Big in the early 70s, saline abortions fell out of favor by the mid-80s because they were - shock - dangerous to the mother.

By 2004 the Centers for Disease Control estimated saline abortions accounted for only 0.6% of all abortions. They are done in the 2nd trimester, between 16-24 weeks.

To commit a saline abortion, the abortionist first removes some amniotic fluid by needle through the abdomen. S/he then injects a concentrated salt solution. The baby's sensitive skin is burned as well as internal organs when the baby swallows or "inhales" (practice breathes) the searing liquid.

Babies are known to writhe quite dramatically during the procedure, taking between 12-48 hours to die and causing the mother discomfort....

But the real problem for mom is if her abortionist accidentally injects the saline into her bloodstream, in which case she dies.

So since this type of abortion is dangerous to women and mostly abandoned, I hope our friends on the other side will join us in welcoming its ban.

On March 10 bills to ban saline abortions were introduced in both the MN House and Senate.

National Right to Life attorney March Balch crafted the language, according to MN Citizens Concerned for Life spokesperson Bill Poehler, with whom I just spoke.

Poehler said the only other states with saline bans were MO and UT. MO's was shot down when the Supreme Court struck the 1st partial birth abortion ban. He wasn't sure on UT. I can't determine either but bet it fell likewise.

So this is likely the 1st saline ban attempted by a state since the Supreme Court upheld a ban on a particular abortion procedure, pba, 11 months ago. Stated the MCCL press release:

The U.S. Supreme Court found partial-birth abortion to be so horrific and inhumane that it could not remain legal. It was the first time since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that a specific method of abortion was outlawed. Because saline abortion is every bit as cruel to unborn children and dangerous to women, MCCL is confident the courts would rule a ban constitutional.

UPDATE, 6:30p: Wikipedia has a history of saline abortions, requested from reader Sandy.

[HT: LifeNews.com; photo courtesy of pro-abort commenter FetusFascist, who wanted to make sure I got the photo right]

This morning the US Senate voted 52-42 to ban Indian Health Service funds from being used for abortions except to save a mother's life, or for rape or incest of a minor.

This has been long-standing US policy since 1982, when President Reagan closed a loophole and Congress later agreed, in conjunction with the Hyde Amendment for Medicaid funding.

But the fix has never been permanent. The House must also pass the measure, although a DC insider noted, "I doubt the House will take up this measure anytime soon."

Democrats voting yes...

Landrieu
Bayh
Reid
Casey
Salazar
Byrd
Johnson
Nelson (NE)

Republicans voting no...

Snowe
Specter
Collins

Clinton, McCain, and Obama were absent. See how your senator voted here.

From the Onion News Network:

[Hat tip: Bethany]

I'm not Catholic but appreciate the faith for many reasons, the foremost being its strong stand against abortion.

Last week the Pope, answering a reporter's question whether Catholic pro-abortion politicians should be excommunicated, said, "Yes, this excommunication was not an arbitrary one but is allowed by Canon law which says that the killing of an innocent child is incompatible with receiving communion, which is receiving the body of Christ."

Eighteen pro-abort Catholic members of the U.S. House had the gall to write a letter reprimanding the Pope, including this hogwash even a pig would roll its eyes at:

We are concerned with the pope's recent statement warning Catholic elected officials that they risk excommunication and would not receive communion for their pro-choice views. Advancing respect for life and for the dignity of every human being is, as our church has taught us, our own life's mission.

But now two wonder priests are calling these bullies on their bluff. One has told the Gang of 18 to resign from politics if they can't function in keeping with Church teachings, and the other has said to resign from the Church if they can't. I love it....

From Catholic Online:

Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, called for the 18 legislators to resign, saying "faithful Catholics" and others in the pro-life movement from other religions "have had enough of this double-talk."

"It is not possible to advance 'respect for life and for the dignity of every human being' while tolerating the dismemberment and decapitation of the human beings still in their mothers' wombs," he said. "These legislators do not only contradict their faith; they contradict the very meaning of public service, and should not be in public office any longer."

