There probably isn’t a pro-life activist alive who didn’t think what I thought when watching President Obama give his speech about Syria this week. To garner support for his plan to attack that country, Obama implored the American people to view the images of innocent children who had been poisoned to death by their own president. It was clear Obama wanted us to emotionally invest in their tortured deaths:

This kind of change is incredibly dramatic. What we’ve been seeing since 1982 was a slow decline, but this kind of change … [is] so different from what’s happened in the past. ~ Elizabeth Nash, state issues manager at Guttmacher Institute, commenting on a Huffington Post report (“Anti-abortion laws take dramatic toll on clinics nationwide”) […]

UPDATE 9/8, 5a: Should’ve thought of this yesterday. Have added a poll asking the weekend question at the bottom of the post.

9/7, 9:20a: Should the United States use force in Syria to stop dictator president Bashar al-Assad from using chemical weapons against his own people, particularly children?

President Obama has made this more than a generalized question on war and death and brought it close to home for anti-abortion Americans by using children as his rationale. Quoting from NBC News:

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.

• At Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, Reggie Littlejohn reports on Lili Zeng of China, who was forced to abort her first child at nine months pregnant and watch him die in her arms. She has attempted suicide three times since this horrific event. Where is the outrage from feminists and pro-choicers?
  

  Her experience shows that full-term babies born alive after a botched forced abortion may be left to die. Her experience also shows that a woman can be forcibly aborted up to the ninth month of pregnancy with the consent of her presumed husband.

  Finally, Ms. Zeng’s experience shows that – even when a woman is pregnant with her first child – if it is her husband’s second child, she can be forcibly aborted.

RH Reality Check’s Andrea Grimes and Sharona Coutts wrote a piece last week deeming it a “myth” that babies survive abortions:

New York Times pro-life columnist Ross Douthat pitched an interesting idea this week:

WHAT happens to a modern society when abortion is restricted? This question is at the heart of the debate over Texas’s new abortion law, which bans abortions after 20 weeks and issues health regulations that could thin the ranks of state abortion clinics, making even first-trimester abortions harder to obtain….

[W]hat’s notable is that rescuers recognized that this baby’s life was a life worth saving. His mother may have intended to discard and kill him, but those who freed him recognized that the mother’s desire for her child does not determine that child’s value. Ironically, here in the United States – where our human rights […]

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.

• Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life discusses an analysis on abortion’s effect on women, released at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, utilizing data from several countries:
  

  Documented complications include hemorrhage, infection, cervical damage, uterine perforation, pelvic disease and retained fetal or placental tissue. Large record-based studies from Finland, Denmark and the United States found that maternal mortality rates were significantly higher after abortion compared to childbirth.

  Long-term risks of abortion, including subsequent preterm birth, infertility, cancer, miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy and placenta previa, can substantially impede future reproductive success. In addition, abortion is associated with increased risk of negative psycho-social consequences. For example, a 2011 meta-analysis published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found an 81 percent increased risk of mental health problems. Anxiety, depression, alcohol and drug use and suicidal behaviors have been found to increase following abortion, along with damage to key relationships.