I wrote yesterday about a premature baby [Jayden Capewell, pictured right], who was left to die without being assessed by physicians for viability simply because at the gestational age of 21 weeks and 5 days he was born 2 days shy of the 22-week cut-off point.

I mentioned that I wondered if Britain's nationalized healthcare program played a part in this baby's death because of apparent rules cited in the article to withhold treatment of pregnant mothers in premature labor as well as very premature babies.

I've been doing more research on this. 1st, the Daily Mail story has been updated from yesterday. Its intro now reads...

I received the following email from Deidrea Laux, Baby Thomas's Mom, both of whom I featured in a post yesterday. Deidrea gave me permission to share her note with you.

Hi Jill -

My name is Deidrea Laux and I noticed that you posted our story from the Dallas Morning News.

I just wanted to tell you thank you for getting the word out there. One of the primary reasons we opened our lives up during such a difficult time was to bring awareness to situations like ours. We are blessed to be surrounded by a very supportive medical community. Once we decided to move forward with our pregnancy, our OB pulled together a team to walk us through medical decisions and they supported us 100%....

UPDATE, 9:40a: From moderator Chris:

There's another organization that helps celebrate these young lives. Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep is a non-profit that coordinates professional photographers to capture stories similar to Thomas's. They provide beautiful heirloom remembrance photography that helps heal and tell these poignant stories for families and loved ones.

My friend Allison Runnion-Baker forwarded the video below, made by the Dallas News. It tells the touching story of a couple who decided to carry their lethally ill baby to term. The video is very well done and sends a powerful pro-life message. Baby Thomas's mother Deidrea says in the video, "I think sometimes when you make the toughest decisions, you can get the greatest joy out of those."

Get your kleenex out. You will watch birth, celebrating life, and mourning death in quick succession....

Allison and I worked at Christ Hospital together. She testified with me before a congressional subcommittee about her experience there....

UPDATE, 10:50a: Here are links to the entire Beck segment yesterday. In clip 1 Beck covers the history of eugenics in America. Clip 2 includes what I discuss in my post and a panel discussion.

[HT: Claude]
_______________

Glenn Beck ran a valuable exposé yesterday showcasing some of the people Obama has surrounding himself with related to the healthcare issue. I'll pick up the piece with a clip Beck ran of Obama in an earlier speech, with Beck following up:

Obama: Let me tell you who I associate with.... Those are the people, Democrats and Republicans, who have shaped my ideas and who will be surrounding me in the White House.

Beck: We will do exactly what Obama himself has told us to do: We have to find out about his advisers. Who is shaping his opinion? Who is surrounding him? We know it's not based in eugenics, but what is it based in?...

In the midst of a national debate on healthcare rationing of the elderly, disabled, and informed comes this, posted on Drudge this morning. in the Washington Times:

Four years after Hurricane Katrina exposed major deficiencies in the capacity of governments to evacuate and care for the disabled during a natural disaster, America's most vulnerable citizens are barely considered in most emergency plans, according to a report being issued Wednesday by the National Council on Disability....

by intern Heather B.

It's time to make room on the bookshelf for another gem: My Sister, Alicia May gently portrays the familial love shared by a girl and her younger sister, who is "special for many reasons," among them being that she has Down syndrome.

The 13-page children's book takes the reader on a "day in the life of"-like saga narrating the blessings and hardships of growing up with a sibling who has Down syndrome. Written in the first person, each page draws a new example that beautifully emphasizes the joys experienced by a proud and patient older sister....

When I watched the new documentary Maafa 21 last weekend (read my snapshot review here and Matt Abbott's in-depth review here) I was shocked to learn President Nixon was pro-abortion and pro-population control of blacks. The above still shot comes from that film.

Then on June 23 the Nixon Presidential Library released 154 hours of secret audiotapes Nixon made during the most critical point in U.S. history re: abortion, January and February 1973.

Reported the New York Times on June 23...

Today is known as Juneteenth, " Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, [which] commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery in... TX [a mostly Confederate state] in 1865. Celebrated on June 19, the term is a portmanteau of June and nineteenth, and is recognized as a state holiday in 31 of the United States," according to Wikipedia.

To the right is a photo of a Juneteenth celebration, circa 1900.

Today, fittingly, a new film entitled, "MAAFA 21 - Black genocide in 21st century America," is being released on DVD.

Produced by Life Dynamics, it emphasizes the themes of eugenics, abortion, and the African American community. The film was written and directed by Mark Crutcher....

