by Susie Allen, host of the blog, Pro-Life in TN, and Kelli

• Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life notes the worldwide concern over premature birth, as it remains “the leading cause of all under-five deaths.” But there is failure to recognize the fingerprints of abortion in this problem:
  

  A wealth of worldwide research has established that induced abortion substantially increases the risk of preterm birth in subsequent pregnancies. For example, a 2009 systematic review published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology found that a history of one induced abortion increased the risk of preterm birth by 36% and increased the risk of low birth weight by 35%.

Dayton Daily News reported yesterday: The federal judge who could decide the fate of Cincinnati’s last remaining abortion clinic has ties to the Planned Parenthood facility. Well, it’s a little more than that. On November 10, Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio filed a lawsuit to block enforcement at its Cincinnati mill of Ohio’s law mandating […]

During U.S. Supreme Court arguments on the Hobby Lobby case, liberals mocked Justice Kennedy for asking the Obama administration’s lawyer whether its contraception mandate could also force for-profit companies to cover abortions in their insurance policies.

Only five months later liberals have taken this to the unimaginable extreme: On August 22, the California Department of Managed Health Care announced that all employers offering health insurance – not just for-profit but also nonprofit, religious institutions, and churches – had to provide coverage for all elective abortions.

by Susie Allen, host of the blog, Pro-Life in TN, and Kelli

• At Priests for Life, Alveda King explains why PFL plans to continue its lawsuit against the HHS Mandate, despite the government’s attempt at an “accommodation”:
  

  Bottom line: The government is on its own in this scheme to expand access to abortion-inducing drugs and contraceptives. We want a full exemption from this mandate, so that we have nothing to do with this scheme. If people want these drugs and the government wants to provide them, then the government will have to find a way to connect with them without our help. Our religion requires no less.

by Susie Allen, host of the blog, Pro-Life in TN, and Kelli

• Wesley J. Smith says the bioethics community is finally beginning to criticize artificial reproduction techniques like IVF – but not for the reasons you might think:
  

  But now, in the ever more radical Journal of Medical Ethics, Cristina Richie, of Boston College’s Department of Theology, argues that these technologies should be regulated to limit the number of children – called “carbon legacies,” as a means of fighting climate change.

  Smith opines:
  

  I don’t know if Richie coined the term, but it is ridiculous. Children are children, not bundles of carbon producers…. No, grim is the exploitation of surrogates in biological colonialism and the eugenic impetus that has sunk its fangs deep into the heart of the industry. In the face of such human objectification, sorry, I can’t get upset about global warming.

Read the background for this case here.

Today, in a unanimous ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Massachusetts’ buffer zone law, which banned pro-life advocates from entering a 35-foot restricted-speech zone around the entrance of abortion clinics. Read the decision here. Details, from USA Today:

The decision united Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s four liberals, who said the distance improperly removed demonstrators from public sidewalks and spaces. The other conservative justices would have issued a more sweeping verdict, striking down the ban on grounds that it targets abortion opponents’ specific point of view….

Although the court had upheld an 8-foot buffer zone in Colorado in 2000, the Massachusetts law passed in 2007 went 27 feet farther.

On April 29 a federal appellate court panel deemed it “preposterous” that the National Organization for Women would challenge an invoice submitted by pro-life activists for expenses incurred during a lawsuit brought against them by the pro-abortion feminist group that lasted almost 28 years.

The court ordered NOW to pay defendants Joe Scheidler, Pro-Life Action League, Timothy Murphy, and Andrew Scholberg $63,391.45 – a pittance, really - for costs to successfully defend themselves in the now infamous NOW v. Scheidler anti-trust lawsuit, launched in 1986.

During that time the case received an unprecedented three hearings before the U.S. Supreme Court, with the pro-lifers getting support in the form of amicus briefs from unlikely places, including PETA and Martin Sheen, since the issue was free speech.

Read the history of NOW v. Scheidler here. In a nutshell, quoting the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin:

This weekend’s question taps into the re-percolating immediatist vs. incrementalist debate.

In its pro-abortion way, ThinkProgress.org, gets much of the controversy right: