PRO-LIFE NEWS IN BRIEF

By Liz Townsend

Court Allows Michigan Woman to Review Her Own Abortion File

The Michigan Court of Appeals granted the request of a 23-year-old Michigan woman who asked to see the file created when a judge allowed her to have an abortion in 1996, when she was a minor.

The woman, identified only as F.G., said that she suffered from mental illness and was on medication when she had the abortion at 15, the Detroit Free Press reported. She has little memory of the events leading to the abortion.

"A couple of years after this happened, she was trying to put her life together and these events were just a blur," F.G.'s attorney Ed White told the Free Press. "She's asking herself, 'Why did I do this? How could this have happened?'"

According to the November 23 appeals court decision, "F.G. asserts that her mental illness and resulting treatment was information that should have been provided to and considered by the probate court during the waiver proceedings and she seeks to determine what information she, her former attorney, and her former social worker gave the court regarding her mental conditions."

Her request to view the file was initially denied by the judge who approved the abortion, Probate Judge Nancy Francis, the Free Press reported. Francis's ruling was later upheld by the Washtenaw County Circuit Court.

However, by a 2-1 margin, the appeals court overturned the circuit court decision. "F.G.'s reasons for seeking to review her file are legally sufficient to constitute good cause," the appeals court wrote, "and her confidentiality will not be compromised as a result of allowing her to review the file."

Court Rules Living Will Trumps Wife's Wishes

A Florida circuit court judge ruled November 23 that Lucerne Hospital in Orlando can remove 73-year-old Hanford Pinette from life support despite his wife's pleas that he continue to be treated, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

Pinette signed a living will in 1998 stating that "death would be preferable if faced with a terminal illness and incapacity," according to the Associated Press (AP). That same year he gave his wife Alice durable power of attorney, empowering her to make health decisions for him if needed.

Pinette, hospitalized since February after suffering congestive heart failure, requires a ventilator, dialysis machine, and medication to live, the Sentinel reported. Doctors consider him to be in a terminal, unresponsive state.

When Alice Pinette refused hospital officials' request to disconnect her husband of 53 years from life support, the officials took her to court.

Mrs. Pinette insists that her husband can still communicate with family members and is aware of his environment, according to the AP.

"Thou shall not kill, and I cannot kill him," Alice Pinette told Orange Circuit Judge Lawrence Kirkwood, the Sentinel reported. "I cannot do this and live with [myself]. When someone is talking to you, how can you do that?"

Kirkwood refused to believe Mrs. Pinette's testimony after hearing different reports from the doctors. "Her credibility is questioned considering the medical evidence," Kirkwood stated, according to the Sentinel. "She presented no independent verification of her perceptions of his abilities."

The judge decided that the living will outweighed Mrs. Pinette's wishes, despite her power of attorney. "The court finds by clear and convincing evidence that the 'patient' would have made the decision to enforce his living will," Kirkwood ruled, according to the Sentinel.

Hospital officials told the AP that they would inform the family before removing Mr. Pinette's life support.

Swiss Voters Approve Embryonic Stem Cell Law

Voting November 28 in a nationwide referendum, Swiss voters endorsed a December 2003 law that allows lethal research on human embryos. The referendum was required because opponents gathered a sufficient number of signatures.

The law allows the destruction of embryos left over from in vitro fertilization provided that the parents consent. A government ethics committee would have to approve each research project that intended to use embryonic stem cells, according to the AP.

The Swiss government encouraged citizens to vote in support of the law, claiming that embryonic stem cell research is needed "in view of the suffering caused by serious and today incurable illnesses," Agence France-Presse reported.

Opponents to the law formed an alliance that included Roman Catholics, Protestants, and even "left-wing and green groups," the AP reported.

"Every member of the human species is entitled to human dignity," the alliance said in a statement, according to the AP. "So-called supernumerary embryos would have a real chance to be born through adoption."

Euthanasia Groups to Merge in January

Two euthanasia groups, Portland-based Compassion in Dying Federation and Denver-based End-of-Life Choices, will merge into a new organization, Compassion & Choices, this January.

Oregon is the only state where assisted suicide is legal, and the new group will seek to change that. "Nirvana, for us, would be to replicate the Oregon law in other states," David Brand, executive director of End-of-Life Choices, told The Oregonian.

In 2003 End-of-Life Choices changed its name from the Hemlock Society. Its Denver office will remain open after the merger, concentrating on "membership, information technology, and legislative activity," according to The Oregonian.