In an interesting set of coincidences, the charlatan identified in the story below, Beccah Beushausen, apparently lives in the same Chicago suburb as me, Mokena, IL, established her p.o. box in Oak Lawn, where Christ Hospital is located, and asked that donations be sent to the local pregnancy care center I support, Pregnancy Aid South Suburbs, which has now been implicated through no fault of its own.

This led one commenter on another blog to write, "Was the blogger suffering from a sort of Jill Stanek attention envy, or is she a Jill Stanek confederate?" I don't think so, but the coincidences are indeed strange. I checked my emails and don't think she contacted me to publicize her pseudo-tragedy. I can imagine how taken we on this blog would feel had I done so.

From the Associated Press, June 12...

In this day of abundant In vitro fertilization, it is rare to hear of naturally conceived triplets, let alone this. From BBC News, May 12:

A 28-year-old mother from Norfolk has more than doubled the size of her family with the birth of triplet boys.

Ken and Emma Spooner's new babies are particularly special because they are identical. The chance of this occurring naturally is one in 150,000.

The brothers joined their sister Molly, 8, and brother Jacob, 5....

Identical triplets are born when 1 fertilised egg splits to create 3 separate embryos....

by Kelli

Glenn Beck is set to air his show at 5pm EST today on Fox News, covering the topic of Hillary Clinton and her acceptance of the Margaret Sanger Award.

Sanger was the founder of Planned Parenthood and a strong proponent of eugenics.

For more information on Glenn Beck, see his page at Fox News.

[HT: Commenters Joanne and Janet; image courtesy of NY Daily News.]

On April 5, Palm Sunday, the pro-life student group NDResponse.com sponsored a rally at Notre Dame with over 400 participants - during spring break - to prayerfully protest its invitation to President Barack Obama to speak at its May 17 commencement.

The following WSBT.com video spotlighted the event but added in the intro, "But... supporters of the president also showed up." I noted the 2 Obama fans WSBT interviewed were both black, recalling this president who decries racism got 95% of the black vote.

Then I spotted an April 6 Fox28.com news piece, "Notre Dame students rally in support of Obama"...

by Bethany Kerr

babyfaithhope.blogspot.com is a blog with an amazing testimony.

It is written by a 23-year-old, unmarried woman, Myah, who in her last year of university (with no maternity leave), found herself pregnant with a baby girl who was diagnosed with anencephaly, which is a birth defect considered to be "incompatible with life."

Myah was given the option to abort, but refused. She carried her baby to term, and miraculously, little Faith Hope has lived 32 days as of yesterday!

Here is Myah's testimony from her sidebar:

When I was 19 weeks pregnant, I was told my baby had no brain.... I was told my baby was only alive because she was attached to me but that she couldn't survive on her own. The doctor said I could continue the pregnancy safely, but my baby would die shortly after being born....

Barack Obama made history as the 1st president to appear on Jay Leno last night. Wanting to prove he is capable of speaking without a teleprompter, Obama proceeded to prove he is not. Joe Biden's foot-in-mouth disease must be contagious.

As the mom of a child who actually bowled in a special recreation program, I was offended. And Obama actually doesn't know what he's talking about. Those kids could bowl him under the alley.

Even Keith Olbermann winced, wondering, "What do we do - what does he do - about that?"...

The ignorance of blacks - even black churches - to the eugenic underpinnings of Planned Parenthood could not be any more epitomized than as described in today's Virginian-Pilot:

At New Light Full Gospel Baptist Church, congregants' benchmark on most topics is "the Word," meaning the Bible.

But on a recent night, more than 50 New Light adults and teens opened up to words from an additional source - Planned Parenthood, on stopping teen pregnancy.

Among many faith-based groups, few organizations are less popular than Planned Parenthood, a provider of women's health services, sex education and abortions.

Yet on this night, teen pregnancy was something Planned Parenthood speaker Margie Rashti [pictured left] and New Light members all agreed was troubling and preventable.

"We come together as a team, working to try to pass down wisdom to the young ladies and young men who are part of this pandemic we call teen pregnancy," Elder Frankie Fells said in his opening prayer....

UPDATE, 10:45a: Moderator Bethany found the following YouTube video of a young man, Daniel Drinker, with Down syndrome, who supported Barack Obama in the primary because he was a "good talker," was "black," had a "good wife," and had a "deep voice." Sounds like reasons why many Obama supporters voted for him, but I digress. Dan didn't know Barack Obama supports killing preborn babies with Down syndrome. Wonder if that would have made a difference in his vote.

This is fabulous news. Makes me want to cry just thinking about it. Here's the press release emailed to me. An attached note stated the group has invited Sarah Palin to participate. That would be wonderful....