And from Spero News:

The Rev. Thomas Euteneuer, STL, president of Human Life International... [said],"The Pope is well within his free expression of religion guaranteed by the US Constitution - and his pastoral duty - to warn any Catholic when their eternal salvation is jeopardized by their actions. This is what the Catholic Church teaches and what Catholics believe. If the Gang of 18 believes otherwise, honesty and integrity requires they find another church that tells them what they want to hear. If they have that much of a problem being Catholic, no one is forcing them to stay. We certainly don't need their hypocrisy."

None other than Morman Mitt Romney had the best line re: all this. During the first Republican debate he said, "I can't imagine a government telling a church who can have communion in their church. We have separation of church and state, and it's served us well."

Late this afternoon President Bush sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stating he will "veto any legsilation that weakens current federal policies and laws on abortion, or that encourages the destruction of human life at any stage."

Over the past decades many important pro-life riders have been attached to appropriations bills, ensuring taxpayer funds do not support funding for abortion, embryo destruction, and coercive population programs, and also providing conscience protections, etc.

Democrats are expected to drop all those provisions as well as attach riders to appropriations bills to fund the abortion industry in various ways. Planned Parenthood advocacy alerts have stated they want a $100 million increase for Title X, for instance.

President Bush has said not to bother.

His letter follows a letter 155 pro-life congressmen sent him on March 30 encouraging him to take just that stand and promising to vote to sustain any such veto. 146 votes are necessary to sustain a veto.

We'll see if Democrats will waste everyone's time uselessly pandering to pro-aborts. They likely will.

Bravo to pro-life congressmen and President Bush.

Today in Washington there will be a hearing in the House Subcommittee on Health on post-partum depression.

IL Democrat Rep. Bobby Rush will introduce noncontroversial legislation that directs the National Institutes of Health to expand research into post-partum depression and the Dept. of Health & Human Services to make grants for services for women with post-partum depression and their families.

Now wouldn't common sense dictate that if there is such a malady as post-partum depression there must be such a malady as post-abortion depression?

Yet post-abortion depression goes widely unrecognized - even disparaged - and untreated.

Realizing the lack of information available on post-abortion depression, Republicans have chosen to use their opportunity today to call witnesses to discuss post-abortion depression. Bravo....

They will be Michaelene Fredenburg and Dr. Priscilla Coleman. Michaelene will speak as a post-abortive woman whose mental health was severely impacted afterward. Dr. Coleman of Bowling Green State University will give testimony on the existing research regarding post-abortion depression.

Republicans will also introduce the Post-Abortion Depression Research and Care Act. This bill provides $15 million to the NIH to research the emotional impact of abortion on women and creates a $1.5 million grant program to fund the development of treatment programs for women who suffer from post-abortion depression.

Are there pro-aborts who believe post-partum depression exists but not post-abortion depression? Would you even battle research into post-abortion depression? If so, why?

Frederick N. Dyer, Ph.D., is the author of the 2005 book, The Physicians' Crusade Against Abortion.

In his thought-provoking commentary today, published exclusively at www.jillstanek.com, Dr. Frederick writes, "It is almost a certainty if your roots go back to the 19th century that you would not exist if it had not been for the laws that protected children from death in the womb."

Are you alive because of the laws against abortion?

by Frederick N. Dyer, Ph.D.

Almost everyone believes that abortions increased after Roe v. Wade ended the state laws against abortion. What is more, there are data that support this view. The Guttmacher Institute reported that abortions gradually rose from 898,600 in 1974, the first full year following legalization, to 1,497,700 in 1979. After 1979, the number stabilized for several years at around 1,570,000.

The gradual increase from 1974 through 1979 suggests that the laws continued to have an effect for 6 years after their nullification. This could have occurred because women still felt that abortions were illegal or because physicians continued their prior habit of persuading women to continue unwanted pregnancies.

It was largely such physician persuasion that reduced the rate of abortion from 1860 when the first of the stringent antiabortion laws was passed until (at least) 1973 when all of the state laws were overturned.

