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NRL News
Pro-Life
News in Brief Discarded Bodies of Female Babies Discovered in India For at least the third time this year, a mass grave with bodies of unwanted female babies has been uncovered in India. Officials in the Nayagarh district are currently investigating the discovery of plastic bags containing the bones and skulls of at least 37 tiny babies in a dry well near the Krishna abortion clinic, according to the London Times. “Prima facie [evidence] seems to indicate female feticide but we can’t be sure until forensic examinations are conducted,” B.K. Sharma, inspector-general of police in the state of Orissa, told Reuters. Police suspect the babies were killed in illegal sex-selection abortions or shortly after birth. A 12-year-old boy discovered the bodies July 14. Police have detained the Krishna clinic’s owner and manager for questioning, according to the Times. In June, officials found the bodies of 260 female babies in a septic tank under a maternity clinic south of New Delhi, Reuters reported. The owner of that clinic has been arrested on charges of illegal abortion. More arrests followed the discovery of 430 infant body parts in Ujjain in February. While it is illegal in India to abort or kill a baby because of her gender, the practice is widespread. Activists have charged that the Krishna abortion clinic is only one of 11 operating in the area with the collusion of local authorities. “They’re all in this nexus and they should all be punished,” women’s rights activist Tapasi Praharaj told the Times. “The Government is totally careless and doesn’t take any action. What we really need is for attitudes to change at every level of society.” The preference for boys over girls stems in part from the tradition of families giving large dowries to the groom when their daughter gets married. Boys are also expected to support their parents in old age, while daughters would only assist their in-laws. This prejudice against girls has led to the abortion deaths of at least 10 million female babies in the last 20 years, according to a June report in The Lancet. The ratio of boys to girls is at a critical level in the country, with only 927 girls for every 1,000 boys under the age of six. The worldwide average is 1,050 girls to 1,000 boys, according to Agence France-Presse. The government has made many attempts to curb the killings of female babies, with little success. The latest proposal is for every woman to register their pregnancies and be required to seek permission to get an abortion, the Associated Press (AP) reported. “This will help to check both feticide and infant mortality,” Renuka Chowdhury, India’s women and child development minister, told the AP. “With this, mysterious abortions will become difficult.” It is unknown yet whether and when this proposal will be implemented. Nearly Unanimous Louisiana Legislature Passes Partial-Birth Abortion Ban When Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed a partial-birth abortion ban July 13, Louisiana became the first state to outlaw the gruesome procedure since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a federal ban in April, the Associated Press (AP) reported. On nearly unanimous votes of 31–0 in the Senate and 99–1 in the House, Louisiana legislators passed the ban and sent it to Blanco June 28. Legislators based the bill on the federal partial-birth abortion ban approved by the Court in Gonzales v. Carhart. A previous Louisiana bill was permanently enjoined by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in 2000 after the Supreme Court overturned Nebraska’s ban in 2000. “To avoid that problem this time, we decided to take the language from the federal bill and overlay it with the Louisiana civil code,” state Rep. Gary Beard (R-Baton Rouge), lead sponsor in the House, told UPI. Louisiana’s law makes it a crime if a physician “deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living fetus until, in the case of a head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother, or, in the case of breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother, for the purpose of performing an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus.” A physician who performs a partial-birth abortion would be subject to a prison sentence of 10 years and fines up to $100,000, but the woman herself could not be charged with a crime. There is also an exception if the procedure is needed to save the life of the mother. Lawmakers said that a state ban is needed to ensure that violations are prosecuted. “I think it is important for this state, if we believe this is illegal, that we not rely on the federal government, which might have other priorities,” Rep. Danny Martiny (R-Kenner) told the AP. Portuguese Doctors Refusing to Perform Abortions Since the legalization of abortion on demand up to 10 weeks began July 15, a large majority of Portuguese doctors have refused