For more information:
Eileen Haupt: 802-899-4882
Leticia Velasquez: 860-556-9116

I've previously blogged on Dick and Rick Hoyt, but at the Foundation for Life of Toledo banquet I spoke at last week organizers played a different tribute to the Hoyts I found touching to the song, "I can only imagine"....

Last night after a speaking engagement, a mom tried to describe to me the extent to which doctors pressured her to abort her now 8-year-old son with Down syndrome.

She said after the diagnosis, every doctor persistently recommended she abort at every visit, even into her 32nd week. They made her feel crazy for not terminating and treated her pregnancy like a disease. She said she understood why 9 of 10 Down's babies are aborted.

Then this morning I received this email from Jeanne describing a similar experience. Her refusal to abort her severely premature baby got her bad care that almost killed her as well as her baby....

Liberal Wonkette apparently thinks Sarah Palin's son Trig, who has Down syndrome, finds life is so embarrassing he wishes Mom would have taken the advice of her doctor and aborted him.

Don't know which was worse, the post (which was snipped to delete ads) or the comments, the first few of which I'm also posting...

I've been meaning to post this for a few days, very touching. By Rich Lowry of National Review Online, August 31:

I found the Palin event Friday incredibly moving. Partly because of Trig.

The sentimentalist in me would be willing to see anyone who is loving and unselfish enough to welcome a Down kid into their family elevated to high office.

When I was thinking of Trig, I was reminded of an encounter I had a couple of weeks ago on the Delta Shuttle from Washington to New York. It was a mostly empty plane, but I went all the back to the very emptiest part of the plane to spread out and enjoy the quiet. And there was a man sitting in the very back row who immediately piped up, "Hi. I'm Ian. Would you like to sit next to me?"

He was a guy with Down Syndrome, maybe in his twenties. I declined the offer, but we struck up a conversation. He was going to New York for a family celebration, including for his birthday. I told him I had a birthday coming up too and he lit up and came over to vigorously shake my hand in congratulations - more delighted by my birthday than his own....

I'm not sure what happened, but it's all good. I reported last week, based on several Indian news stories like this, that the Bombay High Court had agreed to let a couple abort their 26-week old baby with a heart blockage, repairable with a pacemaker (or "peacemaker," according to the Indian story).

The bottom line must have gotten lost in translation, because the front page story yesterday in The Hindu, India's national newspaper:

The Bombay High Court on Monday rejected the petition filed by Niketa and her husband Haresh Mehta... seeking permission to terminate her pregnancy, now in the 26th week.

The foetus was diagnosed with a complete heart blockage when she was in the 24th week of pregnancy. The couple wanted to abort the child for fear it would suffer for life....

The 1st test tube baby, Louise Brown, will turn 30 in a week, on July 25. The July 17 issue of Nature takes a look at the next 30 years of IVF:

Already, modern societies are entering an era of personalized genetics....

True... no embryo will have the perfect genetic future. But these techniques could allow parents to create a top-5 wish-list of the characteristics they most want for their child - avoiding, for example, the Parkinson's disease that plagues the family - and choose the embryo most likely to meet those criteria.

Or the parents may focus on non-health-related aspects such as intelligence and ambition....

The magazine asked several researchers to speculate on the next 3 decades.

Davor Solter, developmental biologist at the Institute of Medical Biology, Singapore...

Dick and Rick Hoyt are a father-and-son team from MA who together compete just about continuously in marathon races. And if they're not in a marathon they are in a triathlon - that daunting, almost superhuman, combination of 26.2 miles of running, 112 miles of bicycling, and 2.4 miles of swimming. Together they have climbed mountains, and once trekked 3,735 miles across America.

It's a remarkable record of exertion - all the more so when you consider that Rick can't walk or talk.

For the past 25 years or more Dick, who is 65, has pushed and pulled his son across the country and over hundreds of finish lines. When Dick runs, Rick is in a wheelchair that Dick is pushing. When Dick cycles, Rick is in the seat-pod from his wheelchair, attached to the front of the bike. When Dick swims, Rick is in a small but heavy, firmly stabilized boat being pulled by Dick.

At Rick's birth in 1962 the umbilical cord coiled around his neck and cut off oxygen to his brain. Dick and his wife, Judy, were told that there would be no hope for their child's development.

"It's been a story of exclusion ever since he was born," Dick told me....

Continue reading Team Hoyt's inspiring story at multi'merica.com.