Compassion in Dying was formed in 1993, and has been the driving force behind Oregon's assisted suicide law. The Oregonian reported that 171 people have died with the "help" of doctors since the law was passed in 1997.

Compassion in Dying officials, who will remain in the Portland office, will continue to work on court cases and counseling for patients in Oregon, but said they seek to widen their agenda to other states. "We're tired of being the sprout-chewing liberals out in Oregon," spokeswoman Claire Simons told The Oregonian. "We need another state" to legalize assisted suicide.

The founder of the Hemlock Society, Derek Humphry, canceled his life membership in March 2004, saying that the group was concentrating too much on passing new laws, which he contends is unlikely to be successful.

"Their focus for the past few years has been entirely on politics," Humphry told The Oregonian. Instead, he said this is the time "to build up your war chest and wait for the political climate to change."

Abortion Clinic Closes for Lack of Patients

An abortion clinic in Victorville, California, the only abortion facility in the High Desert of San Bernardino County, closed in November due to lack of patients, the Victorville Daily Press reported.

Abortionist and owner Joseph Durante said that the clinic, which opened in September 1993, did so little business that it became an economic liability.

"It wasn't feasible" to keep it open, Durante told the Daily Press.

Durante and the clinics he owns have been the focus of several investigations into botched abortions. Abortionist Bruce Steir pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter in 2000 in the botched-abortion death of 27-year-old Sharon Hamptlon, which occurred at Durante's Moreno Valley clinic, according to the Los Angeles Times.

A 1998 case involved the Victorville clinic that is now closed. Patient Anne Marie Santana's uterus was perforated by another doctor at the clinic, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reported. The Medical Board of California alleged that although Durante was not involved in the actual botched abortion, he "did not properly evaluate and treat the woman's symptoms and failed to refer her to an acute-care facility," according to the Press-Enterprise.

Durante continues to perform abortions in Palm Desert, California.

Public Radio Station Bars "Reproductive Rights" from Ad

A North Carolina public radio station edited the term "reproductive rights" from an ad for a pro-abortion group, contending that the term constituted advocacy of abortion in violation of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations.

WUNC in Chapel Hill deleted the term from the on-air underwriting announcement of the group Ipas, which lobbies for abortion worldwide and distributes abortion products such as manual vacuum aspiration systems. The statement, which would have played five times a week in exchange for the group's donation of about $1,500 a month, originally read, "Ipas, a Chapel Hill-based non-profit that protects women's reproductive health and rights at home and abroad," according to Communications Daily.

Reviewing the ad, WUNC officials decided that the term "reproductive rights" could be interpreted as advocating for abortion, a political stance that would violate FCC rules for underwriters of public broadcasters. "As a noncommercial broadcaster, we are not allowed to broadcast donor acknowledgments that include language with political meaning," WUNC's general manager Joan Siefert Rose told the Associated Press. "My first responsibility is to be a good steward of our FCC license."

In response to the change in wording, deleting "and rights" but leaving the rest of the statement intact, Ipas withdrew its support for the station, the Herald-Sun reported.

Other pro-abortion groups sent a letter to WUNC criticizing the decision, saying it threatened the "very concept of free speech," according to Communications Daily.

However, WUNC insisted that its decision did not constitute censorship, and it would not affect how the station treats the issue in its news reporting. "This has nothing to do with news coverage and nothing to do with news programming," Rose told the Herald-Sun. "This regulation from the FCC covers only advocacy of donors."

Nitschke Plans Do-It-Yourself Suicide Seminar

Australia's "Dr. Death," Phillip Nitschke, is currently choosing 30 elderly people from across the country to participate in a March 2005 workshop to teach them how to make their own "suicide pill," the news agency AAP reported.

Nitschke spoke to 12 South Australians in late November to discuss the workshop, and said he would choose four of them to participate, according to The Advertiser. The workshop will teach elderly people how to combine several legal products to make a fatal 10-gram concoction of alcohol and barbiturates.

Nitschke and his pro-euthanasia group, Exit International, scheduled the workshop to come before a vote in the Australian legislature that is expected to levy heavy fines on anyone who distributes information about how someone could commit suicide, AAP reported.

"This legislation will presumably come in when the new Senate comes in, presumably [in] six months time," Nitschke told AAP. "There is a certain degree of urgency now to get the first of these projects up and running where groups of elderly people will not only do it for themselves ... but they will be making sure that that information is then passed on to subsequent groups."