What is more, physicians, particularly Horatio Robinson Storer (1830-1922), were instrumental in passage of the stringent state laws against abortion. A mid-19th Century epidemic of induced abortion, particularly among married Protestant women, was the stimulus for these laws. Dr. Storer persuaded the American Medical Association to tackle the issue and his 1859 AMA Report on Criminal Abortion and the appeals he drafted to state and territorial legislatures led to stringent laws being passed in almost all states by 1880.

The implication of the fact that abortions increased after the laws were rescinded is that the laws against abortion saved lives while they were in effect. There are at least four generations between 1860 and the present, and if only five percent of babies born were saved from an abortion death as a result of the laws against abortion and the physician persuasion that the laws bolstered, there is an excellent chance that one or more of your ancestors survived pregnancy because of these laws.

This is best illustrated by discussing the other 95 percent of children from that first generation. By chance, those children who were not such unwanted pregnancy survivors would marry each other at the rate of .95 times .95 that equals .9025. This means 90.25 percent of the next generation would not have had unwanted pregnancy survivors as parents. But it also means that 9.75 percent of that generation would have had one or both parents who were "physicians' crusade survivors."

Similarly, the .9025 proportion without "crusade survivor" parents would marry each other by chance at the rate of .9025 times .9025, which, when rounded, equals .8145. This means that 81.45 percent of the next generation would not have had one or more "crusade survivors" for a grandparent, but 18.55 percent would.

Similar calculations show that in the next generation, 33.67 percent of children would have had one or more "crusade survivors" as a great-grandparent, and 44 percent of the next generation (approximately our current generation) would have one or more "crusade survivors" as a great-great-grandparent.

However, the laws had their baby-saving effect not only on that initial generation but on each succeeding generation as well. It is almost a certainty if your roots go back to the 19th century that you would not exist if it had not been for the laws that protected children from death in the womb.

I am not claiming that your own mother might have made a different decision about your birth if you had been born before January 1973, although that is certainly possible. However, at least one of your maternal ancestors probably decided to continue an unwanted pregnancy because of her own concerns about abortion's illegality, or, has been well documented, because her physician persuaded her to do so.

Dr. Horatio Robinsin Storer deserves massive credit for the efforts that saved millions of babies from abortion. Most grew up, married, and became the ancestors of almost everyone alive in the U.S. today.
_______________

Frederick N. Dyer is the author of the 2005 book, The Physicians' Crusade Against Abortion, and the 1999 biography, Champion of Women and the Unborn: Horatio Robinson Storer, M.D. Both books are available from Amazon.

A Fox News story yesterday reported:

The two vacancies on the Supreme Court have activists on both sides of the abortion debate sounding the death knell of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling overturning state laws that criminalized abortion.

But some legal scholars who support abortion rights say that may not be such a bad thing.

"Roe was terribly reasoned," said Scott Powe, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law. "I think there's some requirement under the Constitution that if you cannot explain a decision and its relationship with legal materials, it's not a valid decision."

Powe, who describes himself as "100 percent pro-choice," is far from alone in his criticism of Roe. Associate Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas have made no secret of their revulsion toward the decision on legal grounds.

Even some who believe abortion should be legal are uncomfortable with the arguments in Roe.

Jack Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School, asked some of the nation's foremost constitutional law scholars to imagine how they might have written Roe. The results are compiled in "What Roe v. Wade Should Have Said: America's Top Legal Experts Rewrite America's Most Controversial Decision."

"Rights are most secure when they are supported by legislative enactment," Balkin told FOXNews.com.

The right to abortion would have been better settled if it had been articulated through congressional channels, Balkin said....

Read entire story on page 2.

FoxNews.com

By Jane Roh

NEW YORK — The two vacancies on the Supreme Court (search) have activists on both sides of the abortion debate sounding the death knell of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling overturning state laws that criminalized abortion.

But some legal scholars who support abortion rights say that may not be such a bad thing.

"Roe was terribly reasoned," said Scott Powe, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law. "I think there's some requirement under the Constitution that if you cannot explain a decision and its relationship with legal materials, it's not a valid decision."

Powe, who describes himself as "100 percent pro-choice," is far from alone in his criticism of Roe. Associate Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas have made no secret of their revulsion toward the decision on legal grounds.

