number of similar visits at clinics in several states and contacted the authorities about what they thought could be either a "multistate sex trafficking operation" or a " 'dirty tricks' campaign." They pointed to evidence that Live Action (with whom they had prior encounters) could be involved.

"These people have recorded 'undercover' videos of their conversations with our clinic staff and then selectively and maliciously edited the videos," wrote Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Cecile Richards in a letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder at the time.

Yesterday, Live Action uploaded a second video of an undercover visit to a Virginia clinic, which Rose said demonstrates that "Planned Parenthood’s problems go far beyond New Jersey." Planned Parenthood says the staffer in the Virginia video acted "professionally" and notified her supervisor immediately afterward.

Rose and Live Action are hardly new to YouTube activism. Rose, who says she draws inspiration from 1960s activist Saul Alinsky, has organized similar operations against Planned Parenthood before. Critics call Rose a "propagandist" who "has a history of smearing the subjects of her videos," comparing Live Action's tactics to the misleadingly-edited clip that tarred Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod in 2010.

But Live Action has managed to put Planned Parenthood in the hot seat before. The organization apologized in 2008 after Live Action recorded a Planned Parenthood staffer appearing to sympathize with a potential benefactor who claimed he wanted to donate because "the less black kids out there, the better." In 2010, the state of Alabama put a Planned Parenthood clinic on probation after Rose, posing as a 14-year-old, caught a clinic employee willing to violate parental consent laws. The state later found that the clinic had given abortions to nine minors without properly verifying parental consent.

As reporters and commentators weigh the import of the videos and of Woodruff's actions, New Jersey Attorney General Paula Dow plans to look into Live Action's "very disturbing" allegations.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Irish abortion laws violated the rights of one of three women who sought abortions, according to the Associated Press.

Ireland's constitutional ban on abortion violates pregnant women's right to receive proper medical care in life-threatening cases, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday, harshly criticizing Ireland's long inaction on the issue.

The Strasbourg, France-based court ruled that a pregnant woman fighting cancer should have been allowed to get an abortion in Ireland in 2005 rather than being forced to go to England for the procedure.

The judgment put Ireland under pressure to draft a law extending abortion rights to women whose pregnancies represent a potentially fatal threat to their own health. But Catholic leaders and anti-abortion activists insisted that Ireland had no legal obligation to do anything despite the court ruling.

The BBC and the New York Times also published stories on the decision.

Americans United for Life focused on the larger questions of whether countries could individually decide set their own abortion laws.

Abortion proponents’ efforts to make abortion a “right” in Europe were thwarted today when the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights held that the European Convention on Human Rights contains no “right” to abortion. The Court rightly found that matters relating to abortion should be left to the member states’ own domestic laws.

The Court dismissed two of the plaintiffs’ health-based claims in A, B, C v. Ireland because it found no right had been violated under the Convention. In the remaining woman’s situation, the Court stated that Ireland needs to take steps to better comply with its own domestic laws.

First Things' Joe Carter writes that this could continue a larger debate over whether abortion should be permitted in cases where the life of the mother is in danger.

The problem with the abortion law in Ireland, according to the court, was that while it allowed an exception where there is a “real and substantial risk” to the life of the mother, the Irish government makes it impossible for women to get medical advice or to obtain abortions in such cases. Because doctors and patients run the risk of “serious criminal conviction and imprisonment” if a doctor so much as concludes that abortion is an option because the mother’s health is at risk from pregnancy, it makes the exemption untenable.

The Irish government will likely enact legislation setting out how and in what circumstances women with life-threatening conditions can obtain abortions.

What is most interesting about the decision is that it mainly involves an intramural debate in the antiabortion camp: Are legitimate threats to the life of the mother a valid reason to allow for an abortion?

Pro-life politicians and activists are responding to the findings of British doctors who say that the human fetus cannot feel pain before 24 weeks.

The study, which comes out of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, comes out amid hints that pro-life members of the British Parliament—possibly including Conservative Party Prime Minister David Cameron—might want to pull back the UK’s legal time limit on abortions from 24 weeks to 20 weeks.

The Royal College hasn’t dissuaded Labor MP Jim Dobbin, a leader of the pro-life movement in the House of Commons, who told the London Evening Standard, “Other experts would differ. This does not diminish the case for lowering the limit.”

“This is a nakedly political attempt by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to defend the status quo,” said a spokesman for the British based Pro-Life Alliance in a Friday press release. “The Prime Minister has openly backed a reduction to 20 weeks and this is supported by an overwhelming majority of the British population. The RCOG are trying to stop abortion reform and will ignore the opposing side of the argument to suit their purposes.”