to become abortionists, according to Inter Press Service (IPS). Officials with the Portuguese National Health Service have said that the lack of doctors to perform abortions in public hospitals may force them to bring in doctors from outside the public hospital system, leading to increased costs, IPS reported. Although some have cynically said that doctors may be refusing to perform abortions for the public system while charging higher fees for private abortions, many doctors insist that they have legitimate religious and moral objections. Portuguese doctors have a “very conservative code,” gynecologist Miguel de Oliveira e Silva told IPS. “Neither the referendum nor the law were able to change doctors’ attitudes.” Many in the conservative Madeira region of Portugal refuse to accept the legitimacy of the legalization of abortion. The national government “cannot behave like a colonial power and impose on this autonomous region a law that 64 percent of [Madeira’s] population rejected in the referendum,” Madeira’s regional secretary for Social Affairs, Francisco Jardim Ramos, told IPS. Foundation to Fund National Canadian Cord Blood Registry A Canadian foundation established in 1990 to save the life of six-year-old leukemia patient Elizabeth Lue will help fund a national registry to encourage the donation of umbilical cord blood. Elizabeth’s parents began to collect money during an attempt to find a donor with blood marrow compatible to their little girl’s. In four months of testing, more than 10,000 Canadians of Chinese descent came forward to be tested, and over $1 million was raised, according to the Toronto Star. Unfortunately, no compatible donor was found, and Elizabeth sadly passed away August 7, 1990. After her death, some of the funds were used for other bone marrow donor searches, but $250,000 remains. Elizabeth’s mother, Phillipa Lue, and community leader Dr. Joseph Wong announced in July that the Elizabeth Lue Bone Marrow Foundation will donate the money to Canadian Blood Services to help “make stem cells, extracted from umbilical cords, accessible to the general public,” the Star reported. The foundation will also educate the public, especially minorities, about the importance of donating cord blood. “When Elizabeth passed away we wanted to make sure her death was not in vain,” Lue told the Star. “Time has shown us there are many others like her and no family should have to go through what we went through. The foundation and the work are in her memory.” Seventeen years after Elizabeth’s death, the science of treating diseases like leukemia has progressed tremendously. Umbilical cord stem cells are now used more and more, rather than cells from bone marrow. The great advantage of umbilical cord cells is that the match between donor and recipient does not have to be exact as it needs to be when using bone marrow. “The future is in cord blood and stem cells,” Wong told the Star. “Science is at a stage of exciting developments.” A bill has been introduced in the national Canadian legislature to fund a more far-reaching public cord blood database, according to the Star. “A public registry could be used to help, to benefit everybody,” said Lue. Parents Awarded Millions for “Wrongful Birth” Claiming that a doctor misdiagnosed their first child, leading them to fail to abort a second child with the same condition, Amara and Daniel Estrada sued a doctor at the University of South Florida (USF) for “wrongful birth.” A jury awarded them $23.5 million July 23 to provide lifetime care for their two-year-old son Caleb, according to the Tampa Tribune. The Estradas’ first son, Aiden, was born in 2002 with several obvious birth defects, such as a small head, webbing of the toes, and undescended testicles, according to the Tribune. They consulted with USF genetic specialist Boris Kousseff, who was unable to diagnose Aiden with a specific disorder. He told the Estradas that the “chances of a second child having birth defects were the same as any other couple’s,” the Tribune reported. “It was simple human error,” Kousseff’s attorney Janice Merrill said, according to the St. Petersburg Times. “He wasn’t cavalier in his treatment.” The Estradas had their second son, Caleb, in 2004. Caleb had the same birth defects as Aiden, and doctors at Shands Hospital in Gainesville were able to pinpoint this quickly, the Times reported. They diagnosed both boys as having Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome, a disorder that prevents the body from producing cholesterol, impeding development. The syndrome is not terminal, and the boys will have a normal lifespan, according to the Tribune. However, they will not be able to eat or communicate normally, and will need care for the rest of their lives. In their lawsuit, the Estradas held Kousseff liable for not diagnosing the syndrome in Aiden and failing to inform them that there was a 25 percent chance that a subsequent child would have the disorder. They contend that had they known of Aiden’s disease, they would have tested Caleb in utero and aborted him if the tests showed that Caleb had the syndrome, according to the Associated Press (AP). Since the University of South Florida is a government-run school, state law limits claims against it to $200,000. The Estradas will ask the state legislature to pass a special bill awarding them the full amount, according to the AP. However, some legislators seemed hesitant to champion the legislation, calling into question the controversial nature of a “wrongful birth” lawsuit. “In the 15 years I’ve been in the Legislature, I haven’t seen that kind of issue,” Sen. Victor Crist told the Tribune. “This has a potential moral question that could become a potential political issue. I don’t know what the Legislature will do with that.” Swiss Euthanasia Group Must Move Headquarters The Swiss euthanasia group Dignitas has been ordered to move from the building where it has “helped” at least 700 people die in assisted suicides, according to The Guardian. Authorities in Zurich responded to many complaints from neighbors in the residential building who felt the horror of living next door to death. “Some days you would think it was a morgue rather than a block of flats,” resident Gloria Sonny told the Daily Mail. “It is awful when you get the lift and find that there is a body being taken down in there. It’s wrapped up in a green zipper bag and strapped to an upright stretcher. But perhaps worst of all is seeing the people on their way up. The look in their eyes haunts me.” Switzerland’s permissive laws allow people to kill themselves in an assisted suicide if a doctor is consulted and the motive is not “sinister,” The Guardian reported. Dignitas operated for nine years in Getrud Strasse number 84, where, after paying a fee of about $7,000, suicidal people were given barbiturate natrium pentobarbital in powder form to drink and then died under the watchful eye of an assistant within 15 minutes, according to the newspaper. Many residents moved out of the building in protest, and the remaining neighbors complained many times to police. They reported that they could detect the smell of death in the hallways, and some even have nightmares about being brought to the apartment and forced to take the lethal drug. “The dying arrive in a taxi, an ambulance or a wheelchair and you think: ‘In two or three hours they’ll be carried out in a coffin,’” Laurenz Styger, head of the residents’ association, told The Guardian. “It gives me the shivers just to think about it.” Speaking through his lawyer, Dignitas general secretary Ludwig Minelli told The Guardian that he is “looking for new quarters.” If no permanent site can be found, the group will “set up in a caravan” and become a mobile death clinic, according to the newspaper. Panels Clears Scottish Doctor of Euthanasia Charges After neonatologist Michael Munro gave two babies massive doses of a lung-paralyzing drug that hastened their deaths, a panel of the General Medical Council (GMC) declared July 10 that while his actions were “outside accepted professional practice,” they were “not inappropriate,” according to Press Association (PA) Newsfile. The panel exonerated Munro despite the opinion expressed by GMC’s lawyers during the hearing that giving the babies the drug was “tantamount to euthanasia,” and despite evidence that Munro failed to record his use of the drug in the patients’ records, PA Newsfile reported. Munro’s actions came to light after a baby born three months premature, known only as Baby X during the case, died December 20, 2005, at Aberdeen Maternity Hospital in Scotland after living only 15 days, according to the Daily Mail. The baby suffered a brain hemorrhage. Doctors and the baby’s parents decided to withdraw further medical treatment as his condition worsened. As Baby X’s parents held him during his final hours, the child began having violent spasms known as “agonal gasping.” Munro gave him 2,000 mg of pancuronium, a strong muscle relaxant, the Daily Mail reported. Baby X died soon after the drug, at 23 times the normal dose, was administered by Munro. When other staff members at the hospital questioned Munro’s conduct, the case was investigated. Although Munro told investigators that he had never before administered a lethal dose of pancuronium, they uncovered a second, very similar case. Baby Y, born two weeks premature in June 2005, had pulmonary hypoplasia and pulmonary hypotension resulting from a lack of blood flow to the baby’s underdeveloped lungs, according to the Daily Mail. As in Baby X’s case, treatment was withdrawn and the baby began to spasm as he neared death. Munro gave Baby Y the same overdose of pancuronium, and the baby died soon after, the Daily Mail reported. Munro insisted that he while knew the babies would die with such a massive dose, his intent was to relieve suffering. “I explained to the parents that this drug was to be