Even some who believe abortion should be legal are uncomfortable with the arguments in Roe.

Jack Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School, asked some of the nation's foremost constitutional law scholars to imagine how they might have written Roe. The results are compiled in "What Roe v. Wade Should Have Said: America's Top Legal Experts Rewrite America's Most Controversial Decision."

"Rights are most secure when they are supported by legislative enactment," Balkin told FOXNews.com.

The right to abortion would have been better settled if it had been articulated through congressional channels, Balkin said.

Balkin points to 1954's Brown v. Board of Education ruling that made racial segregation illegal as an example. The decision was so unpopular at the time -- even among anti-segregation legal scholars -- that it inspired segregationist lawmakers to mandate congressional hearings for Supreme Court candidates.

"Brown truly becomes law -- really becomes something everyone's on board with -- after the Civil Rights Act of 1964," Balkin said. "At that point, Congress said, 'We are behind Brown.'"

In other words, he said, Brown was not considered by many Americans to be legitimate until its basic tenets were codified through the legislative process.

"Anything the court does that is controversial is going to be in danger as long as it's controversial," added Michael Dorf, professor at the Columbia University School of Law. "The reason why racial segregation in schools is not going to come back is not because all nine justices think Brown is right. It's because the country has accepted that it is right."

Pro-choice legislators have repeatedly tried and failed to get a national abortion law on the books. Abortion politics came to a head during the Clinton administration when the Freedom of Choice Act fizzled in Congress.

Abortion rights activists say they have found themselves increasingly on the defensive after Republicans gain control of the legislature in 1994, and on red alert since President Bush's victory in 2000.

In the past decade or so, Roe's breadth has been chipped away by legislation and rulings on a host of "sidebar" issues: parental consent, late-term or partial-birth abortions and public health care funding.

But any real danger to Roe, which both camps claim exists, may be merely rhetorical. Even if Supreme Court Chief Justice nominee John G. Roberts -- who cautiously evaded questions on Roe last week -- is confirmed, and even if an anti-abortion candidate like Judge Priscilla Owen (search) is tapped to succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the court may still not have enough votes to overturn Roe.

"[Justice Anthony] Kennedy is willing to restrict it but not overturn it," Dorf told FOXNews.com.

In fact, the real fight over the political makeup of the court is likely to come when its eldest member, 85-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens (search) retires, court watchers say.

A Matter of Sexual Equality

Many legal scholars who oppose Roe say that neither Constitution nor in the privacy rights spelled out in Griswold v. Connecticut provide for the right to have an abortion.

Some critics say the way abortion is practiced and discussed today is not what the justices who decided Roe had in mind. In the 1970s, abortion was not "on demand," they said, and the procedure was not accessible to most American women. Roe was in many ways more about protecting doctors from prosecution than granting a new right to women.

"Roe was written for doctors," Powe said, referring to the summer that the opinion's author, Justice Harry Blackmun, spent at the Mayo Clinic researching abortion. "It would have been more helpful if he tried to research law to do Roe rather than medicine."

Some legal scholars say they believe that if Roe is eventually overturned, the case for abortion could then be argued on due process or equal protection grounds.

"Criminalizing abortion requires women who have unwanted or nonconsensual pregnancies to go forward with the pregnancies, and there is nothing comparable with men," said Robin West of Georgetown University's law school. "The most straightforward constitutional argument is that mandatory or nonconsensual pregnancies impose a requirement of 'Good Samaritanism' that is not required of men."

West, who contributed to "What Roe v. Wade Should Have Said," added that freedom from violations of autonomy was a more salient argument than the right to privacy.

"What strikes me as the most burdensome of this requirement of mandatory pregnancy is that it imposes on a woman that she use her body in a certain way. We're all required to pay taxes, etc., but we're not required to do with our body things we don't want to do. ... It is a striking anomaly in the law ," West told FOXNews.com.

Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics agreed.

"We're not willing to go there when it comes to tradeoffs between any two people. We don't say no matter what happens, you are legally compelled to save people who are in peril," he said.

But Dorf said people are daydreaming if they expect the case for abortion beyond Roe would come back to the court as an equal protection claim.

