Thursday, November 6, 2008

FROM LIFENEWS.COM

Planned Parenthood's Christmas Wish List for Obama Includes Forced Abortions
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- In its first email to supporters following pro-abortion presidential candidate Barack Obama's victory Tuesday night, Planned Parenthood announced its Christmas wish list for an Obama administration. Included in the list is a request for funding for a UN agency involved in forced abortions in China. "People around here are finally exhaling, after eight long years," Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards told donors in the email. It didn't take long for the head of the nation's biggest abortion business to turn her attention to working with her new White House ally. At the top of Richard's list is sending $34 million of taxpayer funds per year to an organization that has been involved in the China family planning program that forces couples there to have no more than one child. "It's up to us to take up that challenge and urge Barack Obama to act on his deep commitment to women's health and reproductive freedom by reversing the global gag rule, restoring funding for UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund," Richards said. The UNFPA has denied any involvement with the China program, which involves forced abortions and sterilizations for offenders while other violators are thrown in prison, face job loss and family harassment. Obama would likely restore the funding to the controversial group. Full story at LifeNews.com

United Nations Expected to Promote Worldwide Abortion Right With Obama
New York, NY (LifeNews.com) -- The United Nations is expected to aggressively promote abortions worldwide with Barack Obama as the new president of the United States. One of the top pro-life lobbyists at the United Nations says he worries the floodgates will come open to perhaps make abortion an international right. Austin Ruse, the president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, says the UN and abortion advocates there have held off on extensive abortion discussions because they knew the Bush administration would lobby fellow pro-life nations against promoting it. Those reservations will likely be thrown out the window with a new pro-abortion administration's UN liaisons representing that policy. "There was a frenzy of global UN conferences back in the 1990s, including such massive affairs as the Cairo Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Conference on Women, but during the time of the Bush administration the UN has been relatively quiet," Ruse explains. "The left at the UN counseled quiet during the Bush years for fear of losing ground in the documents that would have come under negotiation," he wrote. "With an Obama administration this fear is removed and one can expect a veritable flood of UN conferences to be announced beginning as early as this year." Full story at LifeNews.com

Birth Control the New Attack Strategy for Abortion Advocates Against Pro-Lifers
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Abortion was noticeably absent from the presidential debate but not entirely because the mainstream media refused to bring it up until weeks before the election in the third and final debate. Leading abortion advocacy groups are shying away from mentioning abortion in their attacks on pro-life candidates. Perhaps they recognize they've lost the battle on partial-birth abortions and that polling data shows anywhere from 60-80 percent of Americans support commonsense limits like informed consent, parental involvement, and laws to protect pregnant women and unborn children from violence. Even on the issue of abortion itself, polls for the last 10 years have consistently shown anywhere from 50-60 percent of Americans are pro-life, including a Marist College poll released last month showing 60 percent of Americans opposing 98 percent of abortions. In a new editorial published on a popular pro-abortion web site, activist Cristina Page admits the pro-abortion movement is increasingly turning to birth control to attack pro-life candidates rather than mentioning abortion. "This year a number of candidates that ran for the Senate, the House and as Governor engaged in a wide reproductive health debate that went way beyond abortion to include birth control," she explained. "It turns out it was a great strategy for pro-choice candidates. In the tightest of races, last night's results showed the broader agenda was a winning one." Full story at LifeNews.com

Pro-Life Democrats Get Five Congressional Seats Despite Pro-Abortion Obama Win
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Pro-abortion Democrat Barack Obama may have captured the presidency, but the pro-life group working within the party to change its pro-abortion position has a reason to celebrate. Democrats for Life of America backed several pro-life Democrats for Congress and five won their races Tuesday night. "The pro-life Democratic Caucus will once again increase," Kristen Day, the director of the group told LifeNews.com. "This will be only the second time in 30 years that the number of pro-life Democrats increases instead of decreases," the said. "The first time we made gains was in 2006 due to the work of pro-life Democrats all over this country advocating on behalf of the pro-life cause." Twenty-six pro-life incumbent members of Congress kept their seats on Tuesday night. They will be joined by five other pro-life Democrats. Full story at LifeNews.com

Assisted Suicide Movement Becomes Absurd, Is Jumping Off Bridges Next?
by Wesley J. Smith
I am having trouble keeping up: Every day now almost, it is one once unthinkable thing after another. In the UK, a woman tried to commit suicide by swallowing anti-freeze, and doctors refused to save her! Well, then why prevent a person from jumping off a bridge? Indeed, why not just get it over with and set up the euthanasia clinics to make sure nobody is hurt by jumpers! Remember the death of E.G. Robinson's character in Soylent Green at the death center? It's almost not science fiction anymore. This is runaway terminal nonjudgmentalism. We are so lost in the fog of relativism and amorality that we can't even save suicidal people's lives anymore. Indeed, we have gotten to the point that some families think it is their duty to help suicidal loved ones kill themselves, vividly in a tragic case, again out of the UK. Full story at LifeNews.com

Uruguay Catholic Leaders Meet to Discuss Excommunicating Pro-Abortion Pols
Montevideo, Uruguay (LifeNews.com) -- Leaders of the Catholic Church in the South American nation of Uruguay met on Thursday to discuss whether or not to excommunicate politicians who voted for a recent bill that would legalize abortion. Uruguay President Tabaré Vázquez vetoed the bill earlier this year and it would have allowed first-trimester abortion on virtually any grounds. Vázquez defied the votes of his party in the Uruguay Congress to expand the nation's abortion law, which currently only allows abortions only in cases of protecting the mother's life, rape or extreme poverty. The Senate initially tied on a 15-15 vote in approving the bill but eventually approved it on an 18-13 vote. The Chamber of Deputies approved it on a 49-48 margin. With many members of the Senate majority having membership in the Catholic Church, officials are concerned that they are violating the church's pro-life teachings. The Latin American news agency Prensa Latina says members of the Uruguayan Episcopal Conference debated a measure for excommunication. Full story at LifeNews.com