used to ease the suffering but that one of the consequences of its use may be to hasten death,” he told the Daily Record. “They were happy with that.” The GMC convened a disciplinary panel to review Munro’s actions. After a hearing, Dr. Jacqueline Mitton, chairwoman of the GMC’s Fitness to Practise Panel, announced July 10 that Munro would not be disciplined. “Doctors should exercise extreme caution when giving treatment outside accepted professional practice,” Mitton said, according to PA Newsfile. “However, in these particular circumstances, the panel found that your actions were not inappropriate or below the standard to be expected of a registered medical practitioner. ... In the judgment of the panel, the concerns raised by the facts are not so serious as to raise the question whether you should continue to practise either with restrictions or at all. Accordingly, the panel has determined that your fitness to practise is not impaired by reason of misconduct.” Charges Dropped against Doctor Accused of Hurricane Katrina Deaths A New Orleans grand jury refused July 24 to bring charges against Dr. Anna Pou, a doctor accused of administering lethal doses of drugs to nine patients in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Pou was arrested in July 2006 along with two nurses, who were trapped in Memorial Medical Center when Katrina hit on August 29, 2005. Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti Jr. arrested Pou and nurses Cheri A. Landry and Lori L. Budo for second-degree murder, declaring, “This is not euthanasia. This is homicide,” the Los Angeles Times reported According to an affidavit filed by Foti, the deaths occurred on Thursday, September 1, two days after the New Orleans levees broke, flooding the city. Some of the 2,000 people stranded at the hospital had already been evacuated, and by Wednesday night 160 patients remained out of an original total of 260, according to the Los Angeles Times. On Thursday morning, hospital officials met and expressed worry that the patients who were still at Memorial were very sick and that it was going to take a long time to evacuate them all. The hospital had lost electricity by Wednesday morning, and temperatures soared to 100 degrees, the Times reported. Memorial official Susan Mulderick said they decided that they “were not going to leave any living patients behind.” Several hospital staff members, not identified by name, are quoted in the affidavit as having witnessed Pou and the nurses preparing to administer lethal doses of morphine and the sedative midazolam to certain seriously ill patients being housed on an acute care floor administered by LifeCare Holdings, according to the Times. Although Foti ordered their arrests, the case was then turned over to Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan and the grand jury. Landry and Budo received immunity from prosecution when they agreed to testify in front of the grand jury. After evidence was presented against Pou, the grand jury returned a verdict of “not a true bill,” meaning that all charges were dropped, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported. It was evident that Jordan did not agree with Foti that the deaths should be considered murder. “I think justice has been served with due process,” Jordan said, according to the Times-Picayune. “I think the grand jury did the right thing. The grand jury considered all the evidence—carefully considered. ... They concluded no crime had been committed.” However, Foti continued to insist that Pou should be held accountable for the deaths of Emmett Everett, Ireatha Watson, Hollis Alford, Rose Savoie, Harold Dupas, Elanie Nelson, Alice Hutzler, Wilda McManus, and George Huard. “No one talks about the victims,” said Foti said after the verdict, the Times-Picayune reported. “The victims. Nine people that died. It is the duty of the attorney general to represent these victims. At 11 o’clock on Thursday, Sept. 1, while the hospital was being evacuated, both by boat and helicopters, all nine of those people were alive. By 5 o’clock, when the last person was removed from the hospital, all nine of those people were dead.” Public opinion seemed to be strongly on Pou’s side, as hundreds attended a rally on Pou’s behalf July 17 in New Orleans’ City Park. However, the families of four of the victims have filed civil lawsuits against Pou, which are still to be decided. New Hampshire Parental Notification Bill Repealed To the dismay of pro-lifers who scored a major legislative victory when a parental notification bill was passed in 2003, New Hampshire Governor John Lynch (D) signed legislation repealing the law June 29. The bill had never gone into effect because of immediate court challenges by pro-abortion groups. Under provisions of the law, abortionists were required to notify by certified letter a parent or guardian of a minor who is seeking an abortion at least 48 hours before performing the abortion. Minor