The more likely scenario, Dorf said, is that Congress would move to pass federal legislation outlining abortion rights. Some think that would be an improvement over Roe, which does not lay out legislative parameters.

Dorf says "there's a decent chance" that today's Republican-dominated Congress would pass some kind of national ban that would trump state legislation, but lawmakers are more likely to end up following the cues of the majority of Americans.

According to a July Pew Research Center poll, 65 percent of Americans did not want to see Roe overturned, compared with 29 percent who wanted it gone. And only 9 percent thought abortion should be illegal in all cases.

Most Americans agree that the procedure should be available in cases of rape and incest or when the mother's health or life is in danger. More are comfortable with abortion early on. The later in the term, and the more viable the fetus, the more uncomfortable Americans get. Most believe that 12-year-olds and women who refuse to use birth control should not be able to get abortions at will.

"I am willing to bet there will be parental notification and there will be no taxpayer funding [if Congress passed a federal abortion law], but there will be abortions in the first half of pregnancies," Powe said. "There would be room for nuance if it was a legislative matter because there would have to be compromises."

But if the federal government creates a legislative remedy, states are likely to add their own restrictions to abortion laws and access would vary across the country.

One scenario that interests legal scholars is the possibility that Roe could come back as a Commerce Clause case. Powe said he could envision Texas and other similarly conservative states passing laws forbidding residents to travel to other states to have an abortion.

If Congress also passed a law banning interstate travel for abortions, however, Powe predicted that it would be declared unconstitutional.

Powe compared the argument to residents in states that forbid gambling being able to travel to states like Nevada to gamble. Congress would be unlikely to pass such a law regulating interstate travel for activities that are legal in the destination state, he said.

Potential ILGOP guv candidate Joe Birkett has made parental notification an issue of his would-be campaign. See article. Sign petition at www.joebirkett.com. (Site appears to be down at the moment.)

Amy Allen/Obiter dictum said ILGOP rep Matthew Leffingwell was flat out wrong when he told The Hill that GOP state Sen. Carole Pankau is positioning herself as pro-abortion in contrast to state Sen. Peter Roskam for a potential primary competition to replace retiring Congressman Henry Hyde.

So I asked them.

Leffingwell said the quote was a mistake. Pankau told me she is and always has been pro-life with the rape/incest/life exceptions and reminded me she has always voted pro-life, which I knew. I asked her if she has a health exception. She said NO.

Ok, Amy!

Reuters reported today:

The most-used Internet site, has shut down all its user-created Internet chat rooms amid concerns that adults were using the sites to try to have sex with minors....

The user-created chat rooms in question, where Internet users converse in real time, had names including "Girls 13 And Under For Older Guys" and "Girls 13 And Up For Much Older Men" and were all listed under "education chat rooms"....

The concern over online safety for children using the Internet has surged with the number of people using the Internet, which allows for anonymous and sometimes hard-to-trace communication and content....

Also surging is the number of men who support minor girls getting contraceptives and abortions without parental consent.

Hat tip: LifeSiteNews.com

PalmBeachPost.com reports today:

Randall Terry, the anti-abortion activist who was a prominent voice in the losing battle to keep Terri Schiavo alive, said Tuesday he's going ahead with a Republican primary challenge of state Sen. Jim King in northeast Florida.

King drew the ire of social conservatives this year when he and eight other Republican senators blocked legislation that aimed to reconnect Schiavo's feeding tube....

Terry founded the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue in the 1980s but has since parted ways with the organization. He has lived in Ponte Vedra Beach since 2003.

[Photo, courtesy of ChristianWireService.com, is of Terry, Bob Schindler, and Bobby Schindler.]

11:55 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:

... And for the good of our legal system, I will also continue to nominate federal judges who faithfully interpret the law and do not legislate from the bench. Every judicial nominee deserves an up or down vote on the floor of the United States Senate, and I thank you for your strong support of the fair-minded jurists I have named to the federal courts.