Pro-life advocates on this side of the Atlantic agree.

“The overwhelming consensus in the medical community in the scientific literature is that it is undisputed that unborn children begin feeling pain at at least 20 weeks gestations,” Mailee Smith, staff counsel for Americans United For Life, said to CT this morning. “And this accepted medical consensus is demonstrated in the general practice of administering anesthesia during in utero surgical procedures of unborn children who are 20 weeks gestation or more.”

Smith and the Pro-Life Alliance both point to the research of American Dr. Kanwaljeet “Sunny” Anand, an researcher in pediatrics and anesthesia, who has been a leader in research suggesting that unborn children feel pain after 20 weeks in the womb.

Anand testified before Congress in 2005 that “based on evidence suggesting that the types of stimulation that will occur during abortion procedures, very likely most fetuses at 20 weeks after conception will be able to perceive that as painful, unpleasant, noxious stimulation.”

Anand “was not even consulted” in the RCOG’s study, complains the Pro-Life Alliance.

The extent of this study’s influence is not yet clear. The Telegraph reports that the Prime Minister’s office said that Cameron will "continue to be guided by the science on the matter."

In America, Smith says it will probably have not much affect on the overa;l abortion debate, though it may be cited in certain cases (like Nebraska’s recent law, which specifically deals with fetal pain as a factor in restricting abortion).

“For the most part this study is going to be overwhelmed by the evidence” for fetal pain at 20 weeks, Smith said.

As far as some in Britain are concerned, questions of fetal pain shouldn’t be central to the abortion debate at all.

“Beyond the issue of pain and fetal awareness, the vital core of this debate seems to have been forgotten,” said an article from the London-based Christian Concern for our Nation. “Life is life and should be protected no matter how little or how fragile the life taken.”

The St. Petersburg Times reports that two former members of the Church of Scientology’s elite Sea Organization leadership group have filed lawsuits in federal court, alleging that the church violated labor laws and forced them to abort two children.

Claire and Marc Headley filed separate actions in January 2009. In addition to the abortions, the Headleys allege that the Church created a working environment that constituted forced labor and violated human trafficking laws.

According to the Times, Claire Headley testified in a May 28 court filing that the church threatened her with “heavy manual labor and … interrogation” if she did not have an abortion after finding out she was pregnant in 1994. In 1996, she became pregnant again, and she alleges that she was not even allowed to contact her husband before having an abortion.

She told the paper, “I'd already promised myself the first time that I would never, ever go through with that again,” but with the church pressuring her and her husband cut off from contact, she felt that a second abortion was “inevitable.”

"I don't remember saying, 'I will' or 'I will not,'” she said. “It was more like the apathetic path of least resistance. I know I never said, 'I want an abortion,' because I did not have the strength to say that.”

The Times report includes video interviews with Headley and other women who say they went through the same thing. Sunshine “Sunny” Pereira, a former Sea Org staffer who says she handled pregnancy cases as part of her job, says she had two abortions of her own in 1994 and 2001.

In her video interview, she told the Times that the church made pregnant Sea Org staffers feel that their work was too important to abandon for a child.

"They put you in this position where you're weighing the lives of all these people you're supposed to be saving against this one little tiny speck of nuisance that's growing inside of you, and make it seem so unimportant," Pereira said.

The Church of Scientology denies that they have ever forced anyone to have an abortion.
Church spokesman Tommy Davis told the Times that people who want to have children “receive assistance from the church, including immediate prenatal care, medical care, financial assistance and even help in finding housing and employment upon departure from the Sea Org.”

Davis released sworn statements from ten women who said Scientology leaders supported them during their pregnancies.

The Church has moved to dismiss the Headley lawsuits. A hearing on the motions is scheduled for July 26.

Several blogs have noted a speech by former Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow, who said companies told him they couldn't have him endorsing products after he appeared in the Focus on the Family commercial.

There's a lot of buzz leading up to tomorrow's NFL draft as Palm Beach Post reports that Tebow said he lost potential sponsors.

As to his first tenet, standing for what he believes in, Tebow told the crowd that multiple companies told him before the Super Bowl that they could not let him represent their products if he went ahead with his pro-life commercial at the Super Bowl. But Tebow said losing sponsors was a small price to pay for the ability to spread his message about family and faith.

However, the Associated Press reports that Tebow offers marketability.

Companies are lining up for Tebow to be their pitchman. Religious and advocacy groups want Tebow, the son of missionaries, for commercials and speeches. Some owners believe he would increase ticket sales.

And with good reason.

The Davie-Brown Index, an independent marketing research tool, found Tebow to be more appealing and more of a trendsetter than New England's Tom Brady, Minnesota's Brett Favre and Dallas' Tony Romo among others.

During the Superbowl, Tim Tebow, the former Florida Gators all-star quarterback, appeared in a Focus on the Family advertisement with his mother who had been advised to have an abortion. Despite any potential losses, Tebow has made deals with Nike and EA Sports.

Scott Roeder was found guilty today of first-degree murder for shooting abortion doctor George Tiller.

The jury also convicted Roeder on counts of aggravated assault for threatening two witnesses with a gun as they chased him after the shooting.

Roeder testified that he shot Tiller, who was one of the few doctors in the United States that would perform late-term abortions, on May 31, 2009, at his church in Kansas.

Tiller was serving as an usher at the Reformation Lutheran Church where he was handing out bulletins to people going into the sanctuary before he was shot. Pro-life groups condemned the shooting.

Roeder's public defender argued that Roeder's faith and opposition to abortion compelled him to shoot Tiller, according to The New York Times. He also compared Roeder to Martin Luther King Jr., according to the Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Rudy asked the jurors to show courage in their deliberations and told them: "No defendant can be convicted based on his convictions."

But Judge Warren Wilbert ruled Thursday evening that the jury could not consider lesser charges; its only choice was to convict or acquit on first-degree murder. Mr. Roeder's lawyers had argued that their client's actions might better be described as "voluntary manslaughter," which Kansas law defines as using deadly force in the honest, even if unreasonable, belief that doing so is necessary to protect others from an imminent threat of unlawful violence.

Judge Wilbert said that did not apply in this case because Dr. Tiller posed no imminent threat to anyone as he stood in his church and because his abortion practice was legal.

Roeder faces a maximum sentence of life in prison, which will be set on March 9.

Move over, Peyton Manning and Drew Brees. A quarterback who has yet to play an NFL game has stolen the Super Bowl spotlight.

Tim Tebow, who just finished his college football career at Florida, will appear with his mother in an ad paid for by Focus on the Family. According to reports, Tebow's mother will describe how she was advised to have an abortion but chose to give birth to him. Pro-choice groups are upset, and CBS defends its plans to air the ad.

CBS has been selling 30-second spots in the Feb. 7 Super Bowl for about $2.7 million each -- slightly less than NBC was able to command for last year's game -- and still has some advertising time left to sell.

A CBS spokesman said the Tebow commercial was subjected to the "full standards process that all ads go through" and accepted only after the script was reviewed.

The network nonetheless finds itself in a difficult position because, several years ago, CBS rejected ads -- some intended for the Super Bowl -- from left-leaning organizations, including MoveOn.org, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the United Church of Christ, which advocates gay rights.

Last year, CBS rejected an ad that portrayed President Obama as an unborn child.

Sports Illustrated columnist Andy Staples weighs whether the ad could affect Tebow's NFL future.

There may be plenty of Christian Tebow-haters in college bases throughout the country who change their mind about him because they're so thrilled that a young athlete will stand up for his faith and his beliefs in an era when such athletes are met with scorn by the secular crowd.

Tebow's opinion on one of the nation's most contentious issues likely formed in the womb. Had Pam Tebow followed doctor's orders in 1987 and aborted her pregnancy, there wouldn't be a Tim Tebow for TMZ to publish shirtless photographs of. The younger Tebow won't apologize for his stance, even though he knows a lot of people will hate him for it. Tebow refuses to be one of those corporate jocks who only worships tiny pictures of Benjamin Franklin. That's probably for the best; we don't tend to learn what those jocks believe in until a 9-iron hits a window.

"I don't feel like I'm very preachy about it, but I do stand up for what I believe," Tebow said. "Unfortunately, in today's society, not many athletes tend to do that. So I'm just standing for something."

Mark Moring has more CT's movies and TV blog.

Despite the Catholic Church's attempts to stop the procedure, a 9-year-old Brazilian girl whose stepfather allegedly sexually abused her had an abortion Wednesday after doctors warned that giving birth might result in death. Physicians at the hospital in the coastal town of Recife said the girl - 15 weeks pregnant with twins and weighing 80 pounds - could not give birth without putting her life at risk.

In response, on Thursday Jos? Cardoso Sobrinho, archbishop of Olinda and Recife, excommunicated the girl's mother, who authorized the abortion, and the doctors involved.

