by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• My FOX Orlando and a variety of celebrity tabloids are reporting that former American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino told the Mecklenburg County Court in NC that she had an abortion before attempting suicide 3 months ago.The father of the child was a married man named Antwaun Cook, whom Barrino claims she believed was separated from his wife.

• Pro-lifers in Council Bluffs, IA came out to a city council meeting to show their opposition to LeRoy Carhart’s plans to build a late-term abortion mill there:

  Carhart, the Bellevue doctor who once performed late-term abortions in Nebraska, recently said he plans to open an abortion clinic in Council Bluffs.

  If so, it won’t be on Avenue G and North 15th Street. At its meeting Monday, the council unanimously agreed to dispose of 24,393 square feet of vacant city ground near that intersection, but with the stipulation that an abortion clinic could not be built there.

• The LA Times has a long article on the CA Institute of Regenerative Medicine and their plans to ask CA for more stem cell money. Wesley Smith comments:

  So who cares about fiscal sanity? Who cares that ESCR is now funded without the Bush restrictions? Who cares that human cloning hasn’t worked out? Who cares that CA is falling into the ocean fiscally? Who cares that our taxpayers are groaning under high taxes and an astonishing level of bond debt? Not the CA Institute of Regenerative Medicine.

• A Harvard researcher has developed a new way to reprogram “mature endothelial cells – which line the interior of blood vessels” into flexible adult stem cells:

  Medici’s study, published online earlier this week in the journal Nature Medicine, found a mutated gene that causes a disease known as Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva induced endothelial cells to become cells very similar to adult mesenchymal stem cells, which have the ability to differentiate into bone, fat, and cartilage cells….

  In addition, Medici said the new discovery is “a much safer alternative than induced pluripotent stem cells,” which also come from reprogrammed mature cells but can lead to cancer in patients.