And here's Team Hoyt in action:

[HT: friend Bruce T.; photo courtesy of Team Hoyt]

A group of black pro-life leaders will hold a press conference at the NAACP convention at the Hyatt Regency in Cincinnati July 14 to appeal to the NAACP to join in the call to Congress to defund Planned Parenthood for its documented affinity for killing black preborn children....

From Mark Steyn, who I've decided I have a crush on, an excerpt from his column, Sexism, not Obama, beat Hillary, May 31:

Sex-selective abortion is a fact of life in India, where the gender ratio has declined to 1,000 boys to 900 girls nationally, and as low as 1,000 boys to 300 girls in some Punjabi cities.

In China, the state-enforced "one child" policy has brought about the most gender-distorted demographic cohort in global history, the so-called guang gun - "bare branches." If you can only have one kid, parents choose to abort girls and wait for a boy, to the point where in the first generation to grow to adulthood under this policy there are 119 boys for every 100 girls. In practice, a "woman's right to choose" turns out to mean the right to choose not to have any women.

And what of the Western world?...

It's all in the attitude. Every life has merit and is worth living. We mourn the loss of this fighter and express appreciation for her loving family. From the Associated Press, May 28:

Memphis, TN - A woman who spent nearly 60 years of her life in an iron lung after being diagnosed with polio as a child died Wednesday after a power failure shut down the machine that kept her breathing, her family said....

To the consternation of campus liberals, Portland State Students for Life in OR - spearheaded by our own commenter Nathan Sheets - last year displayed the poster above (click to enlarge) to commemorate the African-American community's aborted dead during Black History Month.

The comments stirred by my post yesterday, "Planned Parenthood takes bucks to abort blacks," resulted in an interesting find.

Pro-abort FetusFascist linked to a Centers for Disease Control stat she thought scored a point for her side....

In response to my Down trodding post, about the controversy stirred earlier this week when University of North Carolina professor Albert Harris told his embryology class that babies with Down syndrome should be aborted, documentary film maker Bonnie Burt emailed him an offer:

I have recently completed a film about a couple, both born with Down syndrome... [and] would like to offer your university a free screening of.... Strong Love....

Please let me know if you are interested in previewing this film. I think it will help along the discussion that Professor Harris started. It might be of interest to your students.

Synopsis of the movie, from its website:

Strong Love is the story of world-class weight lifter Jon Shapiro and his childhood sweetheart Holly James, both of whom were born with Down syndrome. This documentary follows the couple over the course of three years, starting with their decision to get married. Their challenges, their triumphs, and their complex, sometimes surprising relationships with family and friends are at the heart of this inspiring film.

Bonnie has just posted an excerpt from Strong Love on YouTube. I just watched it a second time and cried a second time. I pity people who view those with Down syndrome as a liability on this earth rather than a much needed ambassadors of pure and unconditional love.

I'm thrilled this incident created flak and made the news, indicating more sensitivity to the issue of eugenic abortions. From the Associated Press, today:

Comments by a University of North Carolina professor about Down syndrome has angered several students in his class.

Albert Harris told his embryology class on Monday he thinks fetuses with Down syndrome should be aborted. He says he's made the comment many times before.

But senior Lara Frame of Charlotte said the classroom was no place for Harris to express his opinion. Frame's brother has Down syndrome and she said Harris' comments made her physically ill....

By: Mary Kay Hastings

I found this quote and thought it was rather interesting, considering the posts that we have put up over the last week and a half.

Not only have I continued to follow your work with loving admiration and expect ever greater results from your beneficence, I have also known of Nehru's statesmanlike interest in birth-control, and now I behold you and him and Lady Rama Rau working together -- a triple Hercules -- for the deliverance of a land long-cursed with excess of population. I cannot imagine anything more blessed happening on earth. As you teach, mankind has, through ignorance, often destroyed the sweet joy of childhood. Now a tide of enlightenment, slow but sure, shall lift its healing waves from one end of the world to the other until every child has a chance to be well born, well fed and fairly started in life -- and that is woman's natural work as the creator of the human race. Affectionately I salute you, Margaret Sanger, as the prophet and the woman Prometheus of humanity's highest physical and mental welfare....

Abortion-Survivor Finds a Home: John XXIII Community Welcomes Baby Girl

Rome, February 8, Zenit.org: A 15-month-old girl whose parents tried to abort her because she is blind, but survived the procedure, has been adopted by a John XXIII Community household in Rome.