"The law of God is above any human law," the archbishop said in an interview with Globo television that aired Thursday. "So when a human law, i.e., a law enacted by legislators, is against the law of God, that human law has no value. The adults who approved, who carried out this abortion, have incurred excommunication." Excommunication is the Catholic Church's severest censure for an individual, who can no longer participate in church of receive the sacraments, except that of Reconciliation.

The President signed the Prenatally and Postnatally Diagnosed Conditions Awareness Act on October 8. The legislation aims "to increase the provision of scientifically sound information and support services to patients receiving a positive test diagnosis for Down syndrome or other prenatally diagnosed conditions." These conditions also include dwarfism, spina bifida, and cystic fibrosis.

Recent research has indicated that 90 percent of the unborn children who are diagnosed with Down Syndrome end up as victims of abortion.

The new law aims to reinforce a culture of life by offering information and support to parents who receive a diagnosis before birth and up to a year after birth.

"This is a great victory for the culture of life we should all seek to promote," Sen. Sam Brownback, R.-Kan., said. "[The 90 percent abortion rate for unborn babies diagnosed with Down syndrome] is much too high and suggests that we as a society are not doing everything we can to protect every human life, at every stage."

For previous CT coverage on disability, see our editorial and columns by me and Al Hsu.

The end may be in sight for the debate over "harvesting" human embryos for their stem-cells in the pursuit of possible medical cures. Apparently adult stem cells--those cells gotten from human body tissues and not embryos--have the potential to be just as versatile for medical research as ESCs--but without the need to kill nascent human life. An article in Newsweek:

In June 2006, a Japanese group led by Shinya Yamanaka reported the first successful result with mouse skin cells, and between November 2007 and January 2008, Yamanaka's group and two American groups led by James Thomson and George Daley at Harvard University all reported the successful reprogramming of human skin cells into a state that is indistinguishable from human embryonic cells. Over the last several months, progress made along this new scientific path has been breathtaking. The laboratory of Rudolf Jaenisch at MIT has taken in the lead in developing therapies with this new technique in mice, demonstrating a cure for a mouse version of sickle cell anemia and alleviating the symptoms of Parkinson's disease in mice.

What these scientists can now do is essentially to take any type of cell and turn it into the equivalent of an embryonic stem cell - without needing embryos or egg cells. So what exactly are these new cells? Cells are fundamentally defined not by where they come from, but by their program of gene activity. In this sense, the new cells should be called embryonic stem cells. And since they are genetically identical to the person who provided the original sample, they are technically embryonic cell clones of that person. But scientists have discovered the power of words to elicit positive or negative emotional responses. "Clone" and "embryo" are words to be avoided. And so by consensus, the new cells are being called induced pluripotent stem cells.

Researchers say more work must be done on the promising technique.

An Alabama prosecutor is taking advantage of a new law to arrest mothers found to be using drugs while pregnant. "In my jurisdiction, a baby being born dead because of drug abuse is a huge deal," district attorney, Greg L. Gambril told The New York Times.

Mr. Gambril makes little distinction between fetus and child. He said his duty was to protect both - though the Alabama law he uses makes no reference to unborn children, and was primarily intended to protect youngsters from exposure to methamphetamine laboratories.

In the last 18 months, Gambril has charged eight women in the 37,000-person county with endangering their unborn babies through drug use, "a tally," The Times says, "without any recent parallel that women's advocates have been able to find."

The article emphasizes the county's rural, Southern culture. It says Maryland threw out two similar cases, while New Mexico's Supreme Court ruled a woman couldn't be charged with child abuse for using drugs while pregnant because the fetus was not a child.

While one local attorney called the charges "an overreaching," The Times says, "others bring up the powerful, unspoken community sanction against the combination of drugs and pregnant women." Hopefully southern Alabama isn't the only place in America where people find drug abuse by pregnant women an especially troublesome problem.

But, The Times seems to say, what else is there to do in southern Alabama?

Covington County is an isolated rural terrain where drugs are a recreational outlet in the absence of others, where the police found nearly 200 methamphetamine laboratories in the first years of the decade, and where they made more arrests for abusing the drug than anywhere else in the state.

All of the women quoted by The Times had several other charges.

It's unfortunate that a public discussion over something as serious as drug abuse by pregnant women has to be laced with the abortion debate. On this issue, at least, isn't there enough common ground on which pro-life and pro-choice advocates can agree?

Christian conservatives are often lambasted these days for fixating on abortion and homosexuality, as if we have sexual hang-ups. Tony Campolo has said for years that the Religious Right has "hijacked" the Christian faith over such issues. Yesterday at the National Cathedral, Rick Warren, who said the country needs liberals and conservatives, lamented that Christians still are viewed as only "right wing." (I'm not quite sure how that is still possible, given that Pastor Warren is arguably the nation's most prominent evangelical himself.) Critics point out that the call to discipleship also involves addressing things like environmental stewardship, poverty, and racism. And in that they are right.

