by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• A girl from Arizona with hypotonia (aka Floppy Baby Syndrome) is walking after receiving a transplant of her own cord blood stem cells and physical therapy.
• In other cord blood stem cell news, a Florida newspaper has a long story on a toddler who is part of an FDA-approved clinical trial to see if children’s own cord blood stem cells can help them with sensorineural hearing loss.

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• At the Huffington Post, Cassie Farrell responds to a piece by Canadian abortion proponent Joyce Arthur:
  

  What Choice Joyce and her cronies need to understand is that their lies simply aren’t cutting it in Canada anymore. Instead of formulating a sound argument, they attack the legitimacy of the debate. However, the debate is on, and isn’t going away until the right to life for all Canadians is acknowledged and ensured.

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• Planned Parenthood is opposed to forced abortion so much that they issued a press release regarding Chen Guangcheng after he had already made it safely to the United States. Gee, thanks.
• Robin Marty attempts to prove that if abortion is difficult to get, women will go to desperate lengths to end their pregnancy. She highlights a British woman who died after drinking concentrated vinegar in a home abortion attempt. One large problem with this argument is abortion is readily available in Great Britain and paid for by tax dollars. So the example undercuts Marty’s argument because it shows that some women, regardless of how much access there is to abortion, will do stupid, dangerous things.

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• Michael J. Fox is finally curbing his embryonic stem cell enthusiasm while lamely trying to cover his rear. He says:
  

  It’s not so much that [stem cell research has] diminished in its prospects for breakthroughs as much as it’s the other avenues of research have grown and multiplied and become as much or more promising. So, an answer may come from stem cell research but it’s more than likely to come from another area.

  During the interview, Fox Foundation co-founder Deborah Brooks then mentions some of the problems with putting embryonic stem cells into the brains of people with Parkinson’s. You know, the same problems pro-life people have been noting for years and the same problems that Dr. Oz told Fox about on Oprah around 3 years ago.

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell leveled the name “forces of darkness” at people opposed to America’s leading abortion provider while speaking at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser.
• An Indian woman was found alive after being thrown into a river with her arms and legs bound. She was allegedly tortured and thrown in the river after refusing to have an abortion:
  

  The woman had reportedly worked as a domestic help for the Bhubaneswar-based retired district judge, Sameer Ray for five years and had allegedly married his only son, Satyabrat. The marriage was reportedly never accepted by the family. According to the victim, she told the family that she was pregnant when they decided to fix Satyabrat’s marriage with someone else. The family then allegedly hired goons to eliminate her.

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat Mercatornet has an interview with Dr. Elard S. Koch who published a study which found that Chile’s restrictive abortion laws didn’t increase maternal morbidity: In this sense, it is a unique natural experiment conducted in a developing country. Thus, a first difference between the data from Chile and […]

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• In Australia, an inquest is hearing how a woman died after having an abortion:
  

  A senior ambulance paramedic has told a coronial inquest, a Hunter woman who died after an abortion was in severe anaphylactic shock when he began treating her.

  29-year-old Helen Grainger died at Newcastle’s John Hunter Hospital in April 2007.

by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• There’s been a possible break in the Chen Guangcheng case as Chinese authorities claim they will allow Chen to apply to leave the country:
  

  Chinese legal activist Chen Guangcheng has been offered a fellowship at a university in the U.S. and can be accompanied by his wife and two children, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement Friday.

  “The Chinese Government has indicated that it will accept Mr. Chen’s applications for appropriate travel documents,” Nuland said in the statement. “The United States government expects that the Chinese government will expeditiously process his applications for these documents and make accommodations for his current medical condition. The United States government would then give visa requests for him and his immediate family priority attention.”