girls had the judicial bypass option available—going to court and trying to persuade a judge she was mature enough to make the decision or that an abortion was “in her best interest.” The passage of the law in 2003 came under a Republican governor, Craig Benson, and a Republican-controlled legislature, and was still a rare pro-life victory in New Hampshire. Gov. Lynch took office in 2005, and the legislature changed party control after the November 2006 elections. Court challenges to the law reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The pro-abortion groups contended that an exception needed to be included to waive parental notification if the minor girl’s “health” was threatened, according to the New York Times. U.S. District Judge Joseph DiClerico and the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the law, and the U.S. Supreme Court rendered its decision in January 2006. In Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, the Court unanimously ruled that the entire law did not need to be invalidated, but that lower courts must examine what the legislature’s intent was with regard to medical emergencies. Instead of retooling the law, the new Democrat-controlled legislature decided to repeal the entire statute. The House voted in March to repeal the law by a 217–141, and the Senate followed suit June 7, by 15–9. While Lynch framed his decision to sign the repeal in terms of insuring the health of girls, other insisted that the law could have been modified rather than completely invalidated. “One can be pro-choice and still believe that parents have a right to know whether their minor daughter became pregnant,” GOP Party Chairman Fergus Cullen told the Associated Press. “Governor Lynch is saying that parents don’t have a right to know their minor children became pregnant.” Amnesty International Calls for Abortion “Decriminalisation” In a policy adopted by its International Executive Committee in April but only slowly becoming public, Amnesty International has abandoned its long-standing neutrality on abortion and now embraces abortion for “particular circumstances,” according to a letter by Karen Schneider, chair of the Sexual and Reproductive Rights Working Group, found on Amnesty International’s web site. A June 14 Amnesty International press release spelled out the new policy, which is “to support the decriminalisation of abortion, to ensure women have access to health care when complications arise from abortion and to defend women’s access to abortion, within reasonable gestational limits, when their health or human rights are in danger.” While the abortion issue may be discussed at Amnesty International’s International Council Meeting August 11, the group’s secretary general told Reuters July 30 that the policy is already in place and will not be changed. “The purpose of the Council meeting is not to endorse this policy because this policy already exists,” Irene Khan told Reuters. The policy has angered many supporters who embrace Amnesty International’s traditional focus on ensuring human rights but who oppose abortion, the denial of the ultimate human right, the right to life. “The Church teaches that it is never justifiable to kill an innocent life. Abortion is murder,” Cardinal Renato Martino told the National Catholic Register. “To selectively justify abortion, even in the cases of rape, is to define the innocent child within the womb as an enemy, a ‘thing’ that must be destroyed. How can we say that killing a child in some cases is good and in other cases it is evil?” The executive committee’s policy change was deliberately kept quiet, according to Ryan T. Anderson, a junior fellow at First Things magazine, who found the information in early May on a members-only section of Amnesty’s web site. The site includes a letter to volunteer leaders, stating, “This policy will not be made public at this time.” Sections spell out Amnesty’s call for “decriminalization,” which it defines as “the removal of all criminal penalties (including imprisonment, fines, and other punishments) against those seeking, obtaining, providing information about, or carrying out abortions.” In addition, the group states that it calls on countries to: “Ensure access to abortion services to any woman who becomes pregnant as the result of rape, sexual assault, or incest, or where a pregnancy poses a risk to a woman’s life or a grave risk to her health.” Anderson points to the language that seems to contradict Amnesty’s contention that it is not advocating for an abortion “right.” “Wait a minute,” he writes in First Things. “We’ve just gone from ‘decriminalizing’ abortion to calling on states to ‘ensure access.’ And, when you throw in the language of a risk to life and health, even if you include the obligatory word ‘grave,’ all of a sudden every abortion becomes ‘ensured.’ If you doubt this, just look at the way Roe’s health exception and Doe’s broad definition of the word have been used.” |