But with the persistent push in our culture toward both abortion and homosexual marriage, what would these critics have Christian conservatives do? Earlier this month, Al Gore came out in favor of gay marriage, stating, "Gay men and women ought to have the same rights as heterosexual men and women - to make contracts, to have hospital visiting rights, to join together in marriage, and I don't understand why it is considered by some people to be a threat to heterosexual marriage. . .."

Are we not allowed to answer him? To abondon the argument is to lose the argument. And we have good reasons, beyond Scripture itself. But we must make these arguments as gently and lovingly as possible, never forgetting that how we make our case counts almost as much in today's culture as the substance of our case.

Pastor Warren is calling for a "second reformation" that includes reconciliation in the church. That's great. Let's all stop calling each other names and agree to do whatever work that God has called us to ... with grace and truth.

--------------------------------------

UPDATE:
Pastor Warren's remarks can be heard by clicking on the following link. They are worth listening to in full.

Just days before the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we have a new report from the Guttmacher Institute that says the U.S. abortion rate has fallen to its lowest level since 1974. Despite fairly widespread access to the new abortion drug RU-486, the rate now stands at 19.4 abortions per 1,000 women age 15-44 in 2005, down from a high of 29.3 per thousand in 1981. The number of abortions is also down, from 1.6 million in 1990 to 1.2 million in 2005 (the last year for which data are available).

While pro-choice advocates point to a lack of access to abortion providers and the success of comprehensive sex-ed programs as factors in the decline, pro-lifers say state laws have made a difference.

Bill Beckman, director of the Illinois Right to Life Committee, said he sees the national decline in abortion numbers as a victory for anti-abortion efforts.

"A number of states over the last five or six years have enhanced their pro-life laws, such as requirements for informed consent and parental notice," said Beckman. "When those laws take effect, the rate of abortion drops. I think the data they're getting is reflecting that change."

While I'm looking forward to a thorough analysis of the numbers, the answer is probably both/and rather than either/or. I believe that cultural attitudes also are changing, thanks to the persistent efforts (such as the spread of ultrasound machines) of pro-lifers to keep before the American people the undeniable fact that every abortion ends a human life. And these efforts must be working, if even pro-choicer Hillary Clinton concedes that abortion is a "tragic choice."

Perhaps not coincidentally, the Guttmacher study comes on the heels of news that the birth rate is unexpectedly booming in the United States.

An Associated Press review of birth numbers dating to 1909 found the total number of U.S. births was the highest since 1961, near the end of the baby boom. An examination of global data also shows that the United States has a higher fertility rate than every country in continental Europe, as well as Australia, Canada and Japan. ...

Experts believe there is a mix of reasons: a decline in contraceptive use, a drop in access to abortion, poor education and poverty.

There are cultural reasons as well. Hispanics as a group have higher fertility rates - about 40 percent higher than the U.S. overall. And experts say Americans, especially those in middle America, view children more favorably than people in many other Westernized countries.

"Americans like children. We are the only people who respond to prosperity by saying, `Let's have another kid,'" said Nan Marie Astone, associate professor of population, family and reproductive health at Johns Hopkins University.

This fall various groups, including the National Institutes of Health and the federal Centers for Disease Control, are rallying behind the radical ideas that people with Down syndrome are valuable and deserve to live. Radical? Apparently. Thanks to new genetic testing capabilities, prospective parents are aborting those unborn children merely suspected of having three copies of the 21st chromosome instead of the usual two at a staggering rate of 90 percent.

Washington Post columnist Patricia Bauer thinks that’s a tragedy:

We cherish our friends and family members and think their unexpected extra chromosome is not the most important thing about them. And we worry that the relentlessness of genetic testing is amplifying stigma and bias against the 350,000 flesh-and-blood Americans who have the condition, as well as people who have other conditions that are now or soon will be prenatally discoverable.

In recent conversations with obstetricians and gynecologists, I've found that we family members aren't the only ones with these fears. Physicians say they're disturbed by mounting demands from prospective parents for nothing less than the "perfect" child, and by lawyers who troll for lawsuits against doctors who have the misfortune to deliver nonstandard babies. Not long ago, a Florida jury awarded a couple more than $21 million when their doctor failed to detect an obscure genetic condition prenatally.

