by LauraLoo
As reported by DailyMailCo.UK, Los Angeles mother Lea-Ann Ellison, who “triggered a torrent of online debate when she was pictured weight-lifting eight months pregnant,” has given birth to a healthy baby boy (Skyler) – her second baby born in a home birthing pool.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEZ2kmppEtc[/youtube]
Congratulations to the happy family!
Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.
by Kelli
The right to own a gun is a far more settled issue constitutionally, politically and legally in this country, but not even the National Rifle Association would dream to argue that we have a right to free guns, provided by our employers. If your boss were required to give you a gun, your new employer-provided Glock still wouldn’t be free because non-cash compensation is still compensation. The costs to the employer are fungible, which means whether it’s a pistol or a pill, the cost is still coming out of your paycheck — and your coworkers’ paychecks….
The plaintiffs in these [HHS contraceptive mandate] cases aren’t saying the government should ban abortifacients or make it impossible for their employees to buy them. All they are asking is that the people using such drugs pay for them themselves rather than force employers and co-workers to share the cost. In other words, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood want such birth control decisions to be left to individual women and their doctors. Leave the rest of us out of it.
But leaving the rest of us out of it is exactly the opposite intent of the authors of Obamacare. The law forces not only arts and crafts shops but also Catholic charities and other religiously inspired groups to choose between fulfilling their mission or violating their values. You may have no moral objection to such things, but millions of people do. By what right are liberals seeking to impose their values on everyone else? Isn’t that something they denounce conservatives for?
~ Jonah Goldberg, “Liberals are culture war aggressors,” USA Today, December 2
by LauraLoo
Drew Barrymore is overjoyed with the pregnancy of her second child! The actress and her hubby Will Kopelman are thrilled to be giving their daughter Olive a sibling.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r0jTflbghM[/youtube]
Drew also shares, “You’re not supposed to look perfect while you’re making babies. Making babies is the perfection.”
Yes it is. Love her perspective on pregnancy and motherhood!
Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.
[HT: DailyMailCo.UK and People]
Brad Fischetti sent me the most darling little photo from a close friend of the family, who wrote:
Meet baby Anthony, who was born November 25 at just 25 weeks 2 lbs. 2 oz. He is doing well. Take a look at the Thanksgiving card he even made! God is great and so is life!
Indeed! Welcome to the world, little one!
Click both photos to enlarge…
by Carder
A pill that provides a safe, effective and reversible method of contraception for men has been brought a step closer by scientists.
Researchers identified two proteins that can be blocked to prevent the launch of sperm cells from the testes during ejaculation. Knocking out the proteins in genetically engineered mice resulted in male animals that were completely infertile, though they continued to mate normally.
A similar goal could theoretically be achieved by suppressing the proteins with drugs, scientists say.
~ The Guardian, December 2
[HT: Laura Loo; Photo Credit: Feminspire]
by Susie Allen, host of the blog, Pro-Life in TN, and Kelli
We welcome your suggestions for additions to our Top Blogs (see tab on right side of home page)! Email Susie@jillstanek.com.
In fact, I think all human beings have an equal right to live, because they all have something special in common: they’re human. That’s why racism and sexism are wrong. Racism is wrong because it focuses on a surface difference that doesn’t morally matter and ignores the thing we all have in common, which is the thing that does morally matter: that we’re human.
And because the unborn are clearly human, they should be given an equal right to life as well.
Naturally, abortion supporters objected to this option, but so far 2,300 people have made the choice to freely pay more for their plates knowing that the increase will benefit adoption. Now that is choice!
[youtube]http://youtu.be/CoWUSuGCo-I[/youtube]
by Kelli
On November 24th, women attending a National Women’s Encounter in Argentina decided that it would be a great idea to “attack[] and sexually molest[] a group of Rosary-praying Catholic men who were peacefully protecting the cathedral in the city of San Juan” from vandalism during a protest. This isn’t the first time pro-abortion feminists have launched violent attacks against religious Argentinians. From LifeSiteNews:
The women, many of them topless, spray-painted the men’s crotches and faces and swastikas on their chests and foreheads, using markers to paint their faces with Hitler-like moustaches. They also performed obscene sexual acts in front of them and pushed their breasts onto their faces, all the while shouting “get your rosaries out of our ovaries.”…
While the site of the protest was the front of the cathedral… “the whole city awoke to graffiti in favor of abortion.”
