Life Links 10-21-11
by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat
- UK’s The Guardian is covering the news of a Chinese woman’s death after a forced abortion. The story was broken by Women’s Rights without Frontiers.
- Pro-life legislation passed in Russia’s parliament:
The law passed on Friday limits abortions to 12 weeks of pregnancy — except for women who say they can’t afford a child, who may have an abortion up to 22 weeks.
The law also stipulates a mandatory waiting period of two to seven days before the procedure, described as time for a woman to reconsider her decision.
The law does not include restrictions proposed by the Russian Orthodox Church, such as a requirement for a husband’s or parents’ consent for married women or teenage girls or for a doctor’s right to refuse an abortion.
- The Washington Post has presidential candidate Herman Cain’s most recent statement on abortion:
I will appoint judges who understand the original intent of the Constitution. Judges who are committed to the rule of law, know that the Constitution contains no right to take the life of unborn children.
I will oppose government funding of abortion. I will veto any legislation that contains funds for Planned Parenthood. I will do everything that a President can do, consistent with his constitutional role, to advance the culture of life.
Didn’t Rudy Giuliani promise to do basically the same thing while still self-describing himself as “pro-choice?” Just being opposed to tax-funded abortions and promising to appoint judges committed to the rule of law doesn’t make a presidential candidate “pro-life.”
We still need answers to specific questions like what’s Cain’s stance on the Mexico City policy, the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, and signing pro-life legislation which restricts access to abortion like prohibiting the transportation of minors across state lines to avoid state parental consent law. Also, what does Cain think is consistent with the constitutional role of the president? Maybe he thinks it would be unconstitutional for the federal government to restrict abortion.
Broad statements will not do. Answers to specific questions are needed.
- A piece in the New England Journal of Medicine discusses the effectiveness of two different types of pro-life legislation. Demand-side policies (like informed consent) attempt to impact how many women want abortions while supply-side policies place regulations on abortion providers.
The study found that a supply-side policy in Texas was much more effective than a demand-side policy:
If Texas’s demand-side policies had an impact, there would have been a decrease in abortions at all gestational stages. If only the supply-side policy restricted access, the decrease would be limited to abortions performed at or after 16 weeks. I found that the supply-side policy had dramatic effects, whereas the demand-side policy had none.
The number of abortions performed in Texas at or after 16 weeks of gestation dropped by 88%, from 3642 in 2003 to 446 in 2004, while the number of residents who left the state for a late abortion almost quadrupled, from 187 in 2003 to 736 in 2004. Despite this large outflow, there were 2460 fewer abortions at 16 weeks or later in Texas residents 1 year after the law took effect, a 68% decline. By 2006, Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio had ambulatory surgical centers in which abortions were performed at or after 16 weeks of gestation, but the number of such abortions remained well below the 2003 level. Over the same period there was no meaningful change in the number of abortions before 16 weeks of gestation…. The demand-side policies had no measurable impact….
If policies rendering free-standing abortion clinics economically unviable are allowed to stand, a map of U.S. abortion services will probably resemble the blue-state–red-state configuration after the 2004 presidential election. Services will be readily available in coastal blue states, whereas women in the country’s vast middle will have to travel large distances for access……
The pre-Roe data illustrate that the farther women must travel for an abortion, the lower the abortion rate will be, and that travel distance is a greater obstacle for less-advantaged women.
[Photos via nypost.com and liveaction.org]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
So… legislation in Russia which allows unborn children up to 3 months to be aborted for any reason, plus up to 22 weeks in the case of poverty is “pro-life” but Herman Cain’s positions aren’t pro-life?
This is restrictive legislation. It is something like the old “quickening” rule that limited it to before around the fourth month because that was the time the unborn could be felt to move, a status in which the girl or woman was said to be “quick with child.” This being felt to move made the unborn emotionally more “real” to the pregnant female — and to those who touched her belly. It also tends to ensure abortion is not legal as the pregnancy gets closer to the period in which the nervous system is “hooked up” and the fetus may actually experience pain as it is being destroyed.
Re: Herman Cain,
I’m one of the most steadfast Personhood advocates here, I didn’t vote for McCain because he wasn’t pro-life, and I’m a huge skeptic of GOP politicians. But I can prove without a doubt that Herman Cain’s statements were not only pro-life, but even consistent with Personhood. He never made a mistake, he never made a misstatement — we just understood his words differently from how he meant them (which is still partly his fault, but still…)
The following points reference this video interview with John Stossel where it seems Cain is contradicting himself over and over, but he’s not if you’re paying attention.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Uhgi-Ja3HbM
When Cain says government shouldn’t make “that decision,” he’s actually agreeing with pro-lifers like myself and Alan Keyes (who wrote a WND article about this) that government has NO AUTHORITY to abrogate the inalienable rights of unborn children to life. Therefore, government shouldn’t be involved in a decision about which they have no authority.
A “decision” assumes they have some standing to decide policy. Cain is saying exactly what we’re saying — these are inalienable rights, which must be guaranteed by the government, but about which the government has no say and no standing to make policy.
Stossel and that other guest were dumbfounded, as was Keyes and the rest of us, because we were so surprised to see someone say on national TV that it’s not up to the government to decide what our rights are — our rights were given by our Creator and cannot be taken away. We understand that, but Stossel doesn’t, so he had no context from which to understand what Cain was saying.
At first glance, it looks like he was contradicting himself, but if so he did so repeatedly and completely, several times. No one does that. In reality, he wasn’t contradicting himself.
When he said, “No, people shouldn’t be just free to abort,” as well as other times when he asserted that abortion should not be legal, period, Cain is expressing a pro-Personhood sentiment.
When he said women have a choice to abort, he’s saying they can choose to break the law. How do we know that’s what he meant?
Because look at the exchange about drugs — mind-altering drugs are already illegal, but when the other guest suggests he and Stossel should have the choice to get high, Cain says they already do. How can that be possible if drugs are illegal? Only if he’s saying they have a choice to break the law.
So I believe Cain’s problem is not one of knowing where he stands on abortion — it’s one of communicating clearly what that stand is, in a way that the general public (and even us!) cannot misunderstand.
I’ll credit Bill Fortenberry of Personhood Alabama for realizing this before I did. His article is also worth reading: http://www.personhoodinitiative.com/herman-cain.html
What a shame. My prayer’s are with Ma’s family. It is hard to believe that all the superficial stories in the press will move ahead while virtually no one will hear about this.