Doctors are left to practice defensive medicine, ordering expensive tests and drowning patients in mind-numbing data, while parents labor under the misapprehension that they have a duty to terminate if the tests so dictate.

Planned Parenthood may have the legal right to operate its new clinic in Aurora, Illinois, but the blowback from the prolife community has been staggering.

In fact, the emerging story looks to me like the rebirth of the prolife protest.

Here's the latest announcement, which arrived in my inbox about an hour ago, from the Prolife Action League:

Aurora, IL - On Saturday, November 17 from 9:00-11:00 AM, a protest will take place at the nation's largest Planned Parenthood facility located at 3051 E. New York Street in Aurora, Illinois. The monthly protests, organized by the Pro-Life Action League, have seen as many as 1,200 pro-life advocates gathering at one time. Rhetoric regarding the protest has heated up this week. Despite allegations of First Amendment violations against the peaceful protestors and a pending lawsuit against the city, Aurora Police Chief William Powell has gone on the offensive, even going so far as to accuse the protestors of being "threatening" when they claim their free speech rights. However, many of the peaceful demonstrators believe it is the Chief who is doing the threatening after calling a paddy wagon to be sent out to last month's protest. At Tuesday's City Council meeting Powell stated, "I hope [demonstrators] will go along with what we ask them to do. If not, I will guarantee there will be arrests made."

Eric Scheidler, Communications Director for the Pro-Life Action League and an Aurora resident, along with other protestors, had a heated discussion with Chief Powell at the Planned Parenthood site this morning.

"Chief Powell was visibly irate as we tried to discuss the plans for the gathering tomorrow," states Scheidler. "When I brought up that the city's outside counsel had given us directives as to the operation of the protest, he said he didn't care about what the attorney said, he would do what he wanted to do. At times, he was so angry that another officer intervened to calm him down."

After months of protests, Scheidler claims the city has continued to give unclear directives as to ordinances relating to the protests. With hundreds of citizens coming out to the Planned Parenthood site on a regular basis, many are questioning why the city seems to be constantly changing the rules.

"We have sought nothing but peace with the city and cooperation with the Aurora Police," states Scheidler. "We have continued to ask for clear, written directives as to laws for conducting these protests, but they have given none. What they have done is show up and intimidate hundreds of Aurora citizens with an armored paddy wagon, constant video surveillance and the city's lawyer in tow."

The opening of Planned Parenthood, scheduled for mid-September, was delayed for two and a half weeks while investigations were conducted into the seemingly deceptive process in which Planned Parenthood received their occupancy and building permits. Amid much controversy, the facility opened on October 2nd. Various investigations regarding zoning issues are still ongoing.

Scheidler vows that the monthly demonstrations will continue, "Regardless of the threats and tactics the city uses to try to keep their citizen's voices from being heard, we will be here praying and marching until no more innocent human lives are slaughtered in our town."

Once arrests begin to occur, prolife protests begin to take on a life of their own. Historically, some prolife protests have stretched for month after month. This situation in Aurora may become the largest stand-off between prolifers and the other side since the Terri Schiavo case.

Many have called Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani hypocritical. Robertson has compromised his position on abortion and gay marriage in order to hitch his wagon to the presidential contender.

Not so, says Naomi Schaefer Riley, in a opinion piece in today's Wall Street Journal. (It deserves to be read in full.) In fact, Robertson's decision fits in a long tradition of evangelical support for an agressive foreign policy toward ideologies deemed to threaten Judeo-Christian civilization.

Riley quotes Richard land, who says evangelicals have long been interested in foreign policy. "The only part of the country that had majority support for Roosevelt's interventionist policies was the South." Then, after World War II, came godless communism. "Communism was seen as a direct threat to the Christian faith and Judeo-Christian civilization. Among Catholics and evangelical Christians, this message resonated first and with the most intensity."

For decades, evangelical missionaries returned home to their churches with stories from behind the growing menace. "Every year, we heard a speaker or two who had come from 'behind the Iron Curtain,' " says John Wilson, editor of CT's sister publication Books & Culture. They had harrowing tales to tell, sometimes first-person, sometimes not. There was a palpable sense of a world-scale conflict with godless communism."

Though some disagree that the threat of Islamic extremism equals that of communism, a similar pattern is emerging among returning missionaries. "In the past you had missionaries come back and talk about being imprisoned. Now you have reports from people about beheadings and bombings," says Timothy Shah, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The fact the Robertson's endorsement has raised such objections shows that there isn't the same kind of wide agreement on foreign policy as there was in the heydays of evangelical anti-communism. It remains to be seen both if Islamic extremism is believed to be the threat that communism was and if Giuliani can be seen as an equal opponent as Ronald Reagan was.