The community announced in a Feb. 2 press conference that the baby was diagnosed with an eye condition that blinded her, and her parents opted for abortion. But the pregnancy was already in the 22nd week, and the baby was born alive. Doctors, following Italian law, thus tried to save her and succeeded....

by Bethany Kerr

I never am more disgusted than when I read an article like this.

Katherine Mobey, 38, explains in great detail her eugenic reasoning behind her decision to kill her first child, who through no fault of his/her own, was imperfect, having Down's Syndrome, and exomphalos, which can much of the time be corrected with surgery.

From You Magazine:

Neil and I had been married less than a year when, in 2001, I discovered I was expecting. We were so ecstatic, we immediately went out and bought three more tests - just to be sure. The routine 12-week scan gave us the first sight of our baby and all appeared to be well.

by Mary Kay Hastings

Brent Rooney makes the case that since no studies were ever done of abortions on animals, performing them on people is a clear cut case of "human experimentation." Coincidentally, these "experiments" are being done primarily on black and Hispanic women:

"Suction" abortion (VAA, Vacuum Aspiration Abortion) performed on Black American women and Hispanic-American women is EXPERIMENTAL UNPROVEN surgery, since there are zero published animal studies demonstrating safety from risks of future premature births, mammary (breast) cancer, etc.

On 16 January 2008, Dr. Sharon Camp, President of the research arm of Planned Parenthood (AGI, Alan Guttmacher Institute) admitted in an email to me that AGI could find no published animal 'suction' abortion study.

It is an ethical scandal that "suction" abortions were performed on humans before safety
validation via published animal studies.

Margaret Sanger would be proud. Reading on:

by Steven Ertelt

From LifeNews.com, February 4:

A report from Britain shows that 66 babies were born alive on one year alone after abortions done with public money under the nation's health care system

The British National Health Service says women were given drugs to soften their cervix and had labor induced to birth the child so prematurely that there is no way to provide enough care for the child to live.

After birth, the babies received no medical care or attention, the report indicated....

I linked to this story last week. Didn't know the details. And the Vatican is absolutely right. If you don't think so, explain.

From the Herald Sun, today:

A botched abortion of a fetus instead of its Down syndrome twin has prompted the Vatican to compare abortion to the Nazis' selective breeding practices....

Last week you'll recall I excerpted a story from Tribune Newspapers about a mother who completed the pregnancy of her anencephalic baby and was able to spend 35 minutes with him after delivery until he died.

It was a touching story that received several comments, including one from an aunt of the baby and two from other mothers who delivered anencephalic babies.

Well, it turns out the story was planted as part of an anti-abortion conspiracy plot to bolster support for the Partial Birth Abortion Ban, as this May 11 letter to the editor revealed....

This amazing video, new up on YouTube, has nothing to do with our topic either, except to celebrate physical diversity.

[Hat tip: Andrew]

Matt and Ginny Mooney's blog is here.

[Hat tip: Dawn Patrol via Br. Francis]

Aborting babies with Down syndrome is a topic close to me, since, as most of you know, holding one such live aborted baby propelled me into the pro-live movement eight years ago.

The New York Times reported today on a movement to curtail the huge percentage - 90% - of mothers aborting babies with DS. I'm glad about that, though, of course, the NYT had to apply a liberal slant.

Blogger Sherry W. at Intentional Disciples did a great job of dissecting the article....

The third season of MTV's reality show Run's House, which begins April 9, will feature a poignant episode.

Rev. Run Simmons, 42, was a founding member and lead vocalist of the '80s rap group Run-DMC and is now a preacher. He and his wife of 12 years, Justine, 43, are parents to five children, ages 10-23. The oldest three are from Run's first marriage.

The cliffhanger ending of season two was Rev. Run's announcement Justine was pregnant. What viewers will learn in season three is the baby, born September 26, 2006, and named Victoria Anne, died two hours after she was born.

They will also learn Run and Justine were told midway through her pregnancy the baby had a birth defect, omphalocele, which causes abdominal organs to grow outside the body. The Simmons opted not to abort....

Associated Press, today:

Orosi, CA - The first newborn was discovered swaddled in a blanket on an outdoor bench, an umbilical cord still hanging from his tiny body. Then, at neat 11-month intervals, two more abandoned babies were found in parked pickup trucks in the same neighborhood.

This week, DNA tests established all three babies were almost certainly born to the same mother.

Now, in a heartbreaking mystery that has transfixed this central California farm community of 7,300, investigators are trying to find the mother and figure out what drove her to such desperate lengths....

All three newborns were found within a two-block radius. The first two - a boy and a girl - survived and are now wards of the state. The third baby was found dead of exposure on the cold night of Dec. 3....