Building a more compassionate society also depends on building a culture of life. A compassionate society protects and defends its most vulnerable members at every stage of life. A compassionate society supports the principles of ethical science. When we seek to improve human life, we must always preserve human dignity, so that's why we stand against cloning. A compassionate society rejects partial-birth abortion. And I signed a law to end that brutal practice and my administration will continue working to defend that law. To advance a culture of life, I was proud to sign the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act.

A compassionate society will not sanction the creation of life only to destroy it. At the White House I recently met with 21 remarkable families, each of whom either adopted or gave up for adoption frozen embryos that remained after fertility treatments. The children I met confirm our shared belief that America can pursue the tremendous possibilities of science and at the same time remain an ethical and compassionate society. With your continued dedication and work, we will continue building a culture of life in America, and America will be better off for it.

On Sunday, June 5, Gov. Rick Perry (R) signed the Texas Parental Consent Bill into law at Calvary Christian Academy in Ft. Worth. A friend was there and wrote details on the event....

On Sunday, June 5, Gov. Rick Perry (R) signed the Texas Parental Consent Bill into law at Calvary Christian Academy in Ft. Worth. A friend was there and wrote details on the event:

We got word late last week that the governor was going to sign the parental consent bill Sunday afternoon, and that they wanted a big crowd there. The governor's office sent out an e-mail to all supporters asking them to attend.

The parental consent bill itself had been killed three times in the legislature in the past month. It had the votes to pass, but the opposition kept on nit-picking and finding technical and procedural errors that killed it. We finally had it attached to some other legislation just so it could pass, and pass it did - one day before the session ended.

This was the only pro-life, pro-family legislation passed this session. The TX legislature meets every other year, so we will not have an opportunity to pass more pro-life laws until January 2007. I was very surprised to find that most of the legislators' staffers were ignorant of the pro-life issue, even the ones whose bosses vote pro-life.

I thought the signing would be a somewhat demure event. You know - the governor walks in, we applaud, he signs the bill, waves and then leaves. Over in 10 minutes. Boy, was I wrong.

This was actually a 90 minute rally and revival with a bill signing thrown in for good measure. The name of the school sports team is Calvary Conquerors, and the logo of the school - a huge Roman warrior helmet looking thing - was the backdrop for the stage where the rally/revival/bill signing took place. The place was packed. I estimate over 1,000 people attended, and there was bleedover into a separate room where a big screen TV was set up.

Coming into the school parking lot, the road was lined with protesters. The media is reporting about 350, but it seemed like a lot more. They were holding various signs, some of which I will not repeat here, but others I found to be funny. They were protesting a whole slew of issues - not simply abortion but also Gov. Perry and his policies. There were people protesting from teachers groups, health groups, educational groups, and, of course, the homosexuals were holding signs and hands. One fellow had a sign that said simply, “Teach Math.” We couldn’t figure that one out. Was he implying Gov. Perry was against teaching math?

We sat down in a corner of the bleachers and watched the people come in. The atmosphere was like a Friday rally at high school before the big game. Lots of energy. There were a bank of cameras.

Finally, GP made his appearance and he got a standing O. There was a gospel choir singing praise and worship, and everyone going nuts. David Barton from Wallbuilders was introduced as the MC and he explained the bill. Then he introduced Rod Parsley, who quickly lived up to his reputation and was the best speaker there.

Several other speakers followed - Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council, a black Southern Baptist preacher, a Anglican preacher from Houston, and others before GP was introduced. He did a great job talking about the bills and he seemed to be getting into it as well. He got several standing O’s. It was a great time.

The media and associated liberal groups are having a field day with this in Texas. Every major newspaper editorial board in Texas spoke against the bill signing, and when they do report on it, the focus is on the protesters. I heard that Barry Lynn and the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State have filed a lawsuit against the school to revoke its tax free status. I love it.

So do I! Thanks for the report!

I hope pro-lifers will be encouraged by the diligence shown to get the bill passed and take note that pro-aborts will throw every roadblock they can think of in the way. We should expect it. I am actually impressed at the other side's determination, which I saw firsthand this past session in IL with our fifth introduction of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. We had everything going for us this time, particularly PR, and still the other side pitched a fit. Incredible.