Officials of Aurora, Illinois, have given their approval for a massive new abortion clinic run by Planned Parenthood to open today. Yesterday the county states attorney found that PP had committed no criminal wrongdoing despite hiding the true nature and ownership of the $7.5 million facility while applying for a permit. In a report in today's Chicago Tribune, PP supporters were jubilant--and unrepentant about their misdirection--while opponents promised to continue the fight:

"This is not just a victory for Planned Parenthood, but also a victory for women and families in that area who want access to health care," said Steve Trombley, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood/Chicago Area.

Opponents said they intend to continue to fight the clinic in court, at the City Council, and with round-the-clock protests and prayer vigils.

If all this facility provides is health care, I wonder why PP had to resort to stealth tactics to get it approved. What would supporters say if a bar, a casino, or a strip club moved into their neighborhood using such methods? I'll bet they wouldn't be crowing about "access."

Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider, is attempting to open a humongous, 22,000-square-feet abortion clinic in Aurora, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. No problem, right? Abortion's legal and all that.

Well, not so fast. Today U.S. District Judge Charles Norgle denied the organization's request for a preliminary injunction that would have allowed the clinic to open. It seems that PP didn't disclose to city fathers that it owned the building--after applying for permits under another name--nor that abortions would be performed there. Not only is the clinic's opening delayed, now the county's states attorney is looking into whether any laws were violated.

Abortion-rights supporters, such as Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn, applaud what PP did--calling it "creative subterfuge"--to sneak a "reproductive health clinic" into Aurora. Zorn writes:

Well of course Planned Parenthood representatives didn’t tell the truth to Aurora city officials while they were building a new clinic in the western suburb.

They hid behind the name of a subsidiary company, Gemini Office Development, and were misleadingly vague when asked along the way about the identity of prospective tenants for the $7.5 million facility.

Their goal was straightforward: To open a reproductive-health clinic on land zoned for such purpose.

But they had to use a certain amount of stealth because abortion is one of the services Planned Parenthood offers. And foes of abortion rights, longtime losers in the battle for public opinion, traditionally raise all kinds of rukus [sic] when Planned Parenthood comes into a community.

The foes not only picket construction sites, but they also send picketers out to harass subcontractors at their homes and businesses, try to spread alarm and disgust in the immediate neighborhoods and attempt to browbeat civic officials into implementing just the sort of craven, politically motivated delays we’re now seeing in Aurora.

Then when Planned Parenthood is revealed to have tried to prevent such pressure tactics by using a little creative subterfuge, the opponents of abortion-rights carry on indignantly, as though the deceptions were an effort to skirt the law.

Let me see if I have his reasoning down correctly: (1) the ends justify the means, if the ends are to promote abortion; and (2) it's all the fault of pro-lifers, anyway.

Such situational relativism may work on "24," but it doesn't work in the real world, Eric. Also, if you pro-choicers have really won in the court of public opinion, why do you have to resort to deception to get a clinic without the public's knowledge?

And what would you say if pro-lifers engaged in a little "creative subterfuge" of their own? It seems to me that they have been (unfairly) pilloried by abortion supporters because they don't advertise the fact that their crisis pregnancy centers don't offer abortions. They are criticized for not advertising a service they don't offer. Of course, who does? But in this instance, PP is not advertising a service they do offer. I wonder why?

This whole episode highlights a persistent problem for abortion-rights advocates: an aversion to telling the truth about abortion, which has taken the lives of 50 million unborn children since 1973.

A movement to pass legislation that would give birth certificates to women who deliver stillborn babies is provoking opposition from pro-choice groups.

The New York Times reports,

The birth-certificate laws, often referred to as "Missing Angels" bills, occupy uncertain territory, skirting the abortion debate while implicitly raising the question of fetal personhood.

Many antiabortion groups say the laws fill a need for parents. But some abortion rights supporters see the push for these laws as a barely disguised political move to undermine abortion rights.

In some states, local chapters of abortion rights groups have opposed the legislation. But at the national level, some abortion rights groups are comfortable with the laws, if they are drafted carefully to cover naturally occurring fetal death and not late-term abortion.

One woman recounted receiving a death certificate after her daughter was stillborn. "When I called and asked for my daughter's birth certificate, the woman asked how she died, and when I told her, she said I didn't have a baby, I had a fetus, and I couldn't get a birth certificate."