Inside the cathedral, 700 people were also in prayer accompanied by their bishop….
After unsuccessfully trying to get into the building, the women burned a human-sized effigy of Pope Francis. “If the pope were a woman, abortion would be legal,” they shouted….
The police reportedly told the media they were unable to intervene because “they are women.”
WARNING: Graphic footage.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/fOCD_T9Qqpc[/youtube]
Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.
[HT: Carla]
The other side is becoming increasingly hostile, attacking the religious freedoms of pro-life Christians with greater boldness. From The New York Times, December 2:
The American Civil Liberties Union announced on Monday that it had filed a lawsuit against the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops, arguing that their anti-abortion directives to Catholic hospitals hamper proper care of pregnant women in medical distress, leading to medical negligence.
The suit was filed in federal court in Michigan on Friday on behalf of a woman who says she did not receive accurate information or care at a Catholic hospital there, exposing her to dangerous infections after her water broke at 18 weeks of pregnancy.
In an unusual step, she is not suing the hospital, Mercy Health Partners in Muskegon, but rather the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Its ethical and religious directives, the suit alleges, require Catholic hospitals to avoid abortion or referrals, “even when doing so places a woman’s health or life at risk.”
The suit opens a new front in the clash over religious rights and medical care. The Catholic Church has fought against requiring all health plans to include coverage of contraception and is likely to call the new lawsuit an attack on its core religious principles.
Catholic hospitals account for about one in six of the country’s hospital beds and in many regions their influence is spreading as they forge alliances with non-Catholic medical groups.
“This isn’t about religious freedom, it’s about medical care,” said Louise Melling, deputy legal director of the civil liberties union, in a telephone news conference on Monday.
About one of the “medical experts who reviewed the case” quoted in the story, Ryan Bomberger of The Radiance Foundation noted in an email this morning:
The article quotes Dr. Douglas W. Laube [pictured right], who they describe as an OB at the University of Wisconsin Medical School. The NYT, of course, doesn’t mention that he’s an abortionist and the Immediate Past Board Chair of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health.
Rest assured the viewpoint of ACLU’s “medical experts” is skewed to kill the baby. It isn’t true the baby “had virtually no chance of surviving.”
It also is not true “in these circumstances doctors usually induce labor or surgically remove the fetus to reduce the mother’s chances of infection.” Certainly no Catholic or pro-life hospital jumps to abortion in such cases. Nor does ACOG recommend it as as a first course of action over “counsel[ing] about… the risk and benefits of expectant management.”
The first noninvasive course of action is to allow nature to take its course, which in this case it did:
Tamesha Means, the plaintiff in the lawsuit, said that when she was 18 weeks pregnant her water broke and she rushed to Mercy Health, the only hospital in her county.
Her fetus had virtually no chance of surviving, according to medical experts who reviewed the case, and in these circumstances doctors usually induce labor or surgically remove the fetus to reduce the mother’s chances of infection.
But the doctors at Mercy Health, Ms. Means said, did not tell her that the fetus could not survive or that continuing her pregnancy was risky and did not admit her for observation.
She returned the next morning, bleeding and in pain, and was sent home again. That night she went a third time, feverish and writhing with pain; she miscarried at the hospital and the fetus died soon after.
At the news conference Monday, Dr. Douglas W. Laube, an obstetrician at the University of Wisconsin Medical School, described the care Ms. Means received as “basic neglect.” He added, “It could have turned into a disaster, with both baby and mother dying.”
Of course, hospital staff may have mismanaged this case particular case one way or another. But even if so, this by no means calls for the overturn of national Catholic/pro-life medical policy to try to save them both, if possible, or again, let nature take its course.
The other side claims not to want the government to meddle with medical policy on abortion.
That is, until it’s convenient.
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.