A bumper sticker on my car, which posted next to several others gives anyone driving behind me ample reason to keep their eyes off the road (and once got me out of ticket), repeats those words above: Pro-Woman, Pro-Life. It's from the group Feminists for Life, which was the focus of attention during Justice John Roberts's confirmation hearings because his wife had been affiliated with the group.

It seems the group's strategy, opposing abortion by focusing on the needs of women, is gaining a wider audience. The New York Times reports,

last month's Supreme Court decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act marked a milestone for a different argument advanced by anti-abortion leaders, one they are increasingly making in state legislatures around the country. They say that abortion, as a rule, is not in the best interest of the woman; that women are often misled or ill-informed about its risks to their own physical or emotional health; and that the interests of the pregnant woman and the fetus are, in fact, the same.

Justice Kennedy mentioned the view that women's health is endagered by abortion in his argument supporting the partial-birth abortion ban. "While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon, it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained."

"Many, on both sides, viewed that as an invitation from a newly conservative court to pass tough new counseling and informed-consent laws intended for women seeking abortions," writes The Times. It seems that the next battle over a woman's "right to choose" will be her right to hear or refuse to hear the possible ill effects of an abortion.

"Abortion rights supporters ... have had to grapple with the reality that the right to choose may well be used selectively to abort fetuses deemed genetically undesirable," reports The New York Times for the second time in the last two weeks. "And many are finding that, while they support a woman's right to have an abortion if she does not want to have a baby, they are less comfortable when abortion is used by women who don't want to have a particular baby."

Public opinon seems to be on the side of those who chose to abort genetically disabled babies. 70 percent of Americans agree with such a choice. Where should America draw the line between a legitmate reason for aborting a baby and an illegitimate one?

Kirsten Moore, president of the pro-choice Reproductive Health Technologies Project, said that when members of her staff recently discussed whether to recommend that any prenatal tests be banned, they found it impossible to draw a line - even at sex selection, which almost all found morally repugnant. "We all had our own zones of discomfort but still couldn't quite bring ourselves to say, ?Here's the line, firm and clear' because that is the core of the pro-choice philosophy," she said. "You can never make that decision for someone else."

Unless you say that that decision to is not theirs to make.

According to LifeNews.com, Catholic politicians are deeply offended that Pope Benedict wants the church to be the church. Benedict recently said that Catholic politicians who vote for policies that support abortion automatically excommunicate themselves. In response, a group of these politicians said, the penalty of excommunication "offend(s) the very nature of the American experiment and do(es) a great disservice to the centuries of good work the church has done."

God forbid that the church would do anything to question the American experiment.

The New York Times reports that former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani will offer an explanation of his views on abortion.

The shift in emphasis comes as the Giuliani campaign has struggled to deal with the fallout from the first Republican presidential candidate debate, in which he gave halting and apparently contradictory responses to questions about his support for abortion rights. ...

The campaign’s approach would be a sharp departure from the traditional route to the Republican nomination in the last 20 years, in which Republicans have highlighted their antiabortion views.

The headlines were so predictable I almost didn't read the stories: "Pope Opens Trip with Remarks Against Abortion" (New York Times) and "Pope Stresses Opposition to Abortion" (Associated Press).

Is the Pope Catholic?

But there seems to be some news here. On his flight to Brazil, the Pope made some remarks that seemed to condemn not only women who have abortions and the doctors who provide them, but also the polticians who vote for legalization of abortion--as they did recently in Mexico, providing for legal abortions up to 12 weeks gestation.

Papal spokesman (when it's the Vatican, you can use the gender-specific term) Federico Lombardi immediately tried to soften the possible implication of the Pope's words. But then, well, I'll let the New York Times tell the story:

The pope's spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, quickly issued a clarification that played down his words, but then issued a statement approved by the pope that seemed to confirm a new gravity on politicians who allow abortion.

"Legislative action in favor of abortion is incompatible with participation in the Eucharist," the statement said, and politicians who vote that way should "exclude themselves from communion."

So, this turns the clock back to the 2004 election controversy over St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke telling pro-choice Catholic presidential candidate John Kerry that he should not receive communion when campaigning on Burke's turf. If memory serves, Washington's Cardinal Theodore McCarrick tried to soften the potential impact of Burke's statements. But now that Benedict has spoken, it looks like Burke may have been right.

The automatic self-excommunication that applies to women who have abortions and their doctors also applies to legislators. This doesn't mean that priests are supposed to become the Communion police, but it does mean that the Church considers it a pretty grievous thing for a Catholic politician who has voted to legalize abortion to present him or herself to receive Communion.

Christianity Today's June 2004 editorial on the dispute between Burke and Kerry can be read in the CT Library (paid archive).